I have always been extra cautious around men. From a young age, I was taught the precautions needed to remain safe. Most of the time, it was my mother who took these precautions for me. Whether it meant not being allowed to have sleepovers, never being alone with a man outside of my dad and brothers, or the constant reassurance that I could always tell her if someone hurt me, I became hyper-aware of the dangerous world I occupied as a female.
Due to this, I often react counterintuitively when new allegations of sexual assault or misconduct surface. Where the world may act stunned by these headlines, I feel a weary kind of recognition. These stories are echoing warnings that half the population received long before we had the words to articulate them. I’ve been catcalled more times than I can count, been called a bitch for having the audacity to voice my opinion, had my ambition weaponized against me, and most recently had the man sitting next to me on a flight (a complete stranger) try to hold my hand and touch my arm, while also bothering the other women around him to the point that flight attendants had to escort him off the plane. Experiences like these are not anomalies in my life; they are part of a pattern that has shaped how I, and many women, move through the world.
To be clear, this recognition is not an indictment of all men, nor is it a claim that women are the only people who experience harm. Many men act with integrity, and many victims of abuse are male. Likewise, women can also be perpetrators. Acknowledging patterns of vulnerability does not erase individual variation; it simply recognizes the unequal distribution of risk that helps explain why so many women are trained, almost as a rite of passage, to anticipate it. And this is why the headlines I started paying attention to as a youth were ones that I was raised to anticipate.
I was a freshman in high school when I first learned of Jeffrey Epstein [1]. He was not the first, nor would he be the last, powerful man for whom claims of sexual assault or misconduct surfaced. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Larry Nassar, Bill Clinton, Mark Schwahn, Ed Westwick, Kevin Spacey, R. Kelly, and our current president, Donald Trump, are just a few examples [2] [3] [4].
As a Political Science student, I am trained to identify patterns and analyze the forces that shape outcomes. While I do not have the word count to delve into the Epstein files and everything that has been occurring around their release [5], there is one key aspect that I want to focus on: the most powerful men have been found in these documents [6]. From royalty to obscene wealth to U.S. presidents, each document is a game of who’s who. As a Political Science student, I am also trained to ask questions. So the question begs: why? And why have they been able to get away with it for so long?
The answer is this: access functions as immunity. While girls are taught to modify their behavior to reduce risk, powerful men are rarely taught to modify theirs to face consequences. They are socialized into insulation and equipped with the resources necessary to protect themselves. This is not merely a series of individual failures; it is structural, a dynamic that has persisted for centuries. Although there have been significant strides toward justice, that progress does not mean the underlying causes are no longer woven into our institutions. And too often, we are not angry at the insulation itself, only at the scandal that briefly reveals it.
Men in power often control their victims’ careers, reputations, or financial security. Wealth provides a safety net of talented attorneys, PR specialists, and non–disclosure agreements [7]. The majority of sexual assault cases are never taken to trial, and for those that are, the accused are often able to shield themselves from a guilty verdict [8]. When the perpetrator is a powerful man, the victim is more likely to be threatened and silenced, preventing them from speaking up in the first place [9]. At their foundation, these men were raised believing they could get away with any behavior, and as they rise in power, the cycle continues to repeat itself, harming one generation after another.
So what do we do about it? We disrupt the system and show survivors that we care about them. We become angry and turn that anger into action. We decide today that having a troubled history does not mean we cannot fight for a better future.
I think back to the little girl who was taught to be extra cautious around men, especially those in power. She was never told that this preparation would need to remain constant, long past her youth. I want to teach my daughters that they live in a world where powerful men are held accountable for their actions and that they are part of systems that will do anything to protect them.
And that starts with each of us building institutions that protect the vulnerable more fiercely than they protect the powerful.
