Elizabeth Hirsh, the new manager of the Women's Health Program, engaged students with an interactive program yesterday about "Women and Pleasure," focusing on methods of sexual pleasure as well as the more clinical aspects of sexuality.
An even mix of female and male students gave the talk a positive reception, welcoming it for its blunt discussion of sexuality and its broad appeal.
Topics ranged from women's "fickle relationship" with seduction to finding the G-spot and the importance of self-exploration, subjects Hirsh said today's society considers "taboo."
But although the program was advertised for all sexual orientations and targeted to an audience of college students, examples portrayed long-term, heterosexual relationships, and many anecdotes involved married couples.
Hirsh spoke of couples who were encouraged to stop engaging in intercourse to excite their sex lives and mentioned the difficulty for a working mother to transform into a "sex kitten" at night.
Much of the discussion focused on finding feminine sexual pleasure by exploring the different steps on the sexual response cycle. She encouraged the audience to avoid viewing intercourse or an orgasm as the ultimate goal of sensuality in a relationship.
During one interactive part of the program, Hirsh queried the audience for "five ways to use a penis to pleasure a woman, not including intercourse," encouraging listeners to vary their sexual practices with their partners. She also cited the top three unusual places to kiss a woman -- behind the knee, along the ribs and inside the upper arm and encouraged women to use sex toys as a "different form of stimulation."
Hirsh also discussed some of society's problematic perceptions of sex. People view sex as "medical," she said, adding that society -- especially in movies -- shows intercourse as "never messy." In movies, the actors will "never be stuck in embarrassing positions," but in actuality, those can be the most sexually satisfying, according to Hirsh.
Hirsh challenged the crowd to match gynecological names with their location on a diagram of the vagina. Using the quiz to lead into a physiological talk, Hirsh detailed the sensual areas of the female anatomy.
Most audience members became involved when Hirsh passed out topics -- including "sex and play" and "seduction can be fun" -- for smaller group discussions.
Kristina Emeghebo '06, described the talk as "uncensored" and liked the clinical nature of the program, in contrast to the more humorous "Sex Rules" during orientation week.
Another student said he felt "enlightened" on the topic of women's sexual pleasure. Zach Smith '06 summed up the discussion of new stimulation techniques: "different strokes for different folks."
Hirsh spent 20 years as a physician's assistant in the obstetrics and gynecology department of the Rochester Institute of Technology working with women in outpatient care and running a clinical physician's program.
