When it comes to sexual intercourse, most people refrain from talking about it. But one spokeswoman believes it’s important to discuss what happens between the sheets, and returned to NMU to deliver another comedic, honest reflection. 

Social sexuality educator, speaker and author Cindy Pierce brought “The Talk” on Tuesday. Although attendance was sparse, the comic educational speaker was unfazed and proceeded in her one-woman show.

The presentation titled “Good Healthy Sex” was given at NMU as a result of the Sexual Assault Task Force Committee as well as a grant from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

“Most of it was just common sense,” Aiden Popour, freshman Environmental Science major said. “But I don’t think humans are usually good at common sense.”

The talk focused mainly on how the internet and social media has impacted young people’s sexuality and how hook-up culture has made it difficult to feel satisfied in sex. Pierce has been giving talks like this since 2004 and includes both humor and social research in her discussion of sexuality. She has written three books about sex and tries to provide as many resources as possible to her young audience.

“This is important to do because I think there should be thousands of people doing what I do,” Pierce said. “So many young people are suffering, feeling alone, feeling sexually inadequate and feeling like they’re left out of the scene of everyone enjoying sex, yet so many people are not. And they don’t really have the facts, and so they’re basing it all on what they see on social media and how people talk. So I just think they need realistic expectations.”

Pierce began by speaking only to college students and has since expanded her repertoire to speaking at high schools and middle schools.

“I had no intention of doing this work,” Pierce said. 

She had three small children when she was roped into giving a comedy show at her niece’s sorority and nephew’s fraternity.

“My assumption about you young people was like, you got the internet, you got all the info you need about sex, you’re dialed in,” Pierce said “[I] went into a sorority with 40 women, started taking questions, [I was] horrified how little they knew about their pleasure zones, about their sexuality.”

Not all of Pierce’s discussion centered directly around sex. Some of it focused on peripheral issues such as the social courage necessary for calling people out on racist jokes. She also advocated for sobriety at parties.

She recommended that students find friends who have their backs and are able to call them out on questionable decisions. She spoke passionately about the importance of trusting your gut and honoring your feelings of warning to form an inner compass.

A great deal of her discussion centered on the negative impacts of pornography. She explained that people assume that young people educate themselves adequately with the internet.

“The first stop for sexual education is porn, the worst to get you off the rails,” she said. 

Pierce handed out her book, Sex, College & Social Media after her discussion and took questions. 

She is happy to provide sex education information via email at [email protected].