A Philadelphia artist has put for sale several “small dicks on plaques” she made in college, saying her view of feminism has evolved, particularly on gender issues.
On a Facebook Page called “Internet Yardsale Philadelphia,” artist Katie Rauth, 25, listed four small mounted plastic penises for $15 each yesterday, saying she’d sell the lot for $50 but was open to a bidding war.
The post quickly drew attention, attracting dozens of quippy commenters. Rauth said that she also has larger penis plaques, which she’s hung on display over the fireplace of her communal home in West Philadelphia. She’s open to offers on them, too, she said, posting a photo.
They are, in fact, “real live dicks!” Rauth confirmed on Facebook. She enlisted male friends to dip their small penises in a safe-skin molding agent she poured into Chinese takeout soup containers, taking a cast, she later told Billy Penn.
She said she made the penis plaques when she was just a “baby feminist” at Arcadia College, where she studied sculpture and minored in gender and women’s studies, according to her online resume.
“The piece isn’t really nuanced— only at like, feminism 101 level,” Rauth told Billy Penn. “I come from an upper-middle class family in North Jersey. I don’t know if I was seeing all the nuances of feminism and all the intersectionality that I would get into.”
By deadline, Rauth did not respond to Heat Street’s request for comment. On Facebook, she describes herself as a “queer femme elitist/budding hyper queen” who is “here to humiliate all the men in your life.”
On the website featuring her art, Rauth says she now focuses on “disempowerment and invisibility of a high femme identity within the queer community,” as well as questioning “the surprisingly narrow mindset of gender inclusivity in mainstream drag.”
Under the pseudonym “Lezzie McGuire,” Rauth hosts in a bimonthly “one-off night of inclusive drag” called Wavelength at Vox Populi in Philadelphia. The performance features “gender-bending performers to push the expectations of mainstream drag.” At the most recent show, Rauth posted a photo of herself at the show wearing a vagina dentate outfit.
Vagina Dentata biiiitch pic.twitter.com/KhCrfl5HlK
— Katie Rauth (@margaritam0m) February 16, 2017
