The Sexual Revolution Failed Jane Doe

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re kind of acting like a slut.”

My best friend’s boyfriend said this to me in ninth grade, as she sat next to him, soberly nodding in agreement. I had no idea what they were talking about.

It’s true that I often hung out with a rowdy group of girls who liked to let loose. Our main objective every weekend was to procure some mind-altering substance, then find a party somewhere—maybe at the beach, or at the house of a kid whose parents were away. When we couldn’t find one, we’d trudge back and forth on our southern Connecticut’s busy post road, between the video arcade and the Dairy Queen. It was glorious. Even now I can’t think of many things that are more fun than those nights—arriving at the party we’d finally located, buzzed on vodka or gin we’d nipped from our parents’ cabinets, catching the eye of some cute guy, flirting all evening, and then ending up making out in his car or someone’s random bedroom.

I was 14, not quite a self-described feminist yet, but already broadly steeped in sex-positive ideas, gleaned from novels and self-help books and my mother’s guidance. Hence why the “slut” accusation was actually confusing to me. It was 1984! Here we were, enjoying this golden era of equal rights, after centuries of girls and women living under brutal repression. Finally, we were free—to become CEOs or artists or maybe president someday, and certainly to have as much fun as we wanted in ways only boys had been able to for far too long. I was as sure of this as that we breathed oxygen and that gravity was holding us to the ground. I couldn’t believe how closed-minded my friends were, calling me a slut. Had they never heard of the sexual revolution?

I’ve thought about this episode in recent days, as I’ve followed the story of Jane Doe and the Cornell 7—the case of the sophomore who arrived alone at a frat party already “5 out of 10” drunk, as she later said in a sworn statement to the district attorney, and then proceeded to snort ketamine and engage in a threesome, which gained in participants, all male, as the night wore on. Initially, Doe seemed fine with the events of the evening, texting someone known in the statement as Male Number One that none “of the sexual stuff was illegal” and, in another exchange, “everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex. . . is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common. . . I’m also really open minded tho. I luv u king.”

But as campus gossip gained traction, culminating in the fraternity president disinviting her from its Halloween party, Jane Doe’s reaction evolved; several days after the incident, she reported a rape to campus police. The county’s district attorney ultimately declined to prosecute, as Doe had said the sex was consensual. Now, two years later, in light of accusations that the university withheld significant information from the prosecutors and that the DA declined to review additional evidence, Doe has filed a civil case, bringing the incident to national attention. This has ignited an explosive conversation that at its heart is about how the old frameworks we once used to understand rape are buckling in a post–sexual revolution world where a woman may feel simultaneously free to do anything—and also suspect, in hindsight, that she has been violated.