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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, now the majority of rape jokes are made by bots instead of humans.
Garbage in, garbage out
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I only heard about it when she put out a full nudity and penetration reinacment video. The reactions to that were certainly interesting.
Link?
Edit: found it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceci_N’est_Pas_Un_Viol
And here’s the original work from way back machine https://web.archive.org/web/20150611064710/http://www.cecinestpasunviol.com/
Update: the text has ample trigger warnings, but I’ll add that (while I think it’s bold and well done), it’s very hard to watch and may give you nightmares
Was? It’s only gotten worse.
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.
I hope you’re right!