The Women's Studies department of the State University of New York at New Paltz held a one-day conference on "Revolting Behavior: The Challenges of Women's Sexual Freedom." Topics included "How to Get What You Want in Bed" (an "interactive group workshop"), "Challenging Compulsory Heterosexuality From the Sixties to the Nineties," "Sex Toys for Women" (featuring demonstrations of appliances by the owner of a New York City sex boutique), and "Safe, Sane and Consensual S/M: An Alternative Way of Loving." Explaining that college officials asked them to avoid graphic descriptions of their sexual practices, S/M workshop leaders invited audience members to see them privately after the session to learn more, including how to join S/M clubs. Pamphlets advised how to dispose of razor blades and similar instruments after "blood-letting sexual activities," involving "cutting rituals, play and permanent piercings, and shavings."

Workshops were followed by a performance piece by Shelly Mars called "Whiplash: Tales of a Tomboy." A press release announced that Mars had been "working as a stripper at a bisexual bathhouse [when she] began to experiment with character development as a way to alleviate the sometimes demeaning aspects of her job." Enacting scenes from her youth in Ohio among "lots of white Christian trash," Ms. Mars and her partner provided a series of simulated sex acts, including one suggesting incest.

Responding to local criticism of the workshops, SUNY President Roger Bowen said that such conferences were "business as usual." Indeed, the School of Fine & Performing Arts later scheduled a two-day conference called "Subject to Desire: Refiguring the Body" that included an "installation" called "Vulva's School" by performance artist Carolee Schneemann, best known for an act in which she slowly unravels a scroll from her vagina while reading it aloud to the audience. One of the exhibits featured a female graduate student suspended from the ceiling while wearing a body suit, being hosed down with water by two men while a woman lying underneath her and wearing only a G-string has hot wax dripped on her body.

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