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.

  • velma@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    392·
    20 hours 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
      31·
      6 hours 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
        3·
        3 hours 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