By Mary Eberstadt
Cornell University is my alma mater. I spent four years there in a residence for scholarship students known to all as a haven for brainiacs. By chance, Telluride House was next door to one of the rowdiest fraternities on campus—a juxtaposition not without its moments of humor, such as when the fraternity members would gather outdoors and chant toward us: “Hey, Telluride! E equals mc squared!”
One Saturday night, while studying with a friend and distracted by the noise from one of the fraternity’s epic parties, I suggested we go see what those celebrated evenings were like. He was skeptical, but the blaring speakers made studying impossible, so he indulged me and off we went. Two minutes after entering, while he went to get drinks, a fraternity member approached me—tall and drunk as a skunk—who thought he had a winning proposition: if he could guess my weight within five pounds, I had to go upstairs with him.
I laughed in his face, amused both by his ethanol-fueled audacity and by the way he swayed above me like a mighty oak about to be felled. I signaled to my friend and we left, never to return. I didn’t think about that episode again until years later, when I read I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. A series of memoirs about fraternity life led to a column for TCT urging Christian young men not to join fraternities.
The lesson learned that long-ago night in Ithaca—that fraternity parties are no place for an unaccompanied young woman—might seem obvious. But that is precisely the point: it no longer is.
Two years ago, at another Cornell fraternity, a young woman made a different choice, and the sordid story that followed would echo around the world. And though the details may be disputed in the courts from now until the end of time, one fact is clear: it did not seem ridiculous to her to agree to what a group of completely intoxicated young men were proposing. At least at first, she considered agreeing to be the option she preferred.
What has changed between then and now? This brings us to the answer glaringly absent from the commentary erupting everywhere about Cornell’s “Jane Doe.”
In December 2008, thanks in part to visionary philanthropist Sean Fieler, a conference—the first of its kind—was held at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, on “The Social Costs of Pornography.” That conference had a major impact, including on my own thinking. It gave rise to two foundational books, also the first of their kind, summarizing the evidence presented by physicians, therapists, neuroscientists, and other experts.
That evidence pointed to a truth that discredits today’s idolatry of sexual autonomy: pornography is poison. It alters the brain, kills romance, and leads to profound loneliness. It creates addicts and destroys families. The empirical data have been well documented since that historic conference onward.
The data are there. What should we do about it? These are the reflections I shared, just last month, at a women’s conference organized to discuss “A Better Way Forward”:
If I could reduce years of reflection on this subject to a single action memo aimed at improving the human condition, it would be this. We need to re-stigmatize pornography. We—that is, not only those of us gathered here, but people across the West—need to understand that pornography today is what tobacco once was: ubiquitous, toxic, and in need of social reform. It is the enemy of romance. It licenses perversion. And pornography is also a major factor in the current collapse of marriage and birth rates.
Those are the grim facts of a culture saturated with pornography. And they demand a radical response:
We need something like a movement and a manifesto Against the Acceptance of Pornography. It should include both secular and religious people, and as many of the wounded who are still standing as can be gathered—as well as the presidents of faithful Christian universities and colleges, and celebrities, and therapists, and anyone else committed enough to join.
If anyone today doubts how important such a reform movement is for restoring a healthy culture, they need only look at the Cornell story that has dominated the front pages since those words were spoken.
At the center of the story is a student accusing several fraternity members of rape. But reading the barbaric details reveals something lost in the lurid accounts. These students—all of them—are so contaminated by pornography that they are literally not in their right minds. Even without the drugs and alcohol that also saturate this horrific scene, these young souls had already been twisted by a less visible but equally incapacitating substance. And they are but a sample of many millions of young people like them.
Therefore, in the spirit of bringing good out of evil, Jane Doe’s story is further proof that we need a national movement against pornography, along the lines of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In fact, it should be a foundational proof—the definitive demonstration, in all its nauseating fullness, that turns mere rhetoric into transformative action. And while such a movement is essential, it should also be only the beginning.
We need therapists capable of deprogramming boys like these. We need society at large to understand that internet pornography is a cult. And dismantling that cult by every necessary means is a decisive step—indeed, the most decisive step—toward restoring a sexual order founded on sanity, not madness.
Above all, we need someone to lead that movement. My hope is that repeating this message in every possible forum will one day reach the heart of that future leader, who will be to this reform movement what Florence Nightingale was to the nursing profession; what Dorothea Dix became for the reform of institutions for the mentally ill.
If there is one prayer to lift from this putrid disaster above the waters of Cayuga, it is the one imploring Heaven for that future leader.
This column is adapted from a speech delivered at the Napa Institute in New York City on October 14, 2026.
About the Author
Mary Eberstadt is a senior fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute and executive director of the Center for Cultural Restoration. Her most recent book is Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited, with a foreword by Cardinal George Pell.