Equal Power, Equal Responsibility

Watching Pam Bondi’s performance in front of Congress a couple weeks back, I had the same reaction a lot of people did. It wasn’t impressive. It wasn’t reassuring. It felt evasive. Political. Calculated.

And then I noticed something interesting happening online. And I saw it over and over again. Not just once. Or twice. A lot.

Not “that was weak.” Not “that was dishonest.” Not “she chose to handle it that way.” What I saw repeatedly was this: “It’s the patriarchy.”

At this point, I don’t even argue with it. I mostly just sigh.

Look, systems matter. Institutions shape incentives. Power structures reward certain behaviors. Nobody serious denies that. If you’re explaining broad historical patterns, structural analysis can be useful. But that’s not what’s happening here.

Pam Bondi isn’t a junior staffer trapped in a machine. She’s a powerful adult in one of the most powerful legal roles in the country. When she steps in front of Congress and chooses a strategy of being evasive, combative, slippery, (whatever you want to call it) that’s a choice.

Same with Ghislaine Maxwell. Whatever else you want to say about the environment she operated in, she wasn’t sleepwalking through history. She wasn’t an automaton. She chose. And saying that doesn’t deny a patriarchy. It just keeps responsibility where it belongs.

If we believe women are equal participants in power, then they’re equal participants in moral failure too. Equality isn’t just about opportunity. It’s about accountability.

When men behave badly, we usually just say they behaved badly. We don’t immediately reach for a grand theory to explain why they couldn’t help themselves. But when certain women in power do harm, there’s sometimes an instinct to zoom out and blame the structure instead.

The structure may shape the field. It doesn’t move the player’s feet.

There’s a difference between explaining pressure and excusing behavior. Structural language can sound sophisticated. It can feel compassionate. But sometimes it functions as a kind of moral fog.

And here’s the part that’s harder to admit: blaming the system is comfortable. It protects larger narratives we care about. It keeps the ideological frame intact. If the problem is always structural, then no individual within the group has to fully own the stain. The theory remains clean. The person becomes secondary.

That may not be the intention. But it’s often the effect.

It feels smarter to blame a structure than to name a decision. It sounds more informed. More historically aware. More morally advanced. Saying “patriarchy” feels like depth.

But sometimes it’s just avoidance. Not every act needs a grand theory attached to it. Not every failure is a case study in systemic inevitability. Sometimes someone in power protects their own interests. Or their allies. Or their status. That isn’t revolutionary analysis. That’s human behavior.

When we immediately relocate responsibility upward to “patriarchy,” or to “capitalism,” or to “the machine,” something subtle happens. The individual fades a little. The edges blur. Accountability becomes atmospheric.

Systems don’t commit crimes. People do.

And here’s the irony I can’t shake. We’ve spent decades arguing, quite correctly, that women are not passive objects shaped entirely by male power structures. We’ve insisted that women are full agents in public life. Capable. Strategic. Ambitious. Complex.

But when some of those women act badly, we sometimes retreat into language that makes them sound like byproducts again.

That’s a strange version of equality.

True equality doesn’t mean insulation from criticism. It means equal exposure to it.

It means we can critique institutions and still say: she had power. She used it poorly.

Holding both thoughts at once isn’t reactionary. It isn’t dismissive of history. It’s simply honest.

Systems matter.

So do choices.