When Centering and Silencing Women No Longer Work
Pam Bondi, International Women’s Day, and the Tools of Patriarchy
The March 8, 2026, celebration of International Women’s Day feels loaded. A celebration born of the early twentieth-century women’s labor movement to bolster gender equality and reproductive rights while stopping violence and abuse against women feels hollow and in need of a massive resurgence, given current US politics. With the dissolution of women’s reproductive autonomy, the rise of pronatalism, the silencing of women harmed by sexual assault, and the ultimate silencing of women through state-sanctioned murder, it is an understatement to say we are living in dark times. Simultaneously, however, we are seeing women push back against their mistreatment; women harmed in this current environment refuse to stay silent and are swiftly and publicly speaking out against the injustices put upon them.
In the timeline of public harms against women, the most recent point (as of this writing) can be broadly located on the Epstein files and, more specifically, on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s disastrous management of the files and her cruel disregard for the women named in them. On February 11, 2026, Bondi testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, where she repeatedly refused to answer questions about the Epstein files, a performance widely interpreted as demonstrating fealty to her boss, President Trump.
Bait-and-switch: The Epstein Files
This was neither Bondi’s first muddled foray into the Epstein files nor her first time harming the women—many of them minors at the time of their assaults—named in the files. Releasing the Epstein files was long a rallying cry of the Republican party during the Biden presidency, centered on the notion that prominent Democrats would be named and, thus, irreparably damaged. Indeed, Trump was a repeated, vocal advocate of releasing the files. In September 2025, Bondi promised to share a “mountain of evidence,” and she released several binders, labeled The Epstein Files, Phase 1, exclusively to conservative influencers. Presumably, the intent was to curry favor with friendly journalists and pundits while also setting up prominent Democrats for humiliation. This almost immediately backfired because there was nothing of consequence in these binders; all the information in them was already publicly available. Bondi’s Phase 1 was such a debacle that other members of the Trump inner circle criticized her for it, illustrating the competitiveness of Trump’s sycophants to reach top favor.
Over the next several months, the White House, and particularly Bondi, faced unrelenting scrutiny about the files. Given how many hundreds of times the word “Trump” is named in the files, the efforts to pivot the national narrative to any other story were mostly unsuccessful. Largely bowing to press pressure, in January 2026, Trump’s Department of Justice released approximately 3.5 million additional files, and once again, it was a disaster for the White House and Bondi. Although several new names surfaced and many public figures faced increased scrutiny, the release failed to redact the names of many victim-survivors even as many attackers’ names were redacted, resulting in a whole new level of harm for the victim-survivors and impunity for attackers, who remained nameless and therefore, protected.
Bondi bamboozles the House Judiciary Committee
All of this resulted in the February testimony, when Bondi repeatedly lashed out at various members of the panel. When asked if she would apologize to the victim-survivors present in the chamber, she demurred; when pressed further, she accused the panel of theatrics; and, perhaps most egregiously, she attempted to pivot to the stock market as evidence of the Trump administration’s success, demanding that the panel owed an apology to Trump for its horrid behavior. Bondi played her hand openly, stating, “I’m going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question,” signalling to everyone her partisan contempt for the committee’s members, her disregard for Epstein’s victim-survivors, and her loyalty to Trump.
Although it may seem surprising that a woman could be so baldly insensitive to survivors of sexual assault, Bondi’s audience of one—Trump—puts her insensitivity in a larger context. Bondi is very clearly following the playbook of her boss and his mentor, Roy Cohn: Attack aggressively, never admit wrongdoing, and always claim victory. While Bondi may very well have been uncomfortable in the same physical space as Epstein’s victim-survivors, she most likely believed that as long as she was loyal to her boss, she would remain shielded from any actual retribution. We cannot assume that women will have empathy or compassion for other women just because they are women; Bondi is part of the larger patriarchal culture and therefore subject to its tenets, particularly the cruelty towards anyone deemed threatening to it.
Bondi’s disastrous performance at the hearing is an opportunity to look at the Epstein saga in a new way and may be an opportunity to reimagine International Women’s Day and the treatment of women more broadly. If we peel back the curtain of patriarchy, what we see is not a terrifying monster but rather a fearful ideology running out of gas.
To maintain dominance, those working within the context of patriarchy must lash out at anything deemed threatening. Although this is frightening and often quite harmful, we can look at it in a new way: Whatever the patriarchy and its agents deem threatening must possess some degree of agency and the capacity for power, especially to create systemic change.
The women in the gallery, sitting and standing behind Bondi, were there to represent all victim-survivors of sexual assault. Their silence in this space spoke volumes: They were present, undeterred, and not backing down. Having been harmed and marginalized for years, they are now resolutely standing strong until justice is served.
One of Epstein’s bravest victim-survivors, Virginia Giuffre, took a great risk speaking out against Epstein and his companion Ghislaine Maxwell’s abuse. Giuffre publicly named (then) Prince Andrew, leading directly to the stripping of his royal title. As of this writing, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is once again under investigation for crimes while in public office; pointedly, his brother, King Charles, has sought to distance himself from him, and while Mountbatten-Windsor has had his royal title and its associated trappings removed, he remains eighth in the line of succession. Giuffre worked to advocate for victims of sexual assault. After her death by suicide in 2025, her family took up her fight, and they continue to push for a law that would eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual assault.
The legal response to sexual assault is further evidence of how fundamentally women are silenced. Murder, for comparison, has no statute of limitations; it is considered such a serious offense that there are no legal time limits on bringing those who commit murder to justice, for the sake of the victim, their loved ones, and society at large. By contrast, the statute of limitations for charges of sexual assault, including the sexual assault of minors, varies by state. This poses two threats to women and girls. First, statutes of limitation send the message to all that sexual assault is legally less offensive than murder. Second, because sexual assault statutes vary by state, victim-survivors are responsible not just for their healing, but also for being aware of the vagaries of a legal system that provides them with variable rights, depending on when and where they were assaulted. This makes the conflation of sexual assault and trafficking even more harmful for those involved. In her death, Giuffre will force us to consider how we conceptualize sexual assault, including, especially, how seriously we expect our legal system to take it.
These women maneuver their vulnerability as a strength, as a way to push back against and introduce new ways to fight for women’s rights. This should serve as a crystal clear warning to Bondi, Maxwell, and Epstein’s friends.
The double-edge of patriarchal power
In Bondi’s embrace of Trump and of his deny-and-deflect ethos, she should be wary that those tools of patriarchy can be turned against her. Trump has a long history of destroying relationships with individuals who no longer serve him; while Bondi is loyal to him, what makes her think he will be loyal to her? Trump’s very public attack on Marjorie Taylor Greene is evidence enough that his loyalty is fickle, at best. When (not if) Trump dumps Bondi, the tools of patriarchy will no longer work to her advantage.
Ghislaine Maxwell, who is arguably paying Epstein’s moral and ethical debts via her prison sentence, may also be harmed further by the tools of patriarchy. Maxwell is believed to possess a great deal of information, including but not limited to Epstein’s lengthy client list, that could harm many public individuals (including Trump). When Maxwell was compelled to speak with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, she was moved to a minimum-security prison in exchange. When compelled a second time, Maxwell requested clemency and, when denied, invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Thus far, Maxwell’s attempts to game the legal system are not working. Her silence also speaks volumes, especially as a warning to Trump and his administration: Let me go or continue to fight this losing battle.
What if, instead, Maxwell embraced the bravery and vulnerability of her and her former partner’s victim-survivors? She might then have the courage to speak a truth that remains unspoken. Will powerful people—Democrat and Republican alike—be taken down? Perhaps. But her continued silence is evidence that, as a nation, many remain indifferent to Maxwell’s invocation of her Fifth Amendment rights as a bargaining chip for her own self-protection.
The corporate media regularly repeat the point that being named in the Epstein files and being close to Epstein are not evidence of wrongdoing (where “wrongdoing” is limited to the sexual assault and trafficking of minors). However, it stands to reason that those who turned to Epstein for financial advice, or who socialized with him because they were in the same geographic, class, and social circles, must have, to some degree, been aware of his actions. Too many sly comments, public photographs, and email chains have been shared for those implicated to be able to deny, at the very least, any superficial awareness. This means that their own personal, professional, and financial goals were more important than the lives and well-being of dozens of young women. Many of these powerful individuals—men and women—had platforms from which they could have spoken, reached out to law enforcement, pulled some strings—and they chose not to. They chose to look away or to maneuver a plausible deniability for their own selfish gains.
Reimagining International Women’s Day
This March, I strongly urge us to celebrate women in new and different ways. The history of International Women’s Day has ebbed and flowed since it was first celebrated in February 1909, including several years when it was mostly forgotten. This trajectory is not unlike how our society has viewed women over the generations: Capable of work, of autonomy, and of peace until any of those get in the way. Celebrating women can be a superficial balm to calm people’s nerves in highly stressful times, or it can be an opportunity to reflect more deeply on what our society values and how we might explore and enrich those values in new and different ways.
Let us take this auspicious day to center and amplify women. Yes, let us celebrate women’s labor, let us continue to fight for women’s reproductive autonomy, let us continue to fight violence against women—and let us also acknowledge that the very fact that we still have to fight for these basic rights is a travesty. In addition, let us fight the very ideology of patriarchy by highlighting women’s unique strengths. Let us give more oxygen to the women who speak up and speak out in the face of injustice, and who do so with vulnerability as an act of bravery. I have no doubt that women will prevail and bring down patriarchy. The question, though, is how long it will take and at what cost? If we work to do things differently, maybe we can make that time shorter and that cost less disastrous.
Editor’s note: The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture, by Allison T. Butler, will be published by The Censored Press, later this month.
First published on https://www.projectcensored.org/centering-silencing-women-pam-bondi/
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