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College Students And Famous Blogger Covertly Shoot 'Pornographic' Shock Film In Columbia University's Butler Library To Protest Sexism

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All the author names on Columbia University's library are men, a fact that's long offended the school's feminist wing (and recently, self-described sex blogger/Vogue contributor Karley Sciortino) and has inspired one group to create an ominously themed "pornographic" film in its structure, Campus Reform reported.

The video, featuring at least one Columbia student and an undergrad from Barnard (five women in total) and posted in full on Gawker (among other sites), is more graphic than you'd expect by college undergrads and within the walls of any Ivy League library, but on par with Sciortino's work. The 26 year-old started the now heavily followed blog "Slutever" in 2007 while living in London with a large group of twenty-something year olds like herself.

"It was the sort of house where it wasn't out of the ordinary to come home to a living room full of naked people on DMT having ritualistic sex, or a homeless Romanian family baking bread in the kitchen," Sciortino said in an interview with the web site dlso.com, which of course stands for "Dance Like Shaquille O'Neal. "Literally, both of those things happened. "

According to Ivy Gate, Sciortino first approached Columbia undergrad and art history major Coco Young (labeled "the artist" by Sciortino) about a video-based protest of the perceived sexism behind Butler Library's all male honorees. Without approval from the school, and with nonchalant consent from those still working in the library late on Saturday night, Young, Sciortino, and others quickly shot the film with Go Pro cameras, blocking off the more graphic shots and making sure to clean up afterwards, such as after the scene when the women rubbed eggs over their naked bodies. Obviously, the three minute short was not intended to arouse, but to provoke, disgust, and exaggerate.

The point of the film, according to Young, isn't an outright protest against Columbia, but a protest against the behavior expected of women and people in general. It makes more than a few references to fraternities and sororities, including its title, "INITIATIØN."

Young said the film is also a pathway into discussions about sexual assault. 

For Sarah Grace Powel, who also appeared in the film, the project was mostly about Butler Library.

"Butler is an extremely charged space-the names emblazoned on the stone facade are, for me, are a stimulant for resistance," she said. "I work in Butler but sometimes feel suffocated by it... The point was to transgress the relative conservatism (and its history) of the space with this hysterical intervention."

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