Anonymous asked: i thought there was proof that emma sulkowicz lied? idk i just heard that somewhere..

No.

Let’s not play that game.

There are people out there calling Sulkowickz a liar because that’s what rape culture is all about: heaping shame and blame on those who come forward in an attempt to silence the reality of sexual assault and moreover, to perpetuate it.

Law enforcement, friends, family and communities all participate in this perpetuation. Calling survivors “liars” is a way to ensure that future victims don’t want to speak up, which in turn allows rapists to continue assaulting others because it becomes clear to them that even if someone does speak out it will be easily dismissed.

Rape and sexual assault are the only crimes in which the victim is routinely the only one put on trial. That’s inexcusable.

False reports of rape make up only 2-8% of all reports. Some are so concerned with this number that they completely ignore the fact that 68% of assaults are never reported to the police.



Consider that for a minute. A staggering number of assaults are never even reported but people refuse to give credence to that because it’s far more important to them to find the small number of people who are “lying”. THAT is rape culture.





And let’s not forget that there are hundreds of thousands of rape kits backlogged sitting in storage rooms, insuring that even if a survivor reports a rape and goes through the secondary assault of a rape kit, it will probably not be used for the intended purpose of preventing future assaults and getting rapists off the streets.



The cost of our preoccupation with disbelieving survivors is too great to ignore. To refuse to believe survivors not only adds to the trauma of their assault, but it actively allows rape to continue to happen on such a sweeping scale.

When a survivor speaks out about their assault, be it to friends and family, to the police or to the nation, we owe it to them and to ourselves as a society to believe them.

-Spider-