Four hours and three minutes. That’s the total time that elapsed between 1:42 a.m. — the apparent moment when a Cornell student put the words “free pussy” in a group Snapchat message that could be seen by dozens of members of the Cornell chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity — and 5:45 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, roughly the time when Jane Doe says she lost consciousness, bringing her ordeal to an end. What happened during that time period? Multiple men came into the room and — according to a lawsuit filed by Jane Doe last month and various documents disclosed in the case — at least some of the men snorted drugs off her body and had oral and vaginal sex with her, all when she was unquestionably very drunk and very high. As dreadful as all that is, I’m also interested in what didn’t happen. No one, apparently, acted to end the encounter. Instead — as the group message indicates — men celebrated. “I fucking love chi phi,” one brother wrote. “Like you can walk in and whip it out,” he said later. “Shop still open?” asked another. I want to be careful here and not draw a straight line from our porn-saturated culture to this dreadful incident. Sexual depravity existed long before pornography was ubiquitous, but this encounter was almost a textbook example of what porn teaches men about sex. It’s not about intimacy. It’s not a manifestation of love, much less care. Instead, sex is an entirely self-regarding and inherently exploitative act.
I’m not writing this column to adjudicate legal guilt. The facts are complicated, and it is almost always difficult to know precisely what happened when copious amounts of drugs and alcohol are involved. Hovering over the entire case is a New York legal standard that draws a sharp distinction between voluntary and involuntary intoxication. Put simply, if you’re voluntarily intoxicated but not “physically helpless” (passed out, for example), proving incapacitation becomes extremely difficult. But if you’re involuntarily intoxicated, you are considered incapacitated — even when your level of intoxication is the same as that of the voluntarily intoxicated person. Think of it like this: If the Cornell men forced Jane Doe to drink shots or snort ketamine, then, in the state’s eyes, she’d be incapacitated. But if she voluntarily drank and consumed ketamine to the same level of intoxication, she would not be considered incapacitated. This makes little sense. Calling intoxication voluntary doesn’t render intoxicated people more aware or capable of making informed decisions. They’re just as vulnerable to predation as they would be if, say, they were unknowingly served spiked fruit punch. Any man of decency should recognize that the legal distinction (assuming he is aware of it) isn’t a grant of moral permission. And any man with any degree of moral fiber who saw that message should have immediately acted to end the encounter, even if it cost him the “brotherhood” he loves.
Last week, Christine Emba wrote a beautiful and compelling guest essay in our pages about the inadequacy of consent as the primary moral basis for sexual intimacy. It’s the legal base line, not a moral threshold. But what is the moral threshold? Conservative Christians like me often respond with a pat answer: marriage. But even that’s inadequate and incomplete. Marital sex can be every bit as abusive and exploitative as an encounter in a frat house. Instead of consent, I’d suggest a different standard, one that applies not just to sex in marriage — and not just to sex alone — but to all of our human interactions. Let’s talk about care. In other words, we should constantly ask ourselves, “If I cared for this person, what would I do?” Even if an obviously drunk or high person is asking you for sex (though whether that happened in this case is disputed, especially as events unfolded late...
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing