Hey BigDeal, I've read through the discussion on the TPS board and fb event, and you have quite a stormy debate going on. We've seen similar performances on the Van Slam stage, poets that push the boundary of misogyny, and have been rewarded by the judges. So you're not alone in that respect.
From what I've read, several people were shocked or offended by three things 1.) violently sexist imagery in the poems, 2.) other members of the audience laughing along, and 3.) the judges giving these poems high scores. Now, after the slam, many people in your community are wondering what can they do to prevent this from happening again, as it made several people feel unsafe or violated at the slam, for the reasons above.
We've discussed similar problems and how we might approach them at our slam. It seems obvious, even to those who desperately want to eliminate this sort of sexism, that turning off the mic or banning the poet would lead to a very thorny debate about censorship. I would suggest that you do not entertain either of those options.
The most important to remember is that freedom of speech works both ways: the poet is free to say what they want, but the audience is free to respond as vocally as they wish. Too often, I believe, our audiences repress their feelings about a poem. At Marc Smith's Green Mill, they have what they call "the feminist hiss", which is, if anyone starts making blatantly sexist comments in their poem, the audience is trained to hiss loudly at the poet. I believe the MC should encourage the audience to make their opinions known (while remaining unbiased, as a host should). It's up to the audience to let a poet know if he's crossed a line, and if enough of the audience feels that way and voices it, problem #2 (other people laughing along) and problem #3 (the judges high scores) are greatly diminished. It will also reaffirm to the rest of the audience the values that are held by your community.
In other words, if a poet goes on a sexist rant, you should boo and heckle him. That's what I would do. Use the experience as what teachers call "a learning opportunity". Let everyone know at that moment know that those values of hate and violence are not the values shared by the community. Silent disapproval and outrage after the fact are poor substitutes for an immediate heartfelt boo, or hiss. As I said before, freedom of expression works both ways, and the audience need only respect the mic so far.
This question can be made all the more trickier as collisions occur between the liberal (and radically liberal) spoken word community and the more gangsta elements of the hip hop community. The gangsta rapper will believe they are presenting the truth of the streets unfiltered by bourgeois political correctness, while the spoken word community will be caught between relative moralism (your truth should be respected according to your cultural background) and liberal values (sexual equality and identity politics, the importance of language use, and so on). For that broader issue, there's no simple solution.
