Even on the most liberal reading, the circumstances in which seven Cornell University fraternity boys are alleged to have raped a woman student add up to a repugnant, contradictory nightmare of modern sexual mores. A 20-year-old woman’s date at a frat house with abundant supplies of ketamine allegedly quickly turned into a threesome with a second male student and ended with several more young men in the room.

It was when the embarrassed young woman – known as Jane Doe – was browsing an online college forum some weeks later that she first encountered posts describing that night’s events as gang rape.

The resulting social media firestorm is fuelled by a point of New York law, which states that voluntary intoxication is no bar to consent.

Somewhere in there is a central truth contained in a Snapchat message sent that night signalling an accused man’s view of the drugged-up woman still in their fraternity house: “free pussy upstairs”. A vulnerable, intoxicated woman’s body seen as a thing to grab, use, boast about and trade.

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