Midlife MavericksThis week I was going to write about artificial intelligence. I had the piece written.
But then the news from Cornell came, and I couldn’t let it go.
I spoke to Isabel Canha and Maria Serina, who very kindly let me swap the pieces.
Today’s piece isn’t easy.
I’m writing based on what third parties have made public: the lawsuit and the press.
In October 2024, a 20-year-old woman known as Jane Doe was allegedly raped by seven men. Men, not boys.
They were all Cornell students, an Ivy League university. They knew she was drunk. According to the lawsuit she has now filed, they invited her to drink even more and to take drugs. Then they raped her. One at a time. Several at a time.
And then, allegedly, one of the men (not boys) went on Snapchat to call the others. There was a girl upstairs, ready for whoever wanted her. Allegedly, 57 men (not boys) were in that chat.
Seven men (not boys) were involved in the act itself. Fifty men (not boys) allegedly read it and let it slide. Nobody spoke up or went to the police.
Boys will be boys, they say.
I say no.
I can’t be a woman in 2026, read this and not feel it.
I can’t be a woman in 2026, read this and stay quiet.
I can’t be a woman in 2026, read this and not cry.
I can’t be a woman in 2026, read this and not fear the future.
I can’t be a woman in 2026, read this and not be scared.
But I also can’t be a woman in 2026, read this and be surprised.
Because I grew up with this fear.
This is an extreme case. Alleged, but extreme. And there’s so much going on inside it.
Jane Doe doesn’t come from a wealthy family. She comes from an ordinary one. She worked hard to get into Cornell, and studying there was a huge financial effort.
She complained to the university. According to the lawsuit, the seven were temporarily suspended and allowed to make amends by writing essays.
Essays.
She went to the police. No one was charged. The prosecutor now says her first statement described everything as consensual.
Her lawyer says otherwise. Meanwhile, women took to the streets, which in 2026 means social media. That same week, the prosecutor reopened the case.
Jane Doe reportedly asked to go home. The university didn’t refund her tuition. She had to stay for at least another semester, crossing paths every day with the men who raped her.
It was the failures of the police and the university that brought her here, to the appeal that exploded on social media last week.
Universities have a huge role to play here.
Cornell has an endowment of around $11.8 billion. I’d very much like to see that endowment pay Jane Doe a bill to match. A bill so big it echoes through every American university. And, with luck, the others too.
And on those same platforms, men around the world are writing that she was asking for it. That she was drunk and went because she wanted to.
In several US states, a drunk person cannot consent. In New York, it’s not quite like that. The law wants force or a clear refusal, or a victim who is unconscious, or drugged without knowing it.
How is this possible?
How does a group of men, not boys, think it’s normal to destroy the human spirit the way they did to Jane Doe?
Behaving like a pack of hyenas.
But let’s not kid ourselves.
I’ve been lucky enough to see hyenas kill, in Botswana and South Africa. I watched them eat their prey alive. It’s an image I’ll never forget.
Hyenas do it to survive. There’s more humanity in that than in what those seven men (not boys) did. And the other fifty.
These were men with the best “education”. Some went on to work at financial institutions, for example at well-known investment banks.
I wonder how nobody in that Snapchat group looked at it and said: this is wrong. Stop. Get out of there.
Nobody called it by its name.
This is giving rise to a movement that, I’d venture, could become as big as MeToo. Women all over the world are telling stories of sexual abuse. In the United States, and even in the UK, women are telling of the sexual assaults they suffered at university and how the universities buried them.
Why talk about this here, in a magazine for women who work and lead?
Because everything that concerns women is relevant here. How can we talk about career ambition and the pay gap when things as basic as women’s human rights and the right to personal safety are being trampled left, right and centre? And turned into a commodity?
We need more women in activism and in the places where decisions about women’s rights and health get made. Without access to health or safety, how can anyone even think about a career?
I know several women who have been sexually assaulted. Several who have been abused. And most of the women I know have been harassed.
We all know one. Even those of us who think we don’t.
A couple of years ago, a mum from school was walking home at ten at night. Sober.
One street from her own, someone approached her. Hit her. Tried to pull her clothes off. Tried to rape her. In the heat of the moment, she screamed, kicked and ran. Ran for her life. I have no idea where she found the strength. The man was eventually caught.
Weeks earlier, two streets away, I was one of the few who left a party as sober as we arrived. I called an Uber and took everyone home. And I made a point of watching each of those women open her door, go in and close the door. They laugh at me. They call me the bus. And the Uber. I’m almost always the one driving.
Women’s safety, my friends’ safety, matters to me. And there are some lunatics out there working very hard to turn it into a commodity.
It isn’t one.
Last week, the internet tells me, women were asked what they would do if they weren’t afraid at night.
They’d walk down the street.
That’s it. Walk down the street.
A normal, basic human right that we should all have. And in 2026, we still don’t.
It makes my blood boil.
Women all over the world must be deeply disturbed this week. We could be every week, because there’s news like this every week. But this time you can feel it. Enough.
We are half the world’s population. Enough.
I’m the mother of a daughter and a son. I’m worried. I’m worried about this world.
Those of us with daughters are passing on exactly what was passed on to us.
Don’t park on a dark street. Park under the streetlight, close to the exit.
Look around you.
Watch where you’re going and be prepared.
Don’t drink from a glass you didn’t see being poured.
Always go in a group.
You know the drill.
It was drilled into our heads, and it’s part of what we do every day.
It’s time we sat down with the men in our lives. Our brothers, our friends, our sons.
And told them that this is not okay. That No means No. That seeing someone do something wrong and letting it slide makes you an accomplice to a crime. That a woman’s life is worth as much as a man’s, and a girl’s life is worth as much as a boy’s.
Until the world works like that, until this is the baseline and it’s ingrained in everyone, we can’t even talk about glass ceilings.
These are basic human rights.
Comment below. What were you told before you went out at night, and what are you telling your sons? I read every response.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! for Executiva.
