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Notes -
Cornell 7, Law, Truth, Sex, and Morality
I would like to compare and contrast two sources on the Cornell Seven case. The first is https://cornellseven.com/ which is the top search result one gets when searching the term. The other is «District Attorney statement re: Jane Doe v. Cornell University, et al.»
The first source begins with
The second source largely agrees:
Unfortunately, this is where the sources diverge. The more popular, but less informative source continues:
The more informative source disagreeing:
The police's summary of Jane Doe's statements is where this comes from:
The popular source says:
But her statements say:
About being forced to go to 5:45 AM:
It would seem that the legal system has so far behaved reasonably well. No criminal charges have been filed, and the lawsuit was opened two weeks ago. Hopefully she will get no money, but now everyone will know about her. That would be justice in this case.
I think the demand for stories of male rapists outstrips the supply. A lot of people want the Cornell 7 to be rapists, but they aren't. In fact, they come off as rather meek to me. Something about sharing one girl between 7 men like they did just seems that way to me.
And that's where I see what I think this case says about the dating market and the relationship between young men and women in 2026. The demand for horny women also outstrips the supply, to the point that handsome, wealthy, intelligence, social Ivy League frat bros need to, in a rather fruity manner, have sausage fest 3-or-more-somes, instead of each of them getting girlfriends independently.
The actual root of this case, ironically, is that men are so respectful of what women say they want, that they now let a huge chunk of women sit out romance and sex entirely, producing extremely sexually deprived young males willing to to share a one night stand with 3 of their male friends. They respect her consent every step of the way and still wound up with a frivolous false allegation because their behavior sounds more rapey on the surface than a one on one.
One element at play here as well is that under the law, only non-consent is illegal, but maybe many people think this behavior was immoral nonetheless. But I don't agree. On what rational basis can that be justified? The only downsides to sex that I see are the risk of pregnancy, STDs, and unwanted pairbonding effects. The former two are well under control in modernity. The latter is largely controlled by the legal consent framework, although strangely the people who buy in to that framework the most tend to justify it on far weaker grounds than this. Hopefully this case will go down as a pretty big hoax like the Mattress Girl.
No, I think this is just another example of the toxoplasma of rage where the most dubious rape cases are the ones that go viral.
If a case is unambiguous, it gets dealt with by either the criminal justice system or the campus courts to the victim's satisfaction, so they don't feel the need to start a big public pressure campaign around it.
Even a lot of more minor cases turn out to be non-stories. Jacob Geller did... something that warranted only a one-semester suspension during peak #BelieveWomen, he immediately fell on the sword when questioned, everyone he's ever worked with wrote one perfunctory tweet each about how he's cancelled, and we all moved on with our lives.
I think I agree with @dailydogma on this. Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there was a Duke Lacrosse type situation, i.e. a bunch of upper class and upper middle class white guys were accused of raping a poor black woman. Except that they were actually guilty and there was overwhelming video evidence to prove it. I'm pretty confident that it would be huge news.
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I don't think dubious stories are more likely to go viral. Rather, the difference between this story and most rape convictions is one of class. High class rape stories go viral. Most rape convictions are low class, rather mundane. But precisely because true high class rape is exceedingly rare, most stories people latch onto are dubious. Dubiousness is a self-own and I think this story will ultimately backfire on the people who really want it to be true.
The intersectionalists made a lot about how "MeToo" was first put forward by a black activist in the 2000s, but didn't take off until celebrity women used it.
In that case a lot of the lurid stories were true.
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