Dartmouth's Sexual Universe

by Andrew Grossman

Feminism, as far as anyone can tell, started somewhere about here:

“It should not be forgotten that if women are fit to advise, convince, and persuade voters how to vote, they are surely also fit to vote themselves.”

And here, Dartmouth's Women's Resource Center would have us believe, is where feminism has come:

“Look, touch, smell and taste your cuntjuices. Never gross out on tasting yourself. You are an acquired taste. Acquire it. You swallow your spit without a qualm millions of times each week. It's filthy in comparison to your delectable cuntjuices.”

The first passage is from an 1860 letter by Millicent Fawcett, a leading British agitator for women's suffrage; the second from Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, a book by a woman named Inga Muscio.

Dartmouth College never brought Millicent Fawcett to Hanover; Inga Muscio, however, is an honored guest. On Tuesday, February 8 in 3 Rockefeller Hall, Muscio delivered a lecture entitled “Rule Your Sexual Universe,” which was followed by a reception and a “Torrid Tuesdays Book Club” discussion and reading at the Women's Resource Center.

The rhetoric of the feminist movement, it seems, has been deeply warped: from high-minded talk of political rights to navel-gazing obsessions about personal secretions and loose ruminations about the earth mother and menstrual associations in the changing of tides.

Quite a change, admittedly, but one that makes a little more sense if Inga Muscio's own worldview is brought to the table. Her book, Cunt, is admittedly wide-ranging, but at her reading Muscio chose to focus, nearly exclusively, on the topic most likely to hit intellectual chimes with her readers: rape.

Inga Muscio's world, you see, is a dangerous one. Men leap out of alleys, from behind mailboxes, and maybe even out of your own closet. Always be on guard; the second you relax, there'll be a man there to getcha. Even your own husband—he's suspect number one. Your father, your brother, your best friend, and the plumber—trust none of them.

And you know what they want, too: rape. It's “the precise point of vulnerability for keeping women divided and, thus, conquered.” Right between their legs! Inga found us out.

I was the only man—and a poor proxy I make for all of brotherhood—to hear Inga Muscio at the Women's Resource Center that night. It was as if a temple had been defiled; their glances all asked, “Who let him in here?” Well, I let myself in; the door was unlocked, which, as we learned, is dangerous behavior up here in New Hampshire. Even jogging while wearing headphones is a no-no; he could sneak up behind you and then—well, something horrible to be sure.

As the only man, I was also responsible for fielding a few questions:

“When you walk down the street late at night, are you afraid?”

“Well, when I'm in Harlem, yes.”

“But are you afraid of being raped?”

“I think it would be pretty unlikely.”

“He doesn't know what it's like to live with this fear everyday.”

In the hands of Inga Muscio, whose lone academic credential is an undergraduate appearance at Evergreen State College, rape becomes not the criminal act of a psychopath but necessary baggage heaped on the Y-chromosome. Each occurrence is a singular act by a deranged individual against a specific target; each occurrence has not been ratified and approved at the monthly men's meeting.

Muscio says she lives her life so she can do anything that she wants. Like running with headphones? Or enjoying an evening with her brother? Or sitting poolside in a slinky swimsuit? No, my mistake—every one of these brings out the fear in her.

Going to buy milk late at night becomes an expedition. What Muscio has never asked herself, though, is if this is any way to live.

Well, I'll cut her off right here and say that it isn't. I'm not going to say that rape shouldn't be a concern of most women, but it shouldn't be the overriding factor in matters of everyday living. The best one can do is to take a few reasonable precautions and go from there. To make rape and self-defense the focus of one's life is to capitulate to the few bad people among us.

All of this despite Inga Muscio's immediate context: both of the two women at the meeting who had been assaulted had been attacked by other women.

I use the word “assault” with hesitation, too (Muscio shows no such restraint); if a wayward drunken grope counts as assault then I have fodder to put several ex-girlfriends in jail. This is the part that people hold back from saying because no one wants to be accused of being insensitive: just because something made a person feel uncomfortable doesn't qualify it as assault.

Yet feminists like Muscio cling tenaciously to these reductionist theories. Perhaps it's because in no other context can these events be explained, short of the dreaded “personal responsibility,” other than by blaming large groups of people—whether men, blacks, Muslims, or any other demographic. What I'm getting at is that this is the type of argument used by racists and other hate-mongers. That post-feminists should find themselves in this company is a step back for women.

Or is it?

There were only eight people at Inga Muscio's chat at the Women's Resource Center—two Dartmouth Review staffers among them. Campus activists attribute thin receptions like this to insufficient institutional support for such events, and demand more money, more speakers, and more sensitive deans. But, in fact, the decision of the other 5,000 members of the Dartmouth community to avoid Muscio's reading may have rested on more deep-seated factors.

The feminist movement, such as it is, has grown increasingly out of touch with the constituency over which it claims exclusive representation. Few would argue now that there wasn't a need for the feminist movement when it first arose; women were unable to vote, hold certain jobs, and attend most universities. The speed with which these conditions have been remedied is breathtaking, given their cultural entrenchment. Women now make up the majority of students at more Ivy League schools than not, they hold whatever jobs they please, and live under nearly the same expectations as men. The feminist movement, without questions of justice and equality to occupy it, finds itself at loose ends.

Inga Muscio's crowd, however, are not feminists but the phallus brigade, celebrating biological secretions as political events and calling anything that is longer than it is round a penis, and cowering from the implied threat.

So, perhaps predictably, the movement has become more and more radical, seeking sensationalism to make its ever-dwindling presence more felt. Muscio's book is just the latest salvo in this unsavory war.

In it, she celebrates the cunt, everything about it: its secretions, smell, shape, feel, and potentialities. She “reclaims” the word itself, as a first step in “Creating a general, woman-centered version of the English language.” She explains how she has managed to “re-establish a close relationship with my cunt.” She admonishes every woman to become a “Cuntlovin' Ruler of Her Sexual Universe.”

Muscio is far from the sole sister currently active in the phallus brigade. Amazon.com notes, helpfully, that visitors looking up Cunt are also likely to have read, and undoubtedly enjoyed, such seminal tomes as Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler by Holly Hughes, and something called Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture by—you'll think I'm making this up, but it's really the author's name—Carol Queen.

But the task at hand is Inga Muscio, who differs from the others mainly in that she cultivates, more extensively, a Native American-based aesthetic, and so I'll have a go at her book, Cunt.

Briefly then, Muscio spends half the book trying to reconnect herself, and all womanhood, with some New-Agey Gaia-esque Earth mother-type feeling. She never gets too specific about this, but if you can imagine a sort of female Captain Planet you're probably close. She finds reflections of this earthiness in the periods of the moon and the cycle of the tides, indeed in all living things.

The most troubling parts of the book involve health advice for women. Forget tampons, ladies; they're tools of the man and his large multi-national corporations. Or, as Muscio puts it so eloquently, “Why the flying fuck should a woman have to pay some huge corporation over and over because the lining of her uterus...sheds every month?” Beats me. So, what are the alternatives? Sea sponges and towels.

What about abortions? Muscio's had three, each described in excruciating detail. Two were performed in a clinic, with the aid of, essentially, a vacuum cleaner. The third, however, was induced with herbs and uteral massage. I can't imagine that any herbal concoction that would expel a fetus would be good for the mother's health.

But they're herbs, Muscio pleads, part of a long matrilineal tradition.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Muscio tackles birth control. Well, if you can get yourself in step with the moon, Inga recommends the rhythm method. Hey, if it doesn't work you can just induce an abortion, which is practically birth control in itself, right?

Science, you see, is right out, likely the unlucky by-product of a resolutely male culture.

I urge any woman contemplating intimate relations with a sea sponge or inducing an abortion to please consult with her doctor beforehand. These things can entail risk, even if they were proposed by a member of the worldwide sisterhood. I urge any woman using the rhythm method for birth control to have her head examined or, at least, to let men know pre-coitus what she means by “protection.”

The third and, thankfully, final part of Cunt is titled “Reconciliation,” specifically of women with their own vaginas and with the larger context of an overtly-hostile society. Women need to protect themselves from “opposing belief systems,” take control of “all mediums of art and literature,” and “fill [their] coffers with [their] money.”

Perhaps the fact that there were only eight people at Muscio's speech made it easier for Dartmouth College to conceal the fact that it is channeling funds to a woman who not only has unpopular beliefs but whose biography makes her seem rather an ill-fit for an Ivy League campus.

In the back of her book, Muscio's publishing company, in a nod to tradition, includes an “About the Author” page. Here is how Inga Muscio pitches herself:

“Inga Muscio is a reclusive, self-styled literary magnate who writes books so she doesn't lose touch with the lower echelons of society... [Her] writing has appeared in Bust, Curve and numerous other publications... She presently lives in San Francisco, where she shamelessly displays her overbite to beautiful women and rides around town on either her bike (`Bikey') or her skateboard (`Boardie').”

Perhaps Dartmouth College was moved by Muscio's celebrity endorsement; the back cover has an enthusiastic quote from Joan Jett.

“Cunt touched me deeply,” says the rocker.

Dartmouth College, which earlier this year awarded its most prestigious fellowship to Sheryl Crow, may be basing its funding decisions on endorsements from Joan Jett and inanimate objects named Boardie and Bikey. But thankfully, the sparse attendance suggests, Dartmouth College's students are applying a more rigorous intellectual standard.