“Each time Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual conduct, the sexual conduct stopped.”
That’s Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, explaining why he didn’t charge anyone after a Cornell University student said seven fraternity brothers took part in her assault during a drug-fueled, hours-long night in the fall of 2024, while a group chat invited more of them to come join. It took a lawsuit and a week of national outrage before he agreed to put the case in front of a grand jury.
Liam Gent
I know what that sentence means. I was the one who stopped asking.
Junior year of college. The guy I was dating was in seminary in Houston, which in the church I grew up in is about as safe as a man gets. The church would have let me marry him on sight. We’d been dating a few months. When he said a hotel was a waste of money and he’d just take my couch, I let him.
I want to tell you that should have been a red flag. I want to tell you I didn’t drink. Almost 20 years later, I’m building the case that it wasn’t my fault. Hold that thought.
When I showed him the couch, he said he wasn’t sleeping there, kicked my dog AJ, shoved her into the bathroom, locked the door so she couldn’t get to him, and raped me. Turned out he was right about the hotel. It ended that night.
I froze. I didn’t ask him to stop. There was nothing in me that could. By the DA’s standard, that’s a yes.
“He read that and saw consent. I read it and saw the couch.”
His statement skipped the part where she told police she felt more incapacitated than she ever had in her life and couldn’t leave the room. He read that and saw consent. I read it and saw the couch.
Freezing and consenting look the same from where he sits. They are not the same from the couch.
I never told a pastor. I didn’t need to. I’d already heard the sermon. Don’t be alone with a boy, it isn’t fair to him. Guys are visual. Don’t be a stumbling block.
My parents taught me what consent was. The church taught me it didn’t matter, because by the time a man is in your house you’ve already sinned, and whatever happens next is the wages.
I knew the word. I still blamed the door. This was one more attempt for me to be the straight, cis, pure girl the church raised me to be. It still raises little girls to be her. It still hands them seminary boys and calls it safe. The one person I did tell went quiet. That was the whole response. Quiet.
Then I transitioned. Not because of him. There’s a tired story that trans men are girls who got hurt and ran, and I’ll say honestly that isn’t my story. I was a trans boy long before a seminarian got to my couch. What he did made me ask what I wanted for my own life and whether I was going to live it to the fullest or not. I chose to. Which, according to a good many statehouses, makes me the thing women need protecting from. Nobody has shown me the group chat on that one.
“I’ve had testosterone in my body the whole time and I have not raped anybody.”
I’ve lived as a man for 13 years. Nobody clocks me. Not in locker rooms. Not in men’s Bible studies. I’ve had testosterone in my body the whole time and I have not raped anybody. Haven’t hit a woman. Haven’t cornered one. The hormone never was the problem.
What I get instead is what men say when they think no woman can hear. Ten minutes into a conversation, a stranger tells me things about his wife she’d leave him over. Uber drivers brag about trading rides for sex. Proud of it. Five minutes in. I haven’t confirmed the destination yet. They don’t know me.
Meanwhile, the women in my life tell me what they won’t tell their husbands or boyfriends, because they’re scared of what happens if they do.
Guys, you do not know the freedom you’re walking around with. To get drunk at a party and wake up with nothing worse than a hangover. To walk to your car without doing the math on the guy by the dumpster.
I learned what women are worth by living as one and getting treated like trash by men who promised they were safe. I will not continue that behavior.
“‘I would never’ isn’t enough anymore.”
So “I would never” isn’t enough anymore. Any one of those seven could have stopped it. Any one of the guys who opened that chat and scrolled past could have stopped it. It took one. Nobody wanted to be the one.
And people still act baffled when women say they’d rather meet a bear in the woods. I’ve never wondered once. The bear doesn’t quote Scripture first.
The church argues about my body constantly. In pews, in committee rooms, in bills with “protect women” in the title. You do it right in front of me and have no idea I’m the one you’re talking about. You’ve decided people like me are the danger.
The man who raped me was a seminary student I let in the front door, and nobody has ever passed a law about him. Trans people never were the threat. You know who the threat is. You’ve read the chat. Some of you wrote it.
The ask is small. Say it in the group chat before it happens. Not after. Not “I would never.” Out loud, to the other men: “If this starts, I’m stopping it.”
You’ll find out fast who your friends are. One guy saying that would have changed a night in Ithaca. One guy would have changed mine.
You can do better. I know, because I’ve got the same hormones and the same hands.
Liam Gent lives in North Texas with his spouse, Sarah, and is an advocate and educator for the transgender community.
Related:
As you read about the Cornell Seven, remember Tamar | Opinion by Braxton Wade
Dear men, it is time to wake the hell up | Opinion by Mark Wingfield