The Daily Campus

Issue date: 9/17/08 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Erin O'Dell Dorian Solot talks openly about sex and the female orgasm to a crowded Student Union Theater last night.

The line outside the Student Union Theater was almost to the Union Street Market by 6:20 p.m. for the third annual 'I <3 Female Orgasm' lecture last night.

If people weren't interested in going for a talk about sex, they should have gone just to get all the free stuff. SUBOG representatives helped keep impatient students entertained by giving out free bags, calendars, whiteboards and more, while the Sexperts had their usual table set up with free condoms, lube and abstinence kits.

Over 100 people were turned away as 500 people filled every seat in the audience waiting for the lecture to start.

A collection of "female O" songs such as "I Touch Myself" blasted and the lecture info was displayed on the screen with a Georgia O'Keefe painting cleverly as the background.

"I don't know much about it, other than it's supposed to be really good and really funny," said Christie Attanasio, a 1st-semster pre-education major.

'I <3 Female Orgasm' was put together by SUBOG's Lecture and Marketing committees, and co-sponsored by UConn's Health Education Office.

Joleen Nevers, the Health Education coordinator, opened up the lecture by welcoming the two guest speakers, Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, and giving an overview of all the resources available to students in the Health Education Office.

Shortly after, Solot and Miller took the stage with a discussion that had the audience laughing and blushing almost the full hour and 45 minutes. Instead of asking the audience to turn their phones off or on silent, they happily requested that they turn their phones on vibrate.

This set up a casual and amusing tone for the lecture right from the get-go. They first acknowledged that female orgasm is simply a fun subject to talk about, but not a frequently discussed one. Solot and Miller travel the country giving talks about female orgasm and their lectures are good sources of information for women's sexuality and health. They were happy to see a decent ratio of female to male audience members, which was about 75 to 25, and welcomed people of all sexual preferences.

Solot and Miller, who met each other when they attended Brown University, are both full-time sex educators and a couple, so they had both professional and personal experiences to share. To really get the "female orgasm" theme underway, the classic diner scene from "When Harry Met Sally" was shown.

Solot then went into her own story about how she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 26, a very uncommon age to be diagnosed and a shock to her. She explained that her ability to be comfortable with touching her own body was how she discovered her cancer, and is convinced that it could have saved her life.

Solot then spoke about her first sexual experience and her first orgasm.

She grew up in a family where sex was a fairly open subject to talk about, but she never felt the urge to masturbate. Her mother bought her the "Dear Abby" pamphlet for teens and there was a section about masturbation stating, that every normal, healthy teenager masturbates. This worried her a little since she never had and was ready to start college.

At Brown, she went to a lecture specifically about masturbation, and left feeling very interested and curious. After buying a book about female sexuality, she had her first orgasm by the end of that semester and gained an interest for female orgasm. She referred to the book she purchased that had opened her eyes (and other parts) to sex and masturbation.

"It was the best $5.99 I've ever spent," she said.

The couple then turned it over to the audience and asked them some questions. The first question Miller asked was "why do women fake orgasms?" Solot quickly interjected with "because men fake foreplay."

Then the real questions were asked to engage the audience; however, with such a salacious topic of discussion, it is doubtful that anyone in the audience needed something extra to engage them.

It was noted that it might be difficult for some people to talk about sex if they never have before or if they've had a traumatic sexual experience, and the two lecturers offered an extensive list of helpful literature on several different topics related to sex.

Since Solot and Miller make a living on being experts on female orgasms, they have become quite the collectors of magazines that feature their topic of interest. They displayed some of the magazines they own and assured the audience that most of the information is somewhat ridiculous and that there is no magic answer to a person's orgasm.

Another big part of the lecture was devoted to the realm of pornography. Although they suggested that it can be a good resource for arousal, it can tend to get men and women off track in terms of what other's bodies realistically look like and what a person's partner might want in the bedroom.

Girls and boys are taught sexual education differently in middle school and high school, according to Solot and Miller. Girls are taught how to say no to sex, so when the time comes for females to feel ready for sex, they don't know how to say yes to it.

"Then you get to college and get drunk and then you don't have to think about it!" Solot said.

With the exception of that joking statement, Solot and Miller were careful not to generalize about anything including sexual preferences or genders and a large part of the lecture was advocating abstinence, safe and responsible sex, and always feeling comfortable with the sex people are having.

The audience was separated between males and females for about 20 minutes when the males left the theater to talk with Miller and the females stayed to talk with Solot. The audience was separated to encourage honest and open talks about sexuality and personal experiences.

To wrap up the orgasm talk, Solot and Miller gave some tips about masturbation, the G-spot, Kegel exercises and multiple orgasms.

"Tightening your muscles down there with kegels can give your orgasm that 'pow' you're looking for," Miller said.

Their final words of wisdom were a list they compiled titled 'So You Want to Have an Orgasm?' The list is in their book "I <3 Female Orgasm" and the audience got the Cliff's Notes equivalent, "or maybe they should be called the 'clit notes,'" Solot said.

"It was basically a talk about sex education but it was really entertaining and I'm glad I went," said Emily Salimbene, a 3rd-semester psychology major. "Some parts were awkward but [Solot and Miller] made it really funny so it was easier to sit through."

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