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Kavita Ramdas The virgin and the whore. You know, you marry the virgin, but then you treat all other women with complete disrespect and complete, with a complete sense as though they are possessions and your belonging. (.......) Hi, I'm Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. And I'm Kavita Nandini Ramdas.
Sanam And this is another special episode of If You Were In Charge. We thought that given all the news and deluge of sludge, frankly, that is coming out of the Epstein files, it would be important for us to have a conversation about... The people who were in charge. The people who are and have been in charge. Exactly.
Kavita Ramdas For whom there so far has been no accountability. And there are no consequences for their relentless misogyny and their treatment of women essentially as subhuman.
Sanam Kavita, for me, one of the things that struck me, which I posted on LinkedIn a couple of days ago, was that Epstein was presented as a guy who loved science and, you know, had almost like a curated network of the most brilliant scientists and financiers and, you know, talent in every domain. (.) But what was notable was that they were all men. So he, you know, he had very strong ties to MIT. MIT has some brilliant women. And Esther Duflo is there and was there as an economist and, you know, across all the sciences. And the Nobel Prize winners. You know, in economics and biology and across the sciences, these women were there. And yet they are notably absent from his networking, right? Now that we know what this, what was actually underneath it all, that there was this persistent level of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation in which all of these characters seem to participate in some way or another or enable or were aware of, of course he wouldn't be inviting the smart, professional, kind of extraordinary women. They would be excluded from these circles, right?
Kavita Ramdas Well, because I don't think this was ever about them, right? Like, it was not really about being seen with the powerful and the extraordinary based on their merits alone. It was clearly not, right? It was clearly about a men's cabal of one sort or another.
Sanam And one thing is to say Epstein had his proclivities and he, you know, he was into, he was a pedophile. It's a whole other thing, recognizing that all of these men who participated never, ever stopped to say, oh, you know, I'm a whatever, Larry Summers. I'm a, I'm a world-class economist. Where is Esther Duflo? Where are the female, he's an extraordinary, strange one to pick given what he said about women, but they never either noticed or maybe they, maybe they liked the fact that, that they come into a space and there aren't women there to challenge them or their own, you know, it's so insidious.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, Sanam, I, I think that this was actually all about him creating something that no longer exists, right? Think about what decades of feminism have achieved for us. We no longer have these exclusive men-only clubs where men go to smoke cigars, talk about how they're, they all have mistresses because they have to marry according to society, but they can all have mistresses. And I think, in a way, Epstein's cabal, as you call it, is a modern-day recreation of something that rich and powerful men always thought they had the right to have, which was a space that was free of women who were their peers, whether that was in society's terms or in this case, intellectual terms or achievement terms, and then where they could actually treat other women who they didn't have to treat with respect, who they didn't have to treat. And so this becomes this dichotomy between sort of the virgin and the whore, you know, you marry the virgin, but then you treat all other women with complete disrespect and complete, with a complete sense as though they are possessions and your belongings. And I think that explains to me why it would be inconceivable that they would invite women. I mean, I've had experiences with Larry Summers personally that have left me with no uncertain sense about his opinion about women, including their brains. You know, he and I served on an advisory council to the Gates Foundation years ago, and we know Bill Gates was also one of the people in this cabal of people. And I remember very vividly a first meeting with him in which he met both me and Amina Mohamed, who is currently the Deputy Secretary General at the UN. And we were there on time. We were the only women in a group of six advisors. I was wearing Indian clothes. Amina was wearing her African clothes, including her head covering. And I had a bindi on my forehead. And he walked up to us and we said, oh, good evening. And the first thing he said to us was, good grief, whatever do the two of you have on your heads? And I was just horrified and grateful when Amina, with a very crisp British accent, responded, well, perhaps you should try wearing something on your head. It might improve your manners. (.) And how did he respond? That's very true.
Sanam Oh, I don't even think he understood. Yeah.
Kavita Ramdas I don't even think he understood. And then I heard another story about him from the former president of Princeton, the only woman to have ever been president of Princeton, Shirley Tillman, when I served on that board. And she said to me, she sat next to him at a dinner for college presidents in which he moaned and groaned about how he had to go through this for fundraising. And she said, well, you know, all of us have to do it. That's part of our job. And he said, yes, but, you know, you get to sit between two brilliant men. I have to sit between two women who have nothing to say.
Sanam Oh, my God. It's just nauseous. It's just so disgusting. It makes you so nauseous. The Times of London, one of the female journalists did a review of the language that these men use in all the chumminess, right? Supposedly, the so-called great and the good. I mean, they are the global elite, right?
Kavita Ramdas Absolutely. From Davos to the TED conferences to-
Sanam Exactly. And the language that they use about women is so crass. The references that they make are so crass. And it's so disgusting that there's kind of, and I don't even want to mention the words, but it's, there's that part of it. And then it's so snivelly. I mean, you know, here's this, whatever, 68-year-old man, president of Harvard. Accomplished economist. Presidential advisory. I mean, and he's complaining about this clearly young woman who doesn't respond to him. And he's talking about, I don't want to be a friend without benefits. This kind of thing. And you're like, this is gross. You people are gross. And it's so gross.
Kavita Ramdas And it's, but Sanam, do you remember when that other guy who was in the hotel room and the young hotel maid, oh, he was in the IMF. Dominique Strauss-Khan, head of the IMF. And he literally got away. He still hasn't really paid a price. And I think that this is what I'm seeing is at least a little bit of, in the UK, you all are seeing at least some set of resignations. Honestly, nobody in the US has had to even resign from anything. Here was Jeffrey Epstein basically doing business for JP Morgan, one of the largest banks in the United States. Has Jamie Dimon stepped down because he was associated with this? Has anybody else in the bank stepped down? Has Bill Gates stepped down? Are people, you know, calling for resignations from anything else? I mean, it's quite extraordinary. Dominique Strauss-Khan, the night that the news came out, the news broke. I was in Washington and I was with Luca, my ex-husband, who's an economist.
Sanam And he immediately said, my God, everybody knew. He didn't work at the IMF or anything, but, you know, these circles up. And apparently at the IMF, it was known that if you were a female, you know, if you're a woman working there, they all loved him as a boss. And, you know, lots of people supported him, his vision and so forth. But it was kind of known that you shouldn't be in the elevator with him alone. It was kind of known that if you go out to dinner with him, you might find his hand on your left.
Kavita Ramdas But I think, Sanam, just saying that, that they all loved him as a boss. Do you think that if there had been a woman boss who was putting her hands all over people, that people would still say, oh, she's lovely as a boss?
Sanam But this is what I'm trying to say, that it's the normalization that, including by women, internalizing for generations. Men will be men.
Kavita Ramdas Boys will be boys. Boys will be boys. Exactly. Which we saw at the Kavanaugh hearings, which is why the woman, very serious scientist, brought these charges against Kavanaugh and took the risk of testifying in public. Same with Anita Hill, the credibility of women, regardless of how amazing their qualifications and credentials, is constantly compromised. And look at this.
Sanam There have been thousands of testimonies by women over years. There is a recording of a woman who says she was 13 years old when she was taken to one of these horrific orgy-type parties, and she was forced to perform sexual acts.
Kavita Ramdas Yeah, perform sexual acts. And nothing's been done.
Sanam So this is— There's no accountability. You know, sometimes, yeah, I mean, sometimes I think, oh, you know, when people think about the Islamic world, they're like, oh, women don't count, and you have to have two women for every male witness in court. And I'm like, what about here?
Kavita Ramdas Thousands of them. Take a look at what about here and for how long that has been the case.
Sanam And the other thing is that what I find notable about the Mandelson case here is, okay, so he's gay and not implicated in the sexual abuse and exploitation, but he was around them. He knew. It's more about the fact that he was back-channel, essentially insider trading, I mean, giving serious information about financial policy and decisions to this guy, and so cheap, so degrading.
Kavita Ramdas And the thing is that it really cuts across—it cuts across all kinds of famous—I mean, I was so depressed to see Noam Chomsky's name on there. And I completely understand how this happens, right? We live in a world, Sanam, and you and I have led non-profits. You still lead a non-profit. We know that the temptation of how to go and look for money for our work is so high. And we will do so many things to go get in a room. Somebody says, oh, you should be at TED because you'll meet all these important people. And to read about how many Epstein dinners happened around TED conferences, because the rich and the not rich, but the famous and the wealthy and the well-known were at those events, just makes you also realize that there is a forgiveness. It's sort of a wink, wink, nod, nod, like, okay, yeah, there's some pedophilia, as you said, or yes, we know that he's handsy in an elevator. And so we all knew that, but we all worked for him anyway. And I guess I think as women's rights activists and as feminists, surely this is a moment for us to say this is enough. And in fact, that's what the Me Too movement tried to do. And yet here we are. We've gone right back as though the Me Too movement never even happened.
Sanam And it's, you know, Alan Dershowitz had a rant on Fox News going on about, oh, these radical feminists that are so concerned about, you know, what was happening on Jeffrey Epstein's island. But they haven't said anything about, you know, the rape of Jewish women on October 7th. This is anti-Semitism. And I just, I'm just like, really? And he's like, you know, we have to get the names of these radical feminists. And in a way, the reason why I wanted to do this conversation was... Well, here we are. He can take our names. Here we are, buddy. Here we are. And guess what? We called out the sexual abuse that happened on October 7th. We did not buy into the extreme fake news versions of it.
Kavita Ramdas We are looking at the facts debunked. Yes, which are actually, which have now been completely revealed. In fact, in the United States, Jewish Voices for Peace, as we heard from our colleague, Stephanie Fox, is bringing a case against the New York Times for that article, which was completely false and based on reports that have not been substantiated in any way. So for Alan Dershowitz to go off on a rant is really quite rich. //S01: As if he cares.//
Sanam All he's doing is he's trying to detract and deflect from the Epstein files and his own name being implicated in that to something else and then attacking radical feminists. I'm sorry. Radical feminists are not involved in the sexual abuse of boys and girls. It just, the other piece of it that I find, you know, it just becomes very clear. I always say in our work that the exclusion of women in, whether it's at your peace table or in these exclusive, you know, clubby worlds of men, is never about, oh, the culture doesn't allow it or, oh, these women aren't qualified. It's never about that. It's simply about power and wanting to maintain exclusivity.
Kavita Ramdas But also knowing that very likely at least a few of those women are likely not to want to go along with these activities.
Sanam Of course they wouldn't go along, right? I mean, you're not, you're not going to have, you're not going to have preeminent MIT scientists and, I don't know, big financiers and the women of tech showing up and tolerating, I hope, tolerating seeing 13-year-old, 14-year-old girls.
Kavita Ramdas I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say that no women have been engaged in a process of exploiting other women because unfortunately we know from the long history of both prostitution and the weaponization of women's bodies that certainly women have been used to exploit other women, but the power is not held by them in this case, right?
Sanam He collected the world's best and the brightest, right? //S00: So-called.// But he deliberately did not collect the best and the brightest of the women because the best and the brightest of the men who came into this space, it was a space of sexual exploitation of minors. And the women who were in there, of course, there have always been, Madame Claude in France, the very famous house of whatever, sex workers and prostitution. We've always had women in these spaces, but what I'm talking about is that these spaces of professionalism or spaces where, as women have come into the ranks of leadership around the world, you think, okay, we need to be in the same rooms in these spaces. And you see that those rooms keep moving. If it used to be that, oh, you know, you went into the high-level rooms at the UN and it was all men and they could be clubby and now the women are there, well, the men have now found an alternative space.
Kavita Ramdas They've exited to their private mail clubs. Here's a list. I just want to read out a few names. So Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, Larry Summers, Howard Lutnik, Sergey Brin, the billionaire Google co-founder, Steve Bannon, the former advisor to Trump, national security advisor to the Slovakian prime minister, Miroslav Laiyec. Ahmadi Najad. Ehud Barak, I mentioned. Cassie Wasserman, who's the president of the committee for the 2023 Summer Olympics. in Los Angeles, was charged. He exchanged floaty emails with Epstein confidant. Stephen Tisch, who is the New York Giants co-owner. Bill Clinton, of course. And his wife, Hillary Clinton. Deepak Chopra. Deepak Chopra. Deepak Chopra. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. And we are about to witness somebody going to war in Iran in order to cover up the Epstein files. I mean, how have we come to a point where, you know, these two things, Sanam, you've been working on trying to work on demilitarization and dismantling militarism for 30 years. And here we are at a moment when the country you were born in, the country of your culture and your history and your tradition, is literally at risk from a man who's so worried about his name being revealed in the Epstein files that he's willing to actually wage war on another country. And we've just been through this with Mr. Netanyahu for other reasons, who doesn't want his corruption to come out in a trial, and so has waged war on Gaza for two years unrelentingly. And I just think that if we don't see the parallels between this kind of demonstration of alleged sexual prowess and the exclusion of women from these spaces in order to exploit women.
Sanam Yeah, in order to have the other way, exactly, to have the compliant, submissive, dependent. //S00: Powerless, often powerless.// And the women who, you know, who are attracted to adjacency to power, that, you know, the Ghislaine Maxwells of this world who are.
Kavita Ramdas And I think one has to say that part of the reason over history that women have chosen the route of adjacency to power as a way to wield their own power is because in patriarchal models, there is so limited room for any other ways to wield that power. I mean, we only got, I mean, the last country to actually give women the right to vote were cantons in Switzerland in the late 1990s. (..) So, you know, we aren't talking a feminist movement here that's much older than 200 years.
Sanam You know, you know, what I find striking about it is the depth of mixture of both, I don't want to say hatred, but there's something like this, this, the way that you see the backlash against women's rights and, and, you know, diversity, et cetera. It comes with such anger as if we are coming into spaces to which they're entitled to and taking away from them their birthright, right?
Kavita Ramdas And I'm like. And Sanam, here's, here's something I would say. I think we as feminists have perhaps underestimated, you know, I, I always was nervous when people were like, well, but this doesn't take away anything. All of us will be better off. I think the truth is, is that when you lose absolute power, it still feels like you've lost. It doesn't matter if you bring more, you know, chairs to the table. If you were used to living in a world in which you didn't have to have anybody else at the table and in which you made all the decisions and in which women were there either to sexually pleasure you or to fold your socks and produce your children and look after them for you, then obviously a movement like feminism, that was why Olympe de Gouges had to be killed by the French revolutionaries who said, you know, liberté, égalité, fraternité, except for les femmes.
Sanam Of course. Yeah.
Kavita Ramdas Right. And I think that that's something we have to acknowledge. And when people say, well, there's really no need for feminism anymore because we've already got equal rights and what's the issue? I'm like, here's the issue. Look at it.
Sanam The other thing that really I find depressing about this is that these men end up sucking out the oxygen of the universe of humanity and of other men, right? And I've always found it interesting and a bit sad that any time we raise problems of gender-based violence or sexual abuse and exploitation and we say, hey, guys, join us. Other guys, you know, there are lots of good guys. Hey, good guys. Guys, you come and also speak about this. The reaction that we get is, it's not me. You know, don't put this issue on me. And my response to that is in the space of feminism and feminist leadership, to me, what we're trying to do is to genuinely create an egalitarian, meritocratic, transparent world, which is good for us and for the good guys.
Kavita Ramdas Ideally, it would be good for everybody, but I do think this issue of, you know, I mean, it's a little bit like us as Indians saying to the British, listen, you know, if you gave us independence, it would be good for us all. And the truth is, is that the British liked it just the way it was, that they liked being able to take whatever money they could out of India and take all the gold and all of the things that are lying in those museums. So, an anti-colonial struggle is not that different. When you have power, it's very difficult to acknowledge losing that power without having a real sense of loss. The reason that the British Empire is mourned is not because everybody in the British Empire were assholes or terrible people.
Sanam But this is the point, that we are dealing with a subset of hyper-alpha male specimens, if you want.
Kavita Ramdas If there's something about, you know, I would like to think that, Sanam, but I don't actually think that. If you've walked on a street in India.
Sanam Well, so, so, so, just, you know, but just, just bear with me. Just, just bear with me for a second. So, this, to me, when I look at these cases, Harvey Weinstein and, and so forth, people, there were people there who worked for him, who knew what he was doing. He was also a bully to the men who worked in his office. Sure. I, right, and so, so these, these, these men are actually pretty, they are alpha types that want to bully other men and exploit women. And what makes me sad is that the men who are falling in line and accepting that kind of, you know, wolf pack, you know, we got the top dog and everybody else falls in line with them. Or who are too scared to speak out because, because of their jobs and mortgages or whatever it is. They need to become a bit more courageous. And they need to understand that where we sit and where we, as women speak out about these things and we take risks and we take the risk of being, you know, vilified online or excluded from whatever spaces because, because we're causing discomfort. I wish that they would understand that we are more allies to them and the world that we are imagining would be good, better for them than persisting with this hierarchical top dog mentality that, that has been forever. I mean, good guys would rise if, if, if, if, and where we see women speaking out. I just, I just think, I think we have to give them the courage to do that.
Kavita Ramdas I don't disagree with that and I don't think it has to do with men or women, frankly. On this issue, I would disagree. I think that there are as many women who don't speak out in support of other women who are facing these kinds of issues. I have seen it in all of the places I've worked. I have witnessed it inside offices where women are being serially sexually harassed and other women don't speak out on behalf of them. And I have seen very brave men who have spoken out. So for me, I don't gender this for me, feminism is not about what you have between your legs and everything about what you have between your ears. And so I don't think that it depends on being a man or a woman. What I think it depends on and what I think is hard for all people is that when you are close to power and when you need powerful people to do things for you, and when you've actually, the issue of proximity of other men who aren't, as you say, these kind of alpha men, is that in their own spaces they can be alpha men, right? You can be a man who is, and in fact, in the work of domestic violence, we know this very well. You can be a man who is humiliated and has no power in your own society or in your workplace and you come home and who do you take it out on? You take it out on the only person who has no power over you and that is the woman in your household. And so I guess what I would say, Sanam, and I'm sorry because I have to wrap up this wonderful conversation now. I have to go to another meeting. But I think I would say that what gives me hope, as we like to end our conversations about this, is that there are good people of all genders, of all genders, who have had the courage to speak out about this, who have had the courage to stand up for women who have been through this, and for young boys and other people who have been through this. And we keep seeing that, don't we? And that gives me hope.
Sanam There's hope and then the question of what would we do. Not sure whether I'm being particularly eloquent about it, but it's a particularly dark moment in our time. And in this year where we've started with wars and militarism and this kind of just lack of just so much sludge. And you think if these are the people making decisions about the state of the world, how on earth do we find the light? How do we? Where do we find the light? So maybe the light is us. (......) Thank you, everybody, for listening. And I hope that at least this conversation that was an emergency pod prompts and provokes more conversation as well in your own circles. We are excited to be launching season three. It'll be coming out first episode of February 25th. So please keep an eye out. And we have some really phenomenal guests. And as you can see, having Kavita as my co-host is making the whole podcast also slightly different in tone and energy and so forth. So excited to be back and looking forward to your responses as well. Thank you.