Episode 158 [PATREON EXCLUSIVE] -- Emergency Episode: A Rape at Cornell

Being that women should accept a sizable risk of sexual violence when walking into a frat, according to some, what are these people saying about men who join a fraternity? When regretful men claim they were innocent because they didn’t know or didn’t participate, perhaps they should consider what they were asking for when they joined a frat in the first place. When you walk through that door as a brother, you are accepting the considerable risk of losing your humanity, participating in extreme dehumanization and rape, or permitting it on behalf of your “brothers.” For all the people who talk about a woman’s culpability, I never hear people talk about what it says about men who join a fraternity and what they know and accept about the culture they are walking into. Of course they don’t consider these men to have agency, but they should ask themselves how it is they can suddenly control themselves when the woman in question is their own sister or mother. It’s clear to them that some women are off limits, but it gets a little hazy otherwise. Speaking of hazy, sexual violence against pledges would be an interesting follow up.

I can’t listen to this right now as a survivor, but I appreciate yall talking about it. I have heard very few people handle this well, and I know you both do.

So what's with all the "Comment Hidden" stuff? Am I correct in presuming that these are offensive/obnoxious comments that Adrian and/or Moira are blocking from the chat? Or is it something else entirely, like commenters choosing to not show their comments, although the latter seems kind of strange. And given the subject of the episode, I think the former is more likely. But still, I'm curious.

This is all so horrific and wild to me. I’m Canadian and the university in my province/my former uni has always banned frats, a few guys tried to start one when I was in high school and they were all straight up expelled. I think that the greek system elsewhere in Canada and the States is SO wild

What this case keeps reaffirming to me, is that we really need a broad reform to a restorative justice model. I'm yes anding everything Adrian and Moira said about the normalized violence towards women, but the thing that I always think about when powerful institutions come to protect the privileged from facing accountability for their sexual violence, it is because at their heart, those in the field of administering justice, know the a justice system isn'tjust. Restorative justice may not be the answer for addressing that normalization of sexualived violence women experience systemically, but it is the answer as to what all the men within proximity to this violence should face in terms of accountability, in that, it requires them to restore the harms they caused to the victim, without the injustice of what our punative system innacts.

Now they’re saying SHE RAPED THEM. It’s truly the DARVO narrative on full throttle.

University is funding a fraternity house?!?!?!?!?!?! Can someone explain fraternities to a confused european????

Moira, excellent job on Brain Lerher this AM.

Cornell alumni are starting to speak out about what happened to them as well, and how administrators as well as campus police basically shrugged off any complaints.

Thank you for putting this out and for the clarity it brought. This was very helpful.

I would love an episode on Camille Paglia at some point. What a piece of work.

I’d be interested in y’all’s thoughts on what a better societal response to sexual violence would be. I’m a firm prison abolitionist who works in criminal defense, and my experience in that system makes me reasonably certain that the criminal legal system will never effectively prevent or deter sexual violence. That said, I don’t really have my own affirmative vision of what a proper societal response to sexual violence would be, and I personally struggle with that in the context of my work. I’m sure y’all have thoughts and I hope I get to hear them.

They abolished frats at Williams before becoming coed in early 70s. That doesn’t solve the problem but it takes away one degree of sanction by the school and alumni community etc. agree with Moira that frats are a symptom. At my uni we are already talking about the safety training for the young women. Sigh. Stop perpetrating training seems a more direct route.

Thank you for this episode. One item that was not discussed in depth is the University response. As I understand it, the definition of rape under the school’s guidelines does not include the loophole regarding intoxication that is found in the NY law but the University still didn’t view the events as rape. Adrian often brings up the concept of in loco parentis and the role of the University in shaping young people (both in a positive and negative sense). I would love if you could share more resources or thoughts on the University’s role here. Thank you!

They absolutely prefer that men can “bond” over rape because they ASAUME it will happen so they “let it happen” there.

Sorry I can't remember if Moira and Adrian said this I just wanted to emphasize this, although others have pointed it out: The anti-genocide protests were going on around this same time. Cornell punished anti-genocide protesters a million times more harshly than 7 rapists.

One of the things that got to me when reading the documentation recently uncovered was with the fact that she was physically unable to get to and leave is that it's agreed that she was naked in a bed and some of the time she was covered by a blanket and that there were several men in the room. So even if she could get up and leave, in order to do that, she would have to expose herself more to these men in order to get to her clothes and get dressed. I think most reasonable people would understand that being a naked woman in a room filled with men might mean you choose the safety of a blanket rather than exposing yourself in order to leave.

Thank you for talking about it. This has been a life raft. I feel so strongly about these things that it seems disproportionate to what happened to me, but the rage I feel is strongest for the people I know and love who went through these horrors without a hint of justice or reckoning. My stories rattle so loudly in my head whenever it happens again in the news, and I wish I could put them together in a way that makes sense. Just you all talking about it helps so many people put words to their own experiences and I hope you realize just how much that means.

The only two people I’d trust on this topic - thanks for putting this out.

Thank you Moira and Adrian. I always appreciate these heavy episodes for how clear eyed and thoughtful you both are.

I just read WIRED’s September article: “A College Girl Was Exploited on Camera. A Network of Anonymous Men Got to Work” about a young woman who learned she had been raped at a frat when people showed her a video of that incident. It had been posted on “the BurnerVerse”—a social media platform for misogynists. It isn’t all men but any more it kinda feels like it.

Thank you A&M for your wonderful podcast.Have you guys ever thought about doing a pod on Evie magazine? It’s truly deranged.

I told my dad when he started talking about the Cornell case that after the Pelicot case I have no capacity to listen because the Pelicot case took participatory gang rape out of the realm of frats and meant that it could be anywhere facilitated by the internet and people aren't even safe in their homes with their partners. [Teaching 126 undergrads counseling related classes right now is... a lot.]

Men in fraternities love to brag about how their fraternity is "good" because they kicked out 1 or 2 members when they heard of them committing sexual violence. Reminds me of how the NFL temporarily suspended Ray Rice when they found out about the DV, but permanently ejected him when the video went public. It's PR. Also men stay in those fraternity group chats for 10+ years after graduation and the things they talk about (peers they went to school with, actresses, female politicians) are absolutely foul.

I went to Bryn Mawr (women’s college near Swarthmore, students at Swat and Haverford and Bryn Mawr could all take classes at the other schools)—my first year I was warned very strongly by other students never to go to the frat parties at Swarthmore. I heard some horror stories but cannot recall details—but the idea that frats were dangerous was just an accepted fact. This was 2009-2013

Thank you for doing this.

Really, really needed this episode given this past week. Thank y’all so much. I know this is a lot, but it’s so important and I know y’all will talk about this with the gravity and understanding that a moment like this requires. There’s been so many conversations going on about rape, and most of them have been horrible and misguided at best.