We Failed Jane Doe at Cornell:
It’s More Than Rape Culture

Who is “we?”

The sociocultural sphere (SCS), where politico-economic processes, cultural values, social norms, education, traditions, behavior and practices all form a unified supernexus. The SCS influences and shapes us in real time and also in deep mythological and historical time.

We are all thrown into the world, as Heidegger said, already immersed in modes of devaluation, objectification, quantified and monetized thinking, deeply soaked in violence and pure destruction.

Some of us are worse affected than others. Some are shaped into tormentors and become overtly cruel; others are more likely to be bullied and subjected to attack because of who they are or what they represent.

We men are found more often in the first category and women in the second, a fact of the world’s harsh ways. With the emergence of early civilizations, gender hierarchy became deeply embedded in their social structures.

So yes, “we” is mostly us. “We” are the primary problem.

And we have been since the beginning of civilization.

But things kept getting worse. With the formation of the first empires in the third millennium BCE, organized male violence became increasingly centralized, specialized and institutionalized. Akkad, beginning around 2350 BCE, provides one of the earliest documented examples of a large military force maintained by an imperial ruler. These men fought repeatedly, were expected to become inured to violence and had to obey orders that could lead to horrible wounds or death. They could be “rewarded” with plunder and the mass rape of women in conquered populations.

And upon returning home they were again compensated by given absolute control over their households. Men who submitted to rulers as soldiers, agricultural laborers and subjects could themselves rule over children, animals and women. It was not a literal contract, but the tradeoff was profound: comply with the hierarchy above you and exercise hierarchy over those below you. Men could be subjects in the larger order and “little kings” at home.

This wasn’t a contract, of course, or something consciously designed by elites. But gender hierarchy could help stabilize a much larger hierarchical order. Men subjected to power could themselves possess power over others.

As societies became more complex, there were ever more ways to secure status, rewards and power for those having the upper hand. And this typically kept making things worse for women.

All the forms of objectification and dehumanization became ever more subtle even as they could be insidiously visible.

This is why “rape culture,” currently the best way to describe what happened to Jane Doe at Cornell, isn’t big enough to describe the problem or contain the damage. Jane was failed at every turn by the time of the horrendous sexual assault she alleges occurred on October 20. But the conditions that made such an attack conceivable are the result of sociocultural and historical forces going back thousands of years.

Men have been inculcated with the belief that – all kind words and university trainings on consent to the contrary – that women are objects and their sexuality a horrific blend of saint/whore so that at they are actively raping a semiconscious, drug addled young woman they think of her as the latter

This is why “consent training” can never be enough. It has to contend with cultural formations that begin long before a young man ever enters a university classroom.

Rape culture begins early. It appears in locker rooms where boys talk and brag, and it continues into workplaces, the military, the corporate world and elsewhere. Women become objects to master and use.

Yes, we know of the many exceptions. But from just one person’s experience, shy, empathetic young boys don’t necessarily prevail in the banter. They can be called out, taunted and referred to as the female genitals they are supposed to conquer—if only they possessed enough of their own.

Yes, that is rape culture. No, of course that doesn’t mean every man will go on to rape. But the culture is a continuum of ideas, beliefs and practices that follow us men. Under particular circumstances, those ideas can help normalize sexual aggression, weaken restraints against it and discourage other men from intervening.

A fraternity room filled with other men, drugs, alcohol and a profoundly vulnerable young woman can provide a horrifying environment in which those cultural assumptions become consequential.

Even if it were just “rape culture,” it won’t stop until the majority of boys and men stop the braggadocio, one-upmanship and objectification. Now that is a huge job, isn’t it?

But not only is it a massive undertaking, it will never be enough.

You have to remove the devaluation and objectification not only of women, but of nature, animals, the poor and people who are different in so many ways.

You have to remove the drive to dominate—the assumption that greater power, status, wealth, strength or authority gives us the right to control and use those with less.

You have to remove the tough-guy love of violence, destruction and pain, including our willingness to accept the suffering of people bombed and killed by our own country and its allies.

In my theory, the only way this can happen is if we return to relational being, where we recognize that we are essentially made of the same stuff as everything else. We are equivalent long before we are “equal.” We all belong on this planet long before human rights supposedly came to recognize that belonging.

Relational being consists of intricate and abiding connections between ourselves and everything else in the world or universe, where values are immanent. People are treated and regarded well not merely because a rule commands it, but because their value is inherent in their existence and relationships.

For roughly 95 percent of human existence, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers.

Those societies were enormously diverse, but many provide evidence of comparatively egalitarian social arrangements, extensive sharing, constraints on domination and ways of understanding human existence as inseparable from the surrounding living world. We do not, and cannot, return to their actual way of life.

But we will never re-humanize our existence without recovering the values that civilization has progressively suppressed.