The current sexual assault case against the so-called Cornell 7 has reignited a wave of feminist MeToo sentiment across social media. None of the people swept up in the rage against the imagined patriarchy, though, have resolved the central problem with their ideology – the fact that their permissive attitude toward sex, combined with stringent step-by-step rules of consent subject to retroactive regret, are not compatible.
The district attorney involved in the original 2024 case, Matthew Van Houten, defended his decision to not bring charges, saying that the actions the alleged victim described in her sworn statement did not constitute a crime. According to Van Houten, rather than claiming she had been gang-raped, “On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual contact as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
Van Houten has recently reopened the case, following a civil lawsuit where the alleged victim changed her initial story to claim she was too intoxicated to consent to sex. In the new lawsuit, she claims that the male students involved in the situation pressured her into doing ketamine, and that two students forced themselves on her, neither of which she claimed in the original statement. While Van Houten described the male students’ alleged actions as “vile,” he accurately mentioned that was not enough to criminally prosecute them, while allowing for the possibility of future prosecution if new evidence was presented.
The people involved in the furor over the current lawsuit, though, don’t claim to view the situation as inherently vile. Had the woman involved recounted the night in question while claiming that she had consented to sex with multiple men, no one would have anything to be ashamed of, according to our liberal moral arbiters. It is the claimed lack of consent that has made the case the newest MeToo cause du jour.
Of course, the problem with this thinking is that having the legal system objectively determine consent is impossible when binge drinking and copious drug use are involved. If MeToo diehards were honest with themselves, they would admit that discouraging heavy drinking and casual sex would cut down on situations like this case, where a woman who initially never alleged assault later changes her story, possibly out of embarrassment. Feminists are incapable of that, though, because any judgments on sex are considered “slut-shaming” and patriarchal in their worldview. So instead, we are expected to support an environment where everyone is free to do as they please, but men are also expected to always know when women are too drunk to consent to something, regardless of how intoxicated they both are.
It’s not an ideology that survives contact with the real world. Then again, MeToo activists’ top concern is fomenting panic against the straight white male menace, not promoting any coherent worldview.
