When the media’s gaze is upon you, it’s difficult to change your mind.
This week, New York magazine’s The Cut published an article titled, “Did Emma Sulkowicz Get Redpilled?” The story chronicles the political awakening of 27-year-old Sulkowicz, who became famous in 2014 for dragging her mattress around Columbia University’s campus to protest the university’s handling of her alleged sexual assault.
The act of performance art, dubbed Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), became a flash point for a national conversation about campus sexual assault. Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York even invited her to the State of the Union address in 2015.
Gillibrand was criticized for the invitation, and not everyone saw Sulkowicz’s performance as powerful. “Mattress girl,” as Sulkowicz had come to be known by the media, lacked the evidence to back up her claim, leading Columbia to drop her complaint against a fellow student. Some writers saw her “performance art” as an act of vengeance.
While Sulkowicz’s supporters and detractors have typically found themselves separating down partisan lines, the lines have now crossed. About politics, Sulkowicz says she’s recently changed her mind. The magazine explains, “Sulkowicz hasn’t been redpilled; she’s still a feminist and an advocate for survivors of sexual assault. What’s changed is her posture.”
And what about her posture has changed? She now listens to Jordan Peterson. She attended Reason writer Robby Soave’s book party for Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump. In the book, Soave writes critically of Sulkowicz.
Yet, she has recently found herself engaging with many libertarians and conservatives, whom she never would have spent time with before. She met Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie, and despite the outlet running critical coverage of her, she says she’s not angry: “I’ve done a lot of self-work to get to the place where I don’t need to have vengeance.”
In response to her supposed “redpilling,” many on the Left were disappointed with Sulkowicz, claiming her lack of class-consciousness had led to a subservience to civility politics. Others on the Right expressed frustration that despite Sulkowicz’s newly libertarian understanding of consent, she had still subjected the man who she claimed raped her to national scrutiny and scorn.
Without placing judgments on the truth of Sulkowicz’s claims, it’s worth noting why Sulkowicz has decided she no longer wants to fit into a fourth-wave feminist box.
“As I became more and more feminist,” she said, “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.”
Now she wants to listen to their perspective — not just men, but others she has disagreed with.
The most remarkable part of the story, though perhaps not the most surprising, is that Sulkowicz says she didn’t even know a conservative until last year. Putting everything else aside, it’s incredible that someone who became so vocal on political issues could know so little about the other side. But this is not uncommon, especially on the Left.
The Cut explains, “In the past, Sulkowicz dismissed opposing views without understanding them, but now she sees intellectual curiosity as intertwined with respect: she wants to disagree with people on their own terms.”
If anyone wants to accomplish something politically, at least that much is necessary. It’s bizarre that any readers are offended by that idea. Then again, those who oppose bipartisan dialogue probably weren’t trying to change minds in the first place.
