Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash Epstein Series — Part 6 If exploitation were random, it would affect everyone equally. But it never does. Trafficking, sexual violence, and abuse overwhelmingly target the same groups — again and again: • poor girls• runaway youth• unhoused children• girls in foster systems• migrants• those without legal or social...
Photo by Keller Chewning on Unsplash Epstein Series — Part 5 There’s a story society loves to tell whenever powerful men are exposed for extreme abuse. It goes like this: He was a monster.A freak.An outlier.Something uniquely evil. And when that man is punished (or dies), the narrative closes. Justice served. Problem solved. But that...
Photo by Donald Teel on Unsplash Epstein Series — Part 4 When we talk about trafficking rings like the one run by Jeffrey Epstein, the question isn’t just how did this happen? It’s: How did it continue for decades — in plain sight? Because extreme abuse doesn’t survive without protection. And in Epstein’s case, that...
Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash Epstein Series — Part 3 When people ask how men like Jeffrey Epstein could commit abuse on such an extreme scale, the answer isn’t just “because they’re evil.” It’s because their version of masculinity is built on domination. Not attraction.Not intimacy.Not connection. Power. And when wealth removes limits, masculinity...
Photo by Emily Karakis on Unsplash Epstein Series — Part 2 Abuse on this scale doesn’t survive on secrecy alone.It survives on respectability. When we talk about the Epstein network, we can’t just analyze the man at the center — Jeffrey Epstein — we have to interrogate the systems that wrapped him in credibility, access,...
Photo by Sep on Unsplash Epstein Series — Part 1 When people talk about the Epstein case, the focus is often on scandal, wealth, and conspiracy. But beneath the headlines sits a much older and uglier system: one where women’s and girls’ bodies are treated as commodities — traded, controlled, and consumed by powerful men....
Photo by Luke Miller on Unsplash Folklore, Fear, and Feminist Lessons from Brave and Beyond Recently, the internet has been ablaze with a strange but telling question: If you had to be alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear? Overwhelmingly, women are choosing the bear. Why? Because while a...
Photo by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash The queer experience is never monolithic. It shifts depending on geography, family, faith, politics, and culture. In Poland, this reality is made visible through contemporary cinema, where filmmakers grapple with questions of identity, secrecy, and survival. Two films in particular—Operation Hyacinth (2021, dir. Piotr Domalewski) and In the...
Photo by Moritz Kindler on Unsplash Michał Witkowski’s Lovetown offers a strikingly unflinching portrait of queer life in Poland at the cusp of monumental political and cultural change. What struck me most while reading was not only the vivid depictions of LGBTQ+ subcultures, but the repeated references to the AIDS crisis—a reminder that this epidemic...
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash When the mpox virus (formerly called monkeypox) started spreading in 2022, the headlines came quickly — and so did the stigma. Within weeks, mainstream outlets and social media users alike were calling it a “gay disease,” repeating the same tired script used during the AIDS crisis. Once again, queer...