During lectures, speakers usually ask the audience to turn their phones on silent.

Marshall Miller and Dorian Solot asked their audience to turn their phones on vibrate.

Miller and Solot, both sex educators, gave their lecture “The Female Orgasm” Thursday night in the Martin Luther King, Jr. University Union Grand Ballroom.

The lecture was brought to campus as part of the University Board cultural arts series.

The predominately female audience chuckled in response to the couple’s joke.

Almost every chair was filled and about 300-350 students were in attendance.

Solot and Miller started their lecture with their famous female orgasm movie scene.

The infamous scene from “When Harry Met Sally” was shown when Sally, played by Meg Ryan, fakes an orgasm in the middle of a restaurant.

Solot said the subject is not only fun, but also healthy to discuss and to know about your body.

For Solot, she said the health benefits are not theoretical. She then described how, when she was 26, she found a lump in her breast.

She did not find the lump from a mammogram or from a monthly self-examination. It was because she was comfortable with her body.

Solot demonstrated to the audience how she found the lump.

She was lying in bed one night when she yawned, stretched and drew her hand over her body.

“It’s not bad, dirty or shameful to touch your body,” Solot said.

When she found out she had cancer, Solot said she was flabbergasted. After going through surgery and chemotherapy, Solot is in her eighth year of remission.

Miller and Solot were able to address both men’s and women’s points of view.

Halfway into their presentation, the audience was separated.

The men went across the hall to the 1895 Room with Miller while all the females stayed in the Grand Ballroom with Solot.

Solot wanted to hear from the women in the room. She asked them what they heard about masturbation while growing up.

One woman said an aunt had told her, “Sex can wait, masturbate.”

Solot also brainstormed things that help women have an orgasm. Foreplay, love, fantasy and patience were all mentioned.

Then the crowd of females was given the chance to share their first orgasm stories.

Some told of how they were young, others had not until they were in college.

The two groups reconvened twenty minutes later to discuss what had been talked about in the separate groups.

Miler said how the men discussed where they first learned about the female anatomy and sex.

He said many said they were in sex education class and all they learned was about the fallopian tubes. Miller then demonstrated with his hands what the diagram looked like.

Miller and Solot also discussed, in detail, the clitoris, vibrators, the G-spot and the arousal cycle.

The couple offered suggestions, explanations and showed diagrams.

Beth Deien, a junior accounting major, said the lecture was informative.

“This stuff never gets talked about from anyone,” Deien said.

The way Miller and Solot talked about orgasms made everyone relate to the subject, even though Deien said no one she knows talks about them.

Deien said because Miller and Solot were at ease talking about female orgasms, everyone else felt comfortable with the material.

Sydney Stanhope, a junior business management major and UB cultural arts coordinator, thought the lecture was “absolutely fantastic” because it proved to be so informative for students.

“I hope they (students) walk away with a lot more information about sexuality and female orgasms in general,” Stanhope said.

Solot said she loved the enthusiasm from Eastern students. She said the lecture is more fun when the audience seems to be enjoying themselves.

Solot said in high school, when sex is discussed, it is stuff that is already known. This is why learning about sexual pleasure is new to many.

“I feel like this topic of sexual pleasure is so central to sexuality,” Solot said, but added sexual pleasure is talked about less than most things.

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.

Marshall Miller speaks during “The Female Orgasm” held in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. Miller said he was there to give males a voice in the discussion. (Nora Maberry/The Daily Eastern News)

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