Here We Go Again

Same story. Different players. A woman alone. Intoxicated. Drugged. Unconscious. Vulnerable.

I’ll start with the first question, does it matter that she drank alcohol and maybe even took the drugs willingly?

Do we all agree that an intoxicated and drugged up woman is not in a position to keep herself safe from others?

Are we fine with saying….again… that she should have ‘known better’, ‘what can she expect’ etc.

Are we ok with never expecting that men would just refrain from their ‘need’ to have sex with such a woman?

Now I will go to what happens in the community when the other questions start.

What’s the whole story?

There must be more to it.

How do you know she didn’t consent?

And, eventually, the one I have grown particularly tired of:

“Not all men.”

Yes. We know. It is not all men. But before we rush to reassure men that nobody is talking about them personally, maybe we should spend a little more time talking about the women who continue to be raped, sexually assaulted, drugged, exploited, harassed and frightened by men.

Because this isn't a rare problem.

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly one in three women worldwide — approximately 840 million women and girls — have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate-partner violence or non-partner sexual violence during their lifetime. Progress has been painfully slow.

In Canada, women reported sexual assault at more than five times the rate of men in Statistics Canada's 2019 victimization survey: 50 incidents per 1,000 women compared with 9 per 1,000 men.

And when we're talking specifically about women being raped, the perpetrator is overwhelmingly male. In a major U.S. CDC survey, 99% of female rape victims reported only male perpetrators.

So can we stop pretending we are talking about a handful of mysterious “bad apples”?

I don't know about you, but I've never seen a bad apple rape an unconscious woman.

Maybe we need to spend less time talking about the apples and start asking some uncomfortable questions about the tree.

We've Seen This Before

Remember Gisèle Pelicot?

Her husband secretly drugged her for years and invited strangers into their home to rape her while she was unconscious.

Think about that for a moment.

Not one man. Not two. Dozens.

In 2024, all 51 defendants in the Pelicot trial were convicted. The men came from different occupations and backgrounds. They were not some easily identifiable collection of monsters living outside society.

They were men living in society. That case should have destroyed forever the comforting fiction that sexual violence is committed exclusively by some tiny, easily recognizable category of evil men whom the rest of us would immediately spot.

Apparently it didn't.

Which brings me to Cornell.

The Cornell Seven (or 5 if you want to call them, whatever).

Let's be careful here because this case is currently unfolding.

A 101-page civil complaint filed in September 2026 alleges that a Cornell student was sexually assaulted by several male students following a night involving ketamine, marijuana and alcohol.

Those are allegations, not criminal convictions. Some of the men have publicly denied wrongdoing, although it seems clear that they were all at least present and witnessed the event.

But we also know something happened that Cornell considered serious enough to warrant institutional action. Cornell has confirmed that its Title IX process resulted in suspensions and expulsions, and the Chi Phi fraternity chapter was shut down. The Tompkins County District Attorney has now reopened the criminal investigation and said the matter will be presented to a grand jury.

So I am not going to determine anyone's criminal guilt in a blog post.

A court can do that.

But I am absolutely going to talk about the circumstances alleged in the lawsuit because they raise a much larger question about men, intoxication, sex and consent.

According to the complaint, Jane Doe alleges she was pressured into consuming ketamine, marijuana and alcohol and became increasingly incapacitated as the night progressed.

And here's where we need to be very clear about something.

Choosing to drink alcohol or take a drug does not mean someone has consented to sex.

Nor does consuming an intoxicant automatically mean someone is incapable of consenting.

The question is whether the person actually consented and had the capacity to consent at the time of the sexual activity.

That distinction matters.

Canada's Supreme Court recently addressed exactly this issue in R. v. Rioux. The Court emphasized that consent and capacity have to exist during the sexual activity and that fragmented memory caused by intoxication does not mean there is no evidence from which incapacity or absence of consent can be determined. Courts have to consider the entire picture, including circumstantial evidence about the person's physical and mental condition.

In other words:

Consent is not something you obtain at 10:00 p.m. and carry around in your pocket for the rest of the night.

It has to continue.

And We've Seen Drug-Facilitated Sexual Violence Before

Remember Bill Cosby?

More than 60 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, including dozens who alleged that they were drugged. Cosby's criminal conviction was ultimately overturned on procedural grounds involving a prior prosecutorial agreement, not through a factual determination that the alleged sexual conduct never occurred.

Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor fortune, was convicted after jurors saw videotapes he made of himself engaging in sexual acts with women rendered unconscious by GHB.

And then there is my own experience as an investigator.

I investigated a case involving a common-law husband who repeatedly wanted anal sex with his partner.

She didn't. She told him no. So he drugged her.

While she was unconscious, he sexually assaulted her anally.

And he recorded it.

More than once. He hid the recordings.

And eventually, he was convicted.

I have never forgotten that case.

Because sometimes the monster isn't hiding in an alley.

Sometimes he's sleeping beside you.

Now Add the Group

There is another element of the Cornell allegations that deserves discussion: multiple men and one increasingly vulnerable woman.

Again, I'm not determining what happened at Cornell.

I'm talking about the broader phenomenon.

We've seen that too.

Remember Steubenville?

An intoxicated 16-year-old girl. Football players. Parties. Photographs. Videos. Social media. People around her watching what was happening.

That case wasn't only about sexual assault.

It forced people to confront something even more uncomfortable:

the people around sexual violence matter too.

The people who encourage it.

The people who laugh.

The people who watch.

The people who share the photograph.

The people who make the joke.

The people who know something isn't right but decide it isn't their problem.

And the institutions that become more concerned about reputations than victims.

That's the part of this conversation I want men to hear.

“Not All Men”

I know.

It isn't all men.

Women know that too.

But “not all men” is not the profound observation some people seem to think it is.

Nobody believes every man is a rapist.

Nobody believes every man abuses women.

Nobody believes every man would take advantage of an unconscious woman.

The problem is that women don't get a flashing red light identifying which man might.

That's the reality women live with.

And men frequently don't understand it because we experience the world differently.

Just this week I was walking my two dogs on a trail with my husband.

A man passed us. He was dressed entirely in black, muttering to himself and behaving strangely.

My husband immediately said:

“You wouldn't want to pass that guy out here by yourself.”

What struck me wasn't what he said.

It was that he didn't have to worry about it himself.

The possibility hadn't changed his experience of the trail at all.

Mine was immediately different.

Yes, I had Piper, my 125-pound shepherd/mastiff.

But my husband was right.

I have walked trails alone before and passed large men coming the other direction.

None of them hurt me.

Probably none of them ever intended to hurt me.

But do you know what has gone through my head?

You idiot. You're going to get raped and murdered out here and your family will spend weeks looking for your body.

What the hell kind of way is that to experience a walk?

And here's something else I've realized:

I have never had that thought while approaching another woman on a trail.

That doesn't mean women cannot be violent or sexually abusive. They can. Men are victims of sexual violence too, and women can be perpetrators.

But pretending the patterns are identical isn't supported by the evidence.

They aren't.

This Is Where Men Come In

This is the part where some men get angry with me.

Good.

Be angry.

But instead of immediately saying, “I'm not the problem,” ask yourself a harder question:

Am I part of the solution?

Because those are not the same thing.

Maybe you've never sexually assaulted anyone.

That's a pretty low bar for being a decent human being.

What happens when your buddy makes the rape joke?

What happens when someone shares the intimate picture?

What happens when the guys start talking about a drunk woman like she's an opportunity?

What happens when someone says, “She was wasted anyway”?

What happens when your son talks about girls like they're disposable?

What happens when your friend treats a woman's “no” like the opening round of a negotiation?

Do you say something?

Or do you laugh?

Do you challenge him?

Or do you stare at your beer?

Do you tell your son that's not how a man behaves?

Or do you shrug and tell yourself boys will be boys?

Because silence teaches too.

Laughter teaches.

Excuses teach.

Looking the other way teaches.

And every time decent men refuse to challenge shitty behaviour by other men, the men engaging in that behaviour learn something:

Nobody here is going to stop me.

That is why “not all men” misses the point.

Until It's No Man, It Requires All Men

I want every man reading this to picture one woman.

Your wife.

Your daughter.

Your sister.

Your mother.

Your best friend.

Someone you love so deeply that seeing them hurt would tear something out of you.

Now imagine another man raping her.

Imagine learning afterward that his friends had heard him talking about women that way.

That people had seen warning signs.

That someone laughed at the joke.

Someone saw how intoxicated she was.

Someone knew something wasn't right.

And everybody decided it wasn't their problem.

Would you wish one of those men had spoken up?

Would you wish somebody had stepped in?

Would you wish somebody had told him, “No. This isn't funny. This isn't okay. And it's not happening here.”

Of course you would.

So be that man before it's your daughter.

Be that man before it's your wife.

Be that man before it's your sister.

Be that man when the woman being degraded is somebody you've never met and never will.

Because she shouldn't have to belong to you before her safety matters.

I know it's not all men.

But as long as some men are doing this, men have a role in stopping it.

Not because every man is guilty.

Because every decent man has influence.

In locker rooms.

At work.

At parties.

In fraternities.

On sports teams.

At bars.

In group chats.

And, most importantly, in the way we raise the next generation of boys.

Don't wait until a woman you love becomes the reason you care.

Pay attention now.

Speak up now.

Make the joke uncomfortable now.

Challenge the behaviour now.

Raise better boys now.

Help us now.

Because until it's no man, stopping it requires all men.