The alleged Cornell gang rape is the talk of the nation. While the allegations are dubious at best, they’re widely believed by much of the country. Go on TikTok or Instagram and you’ll be inundated with deranged takes about how the accused should be castrated and executed. While the mainstream press is covering the story a bit more objectively than they initially reported the Duke Lacrosse case and the UVA rape hoax, there’s still an underlying agitation in how journalists depict this case.
Campus rape hysteria isn’t new to this country. It dominated public discourse in the mid-2010s and served as an inspiration for my first book, No Campus for White Men. But it’s not 2015 anymore. The media no longer imagines young men as dangerous sex predators, at least not before the Cornell story broke. Most coverage centers on how young men aren’t having sex, aren’t drinking, aren’t having friends, and aren’t even leaving their homes. The Cornell 7 seem to be going against the grain here.
The other change from 2015 is the mainstreaming of gender hate, particularly misandry. While incels, redpillers, and the Right’s alleged misogyny are regularly castigated in the press, what’s more popular and socially acceptable is hating men. It animates the outrage over the Cornell 7. It’s also an irresistible force. Women have more power than ever in American society, as apparent in the normie response to the Cornell case and Lindsay Clancy. Both cases also reveal how women don’t want to be held responsible for their poor decisions, which society seems to want to accommodate.
The Cornell case offers a grim preview of how the gender wars will shape politics and society in the future. Despite college students having less sex than ever before, rampant misandry may force a revival of campus rape hysteria and create policy changes. Democrats are eager to latch onto the Cornell story to gin up support from female voters. As part of that process, we could end up with draconian laws that make it easier for women to send men to prison for regrettable sex and other non-crimes. While the media obsesses over random right-wingers who meme about repealing the 19th Amendment, the real result of the gender war will be aimed at men, not women.
The first thing we should know about the case is that nothing truly illegal occurred here. As the district attorney concluded from his original investigation, Jane Doe consented to what happened. She even explained in text messages to one of her “assailants” that nothing illegal occurred. But being known as the girl to have group sex with a bunch of dudes is not a reputation anyone wants. The rape accusation is likely inspired by this embarrassment.
But unlike past hoaxes, the act did in fact occur. Fraternity guys engaging in group sex with a drunk coed is not a good look, even if consensual. It’s easy to whip up outrage over such a tawdry occurrence. Few want to defend such an act. That makes it easier for the “victim” to claim it was a rape and build a narrative around privileged men abusing innocent girls on Cornell.
This especially upsets women. As previously noted, social media is awash with deranged takes on the Cornell case. The only place where you’ll find dissent from the mainstream consensus is on RW parts of X. X itself is mostly in favor of the established normie narrative that seven villainous frat boys raped an innocent girl. A similar dynamic played out in the Lindsay Clancy case. If you spend most of your time on RW X, you would think most people understood Clancy was a cold-blooded killer and should face the death penalty. But this was a minority opinion on social media. Everywhere else, Clancy was seen as a sympathetic woman who only killed due to mental illness.
The normie opinion in both cases is obviously determined by women. In both cases, women demand to not be held responsible for their actions and the blame is shifted onto men. (Patrick Clancy was often blamed for the murders either for not caring enough for his wife or for being the actual killer.) The facts of both cases do not support the popular normie narratives, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what women think about them, and that determines the popular reaction.
It would be one thing if this were just a temporary social media trend and people went about their daily business after a week. Lindsay Clancy fandom is insane, but it fortunately did not lead to legislatures giving women with postpartum depression a license to kill. It’s a different story with the Cornell case. Democratic lawmakers are exploiting it for political gain.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as the special prosecutor. James previously made her name persecuting Donald Trump, VDARE, and the NRA. Hochul also wants to change her state’s standard of consent to end the “voluntary intoxication loophole.” This refers to the fact that people who’ve imbibed spirits can still consent to sex. But Hochul thinks that’s wrong, so now women can claim they were raped if the sex sucked and they agreed to it after a glass of wine. It will give women more power over relationships, which will likely further worsen other social ills. It’s unwise to criminalize consensual sex when young people are already not dating and view the other gender negatively.
But it makes sense to women, particularly to young Democratic women. One new poll showed that 66 percent of Democratic women under 30 believe men are largely responsible for women’s problems. This is a demographic ready and eager to believe frat boys are getting away with rape thanks to the “intoxication loophole.”
Other states could join in targeting this apparent loophole. Stiffer, affirmative consent laws could become a popular demand among Democratic hopefuls in the 2028 primary. They’re unlikely to stop there. While Greek life is growing nationwide, liberals could be inspired to demand more restrictions and regulations on fraternities in response to the Cornell case. The idea of young white men having their own exclusive spaces is already deeply upsetting to the Left. Now the impression they serve as rape dens can be used to justify an anti-fraternity crusade on behalf of aggrieved young women. (Sororities will be excluded from this crusade, of course.)
Democrats will insist on restoring the Obama administration’s draconian additions to Title IX that helped engineer campus rape hysteria in the 2010s. They may find new ways to make it worse, such as immediate expulsion for a mere accusation rather than waiting for a kangaroo court to decide the matter. There are many possibilities here to make the lives of young men worse.
What’s important, and disturbing, to know is that this anti-male push has a degree of popularity. It’s something Democratic politicians are eager to play up in order to gain votes and turn out their base. This is very different from the media fixation on right-wing misogyny. Media outlets have become obsessed with how conservatives supposedly now want to eliminate women’s rights. The evidence comes from random X posters and a few shock-jock commentators. It gets good engagement on X, but has zero play in the real world. There is no Republican politician who’s going to campaign on repealing the 19th and giving incels a girlfriend. There’s a far greater chance of Democratic politicians campaigning on putting incels in concentration camps.
The simple reason is that there is a conceivable base of support for that idea. Young women could be persuaded that their lives are endangered by incels; thus, we need to use the Patriot Act against them. There are plenty of men who would support this idea as well. Just check normie social media for guys rushing to believe the Cornell story and peacock for GOOD MEN points.
There is no base of support for repealing women’s rights outside of the right-wing internet space. It’s just a shitpost rather than a serious policy proposal.
That’s why society should be more worried about misandry than misogyny. The incels only really pose a threat to themselves. They are a marginal, widely disliked demographic. They aren’t going to take over the government. Meanwhile, a society where our pop hits, viral social media trends, and popular TV shows all encourage women to think of men as either losers or potential rapists will further degrade gender relations and make for bad policy decisions.
A new campus rape hysteria would likely be even worse than the first wave a decade ago. We now live in a time of even worse gender relations, in which mainstream politicians are more willing to cater to a feminist extremism. Woke may be in retreat, but it can always return with renewed force. The Cornell case may be the beginning of a new iteration of woke–and it will not be kind to men.
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There’s nothing to be done about this. American female misandry is predicated on the dearly held belief the country is only two or three degrees from the Hand Maiden’s Tale. The people and institutions that promote that understanding and the media that carry it are not going to change. If you’ve expended any effort trying, you realize they’re basically impervious to the fact this is the most female liberated society in history by a massive margin.
The fruits of this moment will be catastrophic, but they’re entirely baked into the American future at this point. Respond accordingly.
It is pretty clear to me at this point that women as a demographic are a lost cause. Our attention needs to be focused on the men that enable them. Any man white knighting for a woman who isn't family or a S. O. needs to be shamed mercilessly.