Warning: this piece contains language regarding sexual assault that may be triggering or uncomfortable to some.
In October of 2024, a then 20-year-old young woman alleges she was brutally assaulted by 7 of her Cornell University classmates, at least one of whom she considered a friend.
Right now, in the wake of her decision to speak publicly and file suit in an effort to bring her abusers to justice, she is being assaulted a second time by a similarly grotesque mob:
A sitting president, himself an adjudicated rapist, is expressing sympathy for the accused, with no such regard for their accuser.
Men all over the country are flooding social media with their crude Neanderthal hot takes on her supposed culpability.
Conservative male content creators like Matt Walsh and Michael Tracey are assassinating her character in tweets, YouTube videos, and reckless think pieces, championing countersuits and calling for her doxxing.
And women like Megyn Kelly are leveraging hours of programming on their massive platforms to perpetuate a narrative that is right out of the misogynist’s playbook: blame the victim.
Kelly has spent the past two weeks running extensive hit pieces on Jane Doe, criticizing her drinking habits, doing drive-by psychotherapy, and questioning the two-week delay in Doe’s reporting of the incident, despite Kelly herself seemingly taking a full decade to disclose alleged sexual harassment by then Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.
Rather than educate her audience on the pressures women face at every turn; the sexism saturating media, the Evangelical Church, and the GOP ecosystem; and the widespread sexual violence permeating our culture, Megyn Kelly would rather throw raw meat to the snarling, unevolved rabble.
Kelly, like all perpetually performative Conservatives who continually sermonize about “protecting women” in college sports, doesn’t seem at all interested in defending them when they step off the field and onto their campuses. Once they have exhausted their use as pawns in a Right-Wing culture war, they’re thrown to the wolves.
As thousands of women take to social media to declare solidarity with Jane Doe (#iamjanedoe), counting themselves among the 81 percent of women in the US who testify to having been sexually assaulted or harassed in their lifetimes, they too are being met with ridicule, insults, and vulgarity.
This is why more survivors of sexual assault don’t come forward; because they know that in doing so, they will find themselves facing violence and indignities from strangers that compound their wounds and amplify the shame of their initial trauma.
They understand that they will face a microscopic scrutiny of their dating histories, clothing choices, and public conduct that places the burden of the violence visited upon them squarely on their shoulders and never on those who authored it.
The United States has a long-gestating rape culture that ensures that the Jane Does will always be hounded and that the Cornell 7s will always be sheltered. This not only makes survivors more reticent to report their trauma, but it emboldens unwell men who are more apt to act out on the monstrous things in their minds, believing accountability will never come.
Until this nation stops electing predators and politically rewarding abusers, they will continue to be prolific in their atrocities.
Until men of conscience police the men around them, no rapist will ever feel as unsafe as those he harms.
Until law enforcement and university boards decide to root toxic masculinity from their ranks, survivors will continue to remain silent.
Until internalized misogynists like Megyn Kelly stop partnering in their own subjugation, young women will continue to question their worth and carry unnecessary shame.
Until Conservative parents stop coddling their sons and diminishing their daughters, campuses and workplaces will be where young men believe they can embrace the darkest evils harbored in their hearts.
And unless we abolish a pervasive rape culture that extends all the way up to the Supreme Court and the White House, every Jane Doe in America will know that if they do choose to expose the unspeakable violence committed against them, they will be further assaulted by a sprawling crowd who would rather practice or excuse violence against women than confront it.
0 comments