Enlarge image
Ghislaine Maxwell with her defense team: become a perpetrator
Photo: JANE ROSENBERG / REUTERS
Ghislaine Maxwell, the former business partner and friend of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday for "trafficking in minors for the purpose of abuse," among other things.
She had already been found guilty in December, and the sentence has now been set.
It's slightly longer than the legally-suggested limit of up to 19 years and seven months because of the seriousness of Maxwell's actions.
"Ever since Eve was accused of tempting Adam with an apple, women have been blamed for the actions of men," Maxwell's attorney, Bobbi Sternheim, said in her opening statement last December.
She called Maxwell a "scapegoat" and added: "She is not Jeffrey Epstein and she is not like Jeffrey Epstein".
This statement was part of the strategy to separate Maxwell's responsibility from Epstein's actions.
Above all, she should make it clear: Maxwell is not a heterosexual man.
To exonerate her client, the defense chose to argue with gender, to victimize the perpetrator, to define her as a victim of her circumstances precisely because she is a woman and Epstein was a powerful man.
Here you have to prick up your ears, because feminist arguments are so heavily instrumentalized that they turn into the opposite - and contribute not only to reproducing sexist structures, but to solidifying them.
Attorney Sternheim's opening statement was based on the premise that women are in no position to act criminally and coldly.
It's frustrating to have to stress this banality: of course women can be assholes too.
This is also frustrating because at the same time there is a long tradition of demonizing women.
In patriarchal logic, they have been used as piñatas of social dysfunction for millennia, from Pandora, who brought suffering to the world through disobedience, to alleged witches who were burned when something went wrong with the crops, to today's tabloid media, who benefit from the fabrication of the manipulative family destroyer at every celebrity breakup.
However, this background noise in favor of women must not drown out abuse committed by women.
Of course, true equality means recognizing that both men and women can be irresponsible and mischievous.
It becomes sexist when it is claimed or assumed that being a woman is the cause of malice and crime.
The idea insinuated by Maxwell's defense that the client's mistakes only happened because she was seduced by a man childishes the woman, robs her of all sovereignty - and is therefore deeply anti-feminist.
There is no feminism in the wrong.
more on the subject
Jeffrey Epstein confidants: Ghislaine Maxwell sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking of minors
A former Silicon Valley icon argued in a similar way: the tech "Miss Miracle" Elizabeth Holmes (this term is deliberately chosen and is in quotation marks because she exploited this very sexist cliché of the underrated young woman).
After deceiving the public for decades with her biotech company Theranos that her alleged innovation, a rapid blood test, didn't work, she deceived investors and put the lives of patients in danger, she declared herself the emotional hostage of the man behind her, the entrepreneur Ramesh »Sunny« Balwani.
One can appreciate that people are also always a product of their circumstances, perhaps internalized misogyny is also part of the problem - and that they can still use structures to their advantage as perpetrators.
Maxwell seeks to capitalize on a corrupted #MeToo cliche - the woman being exploited and oppressed by a man - while exploiting even the most vulnerable members of her own sex in the process.
She played a central role in building the trafficking ring that systematically abused girls, managing its economy, which was also based on not only bringing in minors to rape them, but also befriending them to prepare them for the rapes.
According to the indictment, Maxwell's job was to gain the girls' trust in order to make them compliant for the systematic abuse that was euphemistically labeled "massages."
She sometimes watched the rapes "to reassure the child with her presence," according to the indictment.
It can also be said that she is both a victim and a perpetrator, as she herself suffered physical and emotional abuse, including apparently a hammer, from her father, the late Robert Maxwell, a notorious media mogul.
And in this case, of course, there are no buts: she was and is a victim.
She became a perpetrator at the point where she used her wealth, privilege and social capital in the form of her glamorous contacts to commit violence against others.
Maxwell is also about the power of their social superiority - or about the powerlessness of abducted girls who were recruited from precarious backgrounds.
Apparently, for the entrepreneur, these girls were just a resource in this pyramid scheme of sexual violence designed to ensure her own comfortable life.
A more sexist maintenance of a misogynistic system can hardly be imagined.
On Tuesday, after a long silence, the condemned woman took the floor to explain that she was a victim.
She told the women who spoke about the impact of the rape on their lives: "I'm sorry for the pain you experienced" and further: "I feel deeply for all the victims in this case".
Now she will appeal the verdict.