The journey started when...
Swiping through Tinder, a man she found “distasteful” super-liked her.... They began messaging, and she found him witty. “He was actually way more fun to talk to than any other person I matched with.”Okay, thanks for the update! The interviewer is Sylvie McNamara, and I like that she had the same reaction I had to the "traditional Chinese medicine" — sounds like more performance art. Also, I think it's smart for Sulkiwicz to shift into understanding the minds of the people she's been averse to. She's working on a memoir, and this is the sort of material that could make the writing worthwhile. If you read the article, you'll see she's become friends with Jonathan Haidt (and also with Nick Gillespie (of Reason)). She's identifying with libertarian politics. She's trying to understand men. Whether this is deep-down sincere or promotion for the forthcoming book, I don't know. But good luck with the writing project. I'd like to hear a lot more about the people who supported her during the "mattress performance." She experienced hate, but she also experienced a lot of love, and I suspect that there were negative aspects to that love. Did she turn away from the people who wanted so badly to embrace her and squeeze more mattress-like stuffing out her?
Eventually, Sulkowicz stalked him on Twitter and realized that he was conservative — “like, very conservative.”... [S]he asked him to recommend one book to help her understand him, and he picked Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. It’s a book that explains, in evolutionary terms, the human tendency toward political tribalism and the importance, in light of that, of learning from one another’s beliefs. She calls the book “mind-opening.” Its resonance with her new friendship did not escape her.
Shortly after, Sulkowicz attended a book talk of Haidt’s. This was for The Coddling of the American Mind, which diagnoses the campus left with the kinds of cognitive distortions that addle the chronically anxious and depressed: a tendency to blow everyday problems out of proportion, or to believe that one’s negative feelings reflect reality....
“For many years,” she explains, “I wasn’t interested in listening to other points of view. I was very emotional and making performance-art pieces that were very reactionary and fiery.” Without disowning them, she describes these artworks as something she “got out of her system.”
Having found the art world humorless, narrow-minded, and grotesquely competitive, Sulkowicz says she stopped making art about a year ago.... She has been working on a memoir that draws on her diaries from Mattress Performance, and last month, she started a full-time, four-year master’s program in traditional Chinese medicine. There, she’ll learn skills from acupuncture to herbalism, which have been her “personal healing modality” for years. Sulkowicz has parried assumptions that this is performance art, too. It grates on her. “I’m a human and humans can change,” she says, insistently. “I’m telling you that I don’t want to make art anymore.”...
[A]fter becoming a public figure... [p]erfect strangers debated her private life and integrity... “The more the internet seemed to hate me,” she says, “the more of a bad person I became. I was very angry and I always had a chip on my shoulder. I had trouble being happy.” Outsized expectations inflamed her misery: artists, activists, and critics alike celebrated Mattress Performance and, after she graduated, Sulkowicz felt constant pressure to create something just as electric. She fell into a pattern of “increasingly soulless activities,” taking on art show after art show, “because I thought I was supposed to become an artist — as if I wasn’t one already.”...
“As I became more and more feminist,” she recalls, “I think I got to a point where I was literally just straight up hating men. I just hated men, I wished all men would die.” But embarking on her political journey made her want to understand them...
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65 comments:
Danger Danger Danger.
“As I became more and more feminist,” she recalls, “I think I got to a point where I was literally just straight up hating men. I just hated men, I wished all men would die.”
I've been saying for some time now that modern feminist activists are simply sexist bigots driven by hatred of men, rather than a desire for equality. What began as an equality movement has morphed into a hate movement.
Red pilled.
'I'd like to hear a lot more about the people who supported her during the "mattress performance." She experienced hate, but she also experienced a lot of love, and I suspect that there were negative aspects to that love.'
I'm curious if she'll get the Cindy Sheehan treatment from the radical activist crowd due to her becoming an apostate.
I like that you posted this right after the Chapelle tweet. I always thought the ugly thing about mattress girl was not that a college kid was carrying on the way she did but that so many adults -- especially the people at New York magazine -- celebrated her idiocy. She was a child, after all, behaving like a child, and now she is growing up. Nice to hear.
She made her bed...etc.. But if she runs across Jordon Peterson's work and listens to the truths he communicates so well, truths that cannot be easily ridiculed, then her days as a wingnut are probably not coming back. God bless her.
Bob Smith said...
Danger Danger Danger.
Bingo ! She is still a nut.
But if she runs across Jordon Peterson's work and listens to the truths he communicates so well, truths that cannot be easily ridiculed, then her days as a wingnut are probably not coming back. God bless her.
My leftist daughter was probably beyond reason, I thought, although I could usually talk to her. On a whim, I sent her a copy of Peterson's book, wondering if she would read it.
She called me a week later to tell me how she loved it. That was a year and a half ago. Now she is married with a baby. Coincidence ? We are back in CA to visit.
Marianne Williamson has said that Conservatives are nicer to her than lefties, and how surprised she is. Wake up!!!
I'm sorry she's no longer an artist. I was hoping she could favor us with a performance of "Eating Shit and Dying."
Anyone dumb enough to lay a finger (or any other body part) on that insipid twat deserves whatever that psycho bitch from hell dishes out afterwards.
She is deep in the danger zone of the hot/crazy matrix
Lives are long, especially the lives women.
"Red pilled."
Nobody but Emma knows what pills she's been taking, if even she does. I doubt anyone knows what pills she needs.
This is great but she kind of ruined a man's life with what seemed to be a false rape accusation. That's hard to get past, even though she's in a position to do a lot of good.
This is funny, about the "conservative" guy she dated and befriended:
But Chad is also a different kind of conservative than I imagined. Rather than a bowtie-sporting William F. Buckley type thumbing his nose at populism, he finds Reaganism laughably passé and aligns himself with Tucker Carlson’s anti-elite drive to regulate markets.
Does the writer really think most young conservatives wear bowties, or does she think her readers think that?
“and he picked Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.”
That’s where I got “Reject first, ask rhetorical questions later!” as a description of how liberals think. It’s Haidt’s.
Now watch the Amazon documentary “The Red Pill” which is nothing like the “Red Pill” reddit, which is about exploiting female thought and behavior foibles to get laid. The documentary is about a young feminist who sets out to do a documentary on these misogynist “Men’s Rights” advocates and ends up having her beliefs challenged.
One of the best bits from that was a woman who was kind of a Dr Helen type being that she understood somewhat where MRAs were coming from. She told the story of “Bring Back Our Girls” and pointed out that before those girls were kidnapped, there had been many instances where Boko Haram separated the girls, told to go home and marry, and stay away from school, and the boys were killed. In some cases all the boys in a school were locked inside it and the school was burned, and there was no international response.
She also pointd out, and the documentarian went back and checked, that whenever large numbers of exclusively boys were killed, they were described as “people” or they would say thinks like “127 killed by Boko Haram” but if it was girls! It would be "200 GIRLS kidnapped"
She's trying to understand men.
Wake me up when she apologizes to Paul Nungesser.
She's left college.
She's now free to learn.
"What began as an equality movement ..."
Surely it would be more accurate to describe feminism as an advocacy movement than a movement for equality? Of course, sometimes advocacy and equality may be aligned, but, does anyone really expect feminists to choose equality even in cases where doing so would disadvantage women?
In any case, any man who can't see the invisible-ink "Beware- extreme danger here!!" warning tatooed on Sulky's forehead must be experiencing a bad failure of perception.
Really, juggling chain saws isn't all that much fun or particularly rewarding. Especially after something goes wrong (and that probably just after you have assured yourself, "I can handle this").
Feminism... What began as an equality movement has morphed into a hate movement.
Female, not really. There are a number of feminists who are principals or accessories to superior exploitation, of men, yes, and women, too. And, of course, women's reproductive rites. #HateLovesAbortion
Emma S., a.k.a. Mattress Girl:
"But Chad is also a different kind of conservative than I imagined. Rather than a bowtie-sporting William F. Buckley type thumbing his nose at populism,he finds Reaganism laughably passé and aligns himself with Tucker Carlson’s anti-elite drive to regulate markets."
That rather indicates how little she knows about conservatives. William F. Buckeley was never noted for wearing a bowtie. Peruse Wikipedia:List of bow tie wearers: William F. Buckley is not on the list, which supports my recollection of never having seen a photo of him -or at a TV appearance- wearing a bow tie. George Will is on the list-though some have speculated that as he became less conservative, he wore a bow tie less and less.
Ironically,she also lists Tucker Carlson in her conversation, who used to wear a bow tie.
Alex: We are here with Tucker Carlson. He does not have the customary bow tie. Why did you get rid of the bow tie?
Tucker: I joined the mainstream, Alex...I'm just like everyone else[Sarcasm]. No, if you wear a bow tie it's like wearing a middle finger around your neck. You're just inviting scorn and ridicule.
Alex: Like Louis Farakan.
Tucker: I don't mind scorn and ridicule but I work in New York during the week so I have to walk through Penn Station and the number of people screaming the F word at me wore me down so I just gave in and became conventional.
Alex: You got told off for wearing a bow tie?
Tucker: Literally everyday. People will scream obscenities at you. Try it for a week.
Inclusive, liberal NYC. What a surprise.
If you're in the mood to comment on Emma Sulkowicz, you owe it to her, yourself, and us to first watch the video of her interpretation of the events that set in motion the whole Matress Girl thing, Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol ("This is not a rape") NSFW. “Everything that takes place in the following video is consensual but may resemble rape. It is not a reenactment but may seem like one.”
Safe-for-work introduction here.
I watched her porn video. She sucked some guy off I think. The bad lighting made me realize it was an art piece.
"I walk Sulkowicz home through the June heat and she wants to know how I’ll describe her. “You’re a trickster,” I say"
Shawn Levasseur wrote:
"She's left college. She's now free to learn."
Today's internet winning comment.
I wish her luck on her journey.
It would be easy for her to coast for decades on the 'mattress girl' icon status and never rethink anything, believing she perfected her understanding of the world and taking her halo out for special occasions.
I have no idea where she will end up, but it sounds like she is making the beginning steps that college is supposed to be for (but no longer is, because it is more important now for the colleges to turn out mattress girls than people capable of independent thought).
Sometimes when you believe you have been painted into a corner you just need to walk across the fucking paint; you can get new shoes later.
I am Laslo.
After this, Kirsten Gillibrand will NOT invite Sulkowicz to attend a State of the Union speech again.
CJinPA said...
[quote]But Chad is also a different kind of conservative than I imagined. Rather than a bowtie-sporting William F. Buckley type thumbing his nose at populism, he finds Reaganism laughably passé and aligns himself with Tucker Carlson’s anti-elite drive to regulate markets.[quote]
Does the writer really think most young conservatives wear bowties, or does she think her readers think that?
What's really amusing about this sentence is that Buckley didn't wear bowties, but Tucker Carlson was well-known for wearing them until a few years ago.
I find it funny and apropos that the conservative guy who caught her attention was named Chad.
Despite being in the tank re the rape story, female(?) writer says:
"Leaving Robby Soave’s book party, I walk Sulkowicz home through the June heat and she wants to know how I’ll describe her. “You’re a trickster,” I say, and she asks how I came to that word. I tell her that she seems to relate to the world on the level of mischief and play, rather than through any kind of ideology or strict moral code. I use the word “chaotic,” and she doesn’t object. A friend of hers wrote a book about tricksters, and she says she relates to it. Tricksters, he argued, can move unrestricted between any circumstances, because they’re always playing."
Heh, now I kind of like her. I always thought she was unpredictable. When she re-enacted her assault (nude and actually having sex with some fat guy she paid to be in the performance) and published it (of course I did not watch it, not wanting to participate in the assault which she said anyone who watched it would be doing) - I though OK, that is not what a normal bat-shit crazy woman does. And... and... I also started kind of believing her.
My political beliefs changed dramatically from the age of 22-27. I'm sure the Reason-types she is hanging out with now are far more interesting than the woke professors/students she was stuck with at Columbia.
The jury is out. Let’s see what happens.
One observation: she has a history of turning on a dime.
But everyone is entitled to sort through life in his or her own way.
My advice to any man who wants to date her: there are plenty of fish in the sea, you don't have to eat the fugu.
I wonder at what point "Chad" realized who she was.
Hard. Not sure how she could build a new life for herself, even if she wanted to. Too recognizable.
If she has grown, and learned, then that is good. If true we should encourage her. Would I get involved personally? No, absolutely not.
Anyone remember Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs? He was a loonie leftie. He became sane, for a bit. Then ...
Michael K said...
My leftist daughter was probably beyond reason, I thought, although I could usually talk to her. On a whim, I sent her a copy of Peterson's book, wondering if she would read it.
She called me a week later to tell me how she loved it. That was a year and a half ago. Now she is married with a baby. Coincidence ? We are back in CA to visit.
Outstanding.
@Earnest Prole, I did see the video Sulkowicz made, and per that video she had consensual anal sex with her boyfriend. She didn’t enjoy it (duh!) but does she ever yell out “No! Stop! You’re hurting me!” or words to that effect?9 IIRC she had to be persuaded later by a female faculty member that she had been raped.
I contrast Sulkowicz being being honored and feted with the honoring of Roman Polanski, who had nonconsensual anal sex with an adolescent child, and that child was screaming “No!” I think that the left got it wrong in both cases.
re: Chad.
If I had read the article first, I would have realized that was the joke.
The left is not cool anymore, and it's full of scolds who enforce a stultifying conformity. In the long run, that's the best thing we have going for us, because our education system is doing poorly and ideology is never that compelling to most people.
I'm feeling some small shreds of charity today, so I'll simply wish her the best
Congratulations Doc.
CJinPA said...
Does the writer really think most young conservatives wear bowties, or does she think her readers think that?
It's figurative language, a stereotype, like a lot of what people say in political discussion. And, like a lot of stereotypes, it does convey something real about the group stereotyped.
"Bow-tied, like George Will" or "Bow-tied, like Tucker Carlson" is like saying "Bow-tied, like Arthur Schlesinger" or "Bow-tied like [political journalist] Tom Oliphant" (to name two once prominent liberals). It conveys a combination of ideology and social class, complacency, and (perhaps) pomposity.
I was young once and conservative, and back then it did seem like most "young conservatives" - the militant, activist guys (who were all guys) - wore bowties, or at least aspired to wear bow-ties, like George Will.
"Bow-tied, like George Will" or "Bow-tied, like Tucker Carlson" is like saying "Bow-tied, like Arthur Schlesinger" or "Bow-tied like [political journalist] Tom Oliphant" (to name two once prominent liberals). It conveys a combination of ideology and social class, complacency, and (perhaps) pomposity.
It says “I’m queer-curious,” not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I did see the video Sulkowicz made, and per that video she had consensual anal sex with her boyfriend.
I think her assertion was the same as that of the woman who accused Matt Lauer of rape at the Winter Olympics: The front door was open for business but not the back.
Bowties are for economists on tv.
Not a single mention of the guy whose life she ruined, huh?
I mean good for her and her new guy; no one can say the new guy didn't get adequate warning!
But the school ended up paying out some money to the guy she helped smear, right? I know they settled his lawsuit against them.
A Cntrl-F search of the article for "Nungesser" brought up 0 results.
And anyway what's all this "she" business? I recall, and the Wikipedia entry on the "Columbia Rape Controversy" confirms, that Sulkowicz identifies as non-binary. So calling them "she" is an unforgivable insult, right?
Or maybe that was bullshit, too. Also: fuck Kristen Gillibrand.
@Earnest Prole, my mistake. I went back and looked at the video. I remembered Sulkowicz -- in the video reenactment that she explicitly claims isn't a reenactment -- objecting to being hit in the face during coitus, and her boyfriend does stop hitting her. Eventually. And I remembered her saying "Ow!" when he penetrated her anally, but she does say "Stop!" during the anal sex and he does not stop. and that's the point where I agree that -- if the reenactment that she explicitly claims isn't a reenactment -- is accurate then, yes, she was raped. A real man would have been more considerate of his partner.
But that's only if reenactment that she explicitly claims isn't a reenactment is an accurate depiction of events.
There's a song from the 60s that I heard last week when I was driving about how you need to listen to the other side. I wish I could recall it. I'll probably remember after I hit 'Publish'. That's what this topic reminds me of.
the “Bow tied bum kissers at the Boston Globe [TM Howie Carr]” are anything but conservative.
Re: Feminists being man-haters, I had an interesting experience at the airport in Atlanta yesterday on my way home from Hawaii. An elderly woman in a straw hat was talking with her traveling companions and said something along the lines of "Wasn't that a great flight? That big plastic plane, the Starliner… And we had a woman pilot on the plane! Girl power!"
Then she turned to a long-haired child of about eight years old who was standing with another couple and said, "You see? Girls can do anything! You can be a pilot or anything you want to be." She didn't notice that the child was a boy.
"What about boys?" asked the father, who was wearing a shirt with red-white-and-blue text in the shape of an American flag (something about "when the last something-or-other").
"Oh, we don't care about them," the woman replied honestly. And then she took a closer look at the child with the fine-blond curls and realized that he was a boy. And started backtracking, which was hilarious. I don't think she was truly a man-hater, but she certainly wasn't in favor of true equality, either.
I suspect that the boy may decide to go with a masculine haircut in the future.
I think our hostess hits it on the head with this: "I'd like to hear a lot more about the people who supported her during the "mattress performance." As I understand it, male feminists are creepy weirdos, almost to a man. If those were the types she ran into while she was famous, no wonder she started looking for some different kinds of men.
Mattress Girl - 95% crazy, 3% hot (2% other).
Feminism (feminine, woman) Good
Patriarchy (father, man) Bad
But don’t you dare call a “fireman” anything other than a “firefighter” because *language matters*!
It’s a hate movement.
That was also from the Red Pill documentary. What it also showed was that the feminists were extremely focused on the outcomes at the very top, CEOs, political leaders, professional athletes, and cared nothing about the fact that men have stopped going to college. That’s men's fault for being weak! Imagine if somebody had said “it’s women’s fault that...." well anything?
I remember in a movie once a guy said “Never forgive a woman, because that implies she did something wrong and she will just get mad. If you want to forgive her, do it in your heart and leave it at that."
The Althouse Rule was also mentioned, but not crediting Althouse.
I read that book when it first came out. It is very insightful, but as with most books, its message is soon forgotten without practice. It also assumes something I disagree with, and that is that both sides are equally fair-minded, but for our natural tendencies to be unfair. Both side are not equally fair-minded. One is much more tolerant than the other.
When she invents a way to make amends to the man she falsely accused and the real victims she harmed by making a mockery of real rape, then maybe I'll care. Probably not.
Odd what was left out in post:
"Swiping through Tinder, a man she found “distasteful” super-liked her. “It smelled like Connecticut,” she says of his profile. “He was very blond, law school, cut jawline, trapezoidal body figure, tweed suit kind of vibe, but something inside of me made me swipe right, I don’t know.” They began messaging, and she found him witty. “He was actually way more fun to talk to than any other person I matched with.”
--
Oh.."something".
Also at The Cut:
deal of the day 10:36 a.m.
AOC’s Favorite Red Lipstick Is Half Off at Macy’s A deep-red liquid lipstick with shimmer for any situation.
Carried Away
My time with Emma
by The Mattress
Finally remembered the song:
Reach out in the Darkness
Not remembering was really bugging me.
I would recommend The Righteous Mind, especially as it was done here to someone who is very opposite in political views. It does explain why it's so hard to find common ground in some subjects, and why our opinions are so often automatic, and why seeing it any other way is so difficult. When you are reading it you realize that "yes, I do do that", but you also find yourself wanting desperately for differing friends to see what you just saw in yourself.
I was young once and conservative, and back then it did seem like most "young conservatives" - the militant, activist guys (who were all guys) - wore bowties, or at least aspired to wear bow-ties, like George Will.
I wore bow ties for years. Not for any particular style but just because I liked them. I know Tucker Carlson yielded to the criticism and quit wearing them. Ritmo complained that my photo was wearing a bow tie so I changed my ID photo. I think maybe the professor that flunked him out of premed wore a bow tie.
Pediatricians should wear bow ties to avoid baby vomit.
In 2016 Trump went to the people out there in middle America and said, It's me and you against the rigged elite system.
Hillary went to the elites and said, It's me and you against all those deplorable people out there in Middle America.
Trump won.
What the Dems and the Never Trumpers have done since has proved that both Trump and Hillary were telling the truth.
Was Ritmo ever on a doc track?
Yowzah.
Maybe my quips about him pillowing out elderly nursing home patients was too apt.
I saw an article in Baron's 30 years ago claiming that it took the average Columbia grad 20 years to start thinking right. As a Columbia alumnus, I would say that sounds about right.
He'd better have video of every moment of interaction with her. The rape accusation is coming any minute.
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