She can WHAT: "Female Orgasm" enlightens Page
Kris Miranda
Issue date: 4/27/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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In last week's General Announcements you probably noticed "the Female Orgasm" under "Lost." On April 19 Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, full-time sex educators based in New York, equipped hundreds of students with the knowledge to find this elusive creature. (And find it again. And again.)
It was immediately clear that though they were here to educate, they also fully intended to have fun doing it. Solot joked of their hope to make this night "the climax of the semester" shortly before she asked students, rather than shutting them off, "just ... to set your phones to vibrate." A clip from When Harry Met Sally... further set the tone, demonstrating women's orgasm-faking talent.
Having established their Fun & Wackiness credentials, they made equally certain to drive home the importance of all facets of sexual health. Solot spoke of her diagnosis with breast cancer at age 26. Relating her chance discovery of the growth that prompted her to visit a doctor, she noted that she didn't grow up being told it was "bad or dirty or shameful" to touch herself. "If I hadn't absentmindedly run my hand across my breast that day" while stretching idly, and if she hadn't done it often enough before to notice a tiny lump this time, Solot suspects she might not now be celebrating seven years of remission. But other women have grown up being told not to touch themselves-how many might find their health threatened as a result?
This concern with social preconceptions and taboos remained important throughout the talk, along with recurring themes of consent, communication and diversity (of bodies and organs, experiences and preferences).
Miller and Solot both talked about the inadequacy of most middle and high school sex education programs. Women in particular, Solot said, are told again and again how to say no until they "don't even know how to think about saying yes to sex" when they feel they might want to. By age 16, fifty percent haven't experienced an orgasm; many still haven't by college. As for men?
It was immediately clear that though they were here to educate, they also fully intended to have fun doing it. Solot joked of their hope to make this night "the climax of the semester" shortly before she asked students, rather than shutting them off, "just ... to set your phones to vibrate." A clip from When Harry Met Sally... further set the tone, demonstrating women's orgasm-faking talent.
Having established their Fun & Wackiness credentials, they made equally certain to drive home the importance of all facets of sexual health. Solot spoke of her diagnosis with breast cancer at age 26. Relating her chance discovery of the growth that prompted her to visit a doctor, she noted that she didn't grow up being told it was "bad or dirty or shameful" to touch herself. "If I hadn't absentmindedly run my hand across my breast that day" while stretching idly, and if she hadn't done it often enough before to notice a tiny lump this time, Solot suspects she might not now be celebrating seven years of remission. But other women have grown up being told not to touch themselves-how many might find their health threatened as a result?
This concern with social preconceptions and taboos remained important throughout the talk, along with recurring themes of consent, communication and diversity (of bodies and organs, experiences and preferences).
Miller and Solot both talked about the inadequacy of most middle and high school sex education programs. Women in particular, Solot said, are told again and again how to say no until they "don't even know how to think about saying yes to sex" when they feel they might want to. By age 16, fifty percent haven't experienced an orgasm; many still haven't by college. As for men?
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