In our latest episode Predator Networks, author Aurora Linnea talks about the worldwide normalization of sexual violence against teenage girls; from men marrying girl children, to campus gang rapes, to the massive popularity of internet “teen porn”, and argues against our collective delusion that these practices breaks with our social norms at all.

New season, new logo!! Welcome to Season 5, so excited to share our new episodes, and we are starting off with a phenomenal and timely conversation with feminist writer Aurora Linnea. When news of men’s coordinated sex attacks erupt in the media, such as the recent Cornell 7, or the Giséle Pelicot case, or the global Whatsapp groups dedicated to rape techniques, not to mention the Epstein files - we desperately want to think about these atrocities against women and children as an abomination. We call for the punishment of the depraved men who did it. We feel compelled to think of these crimes as a horrific breakdown of societal norms. Aurora has written an extraordinary essay titled "The Unexceptional Jeffrey Epstein: Rapist Everyman and Ubermensch" published on her Substack "Holistic Anti Atrocity Feminism" - which takes the very opposite view. In her essay, Aurora examines Epstein’s sex crimes enterprise - trading girls and women to other men for sexual abuse - in a historical context. She traces the practice of men working together in informal or formal networks to sexually violate, back in history - showing us that Epstein and all other predator networks IS our social norm, and actually fits very neatly into our cultural landscape. In this hour we talk about how we stop pretending that Epstein is a rare monstrosity, what gang rape as a practice reveals about male sexual mores and norms, and the very central role that sexual violence against girls and women play in how men bond with each other and how they broker status and power amongst one another. Or as Aurora puts it, “ women and girls are very valuable capital in the homosocial maneuvering of men under patriarchy.”Predator Networks subjecttopower.com/predator-…

40 years ago, Jane Caputi wrote a brilliant book about serial sex killers - The Age of Sex Crime - which is as relevant today as it was in 1987. In the book, Jane analyzes the histories of well-known, individual serial sex killers, from Jack The Ripper to The Boston Strangler to Son of Sam to Ted Bundy and many more - and answers fundamental questions about how and why they came to be - and how they fit into our cultural narratives. Jane argues that far from being monstrous aberrations, serial sex murderers occupy a role in our patriarchal culture that is both accommodated and endorsed. In this hour Elle talks with Jane about all aspects of serial sex killing; the folk hero appeal of serial sex killers, how sexual terror is used to preserve male power, how the serial killers, police and media co-create “monster genius mastermind" narratives and how these narratives fit hand in glove with a common collective male fantasy of hurting women. We also talk about the real silencing of victims and how women everywhere are invited to identify with the serial killer’s victims, both in the real-life cases, then in the true crime media that retells the gruesome details, and then finally in the fictional movies, books and television that serves up an endless buffet of dead women, bloody sacrifices to male power. subjecttopower.com/bloody-sa…

In latest episode Category: Torture, Elle @J42doc talks with public-health-nurses-turned-global-human-rights-activists Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald about their long quest to get non-state torture recognized as a crime, a crime that mostly victimizes women and girls. Link in bio.

New must-listen💥episode up. Abuse and systematic cruelty against women and children is common across the world, but the term torture is still reserved mostly for men - think political prisoners, prisoners of war, victims of evil regimes.But guests on today’s episode, retired-community-nurses-turned-global-human-rights-activists Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald has a 60-year plan - a plan to broaden our understanding of torture to include women and children, and to get non-state torture recognized as a crime everywhere. Jeanne and Linda spent their whole working lives as public health nurses in Nova Scotia, Canada, providing womb-to-tomb care throughout their province. As nurses they came into contact with a lot of family violence and abuse of women and children - and advocating for and counseling victims were an essential part of their job and their personal mission.But in 1993, Linda and Jeanne had a fateful encounter with a woman who reported being a victim of life-long systematic torture, and they soon realized that they were dealing with a very different category of harm - and this set their careers and their lives in a whole new direction. The story of how Jeanne and Linda helped and cared for this torture victim, what they discovered about organized torture networks and perpetrators, how they created the model for understanding non-state torture as a phenomenon and as a crime - and how they became global activists in the process - is chronicled in their book Women Unsilenced. In this hour Elle talks with Linda and Jeanne about their story, their decades of research and founding the organization Persons Against Non-State Torture - and how they used nursing science and an unshakable ethic of care to help victims break out of silence, to tell of their victimization, to escape, and to heal from their traumas. subjecttopower.com/category-…

How is women's equality connected to the health of a nation? Author of @doublexeconomy Linda Scott talks with Elle @J42doc about all the ways that sex inequality is a recipe for disaster, and how empowering women is always going to result in a more stable, prosperous economy. More truth bombs at link in bio.

Thank you Orla🫶🏼

We know there is an effort afoot in the US to force women back into the domestic sphere, but do the proponents of this plan grasp what they're wishing for? Expert on women's economy and author of @doublexeconomy Linda Scott doesn't think so. Find our conversation at link in bio.

New episode alert 🚨 Standing Up To The Brotherhood No matter how much the “family values” crowd wishes for women to “return home where they belong”, Linda Scott, renown expert on women’s economy and author of @doublexeconomy, knows women’s economic empowerment has traversed past the point of no return. It is - in every way - too late. It is too late to force women out of the market economy and back into the private, domestic sphere - without widespread damage to all of society. A fact that is not stopping patriarchs from trying to shove women backwards. In founding the concept of The Double X Economy, Linda revealed how women have been economically subjugated across the world and throughout history, demonstrating through extensive data and on-the-ground research, how women have been systematically excluded from the entire financial order. Linda opens our eyes to the economic injustices women are subjected to around the globe, from corporate offices to rural farms, far beyond being denied paid work or being exploited for unpaid labor. In this episode, Elle talks to Linda about patriarchy’s most powerful and enduring tool used to keep women out of power and away from agency - economic exclusion - and why it is that gender inequality is such a bad economic strategy, and gender equality is a perfect recipe for success - regardless of culture. We talk about the far-reaching consequences of shutting women out, as well as the equally far-reaching positive impacts of lifting the constraints on women, also about our Chimpanzee-Bonobo deep past, our very dark present, and the exciting new project Linda is working on. subjecttopower.com/standing-…

This is the inevitable outcome of making machines out of women, and human babies into products they produce on order. Commodification of this deeply human act makes us all into things to buy and sell, and life itself becomes dramatically devalued.

Looking forward to reading and if you want to hear @lexington1920 speak about the alarming spread of surrogacy, go listen to our latest episode The Empathy Trap, link in bio.

There is a lot that goes into the recruitment of women for surrogacy besides financial incentives - because, as recruiters well know - most women are powerfully motivated to help those in need and to prove that they are "good women". Recruiters and "intended parents" often love-bomb a prospective surrogate mother, offering her belonging, appreciation, care and company. In latest ep The Empathy Trap, founder of @WombsNotForRent Lexi Ellingsworth talks with Elle about the act of seducing a woman into surrogate motherhood.

Human beings (and that includes women) are not meant to produce a product to order. It’s a hideous, dehumanizing and appalling practice that needs to be criminalized globally.

New episode up✨with founder of @WombsNotForRent Lexi Ellingsworth! In 2026 the global surrogacy industry will grow to over 30 billion dollars. The manufacturing plants and raw materials that make this massive business possible are women's bodies, and the products being bought and sold are human babies. This hugely profitable industry can only exist if a subset of women offer themselves up for highly invasive, completely unnatural, risky, and life-altering medical procedures resulting in pregnancy and birth, or alternatively “egg-harvesting” - all with little to no legal protection or oversight. What motivates women to become surrogate mothers? What motivates women to have their eggs extracted for other women to “use”? What and who are the drivers behind the normalization of surrogacy? We know that money plays a big part, both for the surrogate mothers and to the chain of people who profit from this human trade - the surrogacy agencies, doctors, clinics, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry - what we might call Big Fertility - but there are other factors at play besides money. Lexi has been investigating surrogacy and campaigned against surrogacy law reform in the UK for 7 years, where commercial surrogacy is still illegal but "altruistic" surrogacy is getting more and more common. In her work to raise awareness around the mountains of ethical questions surrounding the practice of surrogacy in the UK and internationally, Lexi works closely with survivors of surrogacy and in this episode we get an inside view of the world of surrogate motherhood and the dangerously murky morality that surrogate mothers navigate on their often harrowing “journeys”. We talk about how toxic empathy, low self-esteem and needing to prove you are a good person can lead some women to offer up their bodies for use. We talk about so-called reproductive privilege, the idea that “aren't you lucky you can do this without any help, you don't have to go to an IVF clinic, and you really should help other people who don't have the same luck as you” as well as the adoption of human rights language such as Wombs Without Borders, “humanitarian surrogacy” and “fertility refugees”. We talk about the dehumanizing and highly manipulative language that is now being used to trivialize the whole biological act of becoming a mother into terms like “extreme babysitting” and “easy-bake oven” and what it means for women everywhere that we are creating a subclass of women who are used or useful for breeding for other people. The Empathy Trap subjecttopower.com/the-empat…