Making excuses for rape sustains GBV culture

Whenever a man is accused of sexual violence, someone inevitably worries about the accusation ruining his life. There’s often far less concern about the life of the woman who says the violence happened to her. 

This has been one of the major points of discourse about an incident at Cornell University in the United States, where an anonymous student, referred to in her lawsuit as Jane Doe, accused seven men of gang-raping her in a fraternity house for seven hours while she was incapacitated. Doe alleges that, despite being underage, she was given alcohol at a bar before going to the fraternity house, where she was given more alcohol and ketamine. A photograph of her was then allegedly posted to a 57-member fraternity Snapchat group with the caption “Free Pu**y”. 

Seven hours. Seven men. One woman. Those numbers have stayed with me. But so has another: the number of people around them. Friends and peers who may have seen the warning signs, heard the comments, or witnessed the behaviour that came before. Sexual violence does not begin with rape. It begins much earlier, in a culture that teaches women how not to become victims while failing to teach men not to create them. 

After Doe came forward, two of the accused were expelled, two were suspended, while others were reportedly required to attend a workshop or write an essay. She was also allegedly warned, “You had better be sure in what you are doing, because an accusation can ruin these boys’ lives.” 

Excuse me? Maybe they should have thought about the consequences of their actions when they decided to violate this young woman. In any case, too many men accused of sexual assault experience literally no consequences – they still have their careers and lives and become even more powerful. 

Not raping someone is easy. Men don’t deserve a trophy for not having raped anyone or saying “I would never rape anyone”. It is not an achievement, but rather the bare minimum. Oftentimes when men get into groups they say the most abhorrent things, and there’s not enough acknowledgement of the harm that this does to the society at large. 

It’s exactly what fuels men to believe that they can treat women as if they are disposable, that every woman is at the mercy of a man, and all she wants is to have sex with them. Or if she doesn’t, there’s something wrong with her. 

Growing up, girls are constantly told that we need to do certain things to keep ourselves safe: walk around in groups, never go in an Uber alone, carry pepper spray or a Taser, don’t dress too revealingly, don’t drink too much, watch your drink the whole night, and so much more. Why do we think this is? It’s so that we can do everything possible to not get raped. 

But when it happens – because we can’t lie to ourselves and believe that if we do these things it won’t happen – victims are immediately met with justifications or just pure disbelief. 

Any man has the capacity to rape. Every man has the social currency to be able to get away with it. From a young age, when a boy does something hurtful to a girl, the girl is told that “Boys will be boys” or “He only did it because he likes you”, and so he is encouraged to continue the behaviour. 

Honestly, that excuse doesn’t cut it; boys need to be taught that doing something that another person doesn’t want done to them is not okay. The fact that “Boys will be boys” is so popular is frightening. This justifies the idea that it’s something they cannot control. But they can. If girls can control their urges and hormones, so can boys. 

There’s the whole idea of “not all men”, but that really means nothing. A woman who’s alone can see a man and, no matter how friendly or non-threatening he looks, wonder if he’s a rapist, or a murderer, or both. A rapist looks and behaves like a regular man; they can have high-powered jobs, they go to the gym, they drive their car to and from work like anyone else does. There’s nothing to distinguish a rapist from another human. 

The rape at Cornell University is not an isolated incident; in fact, it is far from it. The World Health Organization estimates that one in three women has experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner, non-partner, or both during their lifetime. 

In South Africa, 11 430 rapes were reported to police in just three months at the end of 2025, an average of about 124 every day. And even those numbers cannot capture the full scale of sexual violence, because many survivors never report what’s happened to them because they fear they will be laughed out of the police station. 

Looking back over the past three years, the world has completely glossed over the incredible amount of sexual violence on 7 October. We’ve seen the rape and sexual violence questioned, minimised, and, in some cases, dismissed. As a Jewish community, we rightly demanded that the world listens. 

But that demand cannot apply only when the perpetrators are our enemies and the victims are our own. We need to be willing to have the same uncomfortable conversations in our own communities, schools, universities, residences, and friendship groups. We need to stop teaching girls an endless list of ways to avoid being raped and start asking what we are teaching boys about consent, respect, and accountability. 

And men need to understand that saying “I would never rape a woman” isn’t enough. Call out the friend who makes the joke. Question the behaviour that makes you uncomfortable. Don’t look away from the red flags because he’s your friend and you cannot imagine him doing something worse. 

Because rape culture isn’t created only by rapists. It is sustained by every excuse, every joke, every justification, every instance of victim-blaming, and every person who sees something wrong and chooses silence because speaking up would be uncomfortable. 

So the next time a woman comes forward, and someone asks whether her accusation might ruin a man’s life, we should ask a different question: What are we doing to ensure that another woman’s life isn’t ruined first? 

• Lee Tankle is a 26-year-old reporter at the SA Jewish Report.