Dear mattress girl,

Yes, Emma Sulkowicz, when the media and celebrities go away you will still be mattress girl claiming you represent a cause.  Misrepresent a cause really.  Here is reality.  For the rest of your life you are that girl who is carrying a mattress and doing so to ruin an innocent man. You claim that you want to fix the problem of sexual assault on campus. Yet instead of asking for better processes and more resources to help rape victims or trying to teach college aged men and women to act better and maybe addressing such things as binge drinking and safe party attendance, you are playing street theater. And to make it worse, to further the agenda you believe, you want to define what you want truth to be and have it be so. Sounds to me that your ideal is something like a court in Daesh town where women are raped then shot for being raped. Except this is a man who is accused and is considered guilty until proven innocent and you do not want the latter to happen. Because the message overrides any truth or justice. Ian Tuttle in National Review quotes you as saying the following.

“If we use proof in rape cases,” said Sulkowicz, “we fall into the patterns of rape deniers.” Yet it also trafficked in high-sounding maxims composed of that mélange of pseudo-academic, quasi-mystical jargon that passes today for profundity: “In saying I expose the truth, the viewer superimposes their truth upon mine, and once again silences me.” “Well-meaning people on the street will touch me reverently. . . . They do not believe they are violating me with their hands.” “When people engage in believing in me, they objectify me.”

Really? If we use proof in rape cases we are rape deniers? You are silenced by being told you expose the truth? People walking by you in a large urban area when you carry a giant mattress and who engage you in conversation and touch the ginormous mattress violate you and objectify you? What exactly did you expect to happen when you started street theater? Surely it was not making it easier for the women and men who do report rape to the cops have the rapist off the street. Surely it is not helping us with night terrors, nightmares and flashbacks. It is not making it easier to sleep somewhere away from home without terror and chemicals. No it is all about you Mattress girl.

Columbia was using the evidence from both sides to build a case if one was warranted. The university could not make a case for expulsion based on your statements, your friends’ statements and the accused’s statements. In other words, there was not sufficient proof for the university and not enough evidence for the Manhattan DA to prosecute. In other words cupcake, your street theater and games make it even harder to have their rapist in court and have a jury convict said rapist. Even with evidence sufficient for an indictment.

When asked by reporters for information about the evidence you claim there is for a life altering charge, you replied:

“I have already been violated by both Paul and Columbia University once. It is extremely upsetting that Paul would violate me again — this time, with the help of a reporter, Cathy Young. I just wanted to fix the problem of sexual assault on campus — I never wanted this to be an excuse for people to dig through my private Facebook messages and frame them in a way as to cast doubt on my character. It’s unfair and disgusting that Paul and Cathy would treat personal life as a mine that they can dig through and harvest for publicity and Paul’s public image.”

Wait a doggone minute: YOU are the one who walked around in a public arena with a mattress on your back. YOU are the one who made the statements about a guy who you claimed raped you and want to get the truth out according to you. However, truth is something messy and investigating means looking at the evidence and coming up with a result. The result was not what you wanted to hear so street theater with the mattress ensued. And all that does is makes it harder to try the accused rapists in a court of law. But Mattress girl gets her media time and that is all she cares about. Ian Tuttle was right.

Has it never occurred to Sulkowicz or her defenders that, as rape is a serious matter, accusing someone of rape is also serious? And that to go public with life-altering accusations is by definition to submit one’s own private life to scrutiny? That seems unlikely. Far more likely is that they simply wish it were otherwise, and so pretend that it is. What Sulkowicz wants is to make claims about another person that cannot be challenged, checked, questioned, or doubted.

If you put someone else’s life out on the public stage, be ready for yours to join them. The same level of scrutiny you want to give your accusers is also for you and your words, deeds and actions. Please stop clowning and claiming to represent victims. You represent an irresponsible me centered agenda driven group of liars and that is not victims. Victims deserve better.  THIS is how you help victims:  provide them a place to tell their story to a safe listener and work with a group like RAINN.