Emma Sulkowicz has done something horrible.
And no, I’m not just referring to how she ruined a guy’s life (at least a portion of it) with extreme and untrue accusations and a complete disregard for due process and campus policies for ongoing investigations. (I know the lack of physical evidence is not itself proof that rape DIDN’T happen- I’m more talking about the months’ worth of texts you can read if you look up the court transcript that show her BEGGING her “rapist” for sex and pining for him when he wasn’t quite so into her.)
It’s been pretty thoroughly demonstrated that she made the entire rape story up. And what is the result of this?
A few weeks ago, I saw a headline referring to a female college student who has been sexually assaulted at her university. I didn’t read a word of the article, but my immediate reaction was “She’s probably just making it up for revenge and attention.”
THIS is what happens when you invent and publicize rape stories. You don’t draw attention to what’s a real issue. You’re telling the world “This doesn’t actually happen in real life which is why we have to lie to prove it’s a problem.” You destroy the credibility of those who have legitimately been attacked.
It’s the story of the boy who cried wolf: The College Girl who cried Rape. Saying it when it’s an outright lie doesn’t make people listen more. It makes them ignore you when danger actually comes.
Thank you, Emma Sulkowicz, for furthering rape culture and victim blaming.
This, right here, is so fucking important. This is what people who refuse to read the evidence and blindly say “always believe the victim” are doing.
They’re creating a climate where people like her know that regardless of mountains of evidence and contradictions that disproving her claims, she can walk on stage with a mattress and make a porno of the events of her rape, and people will defend and believe her.
Instead of reading the facts and clearly seeing what happened and being upset that someone would dare lie about something this serious, they instead almost seem to feel that looking into it would be admitting she could be wrong and the evidence wouldn’t make a difference as she couldn’t possibly be lying.
If that didn’t happen, if people waited to read the detailed reports and come to the own conclusions, acknowledging that false rape accusations do happen, then I doubt she would have gone this far. And it would deter people from doing it, if they know their clearly faulty and contradictory claims would be called out, and if they knew they would have people chastising them for undermining real victims of rape.
But she knew she would be defended and blindly believed. She knew the evidence would make no difference and that these people would raise this to a national level.
And thats the environment thats been created. Victims are heros, and you need no proof and no evidence against you counts. You just need a claim and a newsworthy stunt.
That doesn’t bring more awareness to rape victims. It doesn’t shine a light on the way Universities handle accusations.
What it does is shove this story into the spotlight, where rational people will look into it and will see the inconsistencies and outright lies, and that will effect public perception of rape accusations. When an actual rape occurs, and the rapist does get away with it, shit like this will have colored peoples views and it wont be taken seriously.
>False rape accusations are dangerous to rape victims.
>Perpetuating false rape accusations is dangerous to rape victims.
