After rape allegations at Cornell University, why are women again being urged to talk to their sons? Why not men? | Gaby Hinsliff

There were seven men in all, and it lasted almost seven hours.

What followed, according to the woman at the heart of the Cornell University case that has gripped student campuses around the world, was less a sexual encounter than a grim pack-bonding exercise fuelled by booze and ketamine, in which she was passed around like a blow-up doll.

Twenty years old and drunk at a college frat house party, she had reportedly agreed to a threesome with a student she liked, though her lawyer maintains she wasn’t sober enough to consent. But it is what allegedly followed – including a crude invitation sent to a group chat of more than 50 of the men’s friends, advertising “free pussy” upstairs if they wanted to join in – that really makes the blood boil. Could so many men really see nothing here to challenge?

One reportedly texted back “Shop still open?” in the early hours of the morning. By that stage, she was concluding that “there was no way for her to escape” a room full of predatory men, according to the lawsuit filed by the alleged victim against both the students she accuses of pressuring her into taking drugs and raping her in the autumn of 2024, and Cornell University which, she argues, failed to protect her. (All deny wrongdoing.) Though two of the seven were reportedly expelled after she went to campus police, none were arrested; five were free to continue their education after variously writing essays about what they’d done, serving short suspensions and attending workshops. It was the alleged victim who lost her future, dropping out of university and struggling with her mental health to the point that her lawyer says she is “barely hanging on”.

Her story, emerging just as this year’s freshers were settling into halls in Britain, has left young women understandably incandescent with rage but touched a deep nerve with older ones too.

All over social media, mothers are posting and swapping advice on how to raise sons who don’t just refrain from rape but who would, if they ever got such a message, realise something was wrong and be brave enough to intervene. Some of that advice is excellent, and I completely understand the urge to do something – anything – rather than let another generation of young women go through the same wringer. Bringing up our own boys to do better feels like the one practical step any mother can take. Yet it makes me angry, all the same; angry and exhausted.

How has rape prevention become yet another thing on mothers’ to-do lists? Where are all the men – the celebrity dads, the sports coaches and the role models, the male politicians who are usually only too keen to talk about sexual assault if the perpetrators are immigrants – with ideas for countering the warped, pornified messages boys receive? I understand why good men might be wary of speaking over women. But this is a job for all parents, not just half of them.

The University of Bath this week announced an investigation into claims that members of a student sports club had supposedly been overheard talking about spiking freshers’ drinks. Even if it was just a tasteless joke, it’s not funny: the Office for Students found that one in seven British students finishing university reported suffering sexual violence, with men as well as women becoming victims. Though freshers at many universities are now routinely made to sit through mandatory lessons on sexual consent and healthy relationships, those can’t unpick in an hour everything they’ve absorbed over the previous 18 years, including sometimes in their own homes.

It’s hard to talk about this without alienating what is still a majority of teenage boys who don’t want to hurt anyone, feel vulnerable themselves at times, and need help resisting aggressive peer pressure. That’s precisely why they need to hear about consent from grown men who understand exactly what it was like to be 14, horny and confused. Yet in too many homes it’s mothers who end up shouldering the burden of conversations about consent, perhaps in part because they start not with an awkward lecture on the eve of university drop-off but way back in the nursery years. (You don’t talk to a three-year-old about sex, obviously. But you can teach them to respect other people’s feelings, to stop the game if it’s obvious someone isn’t enjoying it and not to take what they want by force. Consent is above all a social skill.)

If fathers don’t know how to raise these subjects – well, mothers are equally mortified, but we muddle through because we don’t want our sons to be a danger to other people’s daughters or themselves. It’s what male role models do, however, that perhaps matters most. Boys learn by watching how the men they look up to treat their partners, female colleagues, women on the street. They notice how you react to sexual assault allegations made against a favourite celebrity, or indeed wannabe president. As always with parenting, sometimes you try your best and it’s not enough. But that does not make trying optional.

I suspect there are more than enough men out there eager to do the right thing, even if some aren’t sure what that is. At the Labour party conference in Liverpool this week, a fringe meeting hosted by More in Common aimed at building bridges between women and men on tackling male violence was so packed there was a crowd of both men and women outside the door, straining to hear the speakers from a noisy corridor.

There’s something uplifting too about the social media campaign launched this autumn by the gen-Z anti-rape movement Enough, roping in male student rugby players to preach the message on campus that this isn’t just a women’s issue. Though Enough has been criticised in the past by survivor organisations for promoting self-swab kits for rape victims, it’s right that culture for boys is formed among their peers.

Across the Atlantic, it is now for the courts to decide whether what happened at Cornell meets New York’s bar for prosecution, with the local district attorney – who decided in 2024 not to press charges – reopening an investigation into what he now calls allegations of “heinous and despicable acts”. But it’s already clear that lives were ruined that night; that it was a tragedy, and a preventable one. Precisely the kind, in other words, that parenting exists to stop.

• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

• In the UK, the Rape Crisis national freephone helpline is on 0808 802 9999 (12-2.30pm and 7-9.30pm every day of the year). Rape Crisis also operate a live chat helpline, open Monday: 2pm-4.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Tuesday: 2-4.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Wednesday: 12pm-2.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Thursday: 12pm-2.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Friday: 9am-11.30am, 2pm-4.30pm. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting mind.org.uk. The 24-hour freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, is on 0808 2000 247. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html