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Sulkowicz’s mattress gambit brought explosive notoriety to the case. Nungesser considers the mattress harassment, and that certainly is the view from where I sit. The affair has brought Nungesser social media abuse and threats. A Tumblr post circulating last September reads, “The name of Emma Sulkowicz’s rapist is Jean-Paul Nungesser. Don’t let him have any feeling of anonymity or security. Rapists don’t get the luxury of feeling comfortable.”

Apparently non-rapists don’t have the luxury of feeling comfortable either, once they have been accused, even when the accusation comes from someone clearly obsessed with the spotlight and, it would appear, “issues” with intimacy and attachment. The media couldn’t get enough of her accusations, but none of the major media asked Nungesser for his side of the story. Shades of Rolling Stone magazine’s recent journalistic debacle! He might have told them, amongst other things, that as the son of enlightened parents – father a teacher, mother a journalist – he was brought up with the greatest of respect for women. As he eventually told the New York Times, “My mother raised me as a feminist.”

Feminist or not, it is of course conceivable that Nungesser is guilty of something. But of what? It’s worth reading the long, detailed and meticulously annotated Daily Beast article. If you do, I am pretty certain most reasonable observers will give the benefit of the doubt to Nungesser, and come to believe there is something very narcissistic, and very wrong in Emma Sulkowicz’s perception of reality. Perhaps her future adventures will provide more enlightenment in terms of a pattern of behaviour.

All we can know for sure is that Sulkowicz had her day in “court” and lost, but because she is a woman with a dramatic story of sexual victimhood and people can’t get enough of rape culture, however innocent the man in the story may be in fact, in the court of public opinion, he will never win. Unless, of course, the media start doing their job on rape-culture file, and our cultural elites give their heads a giant shake to get rid of the irrational moral panic that is taking up the space where reason belongs.

National Post