Why would I go through the effort: You have already come to this thread admitting that you haven't really read what was posted. Maybe if you were to do that, it could educate you on not jumping to conclusions.
I think that people should generally not try to change the mind of the hopelessly stubborn. What they should concern themselves with is to ensure that the crazy folks among the hopelessly stubborn (viz: the rape culture crowd) do not mess with the law (like the American Law Institute has been trying to do by introducing "yes means yes" in real court of laws) or any other thing that can potentially negatively affect them.
I'll give durvasa one more opportunity to read up on this: http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2015/06/did-mattress-girl-tell-the-truth-not-very-likely/
What have I said thus far to make you think I'm being hopelessly stubborn? I haven't settled on any position yet. I don't think I even responded to the poll. What I said is that her mattress and sex tape projects, as bizarre/eccentric as they might seem, tell us very little about the truth of her accusation. For people that are already convinced she's lying, I can understand the fascination with it -- "wow, she really is crazy!" For the rest of us who haven't yet decided if she's lying, frankly its a distraction. I read the Daily Beast and Jezebel articles. I came away from them without a strong position on whether she was actually raped or not. I will read ATW's linked article in his recent post, and perhaps that will help me understand where the "she's obviously a lying, crazy b****!" crowd are coming from.
I would disagree with that. If a woman was really traumatized by a rape as brutal as she described it to be, do you think that one likely reaction is to hire a fetish p*rn actor to re-enact the alleged rape, including actual intercourse? Really? Add to that, among many other things, the facts that she told him in writing (out of the blue) to "**** her in the butt" and that, for months after the alleged rape, she would write to the guy in a very friendly tone, telling him she loved him, etc., and it just all doesn't add up to what any actual rape victim would ever do. (Also, and many would probably disagree with this, but it would not surprise me that much if a child of two psychiatrists turns out to be crazy.)
There's something called credibility and in a, as you said, "he said/ she said" situation I tend to rather side with the more credible story. And a girl who claims that she was so traumatised that she could not pursue the matter with the police (itself a bold-faced lie since her case was actually considered and then rejected by the local prosecutor because of...no credibility) but finds no issue trawling a 50 kg mattress all over campus and making a hardcore, non-fappable p*rn video about it is the very definition of a lack of credibility.
I read the article. Took notes, even! "... in an alleged rape case that attracted international attention and scrutiny, we are mostly left with he said/she said accounts ..." She remarks that the accusation made could have been proven, and it been reported immediately. But since the accusation came late, there was no hard evidence to back up her claim. She takes issue with Sulkowicz on the following: 1. Her insistence that the University find the student guilty without the evidence to back it up. 2. for violating the confidentiality of the process while it was under investigation. 3. disobeying university rules regarding the graduation ceremony about not bringing large objects She takes exception to the media coverage, presuming the guilt of the accused. She says present day media coverage is more balanced and that there are two sides. She states "the truth is this story is ultimately unknowable", but tries clarify what are the known facts of the case. She expresses skepticism of Sulkowicz's account that it was an extremely brutal assault, since no one noticed anything visibly wrong with her in the aftermath. She suggests its possible something ambiguous happened which Sulkowicz subsequently felt crossed the line to rape and she embellished it make it seem more violent than it was. She notes that she made some conflicting statements on who she told and when about the incident. Its hard to make too much out of that without going throught the lawsuit notes directly. Regarding the fact there there were multiple accusations of rape from different people, she says Nungesser's side thinks its because of a vendetta against him based on a belief that he raped Sulkowicz. She mentions that one of the other female accusers, Natalie, may not have been actually raped, but rather she was depressed during the time and felt like she had to have sex with him when she didn't really want to. Another accuser, Josie, may have been indeed sexually assaulted by Nungesser, but its not close to the same level as what Sulkowicz is alleging. And she apparently did not even consider it as sexual assault until she learned about the rape accusation. She dismisses the accusation by Adam as clearly fabricated. She speculates that these accusations might have been inspired by the media coverage of "rape culture" on campuses; the accusers reinterpreted what happened to them as being rape when it was something more innocuous. In light of all this, she ends by saying that Nungesser should be given the benefit of reasonable doubt in the court of public opinion. Did I miss anything important in the article? My takeaways are: Sulkowicz is likely lying about how physically violent her encounter with Nungesser was that night Sulkowicz is wrongly demanding punishment when there is insufficient evidence to back up her claims The media should have been more responsible in relaying both sides of the story That said, I will quote directly from her article: [rquoter]Is Sulkowicz a “false accuser”? We don’t know that. It’s possible that something ambiguous happened between her and Nungesser that night—something that she later came to see as coercive and embellished with violent details. But I would say the odds of her account being factually true are very low.[/rquoter] So, the author states it is possible her accusation isn't completely false but instead embellished (presumably to attract more attention and get people to listen to her). What actually happened and exactly how far over the line it crossed we can't know.
Thanks. I appreciate your rational approach to discussion, Mr. Spock . Yes, like in pretty much any rape case. Maybe she felt later that, in the heat of the moment, he was a little more vigorous than she would have liked. Even that is questionable giving her conversations with him afterwards as well as her hiring a fetish p*rn actor to bonk her. But even if that were the case, does it justify her smear campaign against the guy? Nope.
The question is whether beta german guy raped mattress girl. It's either yes or no. Cathy Young is merely saying that she can't assert 100% that Mattress Girl is lying not that what transpired was "rape-rape" (to quote earstwhile criminologist Whoopi Goldberg) instead of "full-blown rape".
I think her "art" pieces do give some insight into her mind and mental state. Most rape victims aren't as open and displaying their rape to the world. But, looking at all of it in a vacuum, the messages and her actions after the alleged incident are enough evidence to get the sense that she's a jilted lover and doesn't have much credibility.
When she says it might have been "ambiguous", I think she is referring to something similar to "rape rape" (if I understand the meaning of that term). What else would that mean? Even if she isn't willing to go so far as to say what might have happened is "rape rape", based on the facts she laid out I don't see why that should be ruled out.
I don't think that you realise that the joke is that there is no such things as rape-rape. That's the reason Whoopi Goldberg was pilloried. There is either consent to have sex or there isn't. The issue is not whether the encounter was violent but whether there was consent: we don't generally discrimate against those who like BDSM. The facts are that for someone who had sex against her will, mattress girl behaved in completely contradictory ways. Retro-actively removing consent through recollections months later is more precisely described as regret sex.
I'm not aware of Whoopi Goldberg's comments on rape. "Consent to have sex or there isn't" -- well yeah, that's the gist of it, but an encounter can start consensual and end up non-consensual. Moreover, whether it ended up non-consensual or not could be unclear. Maybe she didn't make it clear enough to him that she is not OK with what he's doing, or maybe she did and he didn't listen hard enough. Does the latter qualify as rape? I assume this is the ambiguity Cathy Young speaks of.
Her messages to him after the fact indicate that she didn't think it was "rape" at the time. She didn't think it was rape for several months after the fact, then she changed her mind. There is no evidence that the encounter was ever non-consensual....well at least it wasn't for several months. I think comparing this case to incidents where rape actually occurs is harmful to real victims.
"...but an encounter can start consensual and end up non-consensual..." Then it was indeed rape. Not "rape-rape" "...Maybe she didn't make it clear enough to him that she is not OK with what he's doing, or maybe she did and he didn't listen hard enough..." Contrarily to "Yes means Yes" advocates with Victorian-like attitudes to sex and like most sane people, I believe that adult women have agency and are well capable of making there will known. Particularly women who unhesistantly propose to be bonked in da butt. And this is really irrelevant anyway as if the beta german guy really forced himself on her, then her subsequent actions and interactions with him was completely contradictory. If you are instead suggesting that Mattress Girl unexplicably reinterpreted the whole thing nearly 10 months later and "realised" that she actually did not really consented is a plausible idea to entertain, then this discussion is going down a blind alley.
So if a woman doesn't make her will known clearly enough so the person she's with gets the message, would you say its her fault? That's not what I'm suggesting. The girl explained the context of her interactions with him in that article posted on jezebel.com. She claims she was confused on what happened to her. Unless you have a lot of experience dealing with rape victims, I don't think you're in any position to definitively assert that is not something a rape victim could plausibly go through. She claimed she was trying to remain cordial and wanted to talk it through, but at the same time was afraid to do so. I'm not saying it was totally rational on her part. But why should we expect people, particularly potential rape victims, to be completely rational? Again, not saying she was raped. Maybe she made up the whole thing, and the guy is completely innocent. I could see that. I could also see that he crossed a line, and it took a while for the girl to conclude in her mind that what he did was really not OK. And when she did come to that conclusion, she became increasingly angry about it to the point she exaggerated what happened, did the mattress thing, etc. And this would not be inconsistent with the facts in Cathy Young's article.
"So if a woman doesn't make her will known clearly enough so the person she's with gets the message, would you say its her fault?" Yes. You can make your feelings known. You instead choose to go along by continuing to have sex. That's your problem. "She claims she was confused on what happened to her." Confused? Remain cordial? She professsed her love to him and enthusiastically agreed to bring friends to a sex party at the guy's place MONTHS AFTER the alleged rape. Mattress Girl, a mentally disturbed person from an opulent back-ground at an IVY league college is trying to pass herself off as a martyred victim of abuse held captive by her abuser that does not know better. Sorry, but that pig won't fly: the issue is not whether she is a perfect victim but whether she is a victim of something at all.
