Momfluencer Faces More Consequences than All Men In Epstein Files Combined

Reality tv show has more accountability than the white house.

Taylor Frankie Paul, the self-proclaimed creator of #MomTok, star of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and the woman ABC spent millions turning into their next Bachelorette, lost it all last week. Her show was yanked three days before its premiere. She’s on probation. She lost temporary custody of her toddler. And the whole thing played out in real time, on the internet, in front of millions of people who had extremely loud opinions about it.

Now hold that thought. Because at the exact same time, men whose names appear in the Epstein files, documents detailing a decades-long child sex trafficking operation, are still at their desks, still cashing checks, some still holding cabinet positions. One of them is even still president. If you needed a single snapshot to explain patriarchy, this would be it.

To be clear, what Taylor did in that video is disturbing. Throwing a chair, putting a child at risk, that matters. Consequences for that behavior are not inherently wrong. But it’s impossible to ignore the scale of those consequences when you zoom out and compare them to what happens, or doesn’t happen, to men accused of far worse.

Because here’s the part that I’ve seen getting glossed over in everyone’s takes. Taylor’s team has alleged she spent years experiencing mental and physical abuse, along with threats of retaliation, in that relationship. Authorities have confirmed there are allegations in both directions. He denies everything. And honestly, that’s exactly the point.

That video has been sitting wrong with me, and here's why. He's the one filming. He's the one claiming to be in danger. And yet in the police bodycam footage, he is calm and controlled, narrating the whole thing with an unsettling, almost rehearsed precision, while the woman he says was attacking him can barely speak. She is activated, disregulated, falling apart at the seams, begging police to remove him from her home, while he stands there and narrates calmly and clearly. The contrast feels eerie.

If you’ve ever been in an abusive relationship, you recognize this dynamic immediately. I can’t say with certainty what happened between these two people. But I know from my own experience that an abusive man will ruin your life, and if you stay long enough, he’ll make you ruin it yourself. You become aggressive in ways that feel unrecognizable, even to you. He pushes past every boundary you have until you have no boundaries left, until your sense of self has been so quietly, methodically dismantled that the person looking back at you in the mirror is a stranger. And the moment you finally break, he becomes the calm one. He will document it, and save it, for leverage for the inevitable next time he will screw up. And when the timing is right, he will use it. In this case, three days before you are set to premiere your new show on national television, opening you up to potential lawsuits from a network that already spent millions shooting a season they can no longer air. There’s a term for this: DARVO. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. I’m not sure what happened in that relationship. But I do know that a single clip is not the full story.

I don’t know what happened between them, but I do know live in a system that has always allowed men to harm women quietly, consistently, and often without consequence, while demanding women remain calm, credible, and perfect at all times. When they fail to meet that impossible standard, the consequences are swift and public. We cancel their shows. We take their kids. We sue them and ruin their careers.

And let me just say that a society that normalizes violence against women should not be surprised when that violence is reproduced in the ways people survive it. What we are witnessing in these moments is not an aberration, but a reflection of deeply embedded structures that normalize domination while demanding composure from those subjected to it. The question is not why one woman threw a chair. Honestly, I'm more perplexed that the rest of us don't. Given what kind of violence women are subjected to on a daily basis, without consequence for anyone but us, our restraint is what should be making headlines.

And that violent system I’m talking about is very clear!! A reality TV influencer from Utah can lose everything in 48 hours if she’s a woman. Meanwhile, powerful men connected to allegations involving the exploitation of minors continue operating without consequences. Worse, the only person currently sitting in a prison cell for the Epstein case is a woman.

The Bachelorette got canceled. The Epstein investigation is effectively has too. And for some reason, only one of those things dominated the front page.

That’s not a glitch, the system is not breaking… it’s just finally exposing itself.

If you need a palate cleanser after all of that, go listen to the latest episode of Boy Problems where I de-influence you from chasing the hot guy. And send me your own boy problems. Funny, goofy, serious, unhinged, whatever you’re going through. I might read it on the show.