Female orgasms are everywhere. I’m pretty sure I learned the word “orgasm” at the age of five from reading the covers of Cosmo sold in the checkout line at the grocery store, where phrases like “HOW TO CLIMAX TOGETHER,” “THE 7 BEST ORGASM TRICKS IN THE WORLD,” and “THE ORGASM WHISPERER” scream from the cover of each month’s edition. All over our television and movie screens, women pant and gasp and moan and orgasm. And then there’s porn, which has spawned a whole genre devoted to female ejaculation. Female orgasms are everywhere in real life too, right? After all, 44 percent of men with female partners say their partners always have orgasms when they have sex.
And yet only 22 percent of women say that they always orgasm when they have sex with a man. Something has clearly gone wrong here. Starting at a young age, those of us socialized female are bombarded with a series of conflicting messages about our sexuality and our pleasure, often bound up in confusion, shame, and a lack of information — according to the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit which works to advance reproductive health, only 22 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education as of 2015. We exist in a culture which at once fetishizes and shames female sexuality, where women are expected to know how to orgasm, to do it every time, to have loud sex and enjoy it — but to remain silent when sexually assaulted. So female orgasms — and female sexual pleasure more generally — are at once everywhere and nowhere. It almost seems as if our orgasms don’t belong to us, but to men who produce and consume porn, direct and star in movies and are the main beneficiaries of Cosmo’s MIND-BLOWING SEX TIPS.
Luckily, sex educator, doula and co-author of “I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide” Dorian Solot will be on campus soon to help with this whole mess. I’ve spent two and half years of reading Butler, Bourdieu and bell hooks in the college’s gender & sexuality studies courses, hundreds of hours clicking through the feminist blogosphere, and endless trainings, workshops and conversations about sexual assault and consent. So I’ve tried a number of approaches to deconstructing and shaking off the shame and pain associated with pleasure. Solot’s method, though, is different from any of these tactics — not to mention innovative, useful, and with serious potential to enhance the way we treat each other (and ourselves) on campus.
Solot’s interest in sex education and the female orgasm began during her time as an undergraduate at Brown University. At Brown, Solot learned how to have her first orgasm from a book.
“I think I can definitively say it was the most useful book I ever read,” she said. Soon after, attempting to choose a topic for an in-depth research paper on the intersection of science and gender, Solot found the body of academic literature on science of the female orgasm.
“I sat in the Brown library with that first towering stack of academic sexuality journals, and as I started to read I realized this subject is even more interesting than I’d thought,” Solot said. Solot’s initial paper grew into a number of academic articles, the program she will present to Swarthmore students and her book.
The program itself evolved out of other sex education work Solot did with her partner, Marshall Miller. When the two first began to teach sex ed., they found that many people had a great deal of questions about female orgasms.
“Since that’s one of my favorite subjects, I was happy to answer them,” Solot said. “At some point we realized we should probably just offer an entire program specifically on female orgasm. These days, that’s ninety percent of what we’re asked to teach about.”
“The Female Orgasm,” which she and fellow Sex Discussed Here! (a team of sex educators co-founded by Solot) member Connor Timmons will present at the college, blends sex education, female empowerment and humor, emphasizing how individuals can make sexual decisions which are right for them. It deconstructs messages which people who are socialized as female receive about their bodies and sexuality, discusses “the value of saying ‘no’ to sex” — and the problems college-age and adult women sometimes encounter when they realize that’s all they ever learned — and considers how partners can be patient and respectful.
Of course, the program also covers everything you could ever want to know about the female orgasm, from the problems with pressure to have an orgasm, to how to orgasm faster, have multiple orgasms, and orgasm with a partner and whether to fake orgasms.
All of Solot’s programs attempt to utilize inclusive language and keep the diversity of the audience in mind.
“For example, we often use the phrase ‘people with vaginas’ instead of ‘women,’ particularly when we’re talking about anatomy, recognizing that not everyone who has a vagina identifies as a woman, and not every woman has a vagina,” Solot explained.
Additionally, humor is a key component of “The Female Orgasm” program, and Solot believes this greatly facilitates her work.
“It’s often easier to learn when you’re having a good time. Especially with a topic like sex that’s wrapped up with so much shame, guilt, misinformation and conflicting messages, helping people feel comfortable is the first step to creating safe space to learn,” she said. “And let’s be honest: sex is inherently funny!”
Solot’s sex education efforts are also connected to her work as a doula, a non-medical person who provides women with physical assistance and emotional support before, during and after childbirth. This support has been associated with a variety of maternal and fetal health benefits, lower risks of induction and interventions, and less need for pain relief.
“I joke that if I’m going to help women get babies out of there, I might as well help them get babies in there as well,” Solot said.
Solot sees her work and that of her fellow educators as one part of a larger movement attempting to expand access to accurate information about sexuality for those of all genders and sexual orientations.
“I wish sex education weren’t political, but sadly there are a lot of people and groups in the U.S. who work hard — with considerable success — to prevent accurate, comprehensive sex education from being taught,” Solot said. “Research tells us that people who are well-informed are more likely to make responsible choices, whenever the time is right for them.”
Solot also sees connections between more pleasurable sex, happier relationships and sexual assault prevention.
“A lot of colleges that bring us in tell us they’ve done a lot of education on their campuses about the ‘bad stuff’ related to sex, like sexual assault prevention, but hear from students that they want to learn about the positive side, too,” Solot said. “I think helping students think about what healthy, consensual sexual relationships can be like is important — what they may choose to create, not just what to avoid,” she added.
For Solot, orgasms in particular align well with sexual assault prevention.
“You’re a lot more likely to have an orgasm if you communicate well with your partner, if your sex is consensual, if you’re not drunk — a lot of the same messages sexual assault prevention educators often teach,” Solot said. “So orgasm and sexual pleasure can actually be a really positive framework for helping students think about healthy sexuality.”
Solot’s visit will take place as part of a week of events focused on healthy relationships and sex at the college. Among other events, such as a Pub Nite that Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention hopes to host and a workshop on navigating relationships,entitled “Hookups to Breakups” facilitated by Violence Prevention Educator and Advocate Nina Harris, Wellness Coordinator Noemi Fernandez and Alcohol and Other Drugs Counselor Josh Ellow, the week will also feature a conversation on men, masculinity and sexuality.
