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Mattress Girl Discredited
If you haven’t heard of the “mattress girl,” it’s not for lack of trying among liberal opinion shapers. Emma Sulkowicz, who dragged a blue mattress around Columbia University’s campus in 2014 to dramatize her plight as a rape victim, was profiled sympathetically in New York magazine, the New York Times and other publications. Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D., NY) invited her to attend one of President Obama’s State of the Union speeches. Artnet pronounced her mattress stunt (for which Columbia awarded her course credit as an art project) “one of the most important art works of the year,” and she was honored by the Feminist Majority Foundation and other groups.
Her story is this: A consensual sexual encounter with a male student named Paul Nungesser suddenly turned violent. Without warning, he choked her, struck her, and anally penetrated her while she cried out in pain.
Such things do happen. In the course of researching a book due out next year, I’ve spoken to dozens of college students. Every single one knows someone who has been raped. Some know more than one. And the list of colleges that have disciplined or expelled students for rape or sexual assault is long. Some college students have been criminally prosecuted, and rightly so.
We can debate why sexual misconduct and rape have become such pressing problems (spoiler alert: it has everything to do with the sexual revolution and hook-up culture), but facts are stubborn things, and it has become clear that in Sulkowicz’s case, Nungesser, not she, was almost certainly the victim.
Sulkowicz filed charges with the university and the New York police. (She later alleged that the New York police mistreated her.) Both investigated. Both declined to take action against him. It was then that Sulkowicz undertook her mattress performance as an attempt to brand Nungesser a rapist and drive him from Columbia. He was shunned and anathematized. As Cathy Young reported in Reason magazine, Sulkowicz launched a full-on harassment campaign.
In the summer of 2014, other students and a professor pressured Nungesser to drop out of a scholarship-paid class trip to Russia, Mongolia, and China. That October, on a “Day of Action” against sexual assault, several mattress-toting activists showed up in one of his classes, where they stared at him and took his picture. Keyboard warriors in the social media urged making his life “a living hell” and sometimes called for violent retaliation.
Nungesser finished his degree, but he also supplied evidence to Young that undermines the case against him — evidence that was not even admitted to the tribunal that cleared him. Nungesser produced Facebook messages the two exchanged within 48 hours of the alleged rape. In one, Nungesser invited her to a “small shindig” in his room and asked her to “bring cool freshmen.” She replied “lol yussss. i’ll be over w da females soon. Also I feel like we need to have some real time where we can talk about life and thingz because we still haven’t really had a paul-emma chill sesh since summmmerrrr.” Ten days later, she texted him “whatever I want to see yoyououoyou. respond—I’ll get the message on ma phone.” After he sent her an effusive message on her birthday, she responded, “I love you Paul. Where are you?!?!?!?!”
On July 17, Columbia settled a lawsuit Nungesser had filed. While the details are confidential, the university issued a statement acknowledging that “after the conclusion of the [sexual misconduct] investigation, Paul’s remaining time at Columbia became very difficult for him and not what Columbia would want any of its students to experience…. Columbia will continue to review and update its policies toward ensuring that every student — accuser and accused, including those like Paul who are found not responsible — is treated respectfully and as a full member of the Columbia community.” Nungesser’s parents told Newsweek that they felt vindicated after what they described as a “four-year effort” to clear his name.
It has become a feminist catechism that women must be “believed” when they make accusations of rape. As the University of Montana tells incoming freshmen, “almost no one lies.” But of course they do. The woman who spun the lurid tale to Rolling Stone about being gang raped at the University of Virginia invented every detail. The Duke lacrosse players were falsely accused. So were the Scottsboro boys.
Again, this doesn’t mean all accusations are false or malicious, nor is every case of alleged sexual misconduct merely a matter of “regretted sex.” But Sulkowicz has dined out on dubious victimhood for years, and it’s high time she was discredited.
Published in Education
In what way does caring about “girls who have been raped” make it impossible to care about “boys who have been raped – both figuratively and literally”?
I would assert that homo sapiens have evolved to the point that they can care about both.
Oh, my. Well, yeah. Call me lucky, I guess. I got married in my twenties, so I didn’t have to spend too much time with jerks.
Then I discovered the gi-normous pool of people swimming around in social media!!!
My sample size grew. ;)
Well, you didn’t mention them, so I figured I would.
Um. The sentence preceding the sentence you quoted talks about boys who have been “figuratively” raped by the system. Is your problem that I did not talk about boys who have been literally raped?
Okay. Fair enough. That does indeed happen, too.
Correction to my original sentence:
I care about boys who have been falsely accused of rape or who have been raped themselves. I care about girls who have been falsely accused of rape or who have been raped themselves.
All bases covered, including minute subsets.
Every student knows someone who has been raped?
I find that virtually impossible to believe. Under new definitions of “rape,” the word is not particularly useful.
Emma Sulkowicz is poison to our culture. But Columbia is culpable in the harassment of Mr. Nungesser. I recall around the time of their graduation reading that Sulkowicz’s mattress violated rules about how much space a graduate could take up around them in the proceedings and other students weary of looking at her “art” decrying the planned relaxing of the rules for her. But relax they did, allowing that mattress to graduate. What a pitiable waste of an Ivy League education.
Doesn’t this case fit into a standard rape accusation category where it is a he said/she said and there is no way to prove what happened either way?
At the risk of pointing out the obvious:
The sexual revolution caused a lot of (predictable) problems, of which rape on campus is one.
Back in the day, it was expected that women would not sleep with the men they dated, and men expected that women who said no were rational, stable young women making a good choice. Sometimes, it was even a tort to seduce a virgin. Shotgun marriages were a thing. Put another way, the default was that sex would not happen and there were social consequences for men who pushed too hard for it.
Now, thanks feminism (grrr), the default is that women are ready to have sex with men various and sundry and have made themselves sterile. Women who wait are asked if they have hang-ups and the default assumption is that adult, empowered women are sexually active.
That means that a woman who wants to stay chaste – or merely does not want to have sex right then with this particular man – has to overcome the default assumption that she is sexually available.
I don’t blame horny young men for taking the “feminist” creed to heart. They must be psyched to hear that women want it just as much as they do.
But the result is that women do not want sex, articulate that to men, and are pressured into it. (There is also the gross and traumatic situation that some of my friends have been in, wherein the man says he’s okay stopping at third base, they go to sleep, and she wakes up two hours later to find him penetrating her.)
That does not map well onto the legal definition of rape, but it doesn’t mean it’s not all sorts of wrong.
Personally, I blame the grown-(CoC) adults who push this nonsense and not the barely-adult teenagers who are navigating this without any decent guidance, but yeah, let’s not pretend that there aren’t problems.
It’s amazing to see the conservative infighting, because the genesis of this issue is one that absolutely destroys any credibility that the sexual revolution had.
Yes, though there were signs that would lead one (me) to believe the boy over the girl.
However, the “unknowable” is why you can’t privilege one party over another on campus.
There should be gag orders on proceedings.
Yes. Yes. Yes. And… Yes.
See #38.
People seem to have in their mind “rape” as the stranger thing… the beaten up woman behind the biology building.
But it’s *not* just that anymore, if it ever was just that.
It is also not the 20% figure that was so stupidly and carelessly thrown around by the Obama administration.
Sexual encounters are complicated, and I certainly knew girls who had experienced “date rape” when I was in college.
Before you dismiss that as “not a thing,” think about your daughter in a car with a boy and what line you’d draw to distinguish whether or not he was “taking advantage” of her.
By the way, the boy in that scenario has no idea what the limits are anymore either because society has performed a massive mind f**k on *him.*
Bridget is completely right, and the way to change this is to change expectations about sex.
Going out to dinner and talking should not be the thing that shows you “like” someone after boys and girls have spent their first encounter getting naked.
That line may not be the same line as “proving every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, wherein the legal definition of rape requires the use of force.”
“Feminists” wanted it both ways: for women to not be shamed for being sexually liberated, but for men to not push, pressure, or take advantage of the aforementioned liberation. I do not blame young men for struggling to navigate that, and I am constantly amazed to watch “feminists” attempt to recreate what we once had. (Affirmative consent is a perfect example of this. They want the burden of ensuring that sex is wanted to be back on the man, but they don’t want women to have a corresponding obligation to chastity.)
Criminal laws surrounding rape were never designed to deal with this, nor should they be. But there ought to be some concept for the utter wrongness of pushing when you know (CoC) well that the answer is “no” but telling yourself a pretty little lie that it’s okay because sex is just fun.
I think it’s also important to know if everybody was answering with same definition of rape in mind. Because if you’re not, the results are basically meaningless.
The proceedings should be treated as any other school disciplinary proceedings, which include disclosing ( or not) the parties involved.
Well, I have boys, so I think about my sons in similar circumstances. If I was that boy’s dad, I might’ve thought about suing Columbia for serious damages.
I will do my best to teach my boys that sex and marriage are important, hopefully leading by example of what a good marriage looks like.
then again, I wouldn’t dream of sending my kids to Columbia. If I had that kind of money, they could attend hillsdale. As it stands, however…
Of course that’s true. It introduces much confusion, however, about the term “rape” in general society. And, btw, like you, I do not think subjecting boys to university-run Star Chambers is the answer to this problem either. It’s all a billion times more complicated than that. And many women are responsible for creating these conditions.
I don’t think school disciplinary proceedings should be part of the public record as accusations of all sorts can damage a student’s reputation and harm his/her standing at a school.
If that student is guilty, then the punishment is out in the open.
In the case of rape, proven rapists should go to jail.
Exactly. Which is why when asking a question like that, it’s important to define the term so that you’ve at least made an effort to ensure that everyone is answering with the same definition in mind.
And while I’m in a persnickety mood, how the word “know” was defined is important as well. Are we talking about “know” as in having a personal friendship or acquaintance with someone who was raped? Or are we talking about “know” as in know of someone on campus who has been raped? And if it’s the second, how many different colleges are represented in the number of people she talked to? I’m sure the mattress girl was well known on her campus, but I doubt she would have been personal friends or acquaintances with everyone who would have had her in mind if they answered Mona’s question affirmatively based on knowing of someone on campus who had been raped.
All fair.
I hope Mona bounds her words and shares her methodology in her book.
Yes… “we all know of someone who claims to have been raped.” Unfortunately for real victims, you have extremely vocal attention-seeking liars like mattress girl. So “everyone knows someone” may very well mean that everyone knows that same person. Could be a real victim, or could be a crazy stalker who didn’t get replies to her increasingly frantic text messages.
either way, I don’t think those numbers reflect anything close to reality.
Here’s the problem.
We take domestic violence super seriously, so they make laws that say police have to arrest someone whenever they are called to a domestic dispute. This is virtually always the man. It was pretty much instantaneously that some women realized that they had just been given a pretty easy weapon. So, any time you get into a fight, there is always the threat of calling the police and getting you arrested. We take child abuse super seriously, so we’ve got CPS intake lines. Again, you called CPS on me, now I’m going to call CPS on you. Or, we’re getting a divorce, so suddenly I remember all about that molest incident or the neglect, or whatever else.
Obviously, there are safeguards against fraud. Police use their judgment, and there are tons of CPS intake calls that screen out.
I don’t know that these safeguards exist with “rape,” especially under that broad definition where any “unwanted” sex is rape, regardless of when a person decides it isn’t wanted. Now, I make a bad choice and have sex with the popular guy, but it turns out he doesn’t really want to date me. On second thought, maybe I hadn’t actually consented to that encounter… Or, girl has sex with boy (it’s amazing how young this is happening), parents find out, so she says “well, no, I was taken advantage of. I’m innocent, I’m a victim!”
Don’t think that people won’t do just about anything to get out of trouble or to get revenge or anything else. We live in a culture where, if you get pregnant, the immediate and socially-acceptable reaction is to drive yourself down to the local Planned Parenthood so you can kill the baby. In that sort of society, I’m just a little hesitant to adopt an “always believe” policy when it comes to rape.
Does that mean there are no victims? Of course not. But it does mean that we need to have a different perspective and adopt new language as we’re making this one meaningless.
Okay. I accept all of that. I am going to stand by the idea that seeing the persecution of boys and the raping of (however tiny the number we get down to when we redefine rape in some new way) girls as both bad is fine.
I think one solution to deal with both that has absolutely nothing to do with the state is cultural.
Make sex a bigger deal again, and you’ll remove a lot of these encounters completely.
Maybe, it’s a difficult question. The whole Sulkowicz thing is a dilemma. She put out a tape that is supposedly a recreation of what she claimed happened to her in the night in question.
Warning explicit content…
http://www.cecinestpasunviol.com
i watched it, after watching, it’s still murky as hell. I can see that she might have felt it was rape, I can also see where the guy would think it definitely wasn’t.
Interesting. I guess Emma’s reactions afterwards lead me to think her accusations weren’t very credible. If a girl really feels violated, it seems to defy all reason that she would continue to send friendly texts to her violator.
So no one is raped unless there’s first hand evidence that it happened? Guess college kids should start wearing body cams…
I don’t know anything in particular about this case that hasn’t been reported in the media. So my comment on your comment is meant as a general possible explanation. Mental illness or prior abuse might be explanations for subsequent seemingly irrational actions.
Fair enough.
No, I didn’t say that. Ms. Charon stated that “[e]very single one” of the dozens of college students that she interviewed “knows someone who has been raped.”
My comment was meant to point out the fundamental problem in discussing the issue of rape. An allegation may be true, or it may not be true, and it is difficult to determine truthfulness in many circumstances. Ms. Charon’s statement assumed the truthfulness of the apparently second-hand reports of rape that she heard from the college students that she interviewed. Yet later in the OP, Ms. Charon recognizes that sometimes an allegation is a lie.
I say “apparently second hand” because her report that each student “knows someone who has been raped” seems to imply indirect knowledge of such an incident, though it does not absolutely rule out the possibility that a particular interviewee was either a rape victim or a rapist.
How?
I don’t think that this problem can be fixed with simple changes to some “system.” The problem is simple. If it’s permissible for boys and girls to be having sex together in college, there are going to many more opportunities for bad things to happen. It is hard to prove rape because, typically, the woman alleges that she was raped and the man denies it. What is the evidence?
They were typically alone. Perhaps there will be physical evidence that the two had sex. Often not, because it seems that the girl does not report the incident until much later. But even if there is physical evidence of sex, this would prove nothing about whether the sex was consensual in a typical college “date rape” situation. (Physical evidence of sex would be probative if the accused and accuser were complete strangers.)
The Leftist/feminist solution is . . . what, exactly? Some rule requiring affirmative consent? How, exactly, would this work? Put it in writing? With witnesses? Does the writing have to specify the exact sex acts at issue? Hey, maybe a handy form, with check-boxes for oral, vaginal, anal, and all-of-the above? Is this getting ridiculous enough? Do we need the family lawyer to prepare a foot fetish rider? Maybe a 24-hour waiting period for the “rough sex” addendum? But even this would be revocable at will, as I understand it. So apparently the family lawyers ought to be in the room to monitor compliance.
The obvious solution is the traditional one. No boys in the girls’ rooms, or vice versa. Have a chaperone.
If you’ve read what I’ve said, I agree that the system can’t be fixed in a way that truly moderates the bedroom. The system should actually be dismantled in many ways.
The only real fix is cultural. We can’t say sex is simply an act that is expected on the first date without dinner no less!!!!!
I am for dismantling the femism of the 1960s. I think it’s been a destructive force in the lives of men and women.
But I am a conservative.