CORNELL 7: “Here we go again - different men, same excuses”

Survivors respond to the “Cornell 7” Frat House Rape Allegations

Jessica Baker:

What keeps getting to me is that this story isn’t just about the seven men accused of assaulting Jane Doe. The message about her was posted in a fraternity group chat that reportedly included dozens of men.

Who saw it? Who knew what was happening? Who had a chance to say something?

Because what do you do when you know another man is sexually harming women and you say nothing? What do you do when you have a chance to intervene and choose not to?

I’m angry about it.

I’m angry that we can have conversation after conversation about sexual violence and still somehow end up talking about what women could have done differently instead of asking why the men around them didn’t do anything.

Men need to hold other men accountable.

If your friend is talking about women this way, tell him it’s not okay. If you know another man is hurting women, stop protecting him. Stop looking the other way because he’s your friend.

Silence is a choice. And silence protects the person doing the harm.

I know what it’s like to wonder whether someone could have stopped it.

I have spent years wondering whether things might have been different for me if someone around Jacob Hoggard had spoken up. If someone in his management had intervened. If a bandmate had said something. If someone who knew his behaviour wasn’t okay had decided that protecting a woman mattered more than protecting him.

I’ll never know if someone speaking up would have prevented what happened to me.

But I wonder about it more than I probably let myself admit.

For years, I was treated like a case. Like evidence. Like something people could argue about in court. There were so many moments when it felt like everyone was talking about what happened to me without actually seeing me as a person.

That’s why Jacob’s words at his parole hearing affected me so deeply. When he acknowledged what had been taken from me and said I didn’t deserve it, it was the first time I felt like he was acknowledging the person on the other side of what he had done.

Me.

Not a case. Not a victim. A person.

Watching Jane Doe’s experience play out brings a lot of that back.

We talk about the men who commit sexual violence and the women who survive it. We don’t talk nearly enough about the people standing around them who see things, hear things, know things — and decide it’s easier to stay quiet.

Friends. Teammates. Fraternity brothers. Coworkers. Bandmates. Managers.

Say something.

And I’m tired of hearing “not all men.” I know it’s not all men. That isn’t the point.

The point is that when a man hurts a woman, I want the men around him to care enough to say something. I want them to stop protecting their friends at the expense of women.

I’m tired of women having to fight to be believed.

I’m tired of women having to fight to be seen.

And I’m really fucking tired of men protecting men.

-Jessica

Kelly Favro:

Here we go again.

I cannot stop thinking about the parallels between Cornell and the Hockey Canada trial.

A woman agrees to sex with a man - or men – and then she goes into a private room with them. One of those men tells other men there's a woman available for sex. More men start showing up. And suddenly the sexual encounter she agreed to has become something completely different.

“I agreed to this. I did not agree with what this turned into.”

Why is this difficult? And then we get: “But when she said no, they stopped.” Except it wasn't just one no. “No. I'm tired. Stop.” Another proposal. Another man. Another request. More saying  no. More asking from the men. Until, according to her police interview, she got tired of answering and gave in.

How many times did she have to say no? (A quick raise of hands here - who else has done this? Who else has given in to sex just because your “not now” wasn’t heard the first 15 times.)

She called it coercion.

There is something so absurd about presenting “but they stopped every time she said no” as though that settles anything.

Because all I hear is: Every time? How many fucking times did she have to say it?

This argument is so ridiculous that it reminds me of the punishment I used to get in high school:

write an essay explaining what you did wrong and what you should have done differently, and why you won't make the same mistake again.

And listen, I got in trouble a lot in high school. If I wasn’t in trouble for talking too much, I was in trouble for being late to class, or straight-up skipping altogether, or smoking somewhere on the property where I shouldn’t have been smoking. I was once accused of organizing a school-wide walkout over provincial budget cuts. I found this out over ICQ (the proud geriatric millennial I am). I hadn't organized it. So naturally I found the people who actually WERE organizing it and joined them.

 Anyway, even teenage me, sitting there writing some bullshit essay about personal responsibility, understood that “but I stopped every time she said no” raises one pretty obvious question:

WHY DID SHE HAVE TO KEEP SAYING IT?

And here we are again, looking at what the men were saying to each other while trying to understand what happened. We've seen this before. And we will see it so many more times before real change actually comes from any of this.

 Before I forget, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to the former fraternity member who gave Jane Doe the screenshot evidence from that Snapchat conversation. You did the right thing.

But... here we go again.

-Kelly