WRC: Celebrating Prurient Pleasure

By Viraj Patel | Monday, December 3, 2001

The Women's Resource Center was founded to 'celebrate women's achievements, explore the role gender plays in human experience, and support individual and collective struggles related to gender.' But while other women's organizations with similar missions—the Independent Women's Forum for example—hold discussions on dating in college, having healthy relationships, and the pros and cons of marriage, all the Dartmouth Women's Resource Center seems to focus on is sex. Their two main programs for this fall, the 'Let's Talk About Sex Series' and the Sexual Abuse Awareness Program are both explicitly only about sex.

'Yeah that feels good...Male Sexual Pleasure' is the title of the slide that introduces Dr. Joshua Lee's talk on male sexuality, held on November 12th in the Top of the Hop. The talk will be the first in the 'Let's Talk About Sex Series,' as the Director of Health Resources Gabrielle Lucke explains in her introduction. She is especially giddy about a future talk in January about masturbation, but she is excited about today's talk as well because 'We always like a little foreplay.' Dr. Lee, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Hitchcock Medical Center, begins by explaining to the twenty-five to thirty people in the room, mostly male, that he is holding this event 'because people still feel very uncomfortable when talking about sexuality.'

First Dr. Lee requests a 'sexual inventory' of the audience. This is less straightforward than it sounds, as it consists of answering a twenty-five-question survey. It starts out reasonably enough with 'Am I a male or female?' but by question seven it sounds more like a game of Truth or Dare: 'Have you been 'caught' having sex?' One must wonder if Doctor Lee is just curious or actually has medical use for a questions like 'Are you turned on by the thought of being paid for sex?'

Although Dr. Lee promises that these questionnaires will be kept completely confidential, much of the male audience is reluctant to participate. Even when a girl behind me offers a 'Sexual Inventory' sheet to her boyfriend, he is quick to push it away saying, 'No way am I doing this.' Meanwhile, a student photographer busily shoots away an entire roll of film of the Dr. and his audience, presumably for the next day's Daily Dartmouth, ensuring that while the questionnaire might be confidential, the meeting most certainly will not.

Once the inventory is completed, Dr. Lee gets on to the rest of the meeting, which, while just as entertaining, is not much more informative. The slide projector informs us that we will first learn about 'plumbing,' as Dr. Lee explains that 'most of the male sexuality centers around the penis.'

'It's there. It's hard to miss.'

After a short summary of the anatomy of that appendage that one might have learned in a high school biology course, Dr. Lee offers some information that seems very encouraging to certain members of the audience: 'There is no such thing as the right size.' Perhaps most heartening is that 'people may be pleasured by a small penis.'

Regarding the testes, Doctor Lee has the following to say: 'Not that sensitive unless crushed.' Now while that might be more than obvious to the male portion of the audience, it cannot hurt to remind the female portion of this crucial fact. A sympathetic and somewhat confused female in the audience aptly brings up the issues of plastic bicycle seats. The distraught expression on Doctor Lee's face suggests that this is a problem that he has worried a lot about as he informs us that softer seats are the only solution. I almost raise my hand to inform everyone about this gel-filled seat that I have, which is very comfortable, but I hesitate for a moment and the opportunity is lost as Dr. Lee moves on to the prostate. Apparently, stimulating the prostate can make you ejaculate, and while this is news to some, most of the audience familiar with the recent movie Road Trip and its vivid illustration of this fact seem unfazed.

The meeting concludes with a question and answer session, the highlight of which is a question asked by a blond and scientific-minded male student sitting towards the back of the room. 'Do you know how one might increase the fructose content of semen so that it might taste sweeter?' Dr. Lee leaves us with a humorous but helpful 'Don't eat broccoli.'

While the 'Let's Talk About Sex Series' is optional, unlike the 'Sex Rules!' talk during freshmen orientation, whether the college should fund and endorse events like this remains a question. While a safe-sex lecture might be considered in the interest of student health, lectures on 'How men and their partners can get the most pleasure from their sexual experiences,' as the Women's Resource Center advertised about this talk, fall outside that realm. Shouldn't Dartmouth's concern be more intellectual and less, well, prurient?

WRC: Celebrating Prurient Pleasure

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