The Great Feminization Comes to Cornell

This time last year, the conservative writer Helen Andrews delivered one of the most talked about essays in recent memory. Published in “Compact” and titled “The Great Feminization,” it argued that the woke era was best understood in terms of the differences between men and women. “Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field,” she wrote. The essay established Andrews as one of the most provocative voices on sex and power in American life, launching a thousand responses. It also included a stark warning: A feminized legal system would come to represent campus Title IX tribunals, where sympathy for accusers outweighed due process.

Hence why we were so interested to see another piece by Andrews in “Compact” this week, revisiting her argument and relating it to the case of the Cornell 7. Late last month, two years after the local district attorney declined to bring charges in an alleged rape at a fraternity house, New York governor Kathy Hochul handed the case to Attorney General Letitia James and suggested that two women might see it differently than men would. On that point, Andrews agrees. What follows is her case on why that should worry us all.

—The Editors

New York governor Kathy Hochul emphasized her gender when asked on October 3 about her appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a possible rape at a fraternity house at Cornell University in 2024. Hochul is the first woman to serve as New York’s governor. Letitia James, the woman she appointed as special prosecutor, is the state’s first female attorney general. Seeing these two women take on the Cornell case has a special symbolism, Hochul explained. “I’ve heard from a lot of people,” she said. “The image gives them comfort to know that two women perhaps are looking at this differently than men would in the same position.”

She is right. The approach to the law reflected in the New York Democratic officials’ handling of the Cornell case represents a distinctively female perspective. Unfortunately, that perspective is incompatible with the rule of law.

Hochul said she felt it necessary to appoint a special prosecutor because she had “lost faith in the Tompkins County DA’s ability” to handle the case. That district attorney is Matthew Van Houten. He is no backwoods sheriff. The motto “Inclusion Through Diversity” appears at the top of all the documents his office has published regarding this matter. The reason he did not bring charges two years ago was because, on the basis of the accuser’s sworn statement, no crime had occurred. The sexual conduct that night was, in Van Houten’s words, “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”