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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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I'm bringing back the Cornell incident from last week, because I think I have something to add to the topic (albeit that it took a little while rolling around in my head). For those who have already said it outside of my notice, please accept my apologies for the terrible crime of being dull.

Most discourse around the Cornell incident is about whether it was rape. From a fact-finding perspective, I find the first account submitted to the police most plausible, and that does not sound like rape to me. But what I notice is that we, the audience, have been forced to accept the form of the question. As in, is the relevant question about this event whether or not it was rape? (If you are one of the defendants or are on the jury, obviously it is, but I don't think any of us are.) What question has been suppressed by the overpowering presence of the rape question?

Again, I believe that the first account given to the police is most likely true. If so, what happened here? Seven men, one women, and a substantial amount of alcohol and ketamine spent an evening experimenting with different configurations of which was inside, outside, or on top of which. The events seem to have been broadly consensual but severely underinhibited and quite inadvisable. After this, the human participants went their separate hungover ways, and their relationship swiftly deteriorated. This apparently reached a tipping point after the men's fraternity's president disinvited the woman from a Halloween party, at which point she started accusing them of rape. What are we to make of this?

The natural direction to look is in the direction of the woman. Was she sober enough? Was she just some crazy slut? Was she vindictive, hell hath no fury yadda yadda? I don't see a need to. Obviously I disapprove of the actions she took and would be appalled if my daughter were to do anything like it (and, of course, wondering how I raised her so). But she's not my daughter, she's in no way involved with my life, and being free means being free to make bad choices. But overall, prior to the rape accusations (again, obviously a big deal, but only after the fact), her only crime was that she "loved too much," as it were. She did not hurt anyone with her frankly wildly out of control actions, except possibly herself. What I'm interested in here is the men. What do I note from them, what do I see? How did they treat her?

They treated her like a piece of meat. Sure, they had a couple of consensual if intoxicated threesomes with her, and that much is fine if fairly gross. But after that, they started texting each other about "free pussy." The latecomers wandered in awkwardly looking for action, and the original parties just let whoever come in, what's the matter? They barely knew her at this point. After the event, they seem only to have been involved with her as far as making sure the event wouldn't reflect badly on them, no interest in her whatsoever. (I think the slant most people draw from this is that they were worried about being accused of rape; I'm wondering if they were actually worried about everyone knowing how much they loved having sex with their bros.) "Wow, that was a wild night, huh? Well, good knowing you." And under mysterious circumstances, general knowledge of this wild night starts getting around, so the fraternity president now knows enough about this one chick to disinvite her specifically from a party.

Listen, I get that people are gonna have wild and crazy and frankly stupid sex sometimes, stuff that I look down on. But this chick was putting out for them, putting herself out for them, and a man has at least some obligations in response to that. These guys just tried to get laid and then drop her like a hot potato, and while it's not absolutely clear to me that it was them spreading the knowledge that she'd been fuckin', it seems a little more plausible than that her sorority sisters wanted it common knowledge that they harbored sluts. They felt entitled to her body at face-value terms, that "consent" was the only thing needed, and they weren't even obliged to provide the "thank you ma'am." In short, they disrespected her severely, and by disrespecting her so severely, transmuted her essence from "fun woman" or even "nice, sweet girl who made a mistake" into "crazy slut," because the only person you can get away with doing that to is "crazy slut." So, in her rage, she decided to become "victim of sexual violence" so that they would have to stop being "lucky horndogs" and start being "frat bro rapists." But once she does that, it's not just those men who become "rapists," it puts people like the DA and the school into that category, so now it becomes a much larger problem. And now everyone starts fighting over whether that last move was legal or not, whether she has to do a takeback or get issued a game loss, and nobody looks at the earlier move. Were they allowed to turn her into a slut just because she slept around?

This is what I think is supercharging the debate. The seven young men, individually and as a group, acted like total fucking cads, and they were getting away with it. There's no law against acting like a cad, and worse, there's not even a real social punishment. My own personal feelings and standards aside (where yes, I'd probably ice a boy like that out without very strong evidence he'd reformed), the general attitude is that all they needed to do was get consent, and that's the end of their obligations. After that, they just "got lucky" and who cares what's up with her, she can take care of herself, she's got equal rights. They got to go to the Halloween party and she didn't. Excuse me? Then why did she have all that sex? Just for the love of the game? I'm not going to accuse every swipe-addicted TikTok drone of having such deep thoughts about it, but the zeitgeist WILL make itself known. She was mistreated by those men, who allowed her to have sex with them even though they had no intention of returning any of that favor. Her sex was taken for granted, taken advantage of, but we do not punish that, not when it's Cornell frat bros, not when it's fuckboy ghosters, not when it's long-term live-in boyfriends who won't fucking propose. The only thing we do punish is rape, and so it had to be rape.

--

I know this has been a long and meandering post, and expect it will be appreciated if I lay out a pretty explicit thesis. If you like rhetoric as an art, sorry, pretend this doesn't exist.

The rape accusations are born out of women's rage as a collective. Not all women individually, and individual women are not here obligated to avow or disavow this rage, but as a group it suffuses them. The rage is over men's, as a collective, perceived ability to dodge consequences for sex. Again, not all men individually, etc. The rage does not have to be proportionate. It does not have to be satisfied in the ways it demands; indeed this is a poor way to handle rage. But it is aggravated by any incident where a woman is forced to pay for sex while a man is not. The only way out I personally see is to deny that asking her consent is sufficient repayment for a woman's sex, and look down on men who attempt that. But that is a stance I was already happy to take.

They treated her like a piece of meat.

She treated herself like a piece of meat. They met here where she was at.

After the event, they seem only to have been involved with her as far as making sure the event wouldn't reflect badly on them, no interest in her whatsoever.

Why would anyone have an interest in her? Why do they have a responsibility to have an interest in her? Demanding emotion and aftercare from a one night stand is psychopathic behaviour.

so the fraternity president now knows enough about this one chick to disinvite her specifically from a party.

A good move if you don't want your party to degenerate into a gangbang, apparently.

this chick was putting out for them, putting herself out for them, and a man has at least some obligations in response to that.

Oh yeah she was doing charity work, getting absolutely nothing out of the situation.

Listen. Sluts are fast food. They're not good for you, but sometimes you just want a greasy burger and to hate yourself a little bit afterwards. But nobody is making the memories of their life at McDonalds, and nobody is getting emotionally attached to a Big Mac. Even the most hardcore of instagram girlies don't photo their nuggies before they messily devour them.

The partners that are worth being cared about are artisan kitchen dining, and sometimes you get Steamed Hams'd and served a Big Mac in what looks like a fine dining establishment. That sucks. But nobody ever unexpectedly gets a gourmet meal in a McDonalds.

Nobody wants a slut as a girlfriend, not really. Things have value because of their scarcity. If you get the girl that literally anyone can get with, that says nothing about you as a person, that assigns you no value. If you're accepted by the pickiest pillow princess, if she relents just for you, that means something.

A lot of words to say that it is men's responsibility to police both their own and female sexuality, which they are banned by law, custom and vicious political organizing from having any capacity for. Men are agents, women objects. Even in deep, deep blue Cornell, even in college with a supermajority of non-straight-men, even in the most liberal enclaves in the most liberal states in the union.

So must we all as men control our evolutionary imperative at all times and even in the face of aggressive female sexuality. Because they will never, ever take responsibility for their choices, and society will never, ever force them to.

My response would be that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. Equality has two edges. If I grant your premise, then women must be stripped of the vote and all public responsibilities, removed from most workplaces, monitored by trusted relatives, etc. etc. Freedom means nothing if not the right to make the wrong choice. If women are incapable of this in a legal manner, then they can have the full panoply of negative human rights, but none of the citizenship privileges of a free person in a democratic society.

So whaddaya think? Create an actual patriarchy from scratch, or just accept that the young lady made a poor choice that affected her reputationally? And none of it was the fault of evil dudes, who seem to have acted with puritanical exactness the consent rituals of the modern state religion.

Huh...

A lot of words to say

followed by something that is not the thesis here? I really tried, man, there's a whole section at the end. I'm sorry, I like your stuff generally, but this ain't it. I can only assume that you looked at the words and read something that was already in your mind and which was bothering you deeply. I hope you can find solace with that.

To be brief:

So must we all as men control our evolutionary imperative at all times and even in the face of aggressive female sexuality.

I assume this means "the men should not have gangbanged her." Personally, I'm generally against gangbangs, but on the understanding that 7 out of 8 are all in favor, here's the amended version: "the men should have understood that there were expectations placed on them above and beyond bringing penis to the gangbang." As far as I can understand it, and I'm not psychic here, the expectation was that she would be invited to future parties.

Because they will never, ever take responsibility for their choices, and society will never, ever force them to.

My point here is that, from the female perspective, it was the men who were not taking responsibility for their choices, and that failing to understand that perspective is what makes the problem intractable. (Yes, the most unfortunate duty placed upon men is that of reading women's minds. I don't like it either, but I have it on good authority that God had a plan for this.)

Create an actual patriarchy from scratch, or just accept that the young lady made a poor choice that affected her reputationally?

Oh, I accept she made a poor choice. Quoting myself:

Obviously I disapprove of the actions she took and would be appalled if my daughter were to do anything like it (and, of course, wondering how I raised her so). But she's not my daughter, she's in no way involved with my life, and being free means being free to make bad choices.

But the missing part of the story is that the men made bad choices, specifically to have serial threesomes with a crazy slut and then try to totally disavow her after the fact. These bad choices are NOT appropriately punished by a rape conviction, or even a rape accusation. This is because, assuming her first account to be true, the men did not rape her. But they were bad choices, and the men at least deserved reputational harm for these choices. (I'd suggest the appropriate level of harm would be something like "you banged a fat chick" plus "you sucked your bro's dick when drunk" put together.) The fact that they did not appear to be suffering such reputational harm is what I understand is making a lot of women so angry.

But this chick was putting out for them, putting herself out for them, and a man has at least some obligations in response to that.

...Hold up.

These guys just tried to get laid and then drop her like a hot potato, and while it's not absolutely clear to me that it was them spreading the knowledge that she'd been fuckin', it seems a little more plausible than that her sorority sisters wanted it common knowledge that they harbored sluts.

The seven young men, individually and as a group, acted like total fucking cads, and they were getting away with it.

They felt entitled to her body at face-value terms, that "consent" was the only thing needed

But what else is needed if both parties consent? Keeping it quiet? Right, after all dumb young men never brag about sexual conquests. Commitment? How do you imagine commitment in a gangbang?

You even acknowledge this in a way:

In short, they disrespected her severely, and by disrespecting her so severely, transmuted her essence from "fun woman" or even "nice, sweet girl who made a mistake" into "crazy slut," because the only person you can get away with doing that to is "crazy slut."

I would shift the focus here from the (sfw)corrupting power of cock to the incentives behind behavior, which you acknowledge for the woman but fail to apply to the men. The only person she can get away with after a gangbang is "crazy slut", but - extending this logic - what kind of person can you get away with being as a male participant? A healthy "aftermath" of sex is normally some measure of commitment to the woman, but can you imagine doing the "responsible" thing here, committing, to however small extent, to a woman you and your buddies have liberally taken turns on? Defending the honor of the nice, sweet girl who made a mistake, at the direct cost to your own status? Can you in your heart of hearts see such a man in this case as anything else but a mark, who's chosen to pay an upkeep everyone else has handily refused? Can the woman? Is the shadow of the gangbang not going to influence every joke and conversation (both with the woman and with the buddies) for years after? Remember we're talking about meatheaded fratboys here, sophisticated high-decouplers they ain't, stupid monkey neuron-activation shit absolutely can and does rule the status dynamics among those.

It would seem to me that the only winning move for a man here (insofar as the obviously superior "not to play" is not anymore an option) to preserve his status is to put on his best yes_chad.jpg face, mentally write the woman off, and proceed with business as usual. The cad-ness of the fuckboys here is largely in the gall of the initial offer (to which the woman has apparently consented); their behavior afterwards (as is hers) is entirely the result of incentives. A gangbang pretty obviously precludes any possibility of "healthy" commitment; if the woman was misled by yaoi the culture to expect otherwise, I extend my sincere condolences, but shrug play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Were they allowed to turn her into a slut just because she slept around?

Uh... turn? I thought that "someone who sleeps around" is basically the definition of "slut". Sleeping around requires having sex, and sex is a 2 (uh, 2+) players game. Bit of a chicken-egg problem, but once again I don't think the almighty power of cock is the sole answer here.

Excuse me? Then why did she have all that sex? Just for the love of the game?

I mean... why not? Does it have to be more complicated than that? My experience with horny university-age women is that they are, well, horny, and frequently think/talk about sex and sex-adjacent things even if we assume female hypoagency they're sane enough to not brazenly act on it (same as university-age men, incidentally!). One girl I knew pretty well confided to me that on her graduation party, she stumbled on the timeless Prom Classic (i.e two coeds having sex in a toilet stall) and her immediate gut reaction was along the lines of "I wish that was me...?" even as she hastily shut the door, bolted in inexplicable embarrassment, and refrained from having impulsive sexual relations that night. This is the Motte aka galaxy-brain central, so I genuinely don't mean to disparage you for positing that ackchyually the real issue is traditions and society-wide troubles three OoMs removed from the particular happening and something something incentives (hell, I literally just did the latter), but at the same time I really don't think we have to dig very deep here.

Sure, this is something I probably should explicate a little.

But what else is needed if both parties consent? Keeping it quiet?

If you're having casual sex with a woman, your obligations are pretty simple:

  1. Have a nice time. The nature of this varies from girl to girl.
  2. Make sure she gets home safe.
  3. Help her retain her public image.
  4. Treat her nicely, and with appreciation for the sex.
  5. Don't get clingy. At least, not unilaterally.

This is what makes the sex safe for the woman, especially 3, which is what I wanted to highlight most of all. I'm pretty dubious that 1 and 2 were followed (even if she got home safe, was it because the men cared to make it so?), 4 was DEFINITELY not followed (she felt disrespected from the Halloween party), and I guess 5 was technically followed, but 3 is where things seem to have gone very wrong.

This is what I meant by her getting "turned into" a crazy slut. There are a lot of women out there who have wild sex - but many of them are not "crazy sluts." They keep the details suitably private, or they recast the events in some appropriate manner to get a better image for themselves. It's a branding issue, and it's the most severe concrete harm done to her.

Obviously I personally think that commitment is generally a better mode for sex, and is the terminal goal there. But I understand that this, well, takes some working up to. Young people screw around. But there's a right and wrong way to screw around, and this has obligations on both parties. (There are obligations for the woman too, and one of them is that you don't hurl rape charges if you get upset. But I don't think that needs such a deep explanation.) What I suspect is going on here is a deeper dissatisfaction among women, that men corporately aren't meeting their obligations around sex. For this gangbang, the obligation was preserving the lady's modesty, but in other cases it IS in fact about commitment. This is why I'm saying that "consent" is insufficient - not for rape, which is a VERY specific and VERY severe kind of harm which is a matter of public i.e. state interest, but for meeting your gendered obligations around sex. Failing to meet your gendered obligations around sex is not a crime, but it's a reason to get socially sidelined. Think deadbeat dad, or a girlfriend who goes clubbing with her girlfriends (even if she doesn't screw anyone, pretty goddamn inappropriate).

Finally, small note:

Excuse me? Then why did she have all that sex? Just for the love of the game?

I suspect she was screwing around at least in part so that she would be a "cool girl" or a "fun girl" who would get invited to more parties. Obviously she's an idiot and an out of control nut and was totally wrong about all of this, but it helps explain some of the story and especially her strong negative reaction. If all she wanted out of this was ketamine and cock, why would she be so upset after? She got those in great quantity.

A healthy "aftermath" of sex is normally some measure of commitment to the woman, but can you imagine doing the "responsible" thing here, committing, to however small extent, to a woman you and your buddies have liberally taken turns on? Defending the honor of the nice, sweet girl who made a mistake, at the direct cost to your own status?

A gangbang pretty obviously precludes any possibility of "healthy" commitment; if the woman was misled by yaoi the culture to expect otherwise, I extend my sincere condolences, but shrug play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Right, and that is "the corrupting power of cock": men's faith that any woman (not dudes, though) has irretrievably lost status, even social existence, once a bro has stuck his dick inside her.

Scoot into the parallel universe of gay interactions, and penetration somehow doesn't seem to work that way. Eight dudes hooking up in various configurations, younger one plied with drugs by the others, and nobody would be surprised to hear that two of them ended up dating afterwards. I believe that's the way Sam Altman met his husband!

So women read yaoi to fantasize about being the kind of a person whom a man could have sex with, and not hate afterwards.

What must it be like to interact with a female peer, knowing that you and your friends desperately want to do something to her that you fully intend will diminish her as a person in your eyes? "This will destroy and disinvite you, please please pretty please can we do it?"

That scammer's mindset, all fake friendly warmth to the mark beforehand and cold contempt after?

They treated her like a piece of meat. Sure, they had a couple of consensual if intoxicated threesomes with her, and that much is fine if fairly gross. But after that, they started texting each other about "free pussy."

The message that people, especially women, have sent in the last 70? years is that love is transactional, divorce for any reason whatsoever is OK and the sexual marketplace is to essentially function as a anarcho-capitalistic matching market where you are entitled to nothing and everything goes. We title partners as "low" and "high" value, assign numbers to people, commoditize them on dating apps.

If you work extremely hard to commoditise and devalue things like love, then why would you be surprised that things turn into a zero-sum anything goes amoral all-against-all?

People respond to incentives. The incentive for men is to defect in the face of the defection of women. Why propose if you will get divorced in 10 years and half your stuff taken? Why stick around when you have a roster? Because of religion? Women don't believe in that either? Because you worship women as a thing, as a concept? Well most don't.

If you want to bring back chivalry, you either have to bring back the moral system that produced it or engineer men to be subservient and un-self interested. Which women then wouldn't want to have sex with in the first place.

If she wanted altruistic, value-driven men she would have shopped around at an orphanage, volunteered at a homeless shelter or gone to church. She chose an environment where she'd be treated like a piece of meat and well that's what she got.

Admittedly a lazy question but here it goes anyway: in the earlier discussion on this incident that took place here one highlight/moment that was mentioned was that this woman, supposedly already drunk and drugged out of her mind at that point, accepted a proposal from two guys to have a threesome, apparently under the assumption that this will actually entail her getting to watch homo sex happening. I imagine her disappointment contributed to her regretful recollection of that night’s events afterwards. One one hand I think this should be cause for a conversation on the brain-rotting effects of prevalent literary porn consumption among college-educated single women. On the other hand, is this even getting commented on?

LOL, yeah, that was probably the only truly funny part about the whole ordeal, maybe the "we're shutting down whatever the fuck this is" part comes in second. Also solidifies my judgment that she's kind of an idiot. Not necessarily low IQ idiot, but idiot nonetheless.

Not sure it was a key contributing factor, but certainly a sign of how out of touch her fantasies were from reality.

These incidents aren’t even about feminism. It’s really trad male-female relations based on evolutionary biology trying to interact with a rules based legal system. Different religions all had different ways of dealing with this. Muslims not letting females leave the house. Christian’s heavy social shame.

The issue is feminism claims women are free to make their own decisions and make adult decisions while females instinctively know sperm is cheap/eggs are expensive so they have a lot of social norms to deal with that in various cultures.

Obviously pretty much every society had girls who would get gangbanged. They were prostitutes. Usually poor and/or foreigners.

In this case the gang bangee thought she was living in a rationalist free women world but that her sorority shamed her and got her uninvited from future parties…..until she like lived a monastic life for 6 months and wouldn’t give her pussy out for free. Social interactions within communities are still mostly governed by ancient norms locally. It’s not until your an adult in a major city where everyone doesn’t know everyone that you can go get gang banged without social repercussions.

The one annoying thing is how many “enlightened leftist” end up saying this wasn’t rape…….but I still don’t approve of this behavior and these were bad men. I’ve got to respect Aella here because when she’s getting gangbanged thru her personal taste she doesn’t expect society to call the guys banging her out degenerates.

It’s funny we had a rave posts the other day. But there’s ton of people doing drugs that stimulate sexual interests. Sometimes people who are not bad people choose to do drugs to lower inhibition.

Let's not get carried away here. If this woman wanted to get gangbanged by men outside her immediate social circle at college so that her reputation doesn't suffer it was well within hear means to make that happen.

Sigh. Is feminism back? I know it's a bit "boo outgroup", but I really honestly and truly did really enjoy the past couple of years. I felt much less on edge, no longer walking on eggshells all the time, and like we could all mutually start to look at reality and see the same thing again, laugh at jokes about sex, appreciate scantily dressed women, understand that the sexes actually do behave differently from one another for reasons other than "privilege".

At any rate, the only thing that actually matters to me in this case is the question of: did they specifically give her ketamine beyond what she actually "wanted"? I suppose a secondary question may then be: if they did, did they do that maliciously or unknowingly?

I'm afraid I haven't heard too much discussion about the question of the ketamine on the Motte so far, it's been more about the social mores of having sex, and whether she was lying about not wanting to have sex. But to me, the only thing that really determines whether I think any actual wrongdoing took place is whether she deliberately took the drugs or not. I suppose we will never really know - she probably doesn't even remember whether she actually wanted to take that ketamine at the time. And the whole world has now decided that "no, she didn't want the ketamine and it was forcibly given to her to make her have sex against her will".

They felt entitled to her body at face-value terms, that "consent" was the only thing needed, and they weren't even obliged to provide the "thank you ma'am." In short, they disrespected her severely, and by disrespecting her so severely, transmuted her essence from "fun woman" or even "nice, sweet girl who made a mistake" into "crazy slut," because the only person you can get away with doing that to is "crazy slut."

If you don't want to risk being thought a slut, don't have a drug-addled gangbang, it's really not that hard.

Nobody's going to bail me out if I blow up my account by abusing leverage recklessly. I won't be a 'rich guy who made a mistake', I'll be poor because the value of my wealth has declined. It won't be unjust, it wasn't as if I got robbed. I made a risky decision and it went poorly. If I made that decision while drunk or drug-addled, that doesn't change the outcome, I still have to own it.

How can the bad element here be 'disinviting her from a Halloween party' or 'being considered a slut by her sorority'? Who cares, it's just a party. Not getting invited to a party does not remotely justify a rape case.

It's not like she was an 11 year old being groomed over a period of time into performing these sex acts, with an implicit threat of violence if she refused. If it were actual grooming and actual rape, then it would be a really serious matter.

Her sex was taken for granted, taken advantage of, but we do not punish that, not when it's Cornell frat bros, not when it's fuckboy ghosters, not when it's long-term live-in boyfriends who won't fucking propose. The only thing we do punish is rape, and so it had to be rape.

How can the collective/zeitgeist of women possibly be appeased of these frustrations? How does she force a fuckboy to commit without taking away his ability to consent? Is he to be a male sex slave? A virgin until he chooses his forever wife? I appreciate that it might be frustrating to have a live-in boyfriend who won't propose but what's the problem with that? As long as he loves her, what does marriage matter? He hasn't gotten down on his knees to give her a ring he paid for, he hasn't legally shared half his stuff with her if they break up. He might just decide to leave and upend her life, damn, imagine how that would feel...

The state doesn't punish cuckoldry, it doesn't punish women belittling men, it doesn't punish e-girls extracting huge founts of cash from lonely loser men... Should it? Do we need thot police regulating how female streamers act online, as a criminal offence, rather than purely platform-based codes of conduct? Put them in a burkha perhaps, so they can show their personalities rather than their bodies? There are endless male complaints about women that women sure wouldn't enjoy if they were enforced by weaponizing the legal system.

The messy grey areas of sexual relations are unsuitable for law, they should be dealt with by shaming and rumours and informal methods. Same with sluts or cads for that matter. Law shouldn't be used as a mallet to hammer every problem humans face in life, it's already grossly overused.

I don't mean to be aggressive against you personally, you're making a light-shedding descriptive argument about how some feel frustrated. But the descriptive argument if true seems pretty ugly.

Unfortunately the social reality is that 'being considered a slut by her sorority' is a fatal tragedy in the eyes of the average female college student who, on the other hand, has been indoctrinated from her youth, as have been her parents, that trying to sexually shame women for anything is absolutely taboo.

I subscribe to the idea that literally everyone involved was degenerate for their participation in the act (the girl and the guys alike); her escalation into rape accusations is another matter entirely and does not reflect kindly on her or her ability to own her mistakes. But:

If you don't want to risk being thought a slut, don't have a drug-addled gangbang, it's really not that hard.

I really just think progs and trads alike would only be satisfied with the reintroduction of The Patriarchy™ (and probably not even then). They are literally stating that women do not have the capacity to regulate their own sexuality and cannot take full responsibility like adults when they get themselves into situations that make them feel shame or do not yield the outcomes they want, and that the responsibility should be displaced onto men collectively, who must decide on their behalf what would be good for them or read their mind to divine what they Really Want, then regulate their sexuality for them by preemptively stopping them from making stupid decisions and putting out in a way that won’t yield results. They are all just babes in the woods who cannot be expected to assess risk or bear the consequences when their gambits fail.

Of course, you can’t expect every single man on earth to take responsibility for a woman’s Honour and Dignity, so the practical implementation of this is to provide her father and brothers and other male relatives who would naturally care about her the most with the authority to make sure it is preserved. Frankly the discourse surrounding this is some Islam Is Right About Women-tier shit, and I struggle with not believing that women’s lib was a horrible mistake when women en masse seem intent on demonstrating that they are radically unsuited for the “empowerment” they so value. If I didn’t know better I would think this was a conspiracy to turn people into misogynists; it’s just so farcical that I could not have dreamt up better ammunition if I tried.

In a hyper individuated world, women can't control their sexuality. Neither can men. That's why, in every society in history sexuality has been heavily regulated by custom and law.

They are all just babes in the woods who cannot be expected to assess risk or bear the consequences when their gambits fail.

Maybe libertarian sexuality works really well for some subset of hyper-rational economically privileged people living in a co-op in Berkeley. Maybe. But for the large majority of people, men and women, that leads to ruin. Predictably, and we as a society have to bear the costs. Descriptively, they can't assess risk or bear consequences when their gambit fails, which calls for external regulation.

That's why, in every society in history sexuality has been heavily regulated by custom and law.

Yes, and presumably in the system you’re imagining, men and women alike are to be heavily punished and held accountable for breaches of the sexual code, not this fucked-up one way system where all agency and responsibility is placed on the man to Know Better as the ostensible buyers of sex under this framework (whereas expecting the seller to not give away free candy willy-nilly, then complain they were robbed because they just assumed people would donate after taking candy, is too much to ask). That line of thinking naturally lends itself to a guardianship system, which is a system most people making this argument would feel very uncomfortable with. They are not taking their ideas to the logical conclusion; in my experience they would like women to be sexually liberated while at the same time believing that liberation should still come with the ability to displace responsibility onto the nearest man because you were just such a poor little exploited damsel. It is untenable to let women freely put out and to let them still go crying for redress, sympathy and a shotgun wedding when they don’t get what they want out of their investment. Nobody can control a woman, yet everyone must avenge her nonetheless once she is unhappy with the consequences of her own actions.

I’m not a sexual libertine (as I said, everyone here is degenerate). I really just want things to be consistent.

Descriptively, they can't assess risk or bear consequences when their gambit fails, which calls for external regulation.

To clarify, in a world where you are afforded the right to assess risk for yourself and freely make decisions as a liberated individual, you should also be expected to accept the consequences of these actions. People who gamble or invest in a highly leveraged crypto ETF that ends up losing them money might not be the best judges of risk, but as an adult they are judged to be able to make these decisions and suffer the consequences, without having the ability to point to the nearest person and displace all accountability.

We live in a sexually liberated world, and perhaps that is not the world we should live in, but it is. “Your standards applied consistently” and all that. Frankly I am also very perturbed by how trads seem to try and agree with feminists on things like these, instead of forcing them to adhere to the sexual liberation many of them claim to want for themselves. By carrying water for them trads are not actually helping bring about the trad system they so valorise, they’re just pushing the Overton Window in the direction of Sexual Liberation+, which is just milquetoast sexual liberation except now there's shiny new features like the ability to endlessly play victim of your own choices and blame men every time something goes wrong or (gasp) they don't give you exactly what you thought yourself entitled to from sex.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that "full adulthood" isn't something that should happen automatically but something that should instead be available to everyone and needs to be actively sought out.

My wife would almost certainly prefer to not have the right to do plenty of things she technically has the right to do. She knows she is vulnerable to scams and would prefer to not be able to enter contracts on her own, except in some limited capacity like buying groceries.

I don't think she is alone. I think a shitton of people would like to have more limited "rights", like not being able to receive phone calls from anyone, enter into contracts over the phone, only being able to enter into contracts over the internet with third-party white-listed vendors, etc.

It kind of works a bit like this with some investments and bank services, you can't just stumble into making some types of transactions.

I'm not sure this extends to sexual or romantic stuff but it follows the same principle.

In tribal societies, boys sometimes have to complete some dangerous ordeal in order to be considered men. What would the equivalent be for girls?

In hard patriarchal societies like ancient Greece or modern India, there isn't one because women are never considered full adults. In soft patriarchal societies like ancient Rome or medieval Europe, when her first husband dies - the only women who enjoyed what men would consider full adult freedom were widows.

That said, peasant class women in premodern societies enjoyed far more rights de facto than they were supposed to do de jure because their work (i.e. textiles) was just as essential as men's.

The wedding night and their first childbirth?

It is untenable to let women freely put out without policing from society or men and to let them still go crying for redress, sympathy and a shotgun wedding when they don’t get what they want out of their investment.

I think this is missing a very critical aspect of this situation: she probably got what she wanted out of the investment and wouldn't have "gone crying for redress and sympathy" absent another necessary ingredient. Others saw an opportunity to exploit her experience for their own gain, and pushed her to "reinterpret" the situation to advance their agendas. She and the men directly involved are not the only degenerates in this story.

Others saw an opportunity to exploit her experience for their own gain, and pushed her to "reinterpret" the situation to advance their agendas.

What do you mean?

One thing to note is that only four of the men involved are accused of sexual acts. The "Cornell 7" is certainly a more attention-grabbing headline than the "Cornell 4" I suppose.

Ironically the frat president uninviting her from the Halloween party was probably an attempt at damage control. They had nasty rumors of a drug-fueled orgy floating around involving this woman already, they would have to be insane to invite her back (for one of the wildest parties of the year) and risk it happening again. And obviously it's a lot harder to uninvite the people who live there.

Right up until the rape accusation it looked like social shaming was mostly working as intended. Everyone involved made bad decisions and were getting mildly punished for them. The woman's social life was negatively impacted and rumors were going around about the frat being rapey. The issue is that the woman exercised a unilateral option to absolve herself of blame and dump 100x the consequences on the men.

born out of women's rage as a collective

It hasn’t been mentioned much but the earliest published work to include the phrase “free pussy” is Valerie Solana’ anti-male SCUD Manifesto, 1967, maybe the most anti-male book ever written. Bolding the relevant parts:

The "hippie", whose desire to be a "Man", a "rugged individualist", isn't quite as strong as the average man's, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought of having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner's life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and co-operation, he forms the commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the females' rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal "society".

A true community consists of individuals--not mere species members, not couples--respecting each other's individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally--free spirits in free relation to each other-and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; no one says the individual.

The "hippie" babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of the furry animals that he's one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities--farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one on which it is based, is gangbanging. The "hippie" is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect of all the free pussy--the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness of the pussies themselves.

Men cannot co-operate to achieve a common end, because each man's end is all the pussy for himself. The commune, therefore, is doomed to failure: each "hippie" will, in panic, grab the first simpleton who digs him and whisk her off to the suburbs as fast as he can. The male cannot progress socially, but merely swings back and forth from isolation to gangbanging.

Solanas’ experience with men in her life failing her developed into an ardent misandry and culminated in, of all things, a murder attempt on Andy Warhol. It’s interesting that the oldest source of this term also includes consensual gangbanging within a fraternity-like organization of men, though here she critiques them for whisking the woman into the burbs rather than dropping her for reputational reasons.

One interpretation I've read is that this phenomenon was driven just as much by the women. Hippie couples would join a commune and the women would go on to compete for the sexual attention of the commune leader. When the men objected the women would go on to complain of their "possessiveness".

Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; no one says the individual.

Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?

Eh, must've been the wind.

SCUD Manifesto

Saddam Hussein's inspiration!

For those unfamiliar with Solanas, it's the SCUM Manifesto, with SCUM standing for "Society for Cutting Up Men".

Lmao yes you’re right. She was not a Baathist.

Honestly, I'd guess Valerie Solanas being a Baathist wouldn't even be top 5 in the strangest links between American progressive activists and third world postcolonial regimes.

If someone told be Solanas was a Baathist, I would believe them. I do not think she would have called her work of Baathist apologia the SCUD Manifesto though. From the point of a Western useful idiot, that would be a phallogocentric take on what Baathism was really about.

She recorded a phone call with the first guy where he claims that the only reason a bunch of other guys came into the room was that the house was full, when he sent a text to the groupchat inviting them in. So at least that guy comes off as extra dickish, and he was one of the students expelled.

https://abcnews.com/US/damage-control-phone-calls-records-suggest-cornell-frat/story?id=136987960

This apparently reached a tipping point after the men's fraternity's president disinvited the woman from a Halloween party, at which point she started accusing them of rape. What are we to make of this?

What I make of it is she felt like elements of it were non-consensual but didn't want to escalate it since it would just be making a big messy deal out of it and she just wanted to put it behind her and forget about it.

But instead word got out, and it started affecting her academic and social life and now that it's already in the toilet, there isn't much to lose by escalating it.

there isn't much to lose by escalating it.

There should be. False rape accusations cause approximately equal harm as actual violent rape. Therefore, punishments for false rape accusations (if proven beyond a reasonable doubt) should be approximately equal to punishments for violent rape (if proven beyond a reasonable doubt). The fact that they are not is precisely why she feels safe escalating this way as a petty, vindictive, uncostly form of revenge in a social battle. Legal threats like this should not be casually thrown about against innocent people.

This wouldn’t do much in general, and also for this case in particular. There’s no way to prove Jane Doe made a false accusation beyond a reasonable doubt, and this likely also holds for 99% of all rape accusations.

Her sex was taken for granted, taken advantage of; they treated her like a piece of meat.

Well, no.

I get that it's kind of a meme for angry men (hereafter referred to as "traditionalists") to state this, because men (and especially the more trad ones) don't actually understand that a good chunk of the benefit for women is that they don't have to be in control to have the sex. "Vampired billionairely across the room" is a meme for a reason- it's someone you don't want to be in control of because the symbols that you're going to have a good time with this guy are already there.

(It doesn't need to be a stable time, it just needs to be sufficiently good. Employers hire this way all the time- they have the money, but no agency outside of their employees, so it's in effect the employees that dictate the direction the employer takes. The same dynamic applies to the statistically-average woman "hiring" the statistically-average man to give the prizes of labor in exchange for that sex, in this case drugs/a party/an invitation to what was understood to be basically a sex show at said party.)

"Consent" simply doesn't work the same way for doms/men as it does for subs/women; subs/women only really have the one option of "fuck this, I'm out" (for the same reason they can't send open-ended rejections as it's still a signal that they might be open to further pursuit with suitable improvement- it has to be completely unambiguous rejection and even that doesn't work all of the time.).

Doms have a much broader array of tools simply because the mating dance has "be able to be talked into, and then it just happening" as a primary feature of the selection on the part of the sub. That is the appeal of it; if the fanfics are to be believed, the lead-up to the sex is the overwhelming majority of the sexual pleasure.

This, of course, creates some unique liabilities (disease, pregnancy, being shamed by progressives for undermining their collective sexual bargaining) that it is perfectly reasonable on the side of the bottom woman to believe they weren't appropriately priced in at the time. And men that don't intentionally place themselves in that situation will never really realize that (generally because it's against their nature to do so).

The woman is now allowed to cry that this was rape, so she does, and the consequences after that are generally uninteresting power politics that have more to do with privilege of group actors than they do the woman herself.


The only way out I personally see is to deny that asking her consent is sufficient repayment for a woman's sex, and look down on men who attempt that. But that is a stance I was already happy to take.

I mean, thanks for acting as exhibit A for why a social conservative/traditionalist and a progressive are exactly the same, I guess? Though the irony there is that both of them treat women's sexuality as a tool and not as an end, though in truth both pretend as if they're on the side of women. (Much like classical liberalism and the sexual revolution do for men, at least when using a traditionalist/progressive lens.)

The rage is over men's, as a collective, perceived ability to dodge consequences for sex.

Again, something on which trads and progs agree; trads because they don't understand women, progs because they are paid a salary to intentionally misunderstand women.

But it is aggravated by any incident where a woman is forced to pay for sex while a man is not.

The woman paid for the drugs and the party with sex; the men paid for the sex with the drugs and the party. The woman is now trying to renegotiate that contract because she doesn't think those things served as sufficient payment even though she clearly believed they were at the time (and further text messages apparently corroborate this, which is why more progressive countries, like Canada, intentionally exclude those as exculpatory evidence).

Canada, intentionally exclude those as exculpatory evidence

I wouldn't have guessed that. With what explanation? Was there a recent case around that?

But after that, they started texting each other about "free pussy."

Was there more than just the one guy saying that in one text?

Polite society has been adding epicycles to the consent-alone (solus consensus?) model of sexual ethics for decades: People under 18 cannot consent. People under the influence of drugs cannot consent. People who are subordinate in a power hierarchy cannot consent. None of these really made any sense in the solus consensus framework, but jettisoning consent as the one true guiding light of sexual ethics would open up LGBT relationships to scrutiny, and that would be considered unconsionable.

Given the reaction to the Cornell incident, I think society is finally ready to start looking for alternative ethical models. Everyone has now seen the moons of Jupiter so to speak.

I think what you're getting at is pretty simple- they treated her like a whore, except they didn't pay her.

That's what everyone has got grasping at straws. It's a status distinction- having sex with a lady you're supposed to be cuddly afterwards and make her tea and give her breakfast the next morning and the like. But society doesn't want to acknowledge that; this was a sorority sister(and thus some sort of lower gentry background), and society doesn't want to acknowledge that that is a relevant variable to their outrage. We're supposed to be beyond status distinctions, or seeing consensual sex as gross.

Good analogy, but if I could adjust: she expected to be treated like a "fun girl" who was into having "fun" at "fun parties" and would get invited to more "fun parties," and instead got treated as a whore who was out doing community service.

Obviously, I think sex is most appropriately done between ladies and gentlemen, but even my prudish ass can understand that other modes exist in the tangled web of human sexuality. But even the Wild West has rules, and you ought to follow those rules.

lady

There was no lady in the room.

There was a good-time gal. She wanted a casual acquaintance to find a 3rd to Eiffel tower her and take turns pounding her out, but not a 4th because that probably meant anal.

Maybe she hopes they guys will mess around with each other and she'll get to watch, not an uncommon fantasy.

She's unhappy that cooler heads prevail and she dis-invited from Halloween. The dis-invitation (rejection) is the proximate cause of her unhappiness but it was always going to end unhappily. You don't marry the good-time gal.

Feeling unhappy couldn't be the result of anything she did it must be because some external force (the boys) did something to her.

There was a high status woman. By prevailing morality she can't be used as a 'good time girl', not openly.

In times past she'd get the blame and have to marry someone a bit lower than her. But today, that's taboo, so we have to pretend the boys are rapey. But the gods of copybook heading are returning; treating a girl from a wealthy family that way was always banned. The difference is, in times past, she would be sent to 'help her aunt' in another state. That's how my great grandparents met. Today that part's not happening. I mean it will, slowly but surely- she's already banned from the frat parties(which exist primarily to make sure upper class women marry upper class men). But it's not yet, we have seduction charges but not the other side. History repeats, it rhymes, it does all those things at once- and cultural universals will always resurface. Yeah, she's being punished. So are they. The gods of copybook heading go nuclear on everyone.

If you are a man, there's a good chance you haven't received a lot of actual positive attention in life from anyone but your mom.

I saw something on Twitter to the effect that sluts are great because they actually really like men.

There are women out there who like sex, like men, and are comfortable around them. You knew they aren't yours to keep, but they do show you a good time. Maybe you even learn a thing or two. And you get to feel valued, feel sexually desirable, feel visible. Most men have been with someone like that. I have. Looking back on my young life, I wonder what those women even saw in me.

Essentially, sluts are doing men a great service.

Treating them shabbily is in very poor taste.

Treating them shabbily is in very poor taste.

Is this a reference to the dis-invitation to Halloween?

Obviously I can't speak for him, but I would say that yes, that was in poor taste.

Treating them shabbily is in very poor taste.

Yup-yup, in an ideal world both she and her sexual partners would've gone after the frat/sor leadership trying to shame/cancel them over a consensual encounter. "Sure, you are free to punish us for doing drugs in the frat house if you want to, but what we did under the influence of them is our own business. If you don't make people shut up about that, we'll sue you for sexual harassment."

True but if she actively wants demeaning group sex whilst proactively consenting to it, what can you do? Also 'You must act like a gentleman to best satisfy women in bed/post-bed' runs so hard against observed tendencies in mate selection.

'Satisfaction' and 'pleasure' are besides the point. It's about 'dignity' and 'status', not those other things.

The outrage is about upholding a social hierarchy, and part of that is that upper class women are supposed to be treated a certain way. Of course it can't be put in those terms, hence all the rape-that-isn't.

ESH is a perfectly valid conclusion.

She's gross, the men are gross (seriously, consent or not, who thinks it's not gross to put your dick in the same place a dozen other guys just put their dicks?), and social shame and disgust should befall all of them regardless of criminality. But most people are lining up on Team Woman or Team Bitches Ain't Shit. And so it goes.

who thinks it's not gross to put your dick in the same place a dozen other guys just put their dicks

Billions of years of evolution, that mysterious cock shape made to scrape out the other guy's cum so yours can get a head start (or so I have been unreliably informed by half forgotten memes)

"regardless of criminality."

I generally agree that ESH, but the matter if criminality is central to the discussion, as there is a strong faction that believes a crime happened here (and wants to leverage that example into a greater debate on sexual ethics and "rape culture"). So even though these guys suck, it's still virtuous to defend them against an accusation they're innocent of. Something something most of the time you'll be defending scoundrel.

It's arguably "virtuous" to defend their right to innocence until proven guilty of criminal charges. It's not virtuous to line up on Team Dude and say they did nothing wrong because you hate the slut.

Even though neither of us think it was rape, my wife and I have been quoting the Norm MacDonald meme at each other for a week: "Now this may strike some viewers as harsh, but I think everyone involved in this story should die".

It's a central issue in the consent framework. Is sex behind closed doors between consenting adults ever wrong? The actual answer is yes, because consent is insufficient. But because the only way people can criticize the morality of a sexual act is by shoving it into a consent framework, you end up with convoluted, unsatisfying (to everyone!) arguments about whether the exact scenario constituted legal consent.

The men are the parties that did the greater wrong, here, and it has nothing to do with the details of her consent or non-consent. The very limited defense I have of them is that they are confused in believing that consent is the moral line, and that's what media and various bureaucracies have told them since birth; but that doesn't change that the act is well-over the actual line.

If every institution from cradle to frat house in their lives has told them the line is consent, and the actual line is such a secret that even posters on The Motte shy away from saying what the line is, how is it conceivably their fault in any way? Quite literally, how could they possibly know, or indeed, how could they possibly have known that they didn't know?

Agreed. The parents of those frat bros, the university feminists running those "education" courses, the older brothers who should have been explicitly teaching the unspoken rules - all of them should be ashamed for failing those kids who apparently had no fucking idea what is actually expected of them.

At the same time, ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it; Cain was still in the wrong. Both can be true at once.

Fault is a tool we use to create better outcomes, by justifying legal and social punishments. Assigning fault to them allows us to channel energy into creating new norms and expectations that would otherwise be dissipated in questions of "how much ketamine can a girl snort off a guy's cock before the guy can't have sex with her."

She's at fault, too, but gotta choose your battles.

If your position is that the consent framework is bad, then neither the boys nor the girl is at fault. They are simply products of the system. The correct people to assign fault to in that scenario are the people who created, advertised, and enforced the consent framework. This is true both in a moral sense and in a "how do we create better outcomes" sense. Skewering a bunch of boys who literally could not have known to do anything else does nothing to effect the change you want because those boys have no power to change the system. To change the system, you must influence the people who actually have power, who are neither the boys nor the girl, but the horde of faceless teachers, activists, and bureaucrats who actually set the rules.

Going after the boys is just going after the weakest party in the case. Sure, it's "choosing your battles", but you're only choosing that battle because you can win it and feel good, not because winning that battle does anything.

"Tomorrow morning, is she going to wish she didn't do this?" I think is the question they should have asked themselves, and I think it was foreseeable that this would be a wise question to consider.

That's the problem with everyone involved being drunk and high... Of the two men in the initial threesome, one fell asleep and couldn't perform, and the other started vomiting. No one had the mental capacity to consider the next morning.

Good standard, but even in this case not good enough. She wished she didn't do it weeks later after rumors circulated around campus and she was disinvited from the Halloween party.

People are going to occasionally regret the most milquetoast inoffensive sexual encounters for a myriad of reasons, some of which are impossible for the other party to reasonably predict. Is it potential rape if I have sex on the third date, then learn something afterwards that makes me unwilling to pursue a further relationship?

Imagine that it's the night before the events in the story and you are tasked with arguing the case for "the line is the woman not having regretted last night's activities" against someone who is arguing "the line is consent". What evidence would you be able to bring to bear compared to the evidence that your debate opponent would be able to bring to bear? Remember, the debate is not what the line should be, but what the line is.

Would you be able to produce evidence that outweighs the legions of institutions who loudly proclaim consent being the line?

The line here is "don't be an idiot; the vast majority of women will regret having a train run on them, even if they say they're cool with it in the moment." If someone starts bringing in legalese about consent, you repeat. Ideally you've earned the respect of your frat brothers, and they'll listen: it's most likely they're just naive, not malicious.

At the time of the event, what was the publicly available evidence that the line was what you say it is? Imagine you're debating a sex-negative feminist whose position is "at Cornell, the line is consent and that's a bad thing -- we should change it". What would you say to convince onlookers that she's wrong and that she already has her preferred policy in place? Heck, there are plenty of people in this thread who are arguing that the current line is consent and that's a bad thing -- are they wrong about the current line being consent?

I think you are just factually wrong about what the line is. The line is consent. You can wish it was something else, but it's not. Until you change it, you (or the rest of the lynch mob) shouldn't get to enforce your desired line.

Foreseeable to you, the adult, worldly motte-poster. To a 20 year old raised in an environment of sex-positive, "sex is just about feeling good and nothing else" consent feminism? The girl herself seems to have thought she was doing something brave and good.

Her sex was taken for granted, taken advantage of, but we do not punish that, not when it's Cornell frat bros, not when it's fuckboy ghosters, not when it's long-term live-in boyfriends who won't fucking propose.

The rage is over men's, as a collective, perceived ability to dodge consequences for sex.

I liked your post, but this is the issue. Is sex transactional or performative? If anything, the transactional understanding of sex made the Seven treat Doe the way they did: if sex is a way of transferring value from one participant to the other(s, in this case), then Doe is a sucker who was led around.

The way you defeat this is by treating sex as something that produces value for all participants. You don't have sex to get your boyfriend to commit, you don't have sex to get invited to the next party, you don't have sex to gain status.

Then why did she have all that sex? Just for the love of the game?

Yes! Don't have sex for a reason, have it for the sake of it. You don't bring a homemade frozen lasagna to a new mother because you want her to owe you a favor or because you want others to speak well of you or because it's your duty as another woman. You do it because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside. If it doesn't - you don't have to bake anything, she can DoorDash whatever she wants.

High-quality rebuttal.

Is sex transactional or performative?

Neither - it is relational. Sex exists in a relationship between two parties, much like a fishing trip exists in a relationship between two buddies. This means that the rules around sex are in fact reifying the rules of the relationship. Obviously the sex, like the fishing trip, is fun; but you're expected to bring adequate beer, or take turns doing so, not scare the fish, be suitably congratulatory and never salty if your buddy gets the bigger fish (even if he does it every time!), etc. And that bears out an underlying relationship of mutual respect and consideration. For sex, I of course think that the most appropriate relationship is a loving and committed one, but I understand that it doesn't have to be, and that it's conceivable that the underlying relationship the woman wanted to have was "you bring the drugs, I bring my body, we all have a good time and are nice to each other after." Violating that relationship is the cause for this anger, as a kind of disrespect.

You don't bring a homemade frozen lasagna to a new mother because you want her to owe you a favor or because you want others to speak well of you or because it's your duty as another woman. You do it because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I disagree, and would say that "warm fuzzy feelings" are a bad motivation for such things. Obviously the bulk of my interactions with my family are warm and fuzzy, and I do like said feelings, but my most significant obligations come from times when I am NOT feeling warm and fuzzy, e.g. when I am arguing with my wife or the kid is screaming and I'm bone-tired, and despite all of that I need to do what it takes to restore the harmony of the household. Doing things in warm and fuzzy mode is great, but the most important characteristic of a ship is how it holds up in a storm. No, the motivation should be that you feel a personal loyalty to the relationship you are trying to preserve and that you understand that your actions are important to that relationship - this is the durable motivation in such a case.

It's fair to say that sex is almost never transactional for men whereas for the average woman it's more the norm and not the exception.

As long as it's not explicitly transactional, we'll continue to have cases like this one.

This is what I think is supercharging the debate. The seven young men, individually and as a group, acted like total fucking cads, and they were getting away with it.

She did not hurt anyone with her frankly wildly out of control actions

It seems to me that these statements indicate that you are buying into the traditional notions that see men as defilers.

I mean, if a man is intoxicated and a woman (not his girlfriend or wife) performs oral sex on him, is it so outrageous to see the man as having been defiled?

To be clear, I don't have a huge problem with the "men as defilers" double standard, my bigger issue is what could be called the meta-double-standard. Double-standards which are perceived as favoring men over women are constantly attacked in the mainstream; the reverse is not true.

ETA:

Most discourse around the Cornell incident is about whether it was rape.

I think this is pretty reasonable. It's alarming when the criminal justice system is turned into an instrument of mass hysterics and weaponized against people who belong to disfavored groups. That seems to be what's happening here.

How confident are you that the facts of the case support your thesis?

Reliable information is obviously difficult to get right now, but one narrative I've seen, supposedly supported by texts between the girl and one of the main boys involved, is that in the immediate aftermath, all parties involved were perfectly content with the situation, and it was only when the girl's sorority sisters heard about what happened and slut-shamed her that she experienced negative effects (including the disinviting from the Halloween party, done at the request of the sisters). In this telling, it's very much a "is there anyone you forgot to ask" situation, where third parties are inserting themselves into something that they have no business inserting themselves into.

I'm personally skeptical that the frat bros acted like the cartoon villains you describe because my experience with UMC Gen Z men is that they are respectful of women to a fault, and the descriptions of their behavior in the initial police report seem to support that these particular Gen Z men are no different. It seems more like the feminist mob having an idea of what an evil frat bro would do and ascribing that behavior to the boys in this case.

The rage is over men's, as a collective, perceived ability to dodge consequences for sex.

The implication behind this statement is that there ought to be consequences for sex beyond what is negotiated up front. If you asked the collective of women raging at these men what those consequences should be, what would they say? Would they agree with each other? Could they even bear to say it out loud?

But it is aggravated by any incident where a woman is forced to pay for sex while a man is not.

I haven't been following this too closely, but I feel like I'm misunderstanding something here. In what way did she "pay" for the sex other than regretting it later? Are you counting not getting invited back to the frat as "paying" for it? If so, that's like 5 orders of magnitude less than the risk men take for having casual sex with a stranger.

I don’t think the boys turned her into a crazy slut. I think she was a crazy slut. And the boys were fucking cads as well. Both sides suck. But the woman has agency.

There are purportedly videos of her, now that her name and socials have leaked, showing that she looked pretty jacked for a woman. One of the fun speculations I've heard is that she was on T supplements for athletic/training reasons, and that's why she had a sex drive to fuck multiple frat boys into dry-heaving catatonia.

T supplements would indeed explain a lot.

Curious do you have a link

Nice, she lifts more than me.

Sorry. I didn't save anything and I don't know how to slip past search enslopification anymore. If I stumble across it again, I'll share.