Columbia Student Will Carry Mattress Daily Until Alleged Rapist Leaves
time.com
Emma Sulkowicz's performance-art project began this week and may last till the end of the school year.

Columbia University senior Emma Sulkowicz, 21, says she was raped in her own bed at the beginning of her sophomore year. This week, two years after the alleged assault, Sulkowicz, a visual-arts major, has made a promise to carry her mattress around campus every day as part of her senior thesis. It is, she says, a symbol of the burden sexual-assault survivors carry with them every day.

“The act of carrying the mattress from inside my room out into the light has mirrored the way my life has changed, as I’ve brought my personal story out into the light,” Sulkowicz told TIME. “This project is a way to heal one of the most difficult things that happened to me. As I will build muscle and get stronger, hopefully I will also build emotional strength.”

Sulkowicz started the performance-art project on Tuesday, and she said she is determined to continue carrying the mattress wherever she goes — to class, the library, the gym — as long as her alleged rapist is still on campus. That means her project could last until graduation day in May 2015 — unless her alleged assailant is either expelled or chooses to leave the school. Last year, Sulkowicz and two other women reported the same person to the university. All three cases were dismissed.

  • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1795·
    3 days ago

    God, the internet was fucking horrible when this happened. I remember constant comments about how she was lying for attention or just regretted it. Pre-MeToo era was a hellhole.

    • velma@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1286·
      3 days ago

      Oh don’t worry, the internet is continuing to be horrible about this and the Cornell rape. It never really went away unfortunately and we’re in the middle of a huge misogyny resurgence.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        293·
        3 days ago

        Absolutely the shitheads are still here and being loud, but to me the overall culture has shifted enough that they’re at least recognized as shitheads and not just treated as a normal opinion that some men have. I’m sure that’s not the case everywhere, but that’s been how it’s shifted in the past 10-15 years where I’ve seen.

        • velma@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          443·
          3 days ago

          Yeah where I am in the US, we literally elected a rapist as president. The misogyny hasn’t really shifted much from my perspective after Me Too. Like…there’s more lip service paid to it, but like with the Cornell situation, there’s still no real consequences for most rapists and younger generations are demonstrably more misogynistic.

          I get where you’re coming from and you’re probably right that some of the general sentiments have shifted enough that we can talk about these things more openly, but overall not much has changed.

          • protist@retrofed.comEnglish
            51·
            2 days ago

            younger generations are demonstrably more misogynistic.

            I just really have to disagree here. Growing up in the 90s, blatant misogyny was utterly pervasive throughout our culture. Now raising a son, sometimes 90s (or earlier) media comes on and the sexist tropes make me cringe.

            While the internet has enabled a loud subgroup of misogynists to organize, the culture among young people in the real world that I observe daily is waaay more accepting and progressive than the predominant culture 30 years ago.

            • velma@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
              71·
              2 days ago

              I’ll pull some studies in a minute here, but when I say demonstrably, I mean it. There’s a reason that Gen Z helped elect Trump.

              Women’s rights are regressing worldwide, warns UN gender equality chief

              The report titled Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls, shows how laws are being reshaped to restrict women’s freedoms, silence their voices, and allow abuse without consequence.

              Together, these barriers mean that women worldwide have 64 per cent of the legal rights of men whilst 54 per cent of countries lack consent based legal definitions of rape.

              “Nearly 90 per cent of organizations working to end violence against women and girls are reporting reduction in essential services, only 5 per cent believe they can sustain the current situation they are in and sustain for over two years.”

              Source

              That’s right. According to a report published by UN Women in September 2022, it could take close to 300 years to achieve full gender equality at the current rate of progress (read: too slow).

              The global pandemic, conflict, the climate crisis, and a harsh backlash against women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are further diminishing the outlook for gender equality. Violence against women remains high; global health, climate, and humanitarian crises have further increased risks of violence, especially for the most vulnerable women and girls; and women feel more unsafe than they did before the pandemic.

              In countries as diverse as Afghanistan and the US, women and girls now have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did.

              Source

              Though vastly different, extremist movements, such as far-right ethno-nationalists, religious fundamentalists and online “incel” communities, have something in common. The ideological language may differ, but the underlying insistence on women’s “rightful place” in society binds these movements together.

              Around the world, there is a growing sentiment that “feminism has gone too far” or that men are now discriminated against. In Australia and other Western countries, this sentiment has risen steadily since 2021.

              Support for violence to resist feminism was highest among adolescent boys (28%), followed closely by adolescent girls (21%).

              Perhaps most alarming: roughly 40% of boys aged 13 to 17 agreed that women lie about domestic and sexual violence.

              Source

              Even in 2020, a large percentage of Americans continue to agree with statements designed to capture both hostile and benevolent sexism. Exposure to higher education appears to tamper, to some degree, hostile sexist viewpoints, but plays only a modest role in reducing benevolent sexism. Given the significance of hostile sexism in predicting support for Donald Trump and Republican candidates in recent elections, it is instructive to consider how American adults are divided largely along the lines of sex and education when it comes to their adherence to hostile sexism. This suggests that if sexism continues to play a major role in future elections, the gender and education gap between Republicans and Democrats will continue to grow even larger.

              Source

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      28·
      3 days ago

      I think a lot of people just don’t have any experience with the criminal justice system and assume that if there was no conviction he must be innocent.

      • Poloniousmonk@autistics.life
        21·
        3 days ago

        @ayyy @Catoblepas

        Based on what I read, the corollary is also true. Just because somebody did time doesn’t mean they did the crime. Cops use all kinds of bullshit tricks to get convictions. It seems like every week it turns out shaken baby syndrome isn’t real, or excited delirium, or voice stress analysis. Shit, I read that barrel signatures aren’t even real. I’m not sure about that one, only having seen it one place, but I’m willing to believe it’s been a con all along that it’s possible to match a fired bullet to the gun that shot it. They cheat that badly.

        In the US, at least, the criminal justice system seems to care only about clearing cases, not solving crime. Taking the profit motive away might clean some of this up.

        • itsjustachairmary@lemmy.worldEnglish
          141·
          3 days ago

          A ton of ‘forensics’ is just charlatans selling snake oil.

          Still does nothing to change how rape victims are either refused help, are re-victimized by the system, criminalized themselves or in most cases, simply ignored by a system that is ostensibly supposed to help them.

          Cops don’t give a fuck. Prosecutors don’t give a fuck. Not unless they’re made to, but even then they do a shit job and even when it goes to trial, existing laws more often than not fall well short of exacting justice. Meanwhile victims have to relive this shit every single day for the entire multi year process of watching their rapist get away with it.

          The system is built to protect rapists and it will continue to do so.

          • Poloniousmonk@autistics.life
            9·
            2 days ago

            @itsjustachairmary

            To add injury to injury, one piece of forensics that actually does work is DNA testing, and yet it’s hardly ever done. Texas was having to exonerate so many convicted rapists they simply burned all the untested rape kits. Bush2 did that when he was governor.

    • OctopusNemeses@lemmy.worldEnglish
      181·
      3 days ago

      That era was the beginning of my disillusionment with the internet. It’s like every guy was angry for the rapist. Are they afraid for themselves… What are they hiding?

    • Duhtocqueville@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      71·
      3 days ago

      I only heard about it when she put out a full nudity and penetration reinacment video. The reactions to that were certainly interesting.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        23·
        3 days ago

        I’d say different rather than worse. The normal person:misogynist shithead ratio of people online is higher than it’s ever been, which means there are a lot more people are calling it out instead of it just being flung everywhere like feces.