It’s been a long month. In late September, news of the Cornell 7 lawsuit captured international attention, sparking a conversation about gang-rape and consent, with many survivors sharing their own similar stories of sexual assault and the sometimes disappointing and retraumatizing experience of trying to hold perpetrators accountable.
Shortly after that, a story broke out from StFX in Antigonish that stuck around for longer than the typical report of student antics. Off-campus students hung a banner outside their home during homecoming weekend declaring their residence to be a “drop-off zone” for Acadia girlfriends.
What did the banner suggest? Overtly, that women be transported as objects. More subtly, there is the implication that those girlfriends be dropped off to new romantic partners – their own preferences absent from this imagined scenario.
The banner was initially removed following intervention by university officials, but was put back up the same day. Whatever the students intended by the message, its reappearance kept it in public view after concerns had already been raised.
Following this, comedian Shane Gillis said women dress like “whores” at the gym during his monologue while hosting Saturday Night Live, which looked to many like an attempt to rage-bait audiences and generate the viral attention on which shows like SNL increasingly depend.
Three separate incidents which vary widely in seriousness, impact, and precedent, have gained massive attention, but feel oddly familiar. Because for most women, an offensive incident or comment being minimized as “just a joke” feels like a regular occurrence. The strings operating this conversation – dismissals, minimization, deflection – are starting to show plainly, making this an opportunity to name the dynamics that ensure the conversation doesn’t evolve forward, and instead sticks to the same cycle.
Executive director Anita Stewart appeared as a guest on ‘Dispersing the Fog’ in early October, a podcast hosted by Adam Rodgers, Antigonish-area lawyer and cabinet member of the One Door campaign, and Paul Palango, journalist and author.
During the discussion on the StFX banner incident, Cornell 7, and rape culture, we hear many myths and misconceptions about sexual assault, surrounding victim-blaming, the nature of false reports, and consent.
Palango starts off by accusing Stewart of using jargon when she discusses misogyny, coercive control and systemic violence, and describes the services offered at AWRCSASA. He then pivots to saying there are two sides to a troubled relationship.
“There are a lot of bad men out there and who have a lot of bad ideas, but there also is a lot of bad women out there who allow themselves to get into these relationships,” said Palango.
“Are you training the women to get—stay out of these relationships?”
This question came following Stewart’s description of AWRCSASA’s key universal intervention method, the Healthy Relationships for Youth program, in which peer facilitators educate grade 9 students throughout the province on how to spot unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship dynamics, among many other topics relevant to young people such as digital literacy.
Yet the question of what AWRCSASA is doing to “train women” places the responsibility for preventing abuse on those who may experience it. This reflects a familiar misconception about sexual violence: that women should be able to to predict and avoid the unhealthy relationship or situation they find themselves in, before violence occurs.
Prevention education is important, and AWRCSASA’s Healthy Relationships for Youth program is designed to help young people recognize unhealthy relationship dynamics. But education alone cannot eradicate gender-based or intimate partner violence, particularly when the onus of responsibility for that violence is placed primarily on those experiencing it.
Palango disputes that we are living in a rape culture, something he associates with gang-rape and occurrences of sexual violence in developing countries. As they discuss the Cornell 7 case, Palango focuses largely on whether the plaintiff consented at the beginning of the encounter, and possibly to previous group sex encounters, and whether that should affect the way the case plays out.
Stewart responded “An indication of consent is not good enough, right? Consent needs to be clear and concise and freely given,” also emphasizing that consent can be revoked at any time during a sexual encounter.
The conversation shifts to the StFX banner incident, and Rodgers, approaching the issue with a defence lawyer’s eye, asks whether the joke behind the banner is simply that StFX students are asserting themselves to be more ‘manly’ than Acadia students.
Possibly? So let’s continue the thought: they are more manly, so they ‘get’ the girlfriends as a reward? We have unintentionally landed on a perfect illustration of toxic masculinity here: that ‘manliness’ is at least partially defined by the relationship to women, the ability to ‘get’ them, and the suggestion they be traded or otherwise exchanged.
Deciding whether an anecdote is a part of rape culture or just a joke isn’t a fun subjective challenge, and when we get it wrong there is real harm and a missed opportunity to get out of this pedantic cycle.
UN Women says “Rape culture is the social environment that allows sexual violence to be normalized and justified.”
In rape culture, jokes have a function: to normalize disrespect toward women, and punish those who dissent as humourless, or nit-picking for sport. Jokes in this context can be an openly disrespectful comment lacking a punchline, mirth, or traditional joke structure, and that is enough plausibility for some to claim it is just a joke.
Writing in Psychology Today, forensic psychologist Gill Harrop argues that humour helps establish the social rules governing what is and isn’t acceptable. She points to research showing that exposure to sexist comedy can negatively affect women’s cognitive performance, regardless of whether they find the humour amusing.
Writing about humour, Harrop explains: “It helps to signal group membership by establishing what is (and is not) acceptable to laugh at. It identifies who belongs, who doesn’t, and who is expected to tolerate being the target. We laugh because we recognise that others around us find it acceptable, and that emboldens us to join in.”
The podcast concludes on a darker note once Stewart finishes her segment and leaves, with Palango suggesting a futility in Stewart’s efforts as leader of AWRCSASA, a certain inevitability in the nature of GBV, and again casting victims as participants in their own harms.
“I think she wants to eradicate gender-based violence and have the funding to do that. But essentially what she wants to do is reverse evolution and genetics and all kinds of human nature and all of those things as well,” says Palango.
While acknowledging the need for education, Palango goes on to describe some people as “willing victims,” before qualifying the phrase and returning to the Cornell and London cases as examples of situations where, he suggests, people should have known better than to be present.
“Somebody should have had some sense,” he concludes.
The discourse surrounding rape culture has played out once again. Many survivors chimed in, relaying their experiences in similar University environments. Advocates working in the women’s and victims services sector tried to help educate the public in a good-faith effort to broaden understanding about how the groundwork for violent acts is often laid in public conversations. Women are told not to take offense, “it’s just a joke”, and finally, those who seek to diminish or deny the existence of rape culture in our society, deflected away from established facts.
The matter at StFX gives us all a look inside how powerful institutions handle crisis communications when an incident gains unwanted and persistent national attention.
It looks something like condemn → review → soften, a cycle which can dovetail with the amount of attention the story continues to get. Disciplinary processes do take time, and gathering and weighing all relevant information is crucial, but this lag can also allow institutions to benefit from a heavier-handed message during the condemnation phase than what eventually follows in the disciplinary response.
Following the July 2025 acquittal of five former members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team on sexual assault charges, the NHL issued a statement describing the conduct at issue as “unacceptable” and announcing that the players would remain ineligible while it reviewed the judge’s findings.
“The allegations made in this case, even if not determined to have been criminal, were very disturbing and the behavior at issue was unacceptable. We will be reviewing and considering the judge’s findings. While we conduct that analysis and determine next steps, the players charged in this case are ineligible to play in the League.”
In September, the league announced that the players would be eligible to sign NHL contracts beginning October 15 and return to games beginning December 1. As of October 2026, three had signed NHL contracts. The point is not that anyone expected the NHL to ban those players from the league for life. Rather, it’s that the sequence of public statements and decisions reveals a familiar pattern in institutional crisis communications, one that may offer clues about how future incidents will be handled.
StFX, through Dr. Hakin’s statement, has said the matter has been referred through the University’s disciplinary process; what the outcome of that process will be is yet to be determined or shared.
After the podcast aired, I got the chance to speak with one of the hosts, Adam Rodgers, about questions the episode raised.
Rodgers was clear that he doesn’t share Palango’s perspective on his comments about victims willingly putting themselves in situations to be harmed, citing his work in the legal profession and what he sees play out in courtrooms.
“I don’t adopt his line of thinking at all, but it’s a show about opinions, and that was his opinion,” said Rodgers.
We also discussed false allegations of sexual violence or misconduct, and whether raising the subject in discussions about sexual violence—a far more widespread problem in terms of prevalence and impact—risks creating a false equivalency between the two.
“I don’t see it as a widespread issue where people make things up most of the time. If somebody’s making a complaint about sexual violence, that’s because that’s what happened,” said Rodgers. “I see that in our court system all the time.”
Rodgers added that he saw value in the way the discussion played out, because it reflected real attitudes that are prevalent in society – it’s true that you could almost picture this argument playing out in living rooms across Nova Scotia among family members.
“I thought that it was effective in that it put on display that attitude and his view of it,” he said, adding that the discussion demonstrated “in real time that here’s an attitude that’s out there and here’s Anita pushing back on it very effectively.”
There is something useful to glean from this – if we want to meet people where they are in conversion, we need to understand how they think.
Of the five comments posted under the episode on Youtube, two expressed support for Palango’s position and one challenged it. Rodgers, meanwhile, said most of the feedback he got was critical of his co-host’s remarks. At the Centre, staff listened as a group and were disappointed and shocked by how the conversation played out; they also heard from community members and those close to AWRCSASA who were upset and felt the conversation was regressive.
“My focus is to ensure proper messaging, challenge misconceptions about rape culture, IPV, GBV, and keep prevention top of mind. That doesn’t mean avoiding difficult questions and conversations, even disagreeing about things is important to help us all move the conversation forward. However, I feel strongly about mutual respect while having these often challenging conversations, even a spirited discussion is welcomed if we maintain a bit of civility,” said Stewart.
AWRCSASA is working with StFX to continue this conversation by bringing students, staff, advocates, and community members together to examine the link between sexist attitudes accepted in daily life and gender-based violence.
“We have to be willing to call out these behaviours—not to shame people, but to create an opportunity to learn and to do better. In order to do better, we must advocate, educate, and have active dialogue with people, stakeholders, and those in positions of leadership who set the tone and path moving forward.” wrote the Centre, in a letter to StFX calling for a partnered panel discussion this fall at the University.
The Centre has developed programs used by StFX and other Universities in the past, such as Waves of Change, a peer-facilitated prevention program that teaches bystander intervention skills and promotes safer campuses, especially on occasions when alcohol is being consumed. At StFX, student athletes have often helped deliver the program to their peers, usually at the beginning of the academic year.
Other campuses throughout the province have adopted the program, and it’s understood to be an effective tool for college students. But incidents like the homecoming banner show why even well-established prevention programs need reinforcement from time to time. The real test is whether we can turn these moments of collective introspection into meaningful conversations that challenge harmful attitudes, even those that seem benign to some, rather than allowing the same behaviours to resurface once the attention fades.