Emma Sulkowicz ("mattress girl") is back — back from a "political journey," back from listening to "centrists, conservatives, libertarians, and whatever Jordan Peterson is — various and sundry souls that Jezebel has canceled, whose names chill dinner conversation across progressive New York."

The Cut reports.

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.”

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.

Kirsten Gillibrand is "running for president, and invoking the language of critical gender theory, she seems to believe, will help her in the primaries."

I'm reading another section of the Andrew Sullivan column I already linked to in the previous post (NY Magazine). Sullivan notes Gillibrand's recent tweet: "Our future is female. Intersectional. Powered by our belief in one another. And we’re just getting started." What's going on there?

Gillibrand’s evolution... has been long in the works — and reveals, I’d say, where the Democrats are going. When Gillibrand was a member of Congress...

He means when she was a member of the House of Representatives, 2007-2009, before she became a Senator. We do use the term "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" for the representatives in the House, but the Senate is part of Congress, so you shouldn't say a Senator isn't a member of Congress. I have never before noticed this usage problem!

... she identified as a Blue Dog conservative Democrat. She once campaigned in defense of gun rights, was in favor of cracking down on illegal immigration, voted against the 2008 bank bailout, and opposed marriage equality...

She first reversed her previous anti-gay positions... By 2015, she invited Emma Sulkowicz to the State of the Union.... Gillibrand, who once opposed allowing illegal immigrants to get driving licenses, is also now a supporter of abolishing ICE.

And, of course, she famously engineered the resignation of one of the more talented Democrats in the Senate, Al Franken, because of a forced stage kiss, allegations of groping, and a photo of him pretending to grab a fellow USO entertainer’s boobs. We won’t ever get to the bottom of all that because Gillibrand demanded Franken’s resignation merely on the basis of allegations, and within a day, Franken had resigned, before the Senate Ethics Committee had finished an investigation. “Enough is enough,” she declared, invoking the “existing power structure of society” to end due process for Franken. 

Does this record explain that tweet? Is the explanation better if you assume she's setting up a run for President? I find that very hard to understand.

Emma Sulkowicz (of "Mattress Performance" fame) has a new gallery show that inquires into Asian-Amercan identity.

The "Mattress Performance" was so much about female identity that perhaps you did not even notice Sulkowicz's ethnic performance... or maybe you thought it would seem anti-Semitic to notice, because you think of Sulkowicz as Jewish. But you were wrong! From HuffPo:

“I realized so many things were related to being an Asian woman. I didn’t report it all because I’m Asian and told not to have emotions and just be successful,” they told HuffPost. “Now I’m having my first show that explores where race really intersects with feminism.”

Asian! It turns out Sulkowicz's mother is half Japanese and half Chinese.

One of the more commanding pieces of their exhibit showcases a banana sliced with a knife, a subversive statement on both gender and race, Sulkowicz explains. The piece is dedicated to their sister and contains a video of her cutting the banana and designating it a phallic symbol. The banana also represents the Asian-American experience.

“Banana is a term for Asians who are too Americanized. That’s a source of vulnerability,” Sulkowicz said, explaining that the knife cutting through the banana comes from a place of anger as well.

“We identify ourselves as angry Asians,” they added.

I had to stop and think about the pronouns. Did that "we" go with "they" and refer only to Sulkowicz, or is Sulkowicz speaking for Asians in general, expressing their anger via penis-cutting? I think it's the latter, because in the first quote, above, Sulkowicz uses "I" repeatedly.

Sulkowicz’s parents are represented in the exhibit, too. A suspended tea ceremony represents their mother, who is half Chinese, half Japanese.... An orb containing a bagel, fixings and iced coffee represents Sulkowicz’s Jewish father’s longstanding Sunday tradition....

Awfully stereotypical objects — tea for Chinese/Japanese and bagel for Jewish.

Sulkowicz describes a bowl containing Cheetos and chopsticks as being inspired their friend, Mae, who is half Chinese and half Japanese. “Mae eats Cheetos with chopsticks. That’s such a boiled-down example of growing up mixed-race Asian in New York. You’re eating American trash but with an Asian tool. It’s a moment I wanted to capture.”

Or Mae doesn't like getting that orange dust on her fingers. Quite sensible to eat Cheetos with chopsticks. Reminds me of how I eat a banana with a knife and fork. And I want to stress that I do that because I like to keep my hands clean, not because I'm expressing hostility toward genders and ethnicities that some people think of when they see a banana.

“It’s hard to be taken seriously as Asian woman in art world,” they said. “I feel highly sexualized. I’m so sick of men who come up to me after a performance and say, ‘Do you think anyone would care about your artwork if you weren’t pretty?’ When will you leave any room for my artwork to speak for itself?”

Sulkowicz tells us what men tell Sulkowicz,  that Sulkowicz is pretty. Why didn't Sulkowicz leave us any room to judge for ourselves — whether Sulkowicz is pretty and whether we should direct our attention to the question whether Sulkowicz is pretty? But I won't take the bait. I'll do what I would have done without being criticized for failing to do, let the artwork speak for itself. It seems to be a collection of obvious stereotypes and heavy-handed symbols that don't really say anything about the large group of individuals that are being aggressively clustered into a set called "Asians."

"Anyone who thinks that the value of 2,000 hogs transcends that of a human soul made in the image of God himself... is so obtuse that likely no argument would be effective in unscrambling the discombobulation within his skull."

The use of the plural pronoun "they" — by the non-gender-binary performance artist Emma Sulkowicz — reminds me (writing in the comments to this post of mine) of the Biblical story of the man who said "My name is Legion... for we are many." Jesus, we're told — in a passage I quote in full — speaks with demons who request and are given permission to relocate into some nearby pigs — 2,000 of them — and the pigs suddenly run into the lake where they drown.

I ask some questions, get few answers, restate questions and get accused of mockery and called stupid by one of the regular commenters. So I look for and find a serious effort at answering some of my questions, which ends with the kiss-off I've used as the post title.

I'm stunned by the horribleness of that statement. For one thing, animal cruelty does matter, and driving 2,000 hogs into a suicidal frenzy is not explained by saying that human beings are more important than animals. For another thing, if you think human beings are so precious, why do you rush to conclude that they are not worth talking to? Human beings are made in the image of God... with scrambled skull contents.

Ugh! What an image. Scrambled brains. Everyone knows you're supposed to fry brains.

"Sulkowicz wants to change behavior, too, but thinks that punishment is more efficacious than tweaks to campus life."

"When Columbia settled the lawsuit filed by the man Sulkowicz accused of rape, it put out a statement, noting that his 'remaining time at Columbia became very difficult for him and not what Columbia would want any of its students to experience.' But Sulkowicz believes that what he went through had a salutary effect. 'He’s been scared shitless,' they said.*... 'It’s about finding a way to make your institution, and the people who run it, more human.'"

From "Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sexual Assault on Campus?/A team of researchers at Columbia believes that small changes to college life could make campuses safer" by Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker.

I'm interested in the enthusiasm for harsh punishment and for deterring bad behavior by scaring people shitless. That's the common stereotype of a right-wing mindset. Most of that New Yorker article is about understanding the behavior of college students and tracking them away from bad sex, that is, looking for root causes, which is the classic mindset of the liberal. Torentino asked Sulkowicz about that approach (which led to a program at Columbia called "SHIFT"):

Sulkowicz had not heard about SHIFT before, and was politely resistant to the idea: “My view in this whole thing is that, the more that Columbia can retreat behind ‘Here’s a program, here’s a study, here’s a process,’ the less that any human that finds themselves in this machine will ever be incentivized to act based on their moral compass.”

What if, I asked, the idea behind the study was tinkering with the machine, figuring out how to reorient that moral compass?

“That makes me think of asking someone to wash the dishes, and they tell you, ‘I’ll try,’” Sulkowicz said. “I think that’s the difference between spending two million dollars to try to understand the conditions that create a community that’s conducive to sexual assault versus just doing the right thing—expelling people who sexually assault other students.”

 That's an attitude I've always heard called right-wing.**
_________________

* I was confused at "they said," even though I'd read, earlier in the article (and had not forgotten) that Sulkowicz "identifies as non-binary, and uses the gender-neutral pronouns 'they' and 'them,'" and I had already struggled with confusion when I read "in the midst of sex, the student anally penetrated and choked them while they struggled and told him to stop" and "carrying a fifty-pound, twin XL mattress around campus... was a performance project: they would stop carrying it, they said, when the student who had raped them was expelled."

** The new thing is to care passionately and be right-wing.

"Columbia is now a safer institution because of Jane Doe’s courage. Jane Doe can proceed in life knowing she made a material difference..."

"... in one of the premier institutions of higher education and meaningfully participated in a cultural moment of significance for all Americans."

Said the lawyer for a woman who sued Columbia University and a professor. There is now a settlement of the case, the NYT reports in "Columbia Professor Retires in Settlement of Sexual Harassment Lawsuit." Notice the highlighting of the claim against the professor.

[A]n anonymous graduate student filed a lawsuit against [Dr. William V. Harris, a renowned Greco-Roman historian and longtime professor at Columbia University,] alleging that he had kissed and groped her repeatedly while he was her academic mentor, and then disparaged her to colleagues when she rebuffed his advances. 

But I'm more interested in the claim against the university "for what she called its 'deliberate indifference' to her complaints about him." The professor is gone now. Columbia University remains. It's relatively easy to de-activate the individual predator, but the institution lives on, replacing the de-activated predator with new potential predators, and what has changed? What was even wrong in the first place?

Professor Harris is 79 years old. Who knows what he's admitted he did and whether he considers it wrong? Moving him into retirement isn't much of a change, but enough was done to appease "Jane Doe," apparently. And the NYT presents the case in terms of the old man's retirement. But if you read to the end, you can see some coverage of the dissatisfaction among graduate students. One student observes that retirement isn't much of a consequence for Harris — "He shouldn’t get to retire... He should be fired." And:

"[I]t’s not enough and it certainly doesn’t change the culture that allowed him to thrive and continue to abuse his graduate students over the course of decades... There is a fervent desire to view this as an isolated instance rather than symptomatic of a culture that deprecates women and doesn’t take the concerns seriously.”

I absolutely agree with that. What has Columbia changed about itself? From an earlier NYT article about this lawsuit:

Columbia’s handling of sexual misconduct accusations has come under fire before, most prominently after an undergraduate student carried a mattress around campus for a year in protest after the university cleared a man she said had raped her. In July, Columbia settled a lawsuit that the man, Paul Nungesser, had filed over the university’s treatment of him; Columbia said it would review its policies.

It's not easy to figure out what the policies should be, as the case of the 2 students —  Paul Nungesser and Emma Sulkowicz — showed. You can't just pick a side and lean heavily in that direction. The answer should have something to do with paying attention to the evidence and figuring out a fair resolution. But what happened in one particular student interaction is a very different problem from a professor who goes on for years and years exerting power over students. I'd like to see a lot more from Columbia than that it's reviewing its policies.

"He is dressing in drag as me? And carrying a mattress? He'll get a sense of how it feels. That's fantastic."

"I hope he carries a real one, and doesn't cop out with an air mattress."

Okay, good. Maybe everybody has a sense of humor now. Wouldn't that be cool?

"Milo Yiannopoulos watches Emma Sulkowicz's new sex tape so you don't have to."

Writes Instapundit, who includes 4 paragraphs of Yiannopoulos's Breitbart article. I've read Instapundit, so does that mean I don't have to read Yiannopoulos? Can I get 2 layers of protection? I don't want to watch any porn, let alone some young feminist artist's self-porn. I'm no Sulkowicz fan, but from what Instapundit includes, I'm no Yiannopoulos fan either:

It’s revealing of her vanity that she insists on being filmed from four angles. Every crevasse of her unappealing naked body must be considered. Her congressional interlocutor is a gruesome sight in three dimensions, chosen, probably, to make young Emma look thinner. Which doesn’t work, I’m sorry to say.... But you do at least have to give an actress credit for doing nude scenes with a man who has larger breasts than she does....

I'm not entertained by the straining at humor that comes in the form of jocose phraseology like "congressional interlocutor." And criticism of Sulkowicz's body is counterproductive to any point worth making. But I do click over there and funnily enough I see that I still have 2 layers of protection. Yiannopoulos begins:

In preparing for this review, my researcher had to watch Emma Sulkowicz, a.k.a. “Mattress Girl,” perform fellatio on an overweight man eleven times. He tells me that he is now seriously considering homosexuality.

So Yiannopoulos did not watch Emma Sulkowicz's new sex tape so we don't have to. Yiannopoulos got an assistant to do the scut work. Why reveal that you don't do your own research? Apparently, it's to get off a stupid (and very old joke) about homosexuality.

ADDED: I see that Yiannopoulos identifies himself as "a queer." That makes the joke about "considering homosexuality" seem less homophobic and the criticism of the woman's body... different. And I'm puzzled about whether Yiannopoulos watched some or all of the video along with the male heterosexual assistant who — for reasons I don't quite understand — "had to watch" Sulkowicz "perform fellatio" 11 times. Did Yiannopoulos force the man to watch the video? Did he force him to watch it 11 times or did Sulkowicz perform fellatio 11 times in one video? I'm assuming it's one or the other of those 2 options because 11 is a prime number. I'm confused! I can't believe I got myself mired in something I was trying to avoid. I don't watch porn and I don't like to hear the details of what's in porn (unless it's on the level of David Foster Wallace in "Big Red Son").

IN THE COMMENTS: I wrote:

Based on those articles in Breitbart and The Daily Caller and some of these comments, I suspect that Sulkowicz's performance art isn't so much the video, but the commentary that will come out around it. She's making this happen. You are performing as anticipated. Enjoy being part of the show, you knuckleheads.

"Columbia sex-attack accuser, who carried mattress around campus to protest against her 'rapist', creates new work 'renacting' violent sex called: 'This is not rape.'"

"Emma Sulkowicz's new work, 'Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol' or 'This is not a rape', shows the 22-year-old engaging in consensual sexual contact with an unidentified man before it takes a dark twist."

As predicted, many of the commenters on the piece slammed her for her decision to make it, saying it was in poor taste. 'Why did you have to go and ruin a man's life if all you wanted to do was make porn?' one quizzed.

But others jumped to her defense, with one writing: 'Don't listen to the haters Emma. We believe you. This is just another case of straight white males denying women's lived experiences.'

"Have We Learned Anything From the Columbia Rape Case?"

This is a longish NYT Magazine article by Emily Bazelon. Is there anything new here or is this more of a summary of a problem — a conflict — that those of us who've been following the story already know?

1. How Nungesser's parents felt at graduation: It was "devastating," they say, "especially... an exhibition at a university gallery...  that included Sulkowicz’s prints of a naked man with an obscenity and of a couple having sex, inked over a copy of a Times article about Nungesser." I'm a little confused by the word "prints." Prints like etchings or lithographs? Sulkowicz — in email (I think to Bazelon) — called the "prints" "cartoons."

2. Sulkowicz's email gives some insight into the kind of rhetoric she is purveying: "What are the functions of cartoons? Do they depict the people themselves (a feat which, if you’ve done enough reading on art theory, you will realize is impossible), or do they illustrate the stories that have circulated about a person?" Suddenly, I'm thinking about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other incidents involving cartoons depicting Muhammad. Maybe those who get murderous over cartoons just haven't read enough art theory. And I'm put off by the assertion that if only people would read the right amount of a prescribed sort of material, we'd necessarily believe a particular sort of thing. It's saying: The only reason you don't already agree with me is that you're ignorant.

3.  And I don't even understand how those 2 sentences in Sulkowicz's email addressed the pain experienced by Nungesser's parents. Aside from the parenthetical, which is an assertion, the 2 sentences are 2 questions, but the first question sets up the second question, and the second question is an either/or question, within which the first option is negated by the assertion in the parenthetical. Therefore, Sulkowicz really is saying her cartoons "illustrate the stories that have circulated about a person." So her art work is an illustration added to a NYT story that gives graphic reality to the allegations that were made about Nungesser.

4. I wrote "gives graphic reality to" because I was straining to avoid the word that normally comes to mind: depict. Not having read enough art theory to realize that it is impossible to depict Nungesser himself, I thought the use of that word might make me look ignorant to those who have done the homework. But, for the record, "depict" means "To draw, figure, or represent in colours; to paint; also, in wider sense, to portray, delineate, figure anyhow." Anyhow! As in "The solar progress is depicted by the Hindoos, by a circle of intertwining serpents." R. J. Sulivan View of Nature II. xliv. 288  (1794). (Definition and quote via the unlinkable OED.)

5. Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger avoided shaking Sulkowicz's hand at graduation and the university has taken the position that it wasn't actual shunning but the mattress getting in the way. Bazelon doesn't come out and call bullshit, but she links to the video so we can decide for ourselves.

6. Because we don't have the transcript of Columbia's disciplinary proceedings, "even the procedural disputes between Sulkowicz and Nungesser are lost in the land of she-said-he-said." Sulkowicz says she was asked "ignorant and insensitive questions." (That's Bazelon's paraphrase.) But we're not seeing the actual context. And Sulkowicz and Nungesser are saying different things about whether their friendly Facebook conversations were admitted as evidence. It's frustrating to have this matter become so public — through Sulkowicz's performance art — and then be deprived of the transcript, but Columbia has to protect student privacy and to encourage other students to feel secure that their privacy will be protected if they need to file a complaint or if they are accused.

7. Columbia is trying to improve its procedure: "Students are now permitted to bring a lawyer to their hearings, and if they can’t afford an attorney, the university will provide one. The university also hired new investigators and other staff members and gave training on how to hear cases to the administrators who serve as panelists."

8. Sulkowicz says "the system is broken because it is so much based on proof that a lot of rape survivors don’t have." And: "Even if you have physical evidence, you can prove that violence occurred but not that someone didn’t want the sex to be violent." Presumably, she wants to fix the system by avoiding the need to prove things that are too hard to prove. Here, that would be the mental element that accompanies the sexual act. But how can you possibly get rid of the need for that evidence?

9. Some people say, get rape cases out of university proceedings and into the criminal justice system. Bazelon's response to that is: "[I]n the eyes of the government, universities have this responsibility because of an important principle rooted in the federal law, Title IX: If a rape prevents a victim from taking full advantage of her education, then it is a civil rights violation as well as a crime." Quite aside from what statutory law requires, universities may properly see themselves as having a role in making the campus environment a safer and friendlier place. Bazelon refers to counseling, academic accommodations, assurances that alleged assailants won’t contact complainants, and education about prevention of sexual assaults.

10. Bazelon mentions early on that Nungesser is suing Columbia, but she doesn't connect that to other issues she discusses. She doesn't say that his lawsuit is based on Title IX (though, as you see in point #9, she says that Title IX causes universities to want to remain involved in providing remedies to victims). And she talks about Bollinger's avoidance of Sulkowicz at graduation (point #5, above) without saying that Bollinger is a named defendant in Nungesser's lawsuit.

"It was unclear whether Sulkowicz would be able to bring her mattress to graduation..."

"... after Columbia's administration emailed seniors on Monday: 'Graduates should not bring into the ceremonial area large objects which could interfere with the proceedings or create discomfort to others in close, crowded spaces shared by thousands of people.'... However, Sulkowicz appears to have brought her mattress to graduation...."

It's his mattress too.

"He has gotten used to former friends crossing the street to avoid him."

He has even gotten used to being denounced as a rapist on fliers and in a rally in the university’s quadrangle. Though his name is not widely known beyond the Morningside Heights campus, Mr. Nungesser is one of America’s most notorious college students. His reputation precedes him. His notoriety is the result of a campaign by Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who says Mr. Nungesser raped her in her dorm room two years ago. Columbia cleared him of responsibility in that case, as well as in two others that students brought against him. Outraged, Ms. Sulkowicz began carrying a 50-pound mattress wherever she went on campus, to suggest the painful burden she continues to bear....

He says that he is innocent, and that the same university that found him “not responsible” has now abdicated its own responsibility, letting mob justice overrule its official procedures. The mattress project is not an act of free expression, he adds; it is an act of bullying, a very public, very personal and very painful attack designed to hound him out of Columbia. And it is being conducted with the university’s active support. “There is a member of the faculty that is supervising this,” he said. “This is part of her graduation requirement.”

He plays the bullying card.