Jeffrey Epstein's Victims Prove Why Young Women Should Never Ignore The 'Yuk Factor' When It Comes To Men
Jeffrey Epstein’s young victims remind us of the vulnerability of our early internal warning systems.
Elisaveta Bunduche | Unsplash The stories of the women who were victimized by Jeffrey Epstein, often as early adolescents, are wrenching. They point to the systematic dismantling of all of the protective systems that begin to develop in women during childhood and adolescence, so they can protect themselves from men who don’t have their best interests at heart.
Critics have wondered how these young women, and the millions of others who suffer abuse, can “voluntarily” let things go so far. After all, women rarely have a gun to their heads in these situations.
The power of predators and groomers is an evil genius in which:
- They reinforce girls’ vulnerabilities to reflect the deficits in their lives and their dreams for the future.
- They circumvent the commonsense wisdom of girls who perceive trouble, even when it’s hard to verbalize.
- They discount the “twinges” that warn their victims by seducing them with the illusion of belonging as bona fide members in worlds of money, power, enviable lifestyles, achievement, promotion, and love.
- When the young women have outlived their predators’ parameters, they are discarded with the reverse of what sucked them in at the beginning. (You are no longer the least bit special!)
- They terrify them with threats of cruel consequences for disclosure. The power that invited them in is now the force that keeps them quiet.
- This further erodes their confidence in themselves, often escalating into silence and denial, to the point of toxic self-hatred.
We inhabit a culture that stresses the connection between success, achievement, money, power, and a level of entitlement. A second set of rules exists for privileged “members.” They are “secret handshakes,” non-transparent, and require no accountability.
We have an unconscious belief that power is evidence of deservedness and superiority. We are generous in our assessments of their characters, and even when they break the rules, the system is constructed so that they have a softer fall.
Jeffrey Epstein's victims prove why young women should never ignore the YUK factor when it comes to men
The most important aspect of a girl's vulnerability is the insidious “first-degree murder” of her perceptiveness that she is being manipulated. It’s a slow destruction of her confidence that she can “intuit” the essential creepiness of a situation.
As a rule, girls are trained to defer, to please, to be polite, to tune in to what other people want, to take responsibility for failures, and downplay the strength of their success. They provide the perfect context in which girls begin to lose the budding confidence of their own “gut” responses.
How the YUK factor happens
It is not unusual for adult women to recall brief moments in many situations that turned out badly, when they had a flash of doubt, when they thought the whole situation was a little strange, when they thought, “Wait a minute, why is this happening?”
I call them “YUK” moments. A YUK moment is when we feel a shadow pass over us, when we are hit with a string of questions with no answers, and when we become aware of uncomfortable physiological responses — the somersault in our stomachs, the tension in our clenched fingers. They are alert signals.
Predators know how to silence “YUK” moments before they really enter our consciousness.
YUK experiences begin with a level of creepiness in way too many men, who either don't understand boundaries or understand them so well that they can disrupt them without hesitation.
If a young woman’s alarms begin to sound, and she articulates them, the second offensive of the predator is, “Oh, you didn't understand,” or “You are overreacting,” or “What's wrong with you?” or “I’m not mad, you got off to a bad start.”
Or, as things escalate, predators make thinly veiled invectives to induce shame and fear. And then the undercurrent of angry rejection, falling into the “stupid, ungrateful girl” category.
Most men can have some YUK or creepy moments. Much of their behavior with younger women does not rise to the level of violence or abuse. But many interactions can feel pretty creepy to the women involved.
YUK moments are inappropriate and rest on the notion that the man is entitled to speak and act in ways that decimate the self-respect of women. Many times, they are unaware of their own behavior. It cries out for some degree of empathy with its victims to understand.
An early Yuk moment
Halfpoint / Shutterstock
This story is not particularly compelling, but it illustrates an early YUK moment, in which I could tell that something had gone wrong, I didn’t know how to respond, and I didn’t even know how to get support (even from a very supportive mother).
I was 13. It was 1 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Bertram had just returned from a party. Both had a “pleasant” buzz on. They did not seem drunk. Mrs. Bertram paid me generously and told me that Mr. Bertram would be driving me home.
As we approached the car, Mr. Bertram reached over and slipped more cash into the pocket of my coat.
“Oh, Mrs. Bertram already paid me,” I protested and tried to hand the money back.
“No. No,” he said, “I want you to have it. It will be our little secret.” He winked. (YUK! The silent questions begin. “There’s something wrong with this.” “Isn’t there?” “I don’t know.” “Should I do something?” “He’s probably just being nice.”)
Once in the car, he reached over and tried to pull the seatbelt across my chest. (YUK!) Fortunately, he had trouble grabbing it, so I took charge. He actually looked ticked. I can’t believe I said this, but I apologized, “I was just closer, so it was easier for me to do it.”
As we drove, he asked me if I liked school. He asked about my favorite subjects. I calmed down. All in all, it was going okay for being stuck in a car with a grown man I barely knew.
“How about boys?” (YUK! My father never even asked me that.) A small voice whispered to me, “I don’t think that’s his business.” But I was a well-socialized girl who hesitated before calling someone rude. I shrugged.
“A pretty girl like you is probably beating them off with a stick!” he teased. (YUK! I was unfamiliar with the image, very uncomfortable, and had no idea how to respond.)
“Oooh, I’ve embarrassed you.” His voice was half playful, half sarcastic. (YUK)
“Well, get used to it,” he bulldozed on, “I’ve been watching. You’re developing (YUK!) into an attractive young lady.”
He reached for the radio, which meant back and forth, brushing against my bare knees. “Pick a station,” he demanded. “What music do you like?” He went from station to station. “Do you like this?” “How about this?” “You’ve got to like something.” YUK. (Why was he doing this?)
Maybe it would have been easier if I’d just picked a station. Maybe it would have been better if I had responded in jest and picked some awful music. But I wasn’t that cool. I didn’t know how to jest with people’s fathers. The only thing I knew was silence.
I stared at my shoes. In a loud voice, he told me that he hadn’t realized I had such an “attitude” (translation: Junior Jerk) YUK! I wanted to scream, “I just turned 13. I don’t know what’s happening here. Stop it!”
As soon as we turned onto my street, I tried to release the seat belt, but it was tangled. He reached over, and there was definitely not enough air between my body, the belt, and his hand. He was laughing, like we were playing. YUK! I waved his hand away and took my best shot, yanking the belt back.
“Hey, honey, we were just having a little fun,” he called after me. YUK!
I was shaking and I didn’t know why. Nothing was wrong.
Truth and consequences
The next morning, I found my mother in the kitchen and announced, “I’m not going to babysit for the Bertrams anymore. Have John (my brother) do it.”
She asked why. I felt mute and just stood there.
“Well, that's strange,” she said, “because Mrs. Bertram called earlier this morning and said that her kids asked if John could babysit from now on. Did they give you trouble? Those boys can be a handful.”
“No, Mom, I just don’t want to do it.”
And this is the final part of what happens with a YUK experience. It is what keeps girls quiet and confused and leaves them totally unprepared for the really creepy stuff.
The “girl experience” collides with the “grown-up experience.” What could be a YUK teaching moment often morphs into an experience of doubt — about the situation, about the girl, about her confidence in expressing herself, about her distrust of the reaction she expresses, and the paralysis that ensues.
What would I have told my mother? This was a woman I trusted implicitly. But how did I explain a creepiness that made me want to evaporate? In my gut, I knew she would have disapproved of his behavior. But how much?
They both played for the “adult team.” I didn’t talk like them. I didn’t react to things like them. I could imagine her trying to lower the temperature. She could have easily chuckled and said he was just being “fresh.” Not creepy, just inappropriate. Sort of like, “Boys will be boys,” except “Men will be boys.”
She might have asked me why I didn’t just “give it right back to him” like I did with my father and her. (How Mom? Exactly how?”)
I wanted to know why it felt so bad when he was asking me those questions. I needed her disgust. I needed to feel a shared creepiness. I needed her understanding of my lost feeling and my difficulty knowing what to do with it. But I don’t think I would have gotten those answers.
“They don’t mean anything by it,” she might have told me. “Maybe he was uncomfortable talking to you.”
Rather than deal with my discomfort and confusion and the YUK dilemma, she might have tried to reconstruct the event to make it usual, harmless and light. And then the inevitable, unbearable turn where she reconstructed my reaction.
“You’re just making too much of this.” “You can be too sensitive.” Did she remember her own YUK moments?
Punishment and lies
How did Mr. Bertram decide I shouldn’t babysit? What did he say to Mrs. Bertram? Who decided to fire me? What did Mrs. Bertram say to my mother? How did he get her to lie and say it was the kids’ decision, and why did she call so early in the morning? I stayed silent.
It has happened in so many iterations — through adolescence and early adulthood. The YUK factor became more pronounced in situations in which men had power over my future.
The small voice got louder, but the stakes got higher, and several of the men I really respected, who seemed to admire me and seemed invested in my future, turned out to be major creeps.
And I was punished, in ways that still sting. I wrestle with the fact that I retained my self-respect but lost what they had held out as a promise for my future.
We need to respect the Yuk factor —the subtlety, the language, the tone, the behavior. It's not just a matter of “good touch, bad touch.” It’s what crawls into your head and sabotages your developing self.
That self needs to have the strength to say, “I have the words now. I can even describe the scenery. I can detail the creepy behavior. I can tell the threats and manipulations. And you may be in your Florida mansion, or your opulent New York address, but still, I know exactly what happened, and I am going to combine my voice with others. And we are going to use our shared intuition to know what to do about it.”
And we will listen for the YUK factor in our younger counterparts, encouraging its development and its voice as a central part of growing up strong.
If you think you may be experiencing depression or anxiety as a result of ongoing emotional abuse, you are not alone. Domestic abuse can happen to anyone and is not a reflection of who you are or anything you've done wrong. If you feel as though you may be in danger, there is support available 24/7/365 through the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-7233. If you’re unable to speak safely, text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474.
Martha Manning, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and writer. She has published five books, including Undercurrents and Chasing Grace. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reader's Digest, Psychotherapy Networker, Ladies Home Journal, Harpers Bazaar, and has written more than 400 stories for Medium.
