As part of this year’s Sager Symposium (a multi-day event at Swarthmore discussing issues of sexuality, culminating in a drag party tonight), there was a seminar entitled “The Gender-Free Orgasm.” Let that sink in for a second.

What, I hear you ask, is a gender-free orgasm? It’s kind of complicated. Apparently, it’s an orgasm which someone (male, female, or, in grand Swarthmore spirit, neither/both) can achieve without needing to touch their genitalia. It boggles the mind, right? While I didn’t attend the seminar myself, because, uh, people, orgasms, public space, ick, I got the rudiments of it down from someone who did. Since you’re all dying to know, to achieve a gender-free orgasm, you have to do the following, and I swear I’m not making this shit up:

  • Breathe deeply, letting out a moan as you exhale.
  • Focus intensely on your “erotic zones.”
  • With va-jay-jay or penis in mind, and while breathing and moaning, do Kegels. (In case you don’t have time to get acquainted with the technique in depth, it involves clenching the muscle that you squeeze to stop peeing, in those rare events when YOU NEED TO STOP PEEING RIGHT NOW OR TERRIBLE THINGS WILL HAPPEN.)
  • After about twenty minutes, orgasm. Rinse. Repeat.

This all sounds like a lot of effort to me in order to achieve some hippy-dippy progressive orgasm, especially considering the standard way of doing it doesn’t require nearly as much work. Nevertheless, despite what you would expect, apparently it works, for both men and women. A friend came back from the seminar and said, “Holy shit, that actually worked. I had two.”

Since this is Swarthmore, though, all this on its own isn’t sufficiently awkward. Apparently there was a screamer in the seminar group.