Dear Women: Your Bad Life Choices Shouldn’t Be National News
The article discusses the need for women to accept duty for thier decisions and actions, emphasizing the importance of accountability. It critiques a specific case involving a civil lawsuit by a woman known as Jane Doe, who alleges she was sexually assaulted at a Cornell fraternity after consuming alcohol and drugs. The author criticizes the district attorney for allegedly not thoroughly investigating the case, suggesting that authorities may have overlooked crucial details. The piece argues that women must either embrace their independence and face the consequences of their choices or deny their agency altogether,as claiming helplessness when responsible decisions could be involved is problematic. It also stresses the importance of immediate reporting of assaults to preserve credibility and prevent further harm, asserting that accountability is essential in cases of alleged misconduct or assault. The author concludes that women have the power to make responsible choices and must bear the consequences, highlighting the broader societal implications of personal responsibility.
Editor’s note: This article discusses mature themes.
At some point we’re going to have to decide: Women are either capable of taking control of their lives and accepting responsibility for their choices or they’re not. At the moment, we’re trending toward not.
CNN content creator Jake Tapper on Monday interviewed the district attorney who has reopened a criminal investigation into the alleged 2024 sexual assault of a Cornell student known only (per a new civil lawsuit) as “Jane Doe.” In that exchange, Tapper was nearly bent over in angry tears demanding to know why the DA, Matthew Van Houten, hadn’t disregarded everything Doe reportedly told police at the time about her consensual sex and drug use with some frat boys and instead probed around for more details.
“You know, I have a daughter,” Tapper said. “I can’t imagine how mad I would be if a district attorney handled this case that way for my daughter. It’s just — do you not acknowledge that your office dropped the ball by not looking more into what happened?”
According to Doe, “what happened” is that sometime in October — she has officially given two different dates that are almost a week apart — she drank underage at a sorority house “until she was intoxicated” before going to a bar, where she continued to drink. That’s according to the lawsuit filed earlier this month. After that, she went to another bar with sorority sisters before ultimately ending up at a frat house where she was meeting a male friend.
At some point, the friend propositioned Doe with a threesome with another frat brother, and, according to DA Van Houten, she told police back in 2024 that she consented. They all did ketamine, voluntarily, continued to drink, and used marijuana. Other men may have entered the room at various times to do drugs and perhaps sexually engage Doe, who, according to the lawsuit’s timeline, was 20. But Doe now says in her civil suit, which targets seven men, Cornell, and more, that she was incapable of consenting to any of it from the moment she got to the frat house.
That’s what Jake Tapper means by the DA having “dropped the ball”— that his office didn’t investigate a crime that no one at the time was alleging. This is another way of saying, Why did you let that woman speak for herself? How could you have taken her at her word?
Tapper’s colleague Pamela Brown echoed the sentiment the next day in an interview with an attorney for one of the accused men. “Do you think the DA should have convened a grand jury then [and] investigated?” she said. She also asked if it was “a mistake” for Van Hauten “not to have done more at the time.”
In light of the throngs of pink-clad ladies showing solidarity with Lindsay Clancy, the woman who does not deny she strangled her three young children, it’s long past time women make the choice. They can either claim all the independence they are entitled to and accept the consequences of their decisions, or they can admit they have no agency and can’t be trusted with total freedom.
It can’t be both. It can’t be that a woman gets to murder her children and escape all accountability because she had a headache. It can’t be that a woman says she consented to an alcohol- and drug-fueled sex party and then two years later calls it rape — and collects untold sums of money for it.
Do we really wanna talk about criminal?
These are choices. They have consequences. Those consequences require accountability. The only people this doesn’t apply to are children and the mentally impaired. In other words, the helpless. A woman with full autonomy and all the responsibility that comes with adulthood can’t be permitted to claim to be helpless when it’s convenient, which might include when the student body at an elite university finds out she had an embarrassing intoxicated orgy. (Doe’s lawsuit claims she had a fuzzy memory of the night’s events until she found out that details had become public knowledge on campus.)
If a woman is raped, it’s imperative that she alert the authorities immediately, in no small part because it could spare further potential victims. But also because her credibility matters, and claiming the opposite of what was stated a full two years prior serves only to undermine it.
Women have a choice to make. They can no longer evade the responsibility for it.
Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Traitors: The Democrat Party’s Collapse into Anti-American Filth.”
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