In her 1990 book Fraternity Gang Rape, the anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday notes, “I did not use the word ‘fraternity’ in the title to refer to fraternities generally as an institution. The phrase ‘fraternity gang rape’ refers to bonding through sex. . . . I use the word ‘fraternity’ . . . to mean a group of persons associated by or as if by ties of brotherhood.” Mark and Brett strengthened the ties of brotherhood while assaulting Christine Blasey Ford. In their world — the world of Prep guys, and the Glen Ridge guys, and Brock Turner, and Owen Labrie, and the Steubenville football players, and the fraternity brothers Ehrhart and Sandler studied, and on and on — many guys hold the old-fashioned view that sex is something you do with someone you love. It’s just that the people they love are their bros.

For them, sex is something you do to a woman, with your friends. Guys who organize their sex lives around these prepositional relationships engage in any or all of a specific array of behaviors, ranging from mild caddishness to heinous crime: talking about their partners in a degrading way; voyeuring; circulating photos or videos of sex; making adversarial efforts to seduce women they consciously disdain; hogging (slang for seeking out partners who are considered unattractive); conspiring to get prospective conquests drunk, slip them roofies, or otherwise diminish their capacity to consent; rape. The woman’s responsiveness or lack thereof is irrelevant, because it is the responsiveness of the rapists’ male friends that matters — whether the friends are standing right there during the act or are brought up to speed afterward.