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Notes -
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.
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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.
...Hold up.
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:
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
yaoithe culture to expect otherwise, I extend my sincere condolences, but shrug play stupid games, win stupid prizes.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.
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 hypoagencythey'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.
If you're having casual sex with a woman, your obligations are pretty simple:
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:
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.
She's not totally wrong. Based on shared texts, male #1 invited her to the halloween party and seemed romantically interested in her as well as concerned about her general well being.
On point (3), I'm not sure how you can keep a 7 person gangbang in a frat house a secret, particularly when she also told her friends about it. But at least based on texts, Male #1 didn't talk about.
Her primary romantic interest seemed to do all the things you suggest. Unrelated people who never had sex with her called her a slut and disinvited her from parties.
Do we know which of the numbered parties sent the Snapchat message?
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Part of being modest is not doing gang bangs. Stated differently, the boys failed to help her lie that she was modest despite clearly being immodest.
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So to spell it out, in your view it was the unmet specific obligation of the fratboys involved to carefully conceal the incident from a) the sorority queen bee and her minions b) clueless male students of the same college whom the woman in question sees as potential future boyfriends/husbands.
If necessary/possible, otherwise at least plead in her favor and defend her from accusations and insinuations.
I see where you're coming from, and it does seem relevant here but "kissing can be fine, but kissing and telling is rape" is not, IMHO, a viable legal standard. Especially since I'm not aware of it being codified anywhere relevant here. It's dangerously close to ex post facto to criminalize actions based on words separated by months or years, unless it was considered a separate crime.
And if this was truly the standard, going on a nationwide media court-of-public-opinion press tour as part of your civil litigation strategy is, uh, not a good look either.
Of course, rape accusations are way beyond the pale as retaliation, and absolutely the law should be blind to the social games being played here. I'm just talking about why she was wronged which explains (but not excuse) why she reached for rape accusations.
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Don't you think that there is too high a bar for this level of conspiracy and coordination in this particular social setting?
It's their duty not to spread rumors, to attempt to smother the rumor if they hear it being spread, to downplay it ("we were all so high we barely were aware of what was happening so it's not like she just puts out for anyone") and plead her case to the frat and sorority leadership. If none of it worked, I would have considered Male 1 to be pretty much honorbound to get in a serious longterm relationship with her at least until they're out of education, to shield her from social consequences.
Of course, her deserving such consideration went out the window when the rape accusations went in. But it's fun to imagine a world where people aren't all scumbags.
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