We need to stop reprimanding people for “victim blaming” when they’re exercising common sense.
An alleged gang rape at Cornell University has set the internet ablaze with debate. But whenever anyone asks what the victim did to find themselves in that situation, they’re chastised.
Yet these are exactly the kinds of conversations we need to be having to protect other women from similar fates. Pointing out a woman’s missteps does not mean one believes she deserves what happened to her. It helps stop the same thing from happening again.
It goes without saying that what allegedly happened to “Jane Doe” at Cornell is horrific.
In October 2024, an apparently extremely intoxicated young woman showed up to a fraternity house and agreed to have sex with two frat brothers.
Unbeknownst to her, one of the men had sent a Snapchat message out to 57 members of the fraternity bragging that they had “free p—y” available and that they could come in and “whip it out.”
10 shots at bar
Obviously disgusting behavior. Asking how Jane Doe ended up there in the first place doesn’t excuse it.
At the same time, the story she tells in court filings and police interviews reveals some catastrophic missteps on her part.
Her evening started, she says, with 10 shots at a local bar — 10 shots — before she showed up at a frat house to meet one member she knew. She then says she agreed to a threesome at their dorm and took ketamine — some of which she reportedly snorted off one of their genitals.
There’s no question that a purported ten drinks and a helping of ketamine would make someone far too incapacitated to think clearly. But we must be able to ask: what could she have done differently to prevent this situation?
It’s not blaming the victim to acknowledge that she, too, had a part in ending up alone with multiple men, under the influence of multiple substances. There’s no getting around it: everyone involved here made terrible decisions.
We should be able to say as much, because pretending she had nothing to do with what happened to her is implying that women have no agency — which is, frankly, quite sexist.
Camille Paglia said it best herself, in a 2017 interview with CBC, where she called the parsing of gray-area encounters “infantilizing to women.”
“If you go to a fraternity-house party, with the chaos going on in the living-room area, and a young man says to you, ‘Would you like to go up to my room?’ I’m sorry — you are consenting to sex,” she said. “Women must realize they are now free. The sexual revolution has been won.” She went on, “Why are we coddling young women, saying, ‘Go on being children, because Mommy and Daddy will be there to pick up the pieces for you afterward?’ ”
Young women raised to believe that any nuance is “victim blaming” are being implicitly taught that they move through the world with no control whatsoever over their safety or their sexual wellbeing.
Cautionary tale
That’s why so many young women think the world is fraught. If you subscribe to the anti-victim blaming narrative, then there may as well be roving crews of gang rapists on Ivy League campuses drugging women at random.
Of course, that isn’t true.
There’s little upside to a sick story like this. But, if there is any good that can come from it, perhaps it can be a precautionary tale for other young women and prevent even just one from ending up in similar circumstances.
Otherwise, a generation of young women raised to believe that any nuance is “victim blaming” are condemned to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.
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