Eric Langborgh

     Feminists at Pennsylvania State University shocked the campus on the evening of November 18 by staging an explicit event featuring nudity, vulgar sexual references, and anti-male rants. Students in charge of allocating University monies to student groups maintain that they were deceived into thinking "CuntFest," the program named after a feminist manifesto, would focus on the book and not expand into promotion of radical lesbianism and pornographic art.

     While campus security did nothing to stop the strip-show, they did order this reporter on several occasions to stop covering the event. 

     Militant student feminists convinced members of the University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) to fund the program despite concerns over the title. An investigation has begun and may result in sanctions against the offending groups which brought the conference to campus.

     "Wow!" exclaimed UPAC chairman Eddie Elizondo following a description to him of the graphic nature of the forum titled after Inga Muscio's book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. "That is not at all what was conveyed to us about what would be happening at that event," he said.

     What happened at the event included a lesbian performance artist whose nude and semi-nude skits went way beyond the description given to UPAC for approval—an approval which netted Womyn's Concerns and the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) nearly $10,000 of student activity fee funds to pay the honoraria and travel/lodging costs of CuntFest's seven performers and presenters.

     Campus Report attended the event, much to the dismay of conference organizers. When asked beforehand whether the controversially titled event would include explicit or pornographic material, CuntFest's Penn State co-director Missy Mazzaferro answered in the negative. This suggested that the event might have been misrepresented to UPAC, as well.

     Forms obtained from UPAC show that Womyn's Concerns and the FMLA were hardly vague in their description of what would be happening at CuntFest. "The evening will feature woman-centered, cuntlovin' fun entertainment," read the program description included with the budget request. "Inga Muscio will read excerpts from her book Cunt. Performance artist Jess Dobkin will present a series of short pieces." The description went on to mention musical entertainment and poetry, as well as a series of "self-protection" workshops earlier in the day, but failed to mention the graphic nudity of Dobkin's act.

     Nevertheless, Elizondo claimed, "We had no indication that anything of that nature would be taking place. I believe they definitely did [misrepresent the event], based on what you just told me," he replied. Elizondo noted that though UPAC is an "allocating, not a policing body" and therefore could not directly discipline the student groups involved, an investigation would be launched through appropriate student disciplinary bodies with sanctions as a possible result, and perhaps even a freezing of their accounts, thus prohibiting them from organizing future events.

     Critics, however, wonder how the University could have expected anything else from an event with such a name, and suggest funding never should have been appropriated in the first place.

Warning: X-Rated
     Despite being assured in a phone call before heading to Penn State and in an interview preceding the start of CuntFest's evening programs that reporters were welcome, Campus Report was warned just prior to Dobkin's performance not to take notes of any kind. Sensing a cover up, this reporter refused, pleading First Amendment rights to a free press and free speech to the two police officers present who asked three times for Campus Report to cease and desist. When refused, the officers conceded "it's not a matter of law" and allowed this reporter to continue taking notes. While the controversial art piece was meant to titillate the audience, it contained elements that critics considered disgusting and entirely inappropriate for a college setting, which some suggest likely prompted conference organizers to suppress media involvement.

     Dobkin began the performance by asking the audience to "participate" by taking noisemakers out of a "pussy bag" made of papier-mâché. She then handed out maxi-pad nose coverings she called "pussy sniffers." "Now a friend of mine when I told her I was making 'pussy sniffers,' she was pretty concerned," Dobkin shared with the audience. "She's like, 'Jess, I don't think that's very sanitary,' you know, because I was planning to wear them all first…. She seemed to think that maybe they should come clean and you can put your pussy of choice on there and then it's right up there where you need it anytime you need it."

     Later, it was noted that she had a cord hanging from her pink, fluffy dress with a black tank top. Amid crude remarks, it was soon discovered that the cord was attached to an electric pencil sharpener, in which she proceeded to sharpen a series of pencils that she handed to audience members amid sexual utterances.

     Innuendo then took a back seat to nudity when she removed her top to reveal her breasts, which she had painted to look like smiley faces with her nipples acting as noses. Coupled with audible gasps from the crowd, she proceeded to suck each breast; presumably to enable her to subsequently thread strings through her pierced nipples. These strings were then used to maneuver her breasts like puppets as she stood behind a prop made to look like a brick house with two holes cut out for her breasts so they could "talk" to one another.

     For much of the rest of her performance she wore a black nightgown from which a breast would often fall out.

     From a grab-bag of "tricks," Dobkin proceeded to extract numerous objects, to which she attached sexual connotations. For instance, she discussed uses for baby carrots ("don't snack on a carrot after it has been in your ass") and brought out a "ruled" rubber glove (for giving one's lesbian girlfriend "just the right amount").

     Following a graphic description of lesbian oral sex, she showed a film she had made on a big screen television titled, Butt-F—ing Bunny. On screen were paper puppets acting out crude sexual practices and then performing what is described in the title on a paper rabbit puppet.

     In her final skit, Dobkin came out from behind a screen completely naked, except for an apparatus that had swinging castle doors in the front. These eventually opened to completely reveal herself as she performed a play on "The Emperor's New Clothes" with the same paper puppets as before. Most tasteless to critics was the red paint of some sort (likely finger paint) she had running down her legs from her crotch area to represent menstruation. She then proceeded to repeatedly take a paintbrush to her crotch and paint her belly and breasts.

     When asked about the graphic nature of the performance, Officer Frank Ball claimed that "performance art is exempt from public exposure laws." He offered no line that could be crossed—even sexual activity—"unless someone in this room complained," Ball told Campus Report.

Program Focused on 'Shock-Value'
     Right from the beginning, CuntFest was geared toward shocking the senses with both visual and verbal imagery. Walking in the host building's door, potential audience members and other students just going about their business were unwittingly confronted with a four-foot tall ceramic model of a vagina. Conference organizers would then offer what appeared to be fruit juice poured from a spout just underneath the "clitoris" to passersby by asking, "Would you like some 'pussy juice'?"

     In addition, many of the members of FMLA, Womyn's Concerns, and Alliance for Animal Rights (a co-sponsor which hosted a "vegan dinner" for those interested beforehand) were decked out with dyed, pointy hair and a plethora of facial rings piercing their noses, mouths, tongues, and ears. Organizers also sold red soap embroidered with the word "cunt."

     "It's obviously about shock-value," shared Penn State graduate student Jason Covener, a member of the Penn State Young Americans for Freedom. "I think it's an irresponsible use of that money. I think there's a lot better things they can spend it on."

     One objection raised to CuntFest was that fees mandated from students to fund various student groups and activities went to fund such an objectionable program. The student activity fee at Penn State this year is $38 per semester, or $76 per school year.

     "The whole idea of student activity money is it is supposed to improve student life, improve campus life," explained Covener. "If you look at the content, I really don't think the students got $10,000 worth of improvement in our academic culture here." The official total was $9,519.64, of which $7,000 went toward honoraria.

     Organizers disagree. As one unnamed supporter said, "The University takes our money, why can't we get some of it back for programs we want?"

     The co-directors for the event, Mazzaferro and Michelle Yates, explained to Campus Report what their intended goal was: "The word 'cunt' originally came from positive ancestral origins and it is now one of the worst words you can call a woman," declared Yates, who also serves as the president of FMLA. "The whole goal is for women to reclaim the word 'cunt' back and transform the meaning of the word back to something positive, like 'mother goddess.'"

     Added Mazzaferro, "The point in trying to reclaim the word 'cunt' is there is no comparable word for a man. Cunt is a word that oppresses women; it holds women down. If that word doesn't have the same negative connotations," she said, "she is not being oppressed—it even means something positive."

     Yet when asked to define what she meant by oppression, and how words can hold someone down, Mazzaferro objected to those who don't subscribe to her view entering the dialogue. "I don't think you should be writing this article if you are asking 'what do you think oppression is?' because right now you are pretty much implying that women are not oppressed," she retorted.

     Racism, homophobia, pollution, and misogyny are all related, she declared. So who, then, is the common enemy? "I don't want to name it that way, but it is the white, heterosexual male."

'Filled with Hate'
     This view of an enemy that must be vanquished reared its head many times during the program. Cristien Storm, the executive director of the Seattle-based Home Alive, was among the most vocal in her rage. "I'm kind of just tired of all this talk of 'reverse-isms, reverse-isms, reverse-isms…. Let's get together and reverse this bigotry and hate," she proclaimed to the audience.

     Later, Inga Muscio asked Storm to sing one more song in order to presage her headlining remarks. Shouted Storm:

     "It's too late,
     'cause now I'm filled with hate…
     And I hate you!
     more than you EVER, hated me…
     And I'll rape you!
     more than you EVER, loved me…."

     In particular, CuntFest's targets included the Republican Party (Yates decried their convention as "those damn Republicans in Philadelphia" while Dobkin spoke joyously about smashing piñata representations of New York City mayor Rudolph Guiliani) and Accuracy in Academia, the publisher of Campus Report.

     Muscio labeled AIA as "dangerous" and a "fringe group." "I think their goal is … well, I'm not sure what their goal is, but I'm pretty sure it is to silence me and other artists like Eve Ensler," hypothesized Muscio about herself and the author of the off-Broadway play, The Vagina Monologues. "They present themselves as an organization that is about objective truth, but what people claim and what the results from what their activities are, are often two different things."

     "Your school is under attack by this group," she continued. "They want students to not have access to funding unless it is something Accuracy in Academia thinks is okay."

     "Personally that's scary, and to me that's scary as a human being. For you all, and for other people going to school, I'm really scared. It scares me to think that people would prefer to silence someone rather than just let everybody be, you know?"

     Men in general incurred Muscio's wrath as she read to the audience excerpts from a new book she is working on. The book's setting surrounds the exploits of a woman who was gang-raped and then seeks her revenge by becoming a cunning serial killer. "So she has indeed done this—killed a lot of people over a long period of time," she read. "But the people she has killed are all the fathers and sons from six families. I think she has left the women alone; that is, aside from sundering their lives and killing their children."

     She continued: "'They shouldn't have mated with the beast,' she [the killer] insists. 'I left them their daughters.'

     "What about the woman who has four sons and no daughters? What about her, huh?'….

     "'It's all relative, darling,' she sighs and looks deeply into my eyes…. 'It really is all relative,'" she read from her upcoming book.

     A radical form of abortion was endorsed during Muscio's talk, as well as in her book, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. Specifically, she promoted a "visualization" technique coupled with a concoction of herbs to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Regarding a 17 year-old rape victim from Virginia who had performed this abortion on herself, Muscio explained, "She told me that it filled her with power to realize that she could have such a huge effect on her own body and in her own life."

A Religious Experience
     The various themes that ran through CuntFest and the book for which the festival was named seemed to be a religious awakening to the supporters present in the crowd of over a hundred. The women on the stage were more explicit.

     "It is toward the ultimate end of feeling empowered," expressed Mazzaferro, who concluded that women should be able to express their sexual desires in public, to live out these desires, and to have control over their lives.

     For Yates, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence is her Bible. "If something very shitty is going on in my life, I pick up that book and can find a part of it to read to help me; even just practical things like 'hmm, what birth control should I use?'"

     Lesbianism is the living out of this faith. "I dreamt of Medusa, of Cleopatra, of Catherine riding bareback in the town square," divulged poet Dora McQuaid. "I dreamt of women who held love like a power, wielded it like a tool, and ruled ruthless and adamant."

     When Dobkin handed out "lesbian dollars" to bid on items from her "bag of tricks," Yates was quick to bid "whatever you want; anything!" for her desired item. Others jumped at the chance to bid on the vibrating pillow to sit on. "We like vibrating stuff!" exclaimed the winners.

     Storm shared a poem about a fantasy she had of an old lady sitting in front of her on the bus. She pictured her having sex with another woman half her age, and described the old lady's hands as "hands that may have been inside her, and very well may have been inside another woman."

     Womyn's Concerns and FMLA alleged misrepresentation of CuntFest to get funding and approval may lead to serious and long-lasting consequences. Student officials at Penn State have already asked for the notes and tapes recorded at the event in order to amass evidence in the case.

     As Covener said about the lack of resources being diverted to questionable events such as this one, "Many groups complain about the lack of cash for scholarly activities such as attending professional conferences, meanwhile we are spending thousands of dollars on 'pussy juice'?"