Forget the abuse of women and girls, it was politics that counted

Contempt everywhere.

- Nesrine Malik

From Jeffrey Epstein's email exchanges to the scandal of Peter Mandelson's appointment, contempt radiates.

Contempt for women and girls, for the law, for the public. A continuum of disdain runs from Epstein on the one end to our political establishment on the other. The other thing that joins them is a restless pursuit of power.

Contempt is not a byproduct of that power, it is the point of it. Procuring, trading, objectifying and violating women and girls is the summit of potency for those who already have money, status, respect. To subordinate another human being to your urges, to reduce her in all ways, is to be initiated into a club of super-predators who are above the law. The Epstein emails are a demonstration of how misogyny - there should be a stronger word for it in this context - is a currency. The gut-twisting way that casual references to body parts would come up in correspondence is part of a whole language of signalling. Referring to women as "pussy" is to flash your exclusive club membership card.

What facilitated that is a wider climate of scorn and impunity: the value system that still, even after Epstein was convicted, did not disqualify him from his friendship with others, nor disqualified those others from being appointed to roles such as British ambassador to the United States. Those caught in the revelations resort to the same excuses. We didn't know. We were lied to. We did not know the full extent. Some perhaps took the word of a convicted criminal that it was a bit more complicated than that; others took the word of a man who was twice forced to resign from government.