The dialogue around the accusations made against the Cornell 7 is toxic and damaging to women and it needs to stop.
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After a former Cornell University student identified in court records as Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and gang-raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024, the nation jumped into the discussion with victim shaming justifications for why the DA didn’t pursue criminal charges, along with the usual helping of poorly sourced hot takes and cherry picked quotes, leaving out Jane Doe’s “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped” and “And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard.”
The ensuing outrage from people with morals who value human rights prompted authorities to reopen the criminal investigation, but formal criminal charges have not yet been filed. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
While much of the conversation has been fighting about details of the (troubling and seemingly inadequate) state law, the larger problem is how our culture talks about rape accusations. Because the way our culture talks about rape accusations makes abundantly clear why we have a rapist in the White House and an accused rapist on SCOTUS.
This is a culture of deep hatred and contempt for women and their bodies, and nothing shows this more than the casual way in which pundits and lawyers explain whether or not the alleged victim Jane Doe has any right to make the claim that she was gang raped or how the DA was “right” to not pursue charges.
The most important issue here is not if the legal community thinks New York state law would qualify Jane Doe’s experience as rape, although everyone should be aware that the “voluntary intoxication loophole” exists not just in New York, but in 19 states.
“Nineteen states have rape or sexual assault laws that consider intoxicated victims to be mentally incapacitated only if they became drunk or drugged without their knowledge or consent. In 25 other states and Washington, D.C., whether the victim became intoxicated voluntarily or involuntarily isn't a factor. Six states do not define that in state law,” the AP reported.
However, this is currently a civil case. So the arguing about legalities misses the point, and in fact becomes part of the problem, because the issue is how our culture talks about rape accusations with no regard for women’s right to bodily autonomy and integrity.
Let’s rewind this conversation back to basic human rights.
The Human Rights Conversation We Should Be Having
Rape is grave, systematic violation of international human rights law. The responsibility for protecting bodily autonomy, preventing violence, and ensuring access to justice is with the state.
Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and subsequent international treaties, every human being has a fundamental right to control their own body, individuals should live free from the threat of physical harm and violation, and every human being should have freedom from torture and degrading treatment (rape can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment).
The degrading treatment is not just the rape itself, it’s also the way it’s talked about and consumed by the public and the press.
A woman’s body is not property of any man who wants it. A woman’s bodily autonomy and integrity do not disappear because the woman is intoxicated, just like it’s not suggested it’s legal to punch someone when they’re drunk.
But if a woman’s body is property, it is her property. And as such, being drunk is not consent to steal her property, just like it’s not legal to steal the wallet of a drunk person. After all, if a gang rape isn’t actually rape because the victim voluntarily drank alcohol, then there’s a problem with the laws.
And as addressed earlier, there is a problem with the New York law. But there is also a fundamental cultural problem, as evidenced by the man in the White House.
Desensitized Rape Dialogue
This country is led by an adjudicated rapist, and so our conversations around rape have become desensitized through the uplifting of a man found by a jury in a civil case to have raped his accuser.
We also have a president in Donald Trump whose administration has done everything in its power to protect the Epstein predators, while doxxing the victims.
We have a Trump appointed and Republican approved Supreme Court Justice who was accused of gang rape before they confirmed him. There were 4,500 tips sent in to the FBI about Brett Kavanaugh. But he was later confirmed to the highest court in the land.
Pattern of Harassment of Victims and Circling Wagons to Defend Accused
In September 2018, Julie Swetnick alleged in a sworn affidavit that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge were present at high school parties in the early 1980s where girls were drugged and subjected to gang rapes.
The Trump White House and Trump dismissed the claims as false.
But there were more claims against Kavanaugh, who later went on to join the conservative majority to overturn Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022, thereby effectively stealing the right of bodily autonomy from women and girls, as we might expect from someone who has been accused by multiple women of being a rapist.
Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, alleged that in the summer of 1982, a drunken Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge pushed her into a locked bedroom at a high school party and pinned her to the bed, groped her, and used his hand to cover her mouth to stop her screaming.
The Trump administration and his cult went after Ford so hard that she had to go into hiding due to severe harassment, cyberattacks, and constant death threats after her public testimony against Kavanaugh.
Then there was Deborah Ramirez, a former Yale classmate, who alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her and pushed his penis near her face during a drunken dorm party in the 1983–1984 academic year.
Kavanaugh vehemently and repeatedly denied all accusations. Trump’s FBI made a show of doing an “investigation” into the sexual misconduct claims against Brett Kavanaugh via a 2018 FBI supplemental background investigation, but it was intentionally limited in scope by the Trump White House.
For example, the FBI was not permitted to interview the primary accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, nor was it authorized to interview Brett Kavanaugh himself regarding the specific claims. Third accuser Julie Swetnick was completely omitted from the scope of the inquiry.
Also, the 4,500 tips sent to the FBI's specialized Kavanaugh sexual misconduct tip line were forwarded directly to the Trump White House without any agency screening or investigation.
In other words, they buried the accusations against Kavanaugh, just like they’re burying the Epstein files, and then they installed him on the highest court in the land and yet we are supposed to respect the limits of the law when it comes to using it to excuse officials failing to follow up on rape accusations.
After Roe was overturned, political journalist Glenn Kessler, then at the Washington Post, tried to “fact-check” the rape and need to travel to Indiana for the required abortion of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim. This led to toxic dialogue by “lawmakers” and “journalists” suggesting that she wasn’t raped.
It fell to mostly women journalists (including this one) to (angrily) explain to the political world that a 10-year-old cannot get pregnant without being raped, because they are not old enough to consent. (This is why it matters to have representation in newsrooms.) The rapist was later arrested and the case was verified. Kessler later wrote that he felt it would have been appropriate to apologize to the 10-year-old and her doctor, but he felt the paper (of record, read: elite power) muzzled him.
At every turn, women face obstacles put into place by elites from Supreme Court Justices to lawmakers to media organizations that deny their agency, their rights, their experiences, and their bodies because it benefits those in power to do so.
After all, if we respect women’s bodies, then this president is not legitimate. He can not be the head of the executive branch of the most powerful democracy in the world if he is a rapist. But it’s not just him. He’s just a figurehead for the many more like him who fill positions of power around this country. And they, too, would be illegitimate if we believed women.
And to address a right wing criticism of “believe women”, the idea isn’t to believe all women no matter what; there are actual ways to vet accusations and corroborating evidence to be gathered. The point is to approach accusations with respect instead of contempt and automatic, knee-jerk smearing of the accusor.
At any rate, the legal discussion is deadening because it is impossible to respect the law as it pertains to rape, given that some of the men in the highest positions of power in which it is their job is to make, interpret and implement laws are rapists.
Human rights are the correct basis around which to frame the Cornell 7 discussion.
Women own their bodies. Their bodies are valuable. They deserve to be protected by the law as more valuable than a house, car or wallet — none of which it is ever legal to steal from someone, no matter how drunk they are. They deserve to be seen by their fellow citizens as owners of their bodies with more rights than someone can exert over a piece of property, instead of as a liar who might not have cared that her property was stolen while she was drunk.
While the facts listed above might not be in every woman’s mind as she listens to the Cornell 7 discussion, they are in our bodies. We all know that we are prey. We all know that our bodies are not respected. We all know that we are in danger most of the time, whether that be because a woman is more likely to be murdered by a current or former intimate partner or because a university frat party can be a dangerous event for women and girls.
We are in danger. We feel that in our bodies. We need only turn on the news to realize just how much contempt our country has for us.
The conversation around rape allegations should be centered on human rights and women’s right to bodily integrity and autonomy. The conversation should be had as if it were being held in front of our young daughters, because it is. The conversation as it’s being had is sending a message to young girls and women that they don’t matter.
The way this country is conducting this conversation has made it abundantly clear why we have the president and Supreme Court that we do.
What are your thoughts on the Cornell University case? Share them in the comments below.
They're rapist period or accomplices
Having intellectual discussions about the law and and how rape is ajudicated is important but it misses an essential truth. Rape is a violent crime regardless of the woman's condition or circumstances. It doesn't matter if she was intoxicated. It doesn't matter if she was the only woman there. What matters is that she was violently abused for hours by a gang of men who disregarded her humanity and made violating her a sadistic game for their entertainment. The end. There should be no other discussion. This will stay with her for the rest of her life. I hope this lawsuit dogs the perpetrators for the rest of theirs. That's what I would call justice.