There was a moment when it seemed like society was having a reckoning about sexual assault. The #MeToo movement gained traction in 2017, following dozens of sexual violence allegations levied against film producer Harvey Weinstein. Women on social media came out in droves to share their stories of sexual assault, raising awareness not only about the prevalence of sexual violence, but the forms it can take, the environment it can occur in, and the range of women it affects.
It seemed at that time we were coming to some sort of societal agreement. Sexual assault is wrong. Sexual assault is never the victim’s fault. And preventing sexual assault shouldn’t be the victim’s responsibility. The problem is that our focus still remains on teaching women how not to be sexually assaulted, rather than teaching men and boys not to sexually assault women.
Nearly a decade later, a recent lawsuit against Cornell University has raised an uncomfortable question: How much did we really take away from #MeToo?Â
On November 8, 2024, an unnamed Cornell University student, “Jane Doe,” alleged that she was drugged and gang-raped by seven male members of the Chi Phi fraternity during an October party. The university conducted an internal review and hearings, which led to punishments for several of the students, including two expulsions. Yet no criminal charges were filed against any of them. On September 16, 2026, Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against Cornell, alleging that the university had failed to protect her and to adequately respond to her assault.Â
The allegations and failure of the institutional response have ignited a social media firestorm. And I believe this incident may just be the tip of the iceberg and that we are due for another reckoning.
If you’re a woman in college, there are rules you learn and never forget. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t take a drink if you didn’t see it being made. Never go to the bathroom or walk home alone. Share your location with your friends. These precautions are so embedded in our minds that they’ve come to feel like facts of life. We seldom consider the implication behind them: why does the burden of preventing sexual assault fall on the people most likely to experience it?
This isn’t to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with making efforts to mitigate the risk of sexual assault. People do this all the time for a variety of crimes. For example, car alarms and security systems all lower the risk of burglaries and break-ins. But if a homeowner didn’t have a security system, it’s unlikely that anyone would suggest a home invasion was their fault or that they were “asking for it.”
The accusatory language surrounding sexual assault has been ongoing for decades, but it seems to have worsened over the last few years. I was initially encouraged by how widespread the support for Jane Doe was, but once I began looking at social media outside my own algorithm, I was horrified to discover how severe the victim-blaming was. In her testimony, Jane Doe alleges that she had consented to the initial sexual encounter with two men, but had subsequently been plied with drugs and alcohol and was entirely incapacitated for the rest of the interaction, removing her ability to consent. To many online, this eradicates the validity of her accusation. Clearly, she’d consented to the entire thing and only called it assault after word spread around campus.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding among many men about what consent means — or perhaps a willingness to disregard it when acknowledging it would mean taking a woman’s accusations seriously. Consenting to an encounter with two people doesn’t mean consenting to an encounter with seven. Agreeing to one sexual act doesn’t mean agreeing to every act that follows. A woman does not surrender the right to make decisions about her body because she initially wanted to have sex. There’s virtually no other crime where the victim is scrutinized more than the perpetrator. Men know when a woman does not want to have sex with them.
But this shouldn’t surprise us — women have always been blamed for the actions of men. Even supporters of Jane Doe are calling on mothers to “teach their sons better.” So, if it isn’t the victim’s fault, it’s the perpetrator’s mother’s fault for failing to raise her son properly. Is it so hard to acknowledge that men have committed wrongdoing of their own volition? Of course, this behavior doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there are so many institutions and influences that go into shaping a man’s brain. And yet, it’s the women in the equation who bear the brunt of the blame.
There’s another element of the Cornell case that unsettles me. According to the lawsuit, in the middle of Jane Doe’s assault, one of the seven men sent a Snapchat message in a Chi Phi group chat announcing to everyone that there was “free pussy” and then inviting other men to the assault. The subsequent responses celebrated the message, laughed at it, and expressed thankfulness for the frat they had chosen.
Fifty-seven men were in that group chat, yet not one of them reported what was going on. Seven men may have participated in the assault, but 50 others were told while it was happening and still chose inaction. Would these 50 men consider themselves to be better than the ones who committed the assault? Abstaining from violence is the bare minimum; inaction or encouragement creates an environment where it can continue.Â
#MeToo sparked a lot of conversations about sexual assault, but as the dust settled, we may have mistaken raised awareness for increased cultural change. We can talk about how assault is never the victim’s fault and how we must raise our boys to do better, but that doesn’t mean much when cases like Cornell reveal how little has changed in practice over the past decade.
So, what can we do?Â
For young men, behavior is modeled at home, and fathers play a big role. According to research cited by Psychology Today, boys rely on their dads “for guidance, and a model for how to behave in the world and in relationships.” As much as mothers are shamed for not raising their sons better, what fathers and other male authority figures tolerate, laugh at, or go along with matters profoundly. Teaching respect means modeling it. The old mantra of “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work here.Â
Change also has to come from within peer groups. Would you speak up if your friend made a joke about violence against women? Would you intervene if you recognized a woman was too incapacitated to consent? Do you think you’d have the same urge to laugh off a violent joke if the woman being talked about was your sister, mother, daughter, girlfriend or friend? If the answer is no, consider why your relationship to the woman changes your reaction. You may believe you’re against sexual assault in the abstract, but that does nothing to help the women in your life if you’re unwilling to make yourself uncomfortable to keep us safe.Â
Women are inundated with lists of ways to prevent sexual assault. We must anticipate every danger that might come, and be prepared to defend and answer for ourselves on what we could’ve done differently if the unthinkable happened. It’s time we redirect scrutiny from the victims to those who commit and enable violence so men like the Cornell 7 don’t continue to run unchecked.