Hirsh Sex Talk: Let's Get Mechanical

By Michael Ellis | Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Nearly half of all women have labia minora that are bigger than their labia majora. This came as news to me, as it did for most of the others in the crowd at the 'Mechanics of Women's Pleasure,' a seminar sponsored by the Center for Women and Gender, formerly the Women's Resource Center. Elizabeth W. Hirsh, the new manager of the Dick's House Women's Health Program, opened the program by handing out explicit diagrams of female genitalia to the crowd of around sixty who had made their way to the Tindle Lounge. The evening's first task was to identify all the parts of the vagina by attaching printed labels to their proper places on a diagram of the organ. Hirsh warned us that we might not be able to correctly identify all the parts because she had added many 'gynecological-specific' terms in order to 'challenge us.' Few people, male or female, in the audience could label their diagram with ease.

Hirsh told us that the focus for the evening would be on 'pleasure' and whether or not it involved orgasms. In a scientific manner, she noted that the clitoris was only the 'tip of the iceberg' for women and passed around diagrams of where to find the clitoris. Our next goal would be to find the Grafenburg or 'G' spot inside of the vagina. Hirsh's recommendation was to experiment with oneself, but she proved flexible on this point. 'If you have a partner with whom you feel comfortable, you may want to share the discovery,' she said. She continued: 'Insert one or two fingers—palm up—into your vagina while you are lying on your back. The G spot can usually be felt by putting pressure against the top wall of the vagina, in an area about halfway between the back of the pubic bone and the end of the vagina where the cervix is located.'

She also advocated many different ways to stimulate a woman with a penis aside from intercourse, including using it to 'massage her breasts and nipples, [press] it against her cheek, slide it into her underarm, and wrap her hair around it.' While the audience had generally maintained a quiet composure throughout most of the presentation, these remarks provoked a response. According to Hirsh, it was important to be able to 'have a satisfying relationship without intercourse,' and she wished that the word foreplay could be 'retired from the English language' since nothing need come after it.

While the program tried to focus on the clinical aspects of women's pleasure, certain elements strayed from that call, especially the invocation to 'let your imagination run free and discover the delicious magic known as romance.' Especially puzzling were the 'sexual response cycles' presented with a series of odd arrow diagrams that included the stages of 'willingness, desire, excitement, engorgement, and orgasm.' The steps, Hirsh explained, did not necessarily come in that order, and some could be skipped depending on circumstances.

However, Hirsh did place high emphasis on the need for love and commitment in a sexual relationship and warned several times of the dangers of separating sex from long-term emotional attachment. And, despite Hirsh's initial disclaimer that she would attempt to favor no particular 'orientation' over any other, the program was heterosexually-oriented—she stated that vibrators and other sex toys were 'no substitute for a penis' for most women. The underlying assumption for the evening seemed to be that a man would also be involved in bringing about women's pleasure.

Giovanna Munafo could not leave Hirsh to present her program without injecting her own thoughts. When Hirsh was describing the emotional dangers of sex without love, Munafo interjected that that abstaining from sex until marriage was 'a slippery slope,' which can 'become an instrument of control' over women by creating the unreasonable expectation that they remain abstinent. Munafo again interjected when an audience member asked what percentage of women could orgasm solely through intercourse. 'It's small, very small' and 'an unreasonable expectation for most women,' Munafo said.

The program went on to discuss such topics as the 'top three unusual places to kiss a woman'—behind the knee, along the ribs, and inside the upper arm, for the curious.

Hirsh Sex Talk: Let's Get Mechanical

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