The horror of the Cornell rape case is how ordinary it is | Moira Donegan

Maybe more than anything else, sexual violence is repetitive. Men commit it in patterns: mostly against women who are close by and vulnerable, just below them on some social hierarchy: their assistant, their date, their friend, their daughter, their student, their kid’s babysitter.

Men rape for opportunity – because they can – and for status – because it makes them feel good. They rape to impress other men, documenting it on phones for one another’s benefit. Men rape and do not always seem to register much of a difference between the sex they’ve had that was rape and the sex that they’ve had that wasn’t. They rape, often, without seeming to think about it, registering their victims’ unwillingness with vague contempt, if at all.

Institutions don’t seem very interested, either. When a woman comes forward, she is often told in hushed, awed, and thoroughly patronizing tones that she is so brave – by the very same people, be they cops or prosecutors or Title IX coordinators, who will then set about explaining to her why she had no right to say no; why the man or men who violated her were within their rights to do so; why inaction and indifference on the part of the people she turned to for help are the only rational response, and the best that she can hope for. Some version of this happens over and over and over again. It happens every day.

Once in a while, an instance will rise to public consciousness. There is outrage, new articulations of feminist consciousness. Brilliant and livid women describe the pattern with insight, intelligence, and often a kind of bitter wit. People with real power call for action, investigations, even a new law. Then, the moment fades. Attention ebbs. Change doesn’t come. Soon after, a woman wakes up bruised. She steels herself to report. A person on the other side of a table will smile at her with a patronizing treachery, tell her something nonspecific, and set the cycle of impunity in motion again.

This pattern is repeating itself, now, at Cornell. A civil suit filed by a former undergraduate against the university and seven male students has attracted public attention and instigated feminist agitation around rape to a degree not seen in years.

The unnamed plaintiff alleges that in October 2024, she was raped and sexually assaulted over a period of some seven hours at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house by seven men, named as Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar. (Lopes denied wrongdoing in statements to the press, as did Norris and Kretzchmar, the Scotts.) It was Ingalls who had allegedly invited her to the house; she thought he was her friend.

The woman’s lawsuit alleges that the men plied her with alcohol and pressured her to snort ketamine, and proceeded to assault and rape her when she was severely intoxicated and unable to resist. Her complaint includes screenshots from the fraternity’s group chat, in which one of the men, Jonathan Newell, advertised “free pussy” on the night of the attack – seemingly inviting other men to join in the alleged gang rape.

According to screenshots included in the complaint, some of the men in the fraternity who received the message responded with encouragement or delight. None of the more than 50 men included in the group chat objected or reported the ongoing incident.

Unlike many women, the victim reported her assault. But she claims that the results were disappointing. Only two of the men involved were expelled from Cornell. All of the other five soon returned to classes; some were briefly suspended, or required to attend a workshop. According to the student run-Cornell Daily Sun, which broke the story of the lawsuit, the accused were asked, as part of their punishment, to write an essay. I would like to read those essays. Their alleged victim dropped out; according to her attorney, she has not returned to college.

For his part, the local district attorney in Cornell’s Tompkins county, Matthew Van Houten, declined to pursue charges – claiming, nonsensically, that the woman who came to the police to report a rape did not assert that the encounter was nonconsensual or that she was drugged against her will. Van Houten says that allegations from this month’s civil lawsuit are “dramatically different” from Jane Doe’s statement two years ago. In her interview with police at that time, Doe said: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” When asked about this by CBS News, Van Houten replied: “I’m going to follow up on this because this is news to me.”

None of the men were ever arrested; it’s not clear that they were interviewed by police at all. Van Houten has now reversed that decision and reopened the case following a public outcry, and subsequently gone on something of a press tour defending his initial decision not to investigate. But one wonders about his integrity and soundness of judgement in handling such cases. Sadly, his behavior here is not an outlier.

It is often observed that sexual violence is so common that most women have experienced some form of it, and more women than you’d like to think have experienced the worst forms. The obvious corollary to this is even less comfortable to acknowledge: the fact that so many women have experienced sexual violence is only possible because many, many, many men are committing it.

Many men rape; many men giggle encouragingly, or shrug indifferently, when their friends rape. Many men rape, and few seem to think that it’s a very big deal. If anything, cases like the alleged incident at Chi Phi – and many others – show that rape can be a bonding activity for men, a way they celebrate their own shared status as men.

Complicity, too, is typical, not uncommon, for responding institutions. Impunity for rapists is cast as good sense, or as responsibility; as fairness, or compassion.

Today, Chi Phi, Cornell, and the Tompkins county district attorney are under fire as the Cornell case has come to light. All appear to have behaved abominably. None behaved unusually. The next time a case like this arises – and it will arise, with the certainty of the tides – will we have learned anything?

I began my writing career as a feminist, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, and I’ve often thought that that early education in sexual violence advocacy was good preparation for the Trump era, both with its malignant cultural products and its collapse of the rule of law. Sexual violence is intimate, but impersonal: when someone rapes or assaults you, they both force access to the most private parts of your body and also negate your individual qualities, rendering your own thoughts and personality largely moot. So, too, with authoritarianism, which on the one hand seems to seep into the minute corners of our lives, inflecting our thoughts and conversations with its logic, but is also hostile to individualism, blurring citizens into subjects, types.

Sexual assault, like the Trump era, reveals that law is applied selectively, according to the needs of power. Every court and every university, and every institution will say: “We take sexual violence extremely seriously.” And every one will find, with uncanny consistency, reasons not to take it very seriously at all.

And sexual assault, like Trumpist authoritarianism, is ideologically incoherent. It is perpetrated by men against women in every race and class category, in every region and industry, in every school, and among people of every strain of politics. Its only rule, and its only value, is domination.

If you understand all this – that domination is the rule of much of men’s interaction with women, that the law is mutable and does not protect you, and that beyond the effort to hurt and humiliate, there is no agenda and no rules – you will understand much of the Trump regime, and just about everything there is to know about rape. You’ll never be surprised by either one of them again. When I hear, now, about a new and pointlessly sadistic Trump policy, or a new high-profile rape case, I can often guess the details without being told. I’m never shocked anymore. I wish that meant that I was never heartbroken.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html