The Birthday Book of Men Who Thought They Were Untouchable
Humanity is a work in progress
Today some stuff came out about Jeffrey Epstein, serial rapist and paedophile. It got right up my snorer. It’s all about privilege. Why am I sharing my thoughts on this? Because it matters and because old white guys like me need to be clear-eyed about our responsibilities. We are not all lecherous pigs, but you don’t get to be in your 60’s without witnessing some appalling behaviour from your peers.
Because I have the unbeatable joy of having incredible women in my life. From little tots to women my own age and I see the corrosive power of unbridled confidence and sense of self being turned into fear and doubt. It’s not just about rape in its most brutal form. It’s the demeaning comments and the unspoken belief that somehow women are less than we are.
I have some very personal reasons for being on my high horse about this, but that isn’t the point. The point is that we need to shift the way we think and behave. For those men who have, well done boys. For those who still struggle to see women as “real people”, I urge you to try harder.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got some blunders in my past that make me cringe, but life is a journey and we all have the opportunity for redemption. (no religion here)
This is inspired by an article in The Atlantic today that moved me deeply. I urge you to read and contemplate and if you think I’m full of shit, tell me. Here goes.
There it is in black ink and oily fingerprints - the Epstein “birthday book.” A grotesque scrapbook of sycophancy and sleaze, hand-stitched by men who fancy themselves lords of the world yet reveal themselves as nothing more than priapic jackals with tailored suits and offshore accounts.
We tell ourselves, like children clutching fairy tales, that power at least comes with responsibility. That presidents, senators, billionaires and cultural magnates might carry some shred of decency if not morality. But the 238 pages of Epstein’s birthday tributes expose the lie. They weren’t just aware of his attraction to girls - they made jokes about it, winked across the table, wrote poems, drew breasts like schoolboys in detention and called him “the Degenerate One” as though degeneracy were a badge of elite fellowship rather than a sickness.
And here’s the kicker - many of these men have daughters. Daughters they parade at fundraisers, daughters they send to Ivy League schools, daughters they use as proof of their own human decency and yet, when faced with Epstein’s depravity, they didn’t recoil, they congratulated him. Why?
The Father–Daughter Delusion
There is a psychological sleight of hand at play. For some men, the existence of a daughter becomes a talisman that absolves them of misogyny. I can’t be a predator - I raised a girl. I can’t enable exploitation - I love my little princess. It’s the same tired script trotted out by politicians every time they’re caught legislating against women’s rights - “As the father of daughters, I…”
But loving one’s own daughter is not proof of respect for women. It is proof only of tribal loyalty - the primitive instinct to protect my kin while discarding the rest. To these men, their daughters are property to be polished and paraded, not evidence of empathy. Other people’s daughters? Fair game, especially when groomed by a billionaire who bought his way into every boardroom and golf club on the eastern seaboard.
This compartmentalisation - the split between private affection and public cruelty, is the psychology of entitlement. It’s how a senator can beam at his child across the dinner table and then laugh at Epstein’s boat stories. It’s how a billionaire can draw a pair of breasts for a predator’s birthday card while posting wholesome Christmas portraits of his own family.
The Brothel of Power
Epstein’s birthday book is not just a catalogue of depravity. It is evidence of how power metastasises. When men believe themselves untouchable, they use women’s bodies as currency, jokes, metaphors, decorations. They play at transgression because they know there will be no consequences. Even the language reeks of smug immunity - “a liver, a lover” - “avoided the penitentiary.” The assumption was always that the penitentiary was for other people.
The grotesque irony? They were right. Epstein might have faced prison, but for years he slipped through the cracks of a system designed to kneel before wealth. His powerful friends, meanwhile, remain free, writing statements about “cutting ties” or pleading ignorance, as though ignorance were not the very currency of complicity.
The Cult of the “Roguish Friend”
Notice how the contributors softened the edges with humour. Epstein wasn’t a predator, he was a “rascal,” a “degenerate,” a man with “credentials plenipotentiary.” They treated his crimes as a personality quirk, something to rib him about over champagne. This is the culture of male entitlement in its purest form - turn violation into comedy, disguise horror as cheeky roguishness, and dismiss trauma as anecdote.
That psychological trick - of cloaking abuse in banter - is why this rot persisted so long. It’s why survivors weren’t believed. It’s why the birthday book reads less like evidence of crimes and more like the yearbook of a fraternity from hell.
The Acid Test of Fatherhood
The next time a man in power waves his daughters around like a moral hall pass, remember this book. Remember the knife on Epstein’s boat, the drawings of lollipops and fellatio, the novelty cheque for a “fully depreciated” woman. Ask yourself - what kind of father finds all that funny? What kind of father smiles at his little girl and then scrawls a breast doodle in a predator’s scrapbook?
The answer is simple - a father who doesn’t see women as people at all. Only as categories: mine and everyone else’s. A father whose sense of morality is as selective as his Rolodex. A father who believes that his money and his power insulate him from ever having to reconcile the contradiction.
No More Excuses
The Epstein birthday book is not just a document of one man’s sickness. It is a ledger of how entitlement corrupts, how privilege blinds, and how men with daughters - men who should have known better - chose laughter over outrage, complicity over conscience.
And here’s the truth that should haunt them, though it never will - Every page of that book is a reminder that their daughters were never really safe either. Because a man who laughs at Epstein does not defend women - he defends power and one day, when the joke turns on his own family, he’ll discover that monsters don’t care whose daughter is on the menu.
Until then, the rest of us must hold the bile in our throats and name this for what it is - not just scandal, but the rotten architecture of patriarchy, privilege, and power - the kind of system that lets men of means call each other “degenerate” with a grin, while the rest of the world counts the bodies.
If you’d like to share your thoughts or discuss further, feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear from you. +64 275 665 682 john.luxton@regenerationhq.co.nz