Students in Richard White Lecture Hall Tuesday night discussed the female anatomy-but this lecture was more arousing than a typical biology course.
Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, professional sex educators and married couple, headlined Tuesday night's Healthy Devils seminar called "I Heart Female Orgasm." Students and faculty packed into the overflowing Richard White Lecture Hall. The audience, though predominantly female, also included males.
Senior Martha Brucato, an executive board member of Healthy Devils, organized the event after a friend told her about the couple's seminar. Brucato hoped the event would create an environment more conducive to discussions about sex and the female body at Duke.
Some audience members heard about the event from friends while others were intrigued by the fliers posted across East and West Campus.
"It's not something that you typically see advertised at Duke, and I had no idea what to expect," said sophomore Mike Lefevre. "I was very aroused by the topic, and I came here with some pointed questions."
Solot and Miller encouraged members of the audience to set their cell phones to vibrate and continued with other sexual jokes to set an informal tone for the evening. The couple met at a masturbation presentation while they were attending Brown University.
"I decided I wanted to learn everything there was to know about female orgasm," Solot said.
Miller spoke about the male view of the female orgasm and the couple explained that confusion about achieving female orgasm is normal among both men and women.
"A lot of times what they teach girls about sex is how to say no," Solot said, adding that such sexual education leaves women with many questions about sex and their genitalia. To delve deeper into the topic of sex and orgasm, Solot and Miller separated the audience by gender into discussion groups.
Separated into groups, males and females were asked personal questions about masturbation, orgasm and their sex lives in general. Audience members shared anecdotes and asked questions about their sex lives with either Solot or Miller. Several members of the audience discussed their first orgasmic experiences in detail to illustrate the many different ways to achieve orgasm.
"People are not sometimes very comfortable with the word 'sex'... but I'm really happy that people are very open to this," junior Jessica Rodriguez said.
The gender-separated discussion groups were meant to make the audience feel more comfortable talking about personal sex issues, Solot said.
After the 20-minute discussions, the groups rejoined and Solot and Miller encouraged the audience members to join the 5,000 person strong "I Heart Female Orgasm" Facebook group or purchase an "I Heart Female Orgasm" T-shirt, pin or book. The couple also presented the audience members with diagrams of the female anatomy with descriptions of where and how to best stimulate for an orgasm.
For some students, the seminar served more as a discussion forum rather than a specifically informative lecture.
The seminar closed with several tips about how to achieve female orgasm. Miller and Solot recommended Kegel exercises, body consciousness and masturbation as the best methods for achieving female orgasm.
The bisexual couple encouraged the audience members to apply the information they learned in the seminar to their everyday sex lives.
The hope is to make the event annual, as at peer institutions, Brucato said.
"The important part of it is that I don't think anybody went in there and thought that this is the end of the story, that this is all I need to know," Brucato said. "I'm very much encouraged by the fact that I think people are going to continue to get information after this."
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