On the Patriarchal Bargain and the Cost to Girls

Is Megyn Kelly defending Jeffrey Epstein?

Once again, Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news. The man died years ago, but as a nation, we are still grappling with his heinous crimes. Between court filings, redacted documents, and renewed public outrage, we continue to learn more about the extent of his reach and the magnitude of the damage he caused. When something like this dominates the headlines, it is no surprise that media figures rush to weigh in. Attention follows controversy, and the media thrives on attention.

Recently, Megyn Kelly hopped on the Epstein bandwagon in a way that is true to her branding strategy of being contrarian. In a series of comments, she argued that Epstein should not be considered a pedophile because he was attracted to teenage girls, not young children. As I’m sure she had hoped, her comments quickly went viral. At one point, she emphasized that “there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old,” implying that assaulting one would be worse than the other.

The reaction to her comments was swift. Many people heard them as minimizing the sexual abuse of minors. Others interpreted them as defending Epstein outright. I do not think either reading fully captures what she is actually trying to do.

I do not believe Megyn Kelly is motivated by concern for Jeffrey Epstein. I doubt she is interested in rehabilitating his reputation or excusing his crimes. What I do believe is that she understands how attention and power work in a patriarchal culture. Kelly is smart. She understands that aligning herself with male power and excusing predatory behavior is a reliable way to remain visible and relevant. She knows that as long as she aligns herself with patriarchal structures, she will be rewarded.

And rewarded she was. The patriarchy loves women who are willing to do the dirty work of its system.

The Patriarchal Bargain

Women who do the dirty work of the patriarchy may not realize it, but they have entered into what is often called the patriarchal bargain. It is one of the ways women learn to survive, and sometimes even thrive, within a system that ultimately does not serve them. At its core, it is an old idea: if you cannot beat the system, you learn how to benefit from it.

Rather than trying to challenge or change a structure that oppresses them, some women find ways to reinforce it. In return, they may receive protection, status, security, or simply relief from being targeted themselves. The bargain offers rewards, or at least the promise of being spared the system’s harshest consequences.

History is full of stark examples. Think of the mother who agrees to marry her fourteen-year-old daughter to a wealthy forty-year-old man. The choice is devastating, but it is often framed as practical or even loving. Better married than poor. Better protected than vulnerable. Or consider the old Chinese practice of foot binding, carried out not by men, but by mothers and grandmothers. These women were not monsters. They were participating in a system that taught them that compliance was the price of survival. One cannot help but wonder what kind of bargain makes a mother harm her own child in the hope of securing her future.

Today, the patriarchal bargain is usually less overt, but no less real. In its modern form, it often looks like this: a woman distances herself from the experiences of those who are most vulnerable, adopts the language or logic that protects male dominance, and in return gains visibility, credibility, or influence. She is praised as reasonable, practical, or not overly emotional. She is treated as trustworthy, as someone who “gets it,” as someone deserving of a seat at the table.

What makes the patriarchal bargain so powerful is that it does not always require cruelty or conscious betrayal. It can look like pragmatism. It may be disguised as intelligence. And in many cases, it is learned in childhood as a way to avoid being punished, dismissed, or erased.

But the bargain comes at a cost, which is most often paid by others. In this case, girls.

Iran Helped Me Recognize This Pattern

I recognize this pattern because I grew up with it.

I was raised in Iran, where the Islamic Republic openly promoted the abuse of women and girls. The law placed responsibility squarely on women and girls for men’s predatory behavior. Clergy spoke calmly and confidently about why girls should marry young, why men could not be expected to control their urges, and why a girl’s virtue mattered more than her safety. These explanations were often presented as moral, reasonable, and protective. They were never framed as cruelty.

The message was always the same. It was better to accept harm than to challenge power. Better to adapt than to resist. Better to align yourself with the rules than to become their next target.

Megyn Kelly’s comment about the difference between a fifteen-year-old and a five-year-old is a sentence I heard repeatedly growing up. Her argument is eerily similar to the logic routinely used to defend child marriage in Iran. That way of thinking lays the groundwork for crushing a girl’s autonomy before she is old enough to claim it. Iran’s clerics would recognize it immediately, because it reinforces the same ideals they have long relied on.

Kelly’s language may sound modern. The setting may be different. But the outcome is the same. Men are granted leniency, while girls are reduced to categories and distinctions. And women who help carry this message are rewarded for their compliance.

That is the patriarchal bargain at work.

Conclusion

Let’s return to the question of whether Megyn Kelly is defending Jeffrey Epstein. I do not think she is. What she is defending, consciously or not, is the patriarchal system itself.

Kelly’s comments are not meant to serve Epstein. He is dead and does not need defending. Her statements serve a culture that has always made room for men’s sexual entitlement at the expense of girls. They echo a familiar message: that some forms of abuse are more acceptable than others, that predatory behavior deserves nuance, and that girls can be reduced to categories in order to make their abuse easier to stomach.

Vilifying Megyn Kelly does not dismantle the patriarchal bargain. In fact, the patriarchy thrives when women are pitted against one another. It uses that division to sort us further into categories like reasonable versus histrionic. Kelly is doing what many women have done before her, aligning herself with power in exchange for relevance, protection, and reward. This is not unique to her, and it is not new.

There is, however, another way, and it begins with recognition. When we name the bargain, when we see how it operates, and when we refuse to participate in it, we begin to loosen its grip. Instead of pointing the finger at Kelly, we expose the patriarchal bargain behind her. We shift the focus away from false distinctions between abusing a five-year-old versus a fifteen-year-old and insist instead that girls deserve safety without qualification.

The work is not to tear women down for surviving the only way they were taught. The work is to make the bargain visible and, in doing so, to keep our attention where it belongs: on awareness and gradual change.