female orgasm program FAQ
1. What kinds of colleges and groups have hosted The Female Orgasm program?
2. What’s the gender breakdown of the students who attend this program?
3. Is the program LGBTQ-inclusive? How is it inclusive of transgender students, specifically?
4. Our school is quite conservative. Would The Female Orgasm be appropriate for us?
5. Does this program work at a women's college? How about a school with mostly male students?
6. We are bringing The Female Orgasm to campus. What's your advice about how to advertise it?
7. When students hang up the publicity posters and wear the publicity buttons and t-shirts around campus, other students ask them what the program is all about. What's a short answer that will be easy for them to remember and will convince other students to attend?
8. We're excited about bringing your program to campus! We think the topic is important, but we're a bit concerned that the title "The Female Orgasm" may make some people uncomfortable. Do you have ideas for ways to advertise the program using a different title?
Airborne at East Tennessee State University!
photo by Brandilynn Hamm
1. What kinds of colleges and groups have hosted The Female Orgasm program?
All kinds! We've presented The Female Orgasm on conservative campuses and liberal ones, at women's colleges and mostly-male ones, at Ivy League colleges, private and public universities, community colleges and four-year schools, tiny little colleges and very large ones, universities in the heart of New York City and in rural schools surrounded by farmland, from Maine to New Mexico, Washington state to Florida, Arkansas to Alaska -- a total of 45 states and counting!
We've been hosted by a wide variety of groups including student activities boards, programming councils, women's centers, feminist clubs, LGBTQ groups, peer educator groups, offices of student activities, student life, residence life, counseling and psychological services, health and wellness services, academic departments, sororities and fraternities, social justice groups, diversity groups, and others.
We've also presented The Female Orgasm as part of special theme weeks such as Sex Week, Romance and Responsibility Week, Women's History Month, Valentine's Day Week, Love Your Body Week, Sexual Health Education Week, Pride Month, and many others. It's also been part of a college comedy series, as "Late Nite" programming, as part of an academic lecture series, and as a keynotes at a LGBTQ college conference, a Society of Women Engineers college conference, and at the 4th International Feminist Forum in Ankara, Turkey!
2. What’s the gender breakdown of the students who attend this program?
At a typical co-ed school, roughly two-thirds of the audience tend to identify as women, and roughly one-third tend to identify as men. The program attracts both cisgender students and those who identify as transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming (more here). Student and staff organizers frequently tell us how impressed they are by the gender diversity of the audience members who attend this program.
3. Is the program LGBTQ-inclusive? How is it inclusive of transgender students, specifically?
Yes, this is important to us! For lots of detail, “It’s LGBTQ-inclusive, too."
4. Our school is quite conservative. Would The Female Orgasm be appropriate for us?
We've presented The Female Orgasm at many colleges where students and staff members told us in advance that the campus tended to be conservative, and the response to the program has been extremely positive. We are always willing to work closely with organizers to strategize about the publicity and content of the program. Staff who have attended the program say it's tasteful and appropriate. We'd be happy to share letters we've received from a variety of kinds of schools that have hosted the program, sharing their experiences with it, and we also can provide references you can speak to directly. Also, see the question below about ways to advertise the program in more low-key ways, without using the word "orgasm" in all the publicity.
5. Does this program work at a women's college? How about a school with mostly male students?
Yes to both! Among women's schools, Wellesley College has brought the program in six times, and Smith and Simmons Colleges twice each, always to rave reviews. Lesley, Russell Sage, and Scripps Colleges have all hosted and loved the program, as well. The turnout at Douglass College, the women's college of Rutgers University, was triple what the organizers told us they'd expected. We find that at women's schools the interactive, conversational parts of the program work particularly well, since often there is a already a high level of comfort talking about sexuality. The program is inclusive of all who identify as a woman, and/or have a vagina, and/or were assigned female at birth, and partners and friends of all genders and sexual orientations.
The program has also been a hit at schools with predominantly male student populations, including Lawrence Technological University, Maine Maritime Academy, Michigan Technological University, Missouri University of Science & Technology, NYU-Poly, Rochester Institute of Technology, Bentley University, Clarkson University, Daniel Webster College, and SUNY Institute of Technology. At the Wentworth Institute of Technology, the advisor to the Wentworth Events Board wrote to us afterwards, "It was our largest audience ever for an event we did not make mandatory." (They went on to bring the program in twice more in future years.)
6. We are bringing The Female Orgasm to campus. What's your advice about how to advertise it?
To get started, we have some great program descriptions you can put on your website, in the school newspaper, or on materials you create, along with images you can use (a href="/publicityAndPromotion.php">a button image and photos of the presenters). We usually mail you your complete publicity package about 3 weeks before your event -- it will contain your 5 free t-shirts, 30 11x17 color posters, photocopyable posters and table tents, 10 free buttons, and any additional extra t-shirts or buttons that you ordered from us. You should also receive our Orgasmic Publicity Ideas sheet -- we usually send that to you by email when you book the program, and again in the publicity package. If you'd like to receive publicity materials from us sooner, just let us know!
Photo by Dana Lovallo, The Daily Campus
7. When students hang up the publicity posters and wear the publicity buttons and t-shirts around campus, other students ask them what the program is all about. What's a short answer that will be easy for them to remember and will convince other students to attend?
Tell them to say it really is all about female orgasm, and it's really funny. That's really all they need to say! It's a good idea to make sure that every student wearing an "I heart female orgasm" t-shirt or button knows to say this -- and also be sure they know when and where the program is taking place so they can tell people that information, too!
8. We're excited about bringing your program to campus! We think the topic is important, but we're a bit concerned that the title "The Female Orgasm" may make some people uncomfortable. Do you have ideas for ways to advertise the program using a different title?
Yes, many schools have done so. We'd be happy to provide you with a list of alternative titles and approaches that other schools have used that have gotten great turnouts using more "subtle" publicity. Give us a call or an email to request this -- we'd be happy to strategize with you. (We also provide all colleges that book The Female Orgasm with a comprehensive packet of great publicity ideas!)
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