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Welcome to Fair Play, a column exploring the shifting dynamics of sex, dating and culture by Playboy Senior Editor Magdalene Taylor.
In the nine years since the #MeToo movement gained traction and then waned from cultural relevance, many have asked what it really changed. Real, material shifts have occurred on an institutional level: predators with power like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby have faced criminal punishment; 22 states have either passed laws enhancing workplace protections against sexual harassment alongside, enhanced corporate trainings, or eliminated non-disclosure agreements that can protect abusers; calls for accountability in sports and the military have stirred conversation, leaving work to be done.
But a new lawsuit has kicked up these conversations again: An anonymous young woman alleges she was drugged and raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell University in 2024, suing the men themselves, the school, and several other institutions. The lawsuit prompted New York prosecutors to reopen their initial investigation into the case, which resulted in no criminal charges at the time. Now, with new light on the case, so too is there new light on sexual assault on college campuses. Among young women in college today, has #MeToo had any lasting impact?
“Being a college-aged woman right now is genuinely terrifying,” says Madeleine, a senior at the University of Arkansas. “Between the constant fear of sexual assault, spiked drinks, and general safety concerns, going out always comes with a baseline of anxiety.”
“For hours at length my friends and I have discussed how sad this case is,” says Mia, a student at the University of Ottawa. “We are confiding in each other more about our own concerns or experiences on campus in light of this event.” While the hookup culture of her campus remains more or less the same, with sex serving as a form of escapism from both the news and school itself, she and her friends are indeed re-thinking their relationship with it.
“To be very honest, when these stories break, It is definitely harder to enjoy sex or even consider it with other men because of this lingering fear or tension in the back of my head,” she says. “I think a lot of my peers and I are a bit more tense about our sexual autonomy.” With homecoming on the horizon, there’s added anxiety: “We are putting a dire emphasis on things like ‘if we go together, we leave together’ and talk about bringing our own drinks like our lives depend on it…because they do.”
Meanwhile, at smaller schools without a Greek life, sexual assault remains a threat. “Everyone’s talking about the Cornell Seven at my school, and there are big conversations about consent online and stuff like that,” says Ada, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I know that the people I go to school with are very into that sort of thing. I know I have a lot of friends who have been assaulted at other schools’ things, but I haven’t really heard of anything like that going on in my campus.”
For her and her friends, she says, sexual assault is indeed a concern—primarily, though, when they visit parties at schools with fraternities.
“Definitely on my campus, I don’ [feel afraid of sexual assault],” she says. “I have been raped in the past when I was younger, so I think I kind of always carry that fear with me. But I’d say, one of my best friends goes to Loyola, and his apartment building is right next to frats, and sometimes we’ll throw a party at the same time that they are, and they kind of merge. And I would say like that’s a time when I feel kind of unsafe.”
“I think that frats are definitely still creating these opportunistic situations to assault women,” she says. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted. Research has found that fraternity membership has been correlated with sexual aggression, and sorority members are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.
Sage (who asked to use a pseudonym), a senior at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, recalls frat culture being a locus of bizarre and uncomfortable sexual dynamics from the start of her freshman year: parties that were 90 percent women and 10 percent men, seeing baby powder thrown in women’s faces. “I remember being like, ‘oh, I really don’t like this,’ but still you would do it because you get free alcohol or whatever.”
“When I heard about the Cornell Seven, I wish I could say I was surprised,” she says. “There’s people who go to my school who I feel like I could at least imagine doing that.”
Post-#MeToo, some have argued that men have become more fearful of accusations, to the point that they avoid women entirely: “The #MeToo movement ultimately wanted more fair treatment and for creeps and abusers to be held accountable…instead it’s made men arguably fear women, leaving many to feel like they are being punished for something they didn’t do,” one man on Reddit wrote three years ago.
As Daniel Cox of the Survey Center on American Life reports, “Beginning around 2015, younger women’s fears about being a victim of sexual assault increased rapidly after decades of relatively little change. By 2023, nearly six in 10 younger women worried about this at least occasionally.” This itself may be one of the most significant results of the #MeToo movement: women are now more afraid of sexual assault than they once were. Recently, Cox surveyed young men about their perception of false accusations and found that 24 percent believe that women reporting instances of assault or harassment that did not happen is “very” common. “I think you could infer that young men are not all that concerned about being accused based on the results of this question,” Cox says via email.
Many women nevertheless know men who report these types of fears. “I am thinking of one instance recently where, before the Cornell case came to light, a male acquaintance of mine was talking over a couple drinks at a bar with a big group of friends,” says Mia. “I am paraphrasing but he said something to the extent of ‘being afraid of getting falsely accused’ of like sexual assault himself. The same man groped me after I told him to drink some water at a different event.”
While it seems everyone on her campus is indeed talking about sexual assault in one form or another, she’s suspicious of whether men are taking it all that seriously. “I hate to sound completely cynical towards men, but after that instance, if they are talking about this case I question what rhetoric they are using,” she says. “On my campus, like Cornell, I do not know if there is a real concern for the women who are sexually assaulted in these conversations. My guess is that the conversations are much more interested in self-preservation.”
For the most part, Madeleine, Sage, Ada and Mia agree that their school administrators take sexual assault seriously, and feel as though there are resources on campus to address it. Still, among some of the young men, it just isn’t enough. “While many men on campus are respectful for the most part, enough unsafe moments happen that I can never fully lower my guard,” says Madeleine.
For Sage, she feels as though it’s a problem that men may never truly be able to understand. “There are a lot of guys who I think wouldn’t do it themselves, but the thing is, it’s like they don’t have their alarms tuned up. Psychologically, for some reason, they have this idea that it’s better to not talk about it, that it could give their friend a bad reputation or be bad for their their social position, or something like that. Their radars to this kind of thing are tuned down. It’s just not in their best interest.”
