(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The first thing that strikes one when standing in front of the large entrance to Columbia University is that this is a place of great thought. The buildings are majestic, and you can almost feel the solemnity of the ceremony in the cherry trees on campus. On the left, one American flag and one pale blue flag with a white crown on, Columbia's trademark, waving from the flagpoles in front of the Low Library. Now in the summer everything seems to be harmonious. Happy young people sunbathing on the stairs in front of Alma Mater. Their youthful hope shines. It's not weird. Many of them live on the sunny side of life. Since its foundation in 1754, this university has hatched no fewer than three presidents, nine Supreme Court judges and 43 Nobel laureates.
But beneath the glossy surface of elitism and success, dark secrets are hidden. Not all students have equal study time. One of them is Emma Sulkowicz. She claims that a fellow student raped her during her first year of study. In 2013, she appealed to him for a university council that enforces internal guidelines on sexual offenses. During a secret, closed hearing in October 2013, the council declared that the fellow student was not responsible. In response, since last fall, Sulkowicz has carried around a blue mattress similar to the one she was alleged to have been raped. The performance – which also goes by the name Carry That Weight - was Sulkowicz's final project in visual art. The message from Sulkowicz was clear: “It may take a day or until I graduate. He should be expelled. Until that happens, I'm going to carry the mattress with me, ”she told Columbia Spectator University newspaper last year.
The fellow student, for his part, believes that mattress activism has ruined his study time and career opportunities. In April, he brought a case against Columbia for gender discrimination. Sulkowicz, on the other hand, says that performance is primarily a political protest, and a way to show the world the weight of the trauma of rape victims.
Activism. Sulkowicz did not succeed in getting him dismissed. When she, along with thousands of other cloak-dressed fellow students, received her diploma during a solemn ceremony last week, she had the mattress under her arm.
Columbia University, like 94 other universities, is now under federal investigation for violating Title IX – a law that bans gender discrimination in the education system. Ironically, both Sulkowicz and her fellow student have resorted to the same legal instrument. While she and 23 other women formulated a complaint to the US Department of Education, he has hired a profiled lawyer to represent him.
As in many other rape cases, there are irreconcilable fronts between those who unequivocally side with Sulkowicz and those who defend the accused: pretty little liar ». In comment fields on online newspapers and blogs, she is described as a "fucking pussy" and a "self-absorbed whore". Several believe that Sulkowicz and her allies in the activist organizations No Red Tape og Know Your IX spoils the good reputation of the elite university.
And to some extent that is also true. The activists use many tools and engage in widespread civil disobedience. During the visiting week for future students this spring, they projected the messages "Rape happens here" and "Columbia protects rapists" on the administration building on campus. Last year, they also threw 28 mattresses outside President Lee Bollinger's house. Many of the actions are perceived as vandalism, and are a stone in the shoe of the administration that fears losing income from future students.
Brotherhood. It has been an interesting experience to follow the course of the battle from the sidelines this semester. There is a special chapter in American feminist history being written now. In connection with a screening of the documentary The Hunting Ground a few weeks ago, professor Anne McClintock at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said that it is completely unique for nineteen-year-old women to challenge 200-year-old institutions of power. A large part of the actions take place at the prestigious Ivy League universities, which have been the center of a lot of manpower throughout the ages. Many male politicians have been involved in so-called fraternities Student organizations for men (from Latin frater, which means "brother") – which often organizes parties where they give women drunk to have sex with them. There are strong forces, all the way into Congress, that have an interest in obscuring how many abuses are taking place in these fraternity groups. Often the university does not address issues that involve popular sports stars. There's too much money at stake.
We're dealing with one brotherhood policy, where powerful men hold hands over each other. Sometimes the brothers resort to extreme measures. Several women in the documentary say that they have experienced being threatened with death. In 2010, a group of fratboys from George W. Bush's old fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon marched around Yale shouting "No means yes, yes means anal!"
Pain and anger. Some American feminists, on the other hand, do not go out of their way for militant means either. Last year around this time, for example, lists of four named men were hung up on Columbia's toilets. The term "predator", or predator, also abounds frequently, especially in the film The Hunting Ground.
There is a special chapter in American feminist history being written now.
Last week, Norway lost one of its great bauts in criminology. Nils Christie is particularly known for a text from 1986, in which he deals with society's stereotypes about real abusers and victims. He writes, among other things, that it is paradoxical that those who fear crime the most are often the ones who are least exposed to it. Christie's big life project was also to focus on evil deeds instead of evil people. If one does not try to see and understand – really understand – the person behind the action, there is little hope of prevention. I have thought a lot about Nils Christie this spring while I have seen how the political struggle for rape unfolds in the United States, and the way people talk about abusers.
I have mixed feelings. Although I understand on the one hand how frustrating it must be for the victims not to get through, it is also frightening to see how short a path there can sometimes be between seemingly progressive feminists and supporters of the death penalty. The rhetorical dehumanization is striking in both camps. There is so much pain and anger.
Look past the stereotypes. The same form of dehumanization was also present in the historical lynching of black men who had sexual relations with white women. Between 1889 and 1918, 2472 black men were lynched, and killings continued well into the 1960s, primarily in the Southern States. Castration was common. Sometimes men had to eat their own genitals before being hanged. Such unworthy treatment is only exposed to animals, predators who deserve it.
The most difficult thing about rape today is hardly that it is so taboo. I think it's really difficult to find a language beyond the clichés of worthy victims and monstrous, predatory abusers. A language that only comes from an abyss of pain and a desire for revenge, hardly helps us. It is imperative that we create and acquire this language. Without it, we are only left with an ugly perpetrator stereotype that no one will ever admit that they have anything in common with. Then we will have a society with far too many bystanders who do not intervene when injustice is committed.
Or as the recently deceased Nils Christie wrote in the book Small words for big questions: "If we want a community of participants, we must have a language that makes participation possible."
Anne Bitsch is a social geographer and permanent columnist in Ny Tid.
Visiting researcher on Columbia University in the spring of 2015.
