“If no woman in your life has ever talked to you about how she lives her life with an undercurrent of fear of men, consider the possibility that it may be because she sees you as one of those men she cannot really trust.” ~ Chris Clarke, from How Not To Be An Asshole: A Guide For Men
Thursday afternoon. Partly cloudy and cooler, 74 degrees.
We have Olivia again today. Alexis has gotten a job at the pizza place just a few blocks from their house. Let’s hope this works out for everyone. Corey is enjoying immensely the time that he’s getting to spend with the bébé, and she loves being with him. I put some Mardi Gras beads on her, and she said, “Show granddaddy?”
Her vocabulary is amazing for a two-year-old, and people think that I’m bragging because she’s ours, but truly, what two-year-old can say with accuracy, “That’s a J” when “Blue’s Clues” pops a big J on the screen and asks what letter it is? She recognizes letters and numbers up to 10, and sometimes up to 20. Even Alexis wasn’t this smart at this age, and she was pretty damned smart.
I’m loving all of it, in spite of feeling pretty horrible. Oh well. Good things.
And speaking of parents and amazing children, I wanted to update you on the ongoing Sulkowicz story. The following letter from her parents is well worth reading in its entirety.
More later. Peace.
“It is clear that Columbia’s misunderstanding of the psychology of sexual assault survivors has contributed to abysmal rates of reporting, with even lower rates of those who continue to an investigation.”
Update:
An open letter to President Bollinger and the board of trustees
By Sandra Leong and Kerry J. Sulkowicz
October 2, 2014, 6:02am
On April 18, 2013, our daughter, Emma Sulkowicz, CC ’15, reported that she was raped by a fellow student to the Office of Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct.
What followed was a prolonged, degrading, and ultimately fruitless process. It was an injury to her humanity from what was once, for her, a trusted institution. The trauma of this process has contributed to the rerouting of her life, her identity, and the form of her self-expression as an artist.
Emma’s performance piece, “Carry That Weight,” has galvanized forces around the world for gender equality, sexual assault policy reform, and empowerment of the disenfranchised, and has received praise from the art world. Needless to say, we are proud.
However, as Emma’s parents, we do not want her recent celebrity to be a distraction from the fact that the University’s failure to place sanctions on the man she reported for rape, Jean-Paul Nungesser, CC ’15 (whose name has previously been published by Spectator), is a cause of her continued suffering. The investigation, hearing, and appeals process that followed her complaint to the University were painfully mishandled. We feel that they violated standards of impartiality, fairness, and serious attention to the facts of the case.
Read the rest of this powerful letter here or here.
“The next challenge is making sure, ironically, we get college presidents and colleges to understand that they have a responsibility for the safety of women on their campus. They have a responsibility to do what we know from great experience works. Bringing the experts. Provide people, give the young woman the support that she needs. Psychological support. the medical support, and if need be, the legal support. Societal change is taking place. It takes time. But I really believe it’s taking root, and we have an obligation to just keep pushing it.” ~ Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with Tamron Hall (August 9, 2014)
Saturday afternoon. Intermittent thunderstorms, warmer and very, very humid, 80 degrees.
Still no phone, and you would think that I could live with that, but I’m finding that I need to make calls, and I go to text someone, and, um, not so much. Oh well . . . Just an aside note: Today’s post marks 1700 posts. Not too shabby, eh?
CU Students at Protest Friday in Support of Rape Victims
You know, Joe Biden can seem like a goofball a lot of the time, but get him talking about the issue closest to his heart—violence against women—and no one can match his articulate passion. The Emma Sulkowicz case, in case you haven’t heard about it, is yet another case of a young woman being raped on campus only to find that the school’s administration won’t do anything about it.
It’s just plain sickening, and I am so tired that these situations are still being treated lightly. I can remember a former student of mine who was date-raped on campus. This young woman was so traumatized that she had to drop out mid-semester. I stayed in touch and did what I could for her, but the case was troubling for so very many reasons.
Look. Violence against women must not be shied away from, must not be treated as the status quo. This issue is too important to ignore, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have any daughters—there have to be women in your life in some fashion, whether it is family or friends or colleagues. And besides, those of you with sons are even more responsible for making sure this message gets delivered—again and again and again. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to wait until it happens to someone you know or someone you love.
Carrying the Weight Together: Students help Emma Sulkowicz carry mattress to class in first collective carry (from The Columbia Spectator)
Emma Sulkowicz is a senior visual arts student at Columbia University. On the first day of her sophomore year, she says, she was raped by a classmate on her mattress.
“Rape can happen anywhere,” she explains in the video above. “For me, I was raped in my own dorm bed. Since then, it has basically become fraught for me, and I feel like I’ve carried the weight of what happened there with me everywhere since then.”
Sulkowicz’ senior thesis, titled “Mattress Performance” or “Carry That Weight,” is a literal expression of that emotional weight. In what she calls an endurance art piece, she will drag her mattress everywhere she goes on campus until her rapist is expelled or leaves. The project, she says, could extend for one day or for the entire remainder of her time at Columbia.
“The past year or so of my life has been really marked by telling people what happened in that most intimate private space and bringing it out into the light,” she says. “So I think the act of carrying something that is normally found in our bedroom out into the light is supposed to mirror the way I’ve talked to the media and talked to different news channels, etc.”
When Sulkowicz’s case made it to a university hearing seven months after the actual incident occurred, administrators were confused about how anal rape could happen and she had to draw a diagram. The experience left her feeling physically ill.
Their alleged attacker was found not responsible by the university, and remains at the school.
“I was so naive that I guess I thought they would just believe me because I was telling the truth,” Sulkowicz told The Huffington Post in February. “I didn’t expect the school was going to try to not take my side.”
Sulkowicz was one of 23 students who filed a federal complaint against Columbia for mishandling sexual assault cases, in violation of the gender equity law Title IX. The U.S. Department of Education has yet to determine whether it will investigate the university.
“Carry That Weight” is especially powerful protest against injustice, while also forcing her community to face the emotional and physical trauma of sexual assault. While one of her rules for the performance is that she can’t ask for help carrying it around, Sulkowicz said others are allowed to offer their help.
“I’m hoping that not only do I get better at carrying the mattress, but… I’m very interested in seeing where this piece goes and what sort of life it takes on,” she says.
Prescription drugs do well here. Normal
balance seems easily disturbed.
Karen’s neck is bothering her again and
I am suffering in this city which,
for all its humidity, has never had
a major Star Trek convention with
inflammation the physician’s assistant
found by hand. The things we pay to have
done to us while perfectly good dresses
hang on sale racks. I don’t need
inflammation explained. What is there
to do with evidence but burn it. We all
know the temperature of sin. And so
these blue pills are for vaginitis and
oval with patience these help me sleep
when I let them. Also they keep the
dreams from me leaving me with only
this steaming local air to contend with
in the dark. Things form in this climate,
my therapist explains, unknown further
north. Calm talk of fungus follows. He
means to suggest I suppose this condition
I am carrying on so about in extreme
language may have nothing to do with the
man who first dropped to his knees.
Sniffed at me like an animal or a man
gone mad. I just want to smell it, he said,
but he lied.
“It is clear that Columbia’s misunderstanding of the psychology of sexual assault survivors has contributed to abysmal rates of reporting, with even lower rates of those who continue to an investigation.”
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 