02/10/2026
I couldn’t sit here as someone who empowers women for a living & a passion. And as someone promising to speak out more about violence & abuse against women and not comment on the Cornell 7
Even if I can’t feel my legs as I write this.
Almost every woman I know has a story, including me.
Maybe not one she calls sexual assault.
Maybe it’s the hand that went somewhere it shouldn’t.
The “no” that wasn’t taken seriously.
The time she froze.
The time she was too frightened to make a scene.
The time somebody kept asking and asking and asking until saying yes felt easier than continuing to say no.
The time she woke up the next morning and wasn’t entirely sure what had happened.
Women learn the rules ridiculously young.
Watch your drink. Don’t walk home alone. Text me when you get home. Share your location. Cover your glass. Don’t get too drunk. Don’t accept a lift. Don’t trust the wrong man.
We have built an entire fu***ng rulebook around teaching women how not to get assaulted.
And then when a woman says it happened anyway, we open the rulebook and check which rule she broke.
What was she wearing?
How drunk was she?
Why did she go back there?
Had she slept with him before?
Why didn’t she fight?
Why didn’t she leave?
Why didn’t she report it immediately?
Why did she carry on with her life afterwards?
And perhaps the part that makes me most uncomfortable is this:
If so many women have these stories, the men in those stories exist somewhere.
They’re somebody’s mate.
They’re in somebody’s group chat.
They’re somebody’s brother, boyfriend, husband or colleague.
Yet nobody ever seems to know one.
That’s the conversation we need to be having.
Not just teaching our daughters how to stay safe.
Teaching our sons what consent actually means.
And teaching men that when their friend says or does something that crosses that line, being a good mate doesn’t mean looking the other way.
