Why Violence Is the Answer to the Rape Problem
Women are told violence is never the answer.
Curious, really, considering how much violence women are expected to survive. We readily recognise the violence of a fist, a knife, a gun, a body left bruised or bleeding. But rape possesses an extraordinary cultural privilege: the ability to have its violence linguistically washed away. Rape becomes sex. Sexual assault becomes misconduct. Violation becomes an encounter. Coercion becomes miscommunication. Predation becomes a mistake. And suddenly everyone is terribly interested in nuance.¹
So perhaps we have been asking the wrong fucking question.
The question is not simply whether violence is an acceptable response to rape. The question is why the violence already contained within rape keeps disappearing from the conversation. Because watch what happens when a woman becomes angry; suddenly everyone can recognise violence. Let a survivor talk about revenge. Let her fantasise about smashing something, destroying something, hurting somebody back. Let her refuse forgiveness. Let her say she hates the person she says raped her. Let her rage become ugly, frightening or socially inconvenient. Now we need to talk about violence. Now everybody remembers morality. Now we are concerned about proportionality, restraint, civility and the rule of law. Where the fuck was all this moral clarity when her body was the thing being violated?
There is something almost exquisitely absurd about responding to allegations of gang rape with an essay. Not this essay. An actual disciplinary essay. A former Cornell University student, identified publicly as Jane Doe, has filed a civil lawsuit alleging that seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity drugged and sexually assaulted her in October 2024. These are allegations contained in ongoing litigation, not findings by a civil court. The defendants have not all publicly responded in the same way, and at least one lawyer representing a defendant has publicly disputed Doe's account. Those qualifications matter. But so does what happened institutionally after the allegations.²
Cornell investigated the allegations through its own disciplinary system. Cornell has said federal student-privacy law prevents it from revealing individual findings and sanctions. Doe's lawyer says two students were expelled, while others received lesser sanctions, including suspension, workshops, and writing essays. Writing. Fucking. Essays. There is something about that detail I cannot get past. Perhaps because women already know what writing about sexual violence looks like. We write statements, police statements, victim-impact statements, affidavits, complaints, applications, appeals, emails, diaries, academic papers and memoirs. We turn violated bodies into paragraphs because institutions demand narrative before they will contemplate justice.³
Tell us what happened. Tell us again. Start from the beginning. What were you wearing? What were you drinking? Who were you with? What happened next? Then what? Then what? Then what? And are you sure? Women write their way through sexual violence while institutions decide whether their words are sufficiently credible to matter. And now here is the almost unbearable inversion: the men accused of sexual violence get to write too. Perhaps if everybody writes enough fucking words, rape culture will disappear beneath the paperwork.⁴
Western culture has constructed an extraordinarily demanding role for the survivor of sexual violence. She must be violated but not vengeful, traumatised but coherent, angry but not frightening, damaged but functional, credible but not rehearsed, emotional but not hysterical. She must remember everything but not sound as though she has memorised it. She must be distressed, but not unstable. She must be strong, but not so strong that somebody wonders whether the experience really harmed her. She must want justice, but never revenge. Above all, she must remain reasonable because the reasonable rape survivor is one of patriarchy's favourite inventions. She may describe violence. She must never sound violent herself.⁵
Instead, she receives instructions. Report correctly. Remember everything. Don't exaggerate. Don't forget anything either. Preserve the evidence. Hand over your phone, your messages, your diary. Explain why you were there, what you drank, why you trusted him, why you didn't leave, why you didn't scream, why you did scream, why you waited, why you went back, why you sent that message afterwards and, eventually, why you're so fucking angry. Then disclose calmly. Testify coherently. Survive cross-examination. Wait for the institution, the police, the prosecutor, the university, the court. Accept the evidentiary threshold. Accept the disciplinary outcome. Accept the acquittal if there is one. Accept that sometimes nothing can be done. And whatever happens, do not become unreasonable. Because God forbid a woman become violent.⁶
This is where I want to propose something deliberately uncomfortable: violence is the answer to the rape problem. No, I am not proposing vigilantism. Although I completely understand why people do take matters into their own hands, and I will never judge someone for the decisions that they make regarding men who rape. I am not instructing women to hunt down men accused of rape. I am not suggesting punishment without evidence, trial or due process. Although I do think at some point, women need to create a different justice system, one that actually contains justice. I am making a different argument. Violence is already in the fucking room. That is the part we keep forgetting. Rape is violence. Sexual assault is violence. Drugging somebody to exploit their incapacity is violence. Penetrating another person's body without consent is violence. Using physical power, numbers, intoxication, fear or coercion to override another person's sexual autonomy is violence.
Yet sexual violence possesses this astonishing ability to disappear once it enters institutional language. It becomes an incident, an allegation, an encounter, a disciplinary matter, a sexual experience, a complaint, a case, a file. Eventually it becomes paperwork. The violence becomes administrative. And then something extraordinary happens. The moment the woman talks about fighting back, violence suddenly becomes visible again. Now violence is serious. Now violence requires moral scrutiny. Now we must talk about restraint. Now somebody asks whether anger has gone too far. Now everyone remembers the sanctity of non-violence. My question is: where the fuck have you been?¹ ⁷
For decades, women have been taught elaborate strategies for avoiding sexual violence. Don't walk there. Don't drink that. Watch your glass—text when you get home. Share your location. Don't leave your friend. Don't wear headphones. Don't get too drunk. Don't trust him. Don't trust his friends. Don't go upstairs. Don't go home with somebody you barely know. Don't be alone. Don't be careless. Don't make yourself vulnerable. Don't put yourself in that situation. The extraordinary thing about this enormous architecture of female precaution is that we rarely describe it for what it is: an accommodation to the anticipated violence of men.⁸
Think about the fucking insanity of that. Generation after generation of women are trained to modify their behaviour around the possibility of male sexual aggression, and somehow this has been normalised as women keeping themselves safe. We have built an entire culture of rape avoidance and handed responsibility for operating it to the potential victims. And when rape nevertheless occurs, we inspect her compliance with the rules. Did she watch her drink? Did she leave her friends? How drunk was she? Why did she go upstairs? Why was she there? We transform precaution into responsibility and responsibility into blame. So perhaps the radical question isn't why women would contemplate violence in response to rape. Perhaps it is why women have been required to absorb so much violence while remaining committed to non-violence themselves.⁸
This is the linguistic sleight of hand at the centre of rape culture. We notice the broken nose. We notice the knife. We notice the gun. We notice the woman screaming that she wants revenge. We become deeply interested in proportionality precisely at the moment she ceases to be passive. Yet language plays a crucial role in shaping societal and institutional responses to sexual violence. Scholarly research has shown that linguistic choices—such as employing euphemisms or minimising terminology—can obscure the true nature of sexual violence within legal and disciplinary systems. As a result, its injuries may remain private, its evidence may disappear, and memory may fragment, especially when intoxication complicates recollection. Legal and disciplinary proceedings may then diverge: prosecution can fail, while a university process may reach a different conclusion than a criminal court due to procedural and evidentiary differences. Thus, the way language frames sexual violence directly influences how justice systems interpret, respond to, or even diminish the gravity of what has occurred. A survivor can keep walking around, irritatingly alive. And so society begins negotiating with the meaning of what happened.¹ ⁷
Was she drunk? Did she know him? Did she go there willingly? What did she say afterwards? Why did she wait? What can prosecutors prove? What can the university establish? What does the evidence demonstrate? Some of those questions are unavoidable in a justice system committed to due process and the presumption of innocence. But collectively they reveal something profoundly uncomfortable: we have developed extraordinarily sophisticated mechanisms for interrogating sexual violence and remain remarkably unsuccessful at eliminating it.⁶
This is why I keep coming back to the alleged Cornell disciplinary essays. I am a writer. I have built much of my life around the belief that language matters. I believe writing can expose violence. Writing can preserve memory. Writing can challenge power. Writing can transform private experience into public knowledge. But prose cannot repair everything. Some injuries cannot be workshopped. And at times, an institutional faith in education begins to look less like rehabilitation and more like an inability to comprehend the enormity of what is being alleged.² ³
The juxtaposition in the Cornell case is brutal. Doe says she eventually left Cornell. Her lawyer says some of the men she accused wrote essays. Whatever courts ultimately determine about the allegations and liability, that juxtaposition should trouble us. A woman leaves. Men write. There is an entire fucking theory of institutional sexual violence contained in those four words.² ³
Perhaps what frightens society about female rage is not that it is irrational. Perhaps it is that sometimes it makes perfect sense. Rage breaks the script. The compliant survivor asks society to save her. The furious survivor asks why society didn't. And the really furious survivor begins asking a much more dangerous question: if you cannot protect us from violence, on what moral authority do you demand our endless commitment to peacefulness?
That question makes people nervous because the social contract surrounding sexual violence depends partly upon women outsourcing retaliation to institutions. Do not take revenge: report. Do not retaliate: call police. Do not attack: go to court. That bargain makes sense only if the institutions receiving that authority can command trust. When survivors perceive those systems as failing them, anger is not particularly mysterious. That does not make vigilantism just. It makes rage comprehensible. There is a difference.⁹
A woman can fantasise about vengeance without committing it. Although I will not judge her if she does. She can hate. She can rage. She can imagine destruction. She can write violent things. She can refuse forgiveness. She can say that she wants the person who violated her to suffer. None of those feelings requires us to turn her into another social problem to manage. Sometimes anger is the sane response to an obscene situation.
So yes, violence is the answer.
This is not an endorsement of mob justice, punishment without evidence, or vigilantism disguised as activism. Rather, it is a call to directly address the core issue: violence is already inherent within sexual abuse, and institutional and societal responses must reflect this reality. Specifically, rape must be explicitly recognised and treated as violence, both linguistically and legally. Policies should eliminate the use of euphemistic language that obscures the true nature of sexual assault, and institutions must implement interventions that confront sexual violence directly. Practical actions are required: institutions should protect and support women's right to resist sexual violation physically, expand access to self-defence education, and shift prevention strategies to target male perpetration and hold offenders accountable. Legal and institutional processes must be reformed to ensure that administrative actions are not mistaken for genuine justice, and that unrealistic standards are not imposed on survivors. Furthermore, state policies and cultural attitudes should no longer pathologise women’s anger but instead focus on dismantling the underlying conditions that sustain sexual violence. In sum, the call to action demands that institutions and society not only recognise but actively prevent and respond to sexual violence, without requiring passivity or perfection from those who are most affected.¹ ⁶ ¹⁰ ¹¹
Because that is the trick. That has always been the fucking trick. A woman is violated, and we ask for nuance. She becomes furious, and suddenly we demand restraint. She describes what happened and we investigate her credibility. She fantasises about retaliation, and we investigate her morality. She says she wants revenge and suddenly everybody discovers an ethical objection to violence.
No. Look backwards. The violence was already there.
Perhaps the obscenity isn't female rage. Perhaps the obscenity is a culture capable of absorbing rape, sexual assault, coercion and institutional failure and still finding the survivor's anger the most frightening thing in the fucking room. Perhaps women are not too angry. Perhaps women have been expected to tolerate far too fucking much.
And perhaps the question was never whether violence is the answer. Perhaps the question is why, when it comes to rape, we are so determined not to recognise the violence until a woman threatens to return it.
Endnotes
1. Linda Coates, Janet Beavin Bavelas and James Gibson, “Anomalous Language in Sexual Assault Trial Judgments,” Discourse & Society 5, no. 2 (1994): 189–206, doi:10.1177/0957926594005002003. The authors examine linguistic practices in sexual-assault trial judgments, including sexualised or eroticised descriptions of assault and grammatical constructions that can obscure violence, agency and perpetrator responsibility.
2. Christine Pelisek, “Cornell Student Alleges Frat Members Gang-Raped Her, Only 2 Were Expelled While Others Had to Write Essays: Lawsuit,” People, 25 September 2026. The article reports the allegations contained in Jane Doe's civil lawsuit concerning seven members of Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity. These allegations remain allegations and have not been established as findings by a civil or criminal court.
3. Cereese Qusba, “Cornell, Chi Phi Sued by Victim of Alleged Gang Rape, Drugging in 2024,” The Cornell Daily Sun, September 2026; see also “University Releases Statement on Alleged Gang Rape at Chi Phi,” The Cornell Daily Sun, September 2026. Cornell confirmed that its investigation had concluded but stated that federal privacy law prevented it from disclosing specific information regarding individual students. The civil lawsuit alleges that defendants were offered opportunities to mitigate their conduct through essays; Doe's lawyer has separately said two accused students were expelled and others received lesser sanctions.
4. On 28 September 2026, The Cornell Daily Sun reported that Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten had reopened the criminal investigation. Van Houten stated that his office had not decided whether criminal charges would be brought and was re-examining whether additional evidence existed that could alter its earlier assessment. This development means that the criminal investigation should not be described as finally resolved. Cereese Qusba, “Tompkins County DA Reopens Criminal Investigation Into Alleged Chi Phi Gang Rape,” The Cornell Daily Sun, 28 September 2026.
5. Carly Parnitzke Smith and Jennifer J. Freyd, “Dangerous Safe Havens: Institutional Betrayal Exacerbates Sexual Trauma,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 26, no. 1 (2013): 119–124, doi:10.1002/jts.21778; Jennifer J. Freyd and Carly Parnitzke Smith, “Institutional Betrayal,” American Psychologist 69, no. 6 (2014): 575–587, doi:10.1037/a0037564. This scholarship develops the concept of institutional betrayal and examines the additional harm that can occur when institutions upon which people depend fail to prevent wrongdoing or respond supportively to it.
6. Michelle Wieberneit, Sascha Thal, Joseph Clare, Lies Notebaert and Hilde Tubex, “Silenced Survivors: A Systematic Review of the Barriers to Reporting, Investigating, Prosecuting, and Sentencing of Adult Female Rape and Sexual Assault,” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 25, no. 5 (2024): 3742–3757, doi:10.1177/15248380241261404. The systematic review synthesised 28 studies and identified 70 barriers across reporting, investigation, prosecution and sentencing, including fear of not being believed, distrust of criminal-justice institutions, self-blame and shame, rape myths, evidentiary difficulties and perpetrator-related factors.
7. Linda Coates and Allan Wade, “Telling It Like It Isn't: Obscuring Perpetrator Responsibility for Violent Crime,” Discourse & Society 15, no. 5 (2004): 499–526. Coates and Wade examine linguistic practices that can obscure violence and perpetrator responsibility, conceal victims' resistance and blame or pathologise victims.
8. Eliana Suarez and Tahany M. Gadalla, “Stop Blaming the Victim: A Meta-Analysis on Rape Myths,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 25, no. 11 (2010): 2010–2035, doi:10.1177/0886260509354503. The meta-analysis reviewed 37 studies. The authors describe rape myths as false beliefs used principally to shift responsibility for rape from perpetrators towards victims and found rape-myth acceptance strongly associated with hostile attitudes and behaviours towards women.
9. Smith and Freyd's work on institutional betrayal is also relevant to the relationship between trust and institutional responses to sexual violence. See Smith and Freyd, “Dangerous Safe Havens,” 119–124; and Freyd and Smith, “Institutional Betrayal,” 575–587.
10. Jennifer S. Wong and Samantha Balemba, “The Effect of Victim Resistance on Rape Completion: A Meta-Analysis,” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 19, no. 3 (2018): 352–365, doi:10.1177/1524838016663934. The meta-analysis examines the relationship between resistance and rape completion. A correction published in April 2024 addressed a typographical error in the analytic syntax and resulting estimates and confidence intervals; the journal states that the paper's conclusions were unchanged.
11. Charlene Y. Senn, Misha Eliasziw, Paula C. Barata, Wilfreda E. Thurston, Ian R. Newby-Clark, H. Lorraine Radtke and Karen L. Hobden, “Efficacy of a Sexual Assault Resistance Program for University Women,” New England Journal of Medicine 372, no. 24 (2015): 2326–2335, doi:10.1056/NEJMsa1411131. In this randomised trial, first-year female students at three Canadian universities were assigned either to the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act Sexual Assault Resistance program or a control intervention. The program included risk assessment and verbal and physical resistance strategies. Evidence supporting resistance education does not transfer responsibility for preventing sexual assault from perpetrators to potential victims.
