Author: ksimpson@middlebury.edu

Editor,

i submitted a version of this letter a couple of days ago.
tihs is a shorter, better edited version. please include
this version instead! thanks so much

-katie mae simpson ‘02

You may have heard some version of this story already.
Yes, I am talking about “The Art of Kissing” protest. And
yes, I was one of the protesters at that voyeuristic debacle
Saturday night. What happened there is about more than
just a ridiculously sexist, racist, and heterosexist
workshop or performance or whatever you want to call it.
It’s about a double standard when it comes to expressing
the right of freedom of expression.
Five concerned students (myself and four other women)
decided that because of the content of the website run by
the presenter,(Michael Christian, aka William Cane), and
the content of his book, “The Art of Kissing,” we would
make some posters, buy tickets to the show, and monitor
the performance for quality. We had no specific plan – we
were just going to watch for offensive material and act
accordingly. The reason we couldn’t have a specific plan
is because we didn’t know what happened during his
show. If the performance turned out to just be strange,
silly, or immature, we would have shaken our heads,
written off the two hours we spent there, and gone on our
way. But unfortunately, the show was all of those things
and more. It was filled with the same sexist, racist, and
heterosexist material that was found in his book and
website.
Because news of our protest had leaked, there were five –
yes five -security guards at said event. We protesters
numbered only five. Yup, there were as many guards as
there were protesters. You may be wondering, if there
were five security guards at the event, how
was the rest of campus adequately patrolled. This
crossed my mind as well.”
One of my fellow protesters, Kristen, was thrown out of
the show by one of these security guards for choosing to
stand during the middle of the show to express her
opinion – to disagree with the performer’s choice of
offensive vocabulary. Gillian – another protester left the
show because its offensive language was too much.
The rest of us– myself, Nahal, and Sam, decided it
would be best if all five of us stayed together, so we also
left the show, with the idea of going back in – together –
at the end of the performance.
When the show ended and people started filing out, we
went back in to hold up posters for the exiting audience
members to see. The posters we had hung up had been
taken down and confiscated. These posters contained
excerpts from the website and
the book “The Art of Kissing” which contained sexist and
heterosexist language, and discussed how such
language and sexism leads to problematic power
structures in relationships – which can then lead to
feelings of
powerlessness, rape, and the unfortunate perpetuation
of such unnecessary
evils. With one exception, all of our other, big posters
also somehow made it
into the hands of the security officers. I stood on a chair
with that poster. Nahal handed out condoms yelling her
tongue in cheek response to the show – “because good
kissing leads to good sex.” (An ironic side note. The act
was billed as an alternative to sex – kissing as a form of
abstinence. Yet it featured a skit with a girl teasing a guy
until he got an erection – illustrated by the umbrella he
was holding. And there were many references to “getting
all worked up,” “foreplay,” and “bodies rubbing together.”
If kissing leads to sex – which this act suggests, how
does it support abstinence?)
We were then asked to leave the social space so we
moved into the lounge adjacent to the Grille, where I
again stood on a chair with the remaining poster. This
poster was more sarcastic than our others and was, in
essence, poking fun at Christian’s paradoxical
“abstinence” message and the long list in his book that
describes different ways to kiss different body parts. The
poster said: “Isn’t oral sex just another form of kissing?
Introducing the genital kiss!” This poster, which was a
simple and even inadequate response to such an
offensive performance, was the source of a sort of
showdown between us protesters and security and the
town police.
I stood calmly on the chair in the lobby, holding this
poster above my head, while we answered questions
from curious onlookers as to why we disagreed with the
show. For the most part people were receptive to our
ideas and understood and/or respected our desire to
express ourselves. Yet almost immediately I was told to
leave. Two security guards – one male and one female –
asked me to give them my poster and leave. The other
protesters and I said that we understood our first
amendment rights to include freedom of speech and
expression – so we refused to leave. We were asked
repeatedly to stand down, and a guard even attempted to
rip the poster from me, but we refused to leave. The
guards were not able to articulate which school rule we
were breaking, or why we should leave, except for the
simple reason that they told us to. This was not reason
enough for us, so I stayed on the chair, we continued to
answer questions, and the security guards called the
town police for “assistance.” Shortly thereafter, a
policeman arrived and asked me to give him the poster.
He tried to tear it from my hands, but I would not give it up.
We asked what law we were breaking and he said if he
had to he would charge us with “disorderly conduct.”
Now to me, this seemed ridiculous. I was not Michael
Christian, onstage surrounded by eight couples making
out in a near porn-fest; in my mind, Christian was the only
person at McCullough guilty of disorderly conduct. And
remember, we protesters were not yelling, or being
physically violent or threatening in any way. There were
no children around; the poster was less tasteless then
many of the innuendos that were coming from the stage
earlier in the evening. The policeman then said that if I
did not leave, he would force me to leave. Does this
sound like an over-reaction to you? A few women,
standing around, one of whom had a poster in her
hands, answering some questions – engaging in
dialogue. Sound threatening? Well, Middlebury
College’s Office of Public Safety and the town police sure
thought we were. So we left, and now we’re using this
public forum to further this discussion,
In the last 24 hours, dozens of people who witnessed
this violation of our freedom of speech have come up to
me to express solidarity and concern and to hear the
outcome of the mess. But the outcome is now unsure.
Incident reports? That’s what we’ve been told. Is this
over? Not by a long shot.