When Belonging Becomes Dangerous
When Belonging Becomes Dangerous
What the Cornell Allegations Reveal About Group Identity, Gender and the Boxes We Stop Seeing
I have been thinking about a disturbing question.
What happens when belonging becomes more important than thinking?
It came back to me while reading about allegations of sexual assault involving members of a fraternity at Cornell University.
According to a lawsuit filed by a former student, she was sexually assaulted by several men following a night at a fraternity house in October 2024. She alleges that she was severely intoxicated and had been given ketamine.
The allegations are serious and disputed. They have not resulted in a rape conviction.
Investigators and the courts must determine what happened and who bears legal responsibility.
But another question is worth exploring.
What happens inside a group when the need to belong becomes stronger than the willingness to question what is happening?
That question reaches far beyond Cornell.
And it takes us into something I have spent nearly two decades exploring.
The boxes we put ourselves and others into.
We All Live in Boxes
Years ago, when Nicholas Haines and I wrote The Story of Boxes: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, we explored why people put themselves and others into categories.
Woman.
Man.
Boss.
Immigrant.
Boomer.
Gen Z.
Successful.
Victim.
One of us.
One of them.
We call them boxes.
And despite what you might expect from someone who has spent years talking about boxes, I don't believe they are all bad.
Some are wonderful.
They give us identity, friendship, safety and belonging.
A group of young people living and studying together can create friendships that last a lifetime.
That's the Good Box.
But every Good Box deserves one uncomfortable question:
What happens when belonging becomes more important than thinking?
The Box Doesn't Suddenly Become Ugly
This is the part I think we often miss.
Nobody wakes up one Tuesday morning and thinks:
Today seems like an excellent day to abandon my moral compass.
Human beings are usually a little more complicated than that.
The movement from a Good Box towards an Ugly Box can happen quietly.
Belonging becomes identity.
Identity becomes loyalty.
Loyalty becomes conformity.
Conformity becomes silence.
And silence can let a group normalise things its members might once have questioned.
Eventually, someone can say something that should stop the room.
And nobody stops the room.
Not necessarily because everyone agrees.
Sometimes because nobody wants to be the one who steps outside the box.
This is not a conclusion about what happened at Cornell. It is a pattern worth recognising wherever people form groups.
And it raises another uncomfortable question.
Who has enough influence within a group to challenge what everyone else has started accepting?
Because leadership is not always about who holds the title.
Sometimes leadership begins when one person is willing to question what everyone else has decided is normal.
“Is This Right?” Becomes “Is This What We Do?”
This may be one of the most dangerous shifts in human behaviour.
We stop asking:
Is this right?
And start asking, often without realising it:
Is this what people like us do?
That question exists everywhere.
In companies.
Families.
Political movements.
Friendship groups.
Boardrooms.
Schools.
Sports teams.
And yes, fraternities.
It is how culture becomes powerful.
Culture tells us what earns approval.
What gets laughed at.
What gets challenged.
And perhaps most importantly:
What everyone quietly pretends not to notice.
I come from Iceland, a country celebrated for leading the world on gender equality.
We have our own group chats.
Equality on paper does not dissolve the pull of the group.
No society has legislated its way out of human nature.
This Isn't a “Men Are the Problem” Story
That would be an easy article to write.
It would also put several billion human beings into one very convenient box.
I spent an entire book, Beyond Gender, arguing against exactly that kind of thinking.
Some. Not all.
Some men participate in cultures where women are objectified.
Some women reinforce damaging gender expectations.
Some groups create extraordinary safety and belonging.
Some groups make harmful behaviour feel normal.
Gender matters here.
Power matters.
Sexual objectification matters.
But if our conclusion is simply that men are dangerous, we have answered one Gender Box with another.
And learned surprisingly little.
The more interesting question is:
What happens to us when group identity becomes stronger than individual awareness?
There Is Another Dangerous Box
There is a box I think we particularly love when something terrible happens.
I call it the Monster Box.
We identify the people responsible.
Put them inside.
Close the lid.
And breathe a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness I'm not like them.
It can feel like accountability.
Sometimes it is also relief.
Because once we have decided that terrible behaviour belongs exclusively to terrible people, we no longer need to examine the environments that may have allowed it to develop.
We can stop asking the harder questions.
What language had become normal?
What behaviour earned status?
Who laughed?
Who stayed silent?
Who felt uncomfortable but didn't speak?
Who had enough influence to challenge the group?
And what had people stopped noticing?
These questions do not remove individual responsibility.
Quite the opposite.
They ask us to look beyond individual responsibility without ever excusing it.
Understanding how harmful behaviour becomes normal is not the same as justifying it.
It is part of preventing it.
And Then There Is the Gender Box
In The Story of Boxes, Nick and I explored the strange contradiction inside the Gender Box.
Brotherhood and sisterhood can give us friendship, solidarity, safety and the wonderful feeling of being understood.
And the same Gender Box can have an Ugly side.
It can teach us what a “real man” should be.
What women are for.
Who should have power.
Who should pursue.
Who should resist.
Who gets believed.
Who gets laughed at.
Who becomes a person.
And who becomes a body.
These ideas do not exist only in fraternities.
They travel through families, workplaces, schools, entertainment and everyday conversations.
Often without anyone stopping to question where they came from.
That is why sexual violence cannot be treated only as a women's issue.
Nor can we leave preventing it only to women.
It is a human issue.
And human issues require humans to solve them.
All of us.
Perhaps We Have Been Asking Only Half the Question
When allegations like those involving Cornell become public, we understandably ask:
Who did this?
We need that question.
Justice depends on establishing what happened and holding those responsible accountable.
But prevention requires another question:
What made this possible?
Not as an excuse.
As an investigation.
What beliefs?
What language?
What group dynamics?
What ideas about masculinity, femininity, sex, status and belonging?
What silence?
What boxes?
We cannot assume the answers in any individual case.
But we can recognise that removing individuals, even when justified, does not automatically change the culture around them.
If we fail to examine the box, it may remain available for the next group.
New people.
Same box.
So Here Is the Question I Am Left With
Not just for Cornell.
For all of us.
Think about the groups you belong to.
Your workplace.
Your family.
Your friends.
Your profession.
Your gender.
Your generation.
Your country.
And ask yourself:
Where have I stopped asking “Is this right?” because everyone around me seems to accept it?
That is not a comfortable question.
It isn't supposed to be.
Awareness rarely begins with comfort.
It begins when we notice the box.
Because sometimes the most dangerous box isn't the one somebody forces us into.
It's the one where everyone around us makes us feel that we belong.
Reykjavík, Iceland, October 17th 2026.
Rúna Magnúsdóttir (aka Runa Magnus) is a global keynote speaker, leadership coach, and creator of Beyond Boxes Index™—a Leadership Energy Intelligence diagnostic that explores how culture, pressure, and unconscious social “boxes” shape how we lead, behave, and see ourselves.
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Understanding Groupthink, Belonging and the Boxes We Live In
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Belonging is a fundamental human need, but it can become problematic when acceptance within a group becomes more important than independent thinking. Groupthink can develop when people avoid questioning decisions or behaviour because they fear rejection or conflict.
Through the Exploring Boxes methodology, Rúna Magnúsdóttir examines how the same group identity that creates friendship and safety can also encourage conformity and silence.
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A positive group culture can become harmful when loyalty replaces accountability and members begin accepting behaviour they would otherwise question. Exploring Boxes describes this through the Good, Bad and Ugly sides of our social identities.
A Good Box creates belonging and connection.
A Bad Box can encourage conformity and exclusion.
An Ugly Box can normalise behaviour that harms others.
Recognising these shifts is an important step towards healthier group cultures. -
Warning signs include employees avoiding difficult conversations, leaders receiving little honest feedback, harmful jokes becoming normal, and people remaining silent when they disagree.
Another warning sign is when team members begin asking, consciously or unconsciously, “Is this what we do?” instead of “Is this right?” Rúna Magnúsdóttir encourages leaders to examine which behaviours their organisational culture rewards, tolerates or quietly ignores -
Gender stereotypes can shape expectations about power, authority, masculinity, femininity and acceptable behaviour. These expectations may influence who speaks, who stays silent, who is believed and whose concerns are dismissed.
In Beyond Gender, Rúna Magnúsdóttir challenges the tendency to treat gender as a fixed explanation for human behaviour. Her central principle, “Some. Not all,” encourages people to recognise patterns without stereotyping entire groups. -
Leaders can reduce unhealthy conformity by encouraging respectful disagreement, responding constructively to concerns and examining which behaviours receive social approval. They should also pay attention to informal influence, not just formal authority.
The Exploring Boxes approach encourages leaders to recognise their assumptions, question accepted norms and create environments where people can challenge harmful behaviour without risking their sense of belonging.
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Exploring Boxes is a self-awareness and leadership methodology developed by Rúna Magnúsdóttir and Nicholas Haines. It examines how the identities, beliefs and expectations we place on ourselves and others influence our thinking and behaviour.
The methodology explores the Good, Bad and Ugly sides of these boxes, helping individuals and groups recognise limiting patterns, challenge assumptions and make more conscious choices. Its central message is that awareness creates the possibility of change.
Part of The BeBBY Knowledge Library
A collection of essays exploring how AI can help us become more human, not less.
One question. One observation. One conversation at a time.
Personal branding, leadership and development books by Rúna Magnús
Beyond Gender: The New Rules of Leadership - GRAB COPY HERE!
The Story of Boxes, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - GRAB YOUR COPY HERE!
Branding Your X-Factor - GRAB YOUR COPY HERE!