I’m Not Shocked

I’m Exhausted.

Apparently, America has discovered that women are still being failed.

Again.

There is a fresh scandal.

Fresh outrage.

Fresh television coverage.

Fresh think pieces.

Fresh declarations that this cannot continue.

Fresh promises that we have to do better.

And I have a confession:

I am fucking exhausted.

Not because the story isn't horrifying.

It is.

Not because women shouldn't be believed, protected, heard, investigated, supported, or given justice.

Obviously they should.

I'm exhausted because we keep acting surprised.

Why are we surprised?

After Jeffrey Epstein?

After Anatomy of a Scandal?

After Promising Young Woman?

After Our Guys: Outrage at Glen Ridge?

After Audrie & Daisy?

After Victim/Suspect?

After Chanel Miller's Know My Name?

After Wifedom?

After The Wife?

After Harvey Weinstein?

After Larry Nassar?

After Brett Kavanaugh?

After Bill Cosby?

After decades upon decades of women telling us, loudly and repeatedly, exactly what happens when powerful institutions decide that protecting men is easier than protecting women?

Why are we still clutching our pearls?

The problem isn't that we don't know.

We know.

We have always known.

And that may be the most depressing part.

Welcome to the Cornell News Cycle

The current Cornell case is horrific precisely because it is not particularly difficult to recognize the pattern.

According to a civil lawsuit filed by a former Cornell student, Jane Doe, she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple members of the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024. The allegations include disturbing messages exchanged among fraternity members that night. The Tompkins County district attorney initially declined to bring criminal charges, and after the lawsuit generated renewed attention, his office reopened the investigation and said it intends to present the case to a grand jury.

There are important disputes about what happened, what was reported in 2024, what evidence prosecutors received, and how the university and law enforcement handled the matter.

Those questions deserve investigation.

They deserve due process.

They deserve facts rather than internet mythology.

But there is another question worth asking:

Why does it so often take a woman becoming publicly visible, publicly believed, publicly furious, or publicly litigated before everyone else starts paying attention?

That is the part I recognize.

Because this isn't a Cornell problem.

It isn't an Ivy League problem.

It isn't a fraternity problem.

It isn't even primarily a sexual-assault problem.

It is a power problem.

And women have been explaining that to us for a very, very long time.

I Don't Need Another Outrage Cycle

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf recently wrote that the Cornell case reminded her of the anger she felt watching the Senate Judiciary Committee's 2018 hearings over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination.

Eight years apart.

Different institution.

Different circumstances.

Same underlying question:

What happens when the people with power are accused of harming women?

Weiss-Wolf describes her present fury differently from the fury she felt in 2018. She argues that the issue is not merely individual perpetrators but systems of democracy and justice that can leave women playing by rules they did not create.

That sentence landed with me.

Because honestly?

I'm past fury.

I think I may have graduated from fury.

I'm somewhere much less emotionally glamorous.

I'm numb.

And I don't particularly like that.

I don't want to be numb.

I don't want my daughter to grow up in a world where another headline about another woman being failed barely registers.

I don't want the appropriate response to a new story of sexual violence to be:

Of course.

Again.

Here we go.

But that is what happens when the exception becomes the pattern.

You stop experiencing each event as an isolated catastrophe.

You start recognizing the architecture.

We've Built an Entire Library About This

That's what makes me laugh—darkly—about the way we talk about these cases.

As though the country has suddenly stumbled upon a previously undiscovered phenomenon.

Ladies and gentlemen!

Women are not being believed!

Institutions are protecting their reputations!

Men with status are receiving different treatment than people without it!

Victims are being scrutinized!

Women are being asked whether they drank.

What they wore.

Why they went there.

Why they didn't leave.

Why they didn't scream.

Why they didn't report immediately.

Why they reported differently later.

Whether they were dating him.

Whether they had previously consented.

Whether they were intoxicated.

Whether they were too intoxicated.

Whether they were sufficiently traumatized in precisely the way everyone expects trauma to look.

Meanwhile, the man's future sits quietly in the background.

His career.

His education.

His reputation.

His family.

His potential.

His promising life.

Because apparently we are deeply concerned about ruining a man's future.

Women's futures?

Those seem to be remarkably negotiable.

And before somebody accuses me of saying that every allegation is automatically true:

No.

That's not what I'm saying.

Due process matters.

Evidence matters.

Facts matter.

False accusations matter.

The legal definition of a crime matters.

The presumption of innocence matters.

And none of those principles require us to pretend that institutional failure doesn't exist.

Both things can be true.

That is precisely why intellectual honesty matters.

This Is What Filthy Rich Should Have Taught Us

We have watched Filthy Rich.

We know what happened around Jeffrey Epstein.

We have watched powerful men surrounded by wealth, access, status, institutions, lawyers, social connections, and people who had reasons to look away.

We have watched women tell their stories.

We have watched institutions respond.

We have watched the public become fascinated.

We have watched the news cycle move on.

And then we act shocked when the next story arrives.

I'm sorry.

What exactly did we think we learned?

The lesson wasn't supposed to be:

Wow. That one guy was terrible.

The lesson was supposed to be:

What conditions allowed this to happen?

Who benefited?

Who knew?

Who looked away?

Who had incentives to remain silent?

Who was believed?

Who wasn't?

Who had something to lose?

Who had something to gain?

Who was considered credible?

Who was considered disposable?

That is the work.

Because evil rarely arrives wearing a name tag that says EVIL.

Sometimes it looks like a university protecting its brand.

Sometimes it looks like a prosecutor explaining why the evidence wasn't sufficient.

Sometimes it looks like friends laughing in a group chat.

Sometimes it looks like a board of directors quietly moving a problem somewhere else.

Sometimes it looks like a famous man whose career is simply too important to interrupt.

Sometimes it looks like a woman being asked why she didn't make things easier for everyone else.

Sometimes it looks perfectly respectable.

That is what makes power so dangerous.

And Women Are Tired

We are tired of having to become amateur constitutional lawyers, criminal-law experts, journalists, investigators, historians, psychologists, activists, and documentary filmmakers simply to explain why something happening to us matters.

We are tired of collecting receipts.

We are tired of having to prove that our pain is real.

We are tired of being told to wait for the investigation.

Wait for the evidence.

Wait for the report.

Wait for the committee.

Wait for the court.

Wait for the appeal.

Wait for the next election.

Wait for the next generation.

Wait for someone to believe you.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Meanwhile, the damage is occurring in real time.

And then, years later, someone writes an article about how we keep failing women.

Yes.

We know.

Women have been telling you.

This Is Bigger Than Cornell

The Cornell story matters.

The woman at the center of it matters.

The students who reported on it matter.

The evidence matters.

The investigation matters.

What the university did matters.

What prosecutors did—or did not do—matters.

What the accused men say matters.

What a grand jury ultimately determines matters.

But the reason I don't want this to become another isolated “scandal” is precisely because it isn't isolated.

The documentary.

The book.

The lawsuit.

The survivor.

The whistleblower.

The journalist.

The professor.

The mother.

The daughter.

The woman in the courtroom.

The woman who never went to the police.

The woman who reported and wasn't believed.

The woman who was believed and still wasn't protected.

The woman who got justice.

The woman who didn't.

The woman who is still trying to figure out whether what happened to her was even something she is allowed to call what it was.

These are not separate stories.

They're data points.

And eventually, if we are intellectually honest, enough data points become a pattern.

So What Are We Supposed to Do With Our Outrage?

This is where I depart slightly from the current conversation.

Because I don't want another article telling me to be outraged.

I'm already outraged.

I don't need more outrage.

I need more strategy.

I need institutions that can explain their decisions.

I need investigations that actually investigate.

I need people who understand trauma.

I need journalists willing to stay with a story after the national attention disappears.

I need universities that understand that reputation management is not the same thing as student safety.

I need prosecutors who can explain their reasoning without treating survivors as inconvenient obstacles.

I need men who understand that “I didn't do it” is not the same thing as “I intervened.”

I need bystanders who understand that looking away is a choice.

I need women to stop being expected to individually solve a structural problem.

And I need us to stop confusing awareness with change.

We have awareness.

Holy shit, do we have awareness.

We have documentaries.

Books.

Podcasts.

Netflix specials.

Court filings.

Investigations.

Hashtags.

Marches.

Think pieces.

Panels.

Conferences.

Awareness is not our problem anymore.

What we do with it is.

My Feminazi Manifesto, Apparently

So fine.

Call me a feminazi.

I've heard worse.

But here's what I actually mean:

I refuse to accept that women being mistreated is an immutable feature of human civilization.

I refuse to accept that “boys will be boys” is a sufficient theory of justice.

I refuse to accept that a woman's intoxication automatically makes her less worthy of protection.

I refuse to accept that protecting institutional reputation is more important than confronting institutional failure.

I refuse to pretend that every allegation is proven fact.

I refuse to pretend that every allegation is therefore meaningless.

I refuse to let “due process” become shorthand for “don't make us uncomfortable.”

I refuse to let “believe women” become shorthand for abandoning evidence.

And I refuse to let “there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute” become shorthand for “nothing happened.”

Those are different statements.

We should be intellectually capable of understanding the difference.

That is precisely what Aletheia is supposed to be about.

Think harder.

Because the easiest answer is almost always the least useful one.

I'm Not Asking You to Be Angry

I'm asking you to pay attention.

There is a difference.

Anger burns hot.

Attention stays.

Anger gets clicks.

Attention changes behavior.

Anger fills social media feeds.

Attention changes institutions.

And attention requires something our culture increasingly seems allergic to:

staying with the problem after the algorithm gets bored.

That may be the real feminist work.

Not another viral moment.

Not another celebrity apology.

Not another national conversation that lasts until the next national conversation arrives.

Stay.

Read the court filing.

Follow the investigation.

Listen to survivors.

Understand the law.

Understand the history.

Learn how institutions actually work.

Learn where they fail.

Learn who has authority.

Learn who doesn't.

Learn what evidence exists.

Learn what remains unknown.

And then ask the question that powerful institutions really don't like:

What changes now?

Not what do we say changes.

What actually changes?

Because I'm Done Being Surprised

I don't want another generation of women to grow up learning the same lessons.

Don't drink too much.

Don't walk home alone.

Don't trust strangers.

Don't trust friends.

Don't go upstairs.

Don't go to parties.

Don't wear that.

Don't flirt.

Don't be too friendly.

Don't be too drunk.

Don't be too sober.

Don't be alone with him.

Don't make him angry.

Don't ruin his future.

Don't ruin your reputation.

Don't be difficult.

Don't be dramatic.

Don't accuse.

Don't wait too long.

Don't tell the wrong person.

Don't expect too much.

Don't—

Stop.

At some point, the question has to stop being:

How can women behave differently so that men don't hurt them?

And become:

What kind of society are we building so that people understand they are not entitled to hurt one another?

That is a very different question.

And it puts responsibility somewhere other than the shoulders of the person who was harmed.

Maybe that's why it is so uncomfortable.

Because it asks all of us to look in the mirror.

Not just at the alleged perpetrator.

Not just at the university.

Not just at the prosecutor.

Not just at the fraternity.

Not just at the politician.

At the culture.

At ourselves.

At the systems we tolerate.

At the institutions we trust.

At the stories we tell our children.

At the things we laugh off.

At the things we minimize.

At the people we protect.

At the people we abandon.

At what we call justice.

And at what we have quietly learned to accept.

Because I am no longer interested in being shocked that women are still being failed.

I am interested in why we keep building systems that make failure so damn predictable.

That is the conversation I want.

Not another scandal.

Not another news cycle.

Not another woman turned into a headline.

The pattern.

Look at the pattern.

Then do something intellectually honest with what you see.

Knowledge is power. Context is everything. Perception is reality.