On Thursday Feb. 6, UNI’s Campus Activities Board and Student Wellness hosted “I Heart Female Orgasm,” a lecture on sexuality.

The event began with a Student Wellness fair, where students had access to free sexual health information and contraception. Janelle Ballhagen, a health educator at Allen Women’s Health in Waterloo present at the fair, noted the importance of the resources that programs like “I Heart Female Orgasm,” as well as Student Wellness Services offer to students.

Marshall Miller, a sex educator and “I Heart Female Orgasm” co-presenter, emphasized the importance of learning about sex.

“One of the […] main things [to take away] is it’s good and healthy and important to learn about sex, whether you choose to put that information to use right away or some time down the road. For a lot of people […] coming to a program like this is a step toward learning more, [especially] on a campus like this, where there’s so many other resources tapping into the things they’re offering in Student Wellness Services and just taking advantage of the great resources [at UNI],” he said.

Miller and co-presenter, Rachel Dart, used humor and pop culture references in their talk. They showed clips from films and TV shows such as “When Harry Met Sally” and “Big Mouth.” Miller and Dart also elaborated on the definition of “female” in “I Heart Female Orgasm.” Their presentation included those who were assigned female at birth, are cisgender female and who are transgender females.

Gabby Grahamlegare, a junior elementary education major, liked how the presenters brought trans and nonbinary-identifying people into the conversation.

  “I really enjoyed the entire thing overall, but probably my favorite part was them discussing […] consent with trans, nonbinary; they talked about intersex and all that, so it was good for people who have never really experienced that much to actually have information about that,” she said.

“For me […] the most important thing for students to take away is that [sex] doesn’t have to be sort of like an uncomfortable or stigmatizing topic,” Dart said. “In fact, you can talk about it like we do with humor and in a safe way and a comfortable way. So I think just the fact of talking about [sex] together can be a really really powerful and great.”