Pierce Jokes About Sex, Sort Of

By Danielle Levin | 2/22/11 2:10pm

Sex come­di­enne Cindy Pierce kicked off V-Week with a warn­ing that her show would be a no-holds-barred, sex­u­ally ex­plicit night, and then out­lined her main goal of the pro­gram: to have women “be pre­sent in your body, re­gard­less of how it looks or how you feel about it, [be­cause] when you’ve got your plea­sure zones di­aled in, noth­ing can stop you.” Pierce’s ma­te­r­ial cov­ered col­lege and post-col­lege sex cul­ture on Mon­day dur­ing the hour-and-forty-minute long show in a packed Col­lis Com­mon Ground.

Her per­for­mance ranged from the out­landishly hu­mor­ous (tales of swap­ping Pent­house pic­tures with the boys on her base­ball team), to the en­dear­ingly can­did (a de­scrip­tion of her first or­gasm, which took place in her col­lege’s li­brary), to the purely heart­break­ing (a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with near-rape).

Dur­ing her per­for­mance, Pierce iden­ti­fied three major ob­sta­cles in try­ing to find ful­fill­ing sex­ual re­la­tion­ships: the lack of plea­sure ed­u­ca­tion, porn cul­ture and the al­co­hol and hookup cul­ture.

Pierce de­scribed the re­cent up­swing in stu­dents’ high-risk drink­ing be­hav­iors as the sin­gle great­est threat to healthy sex­ual re­la­tion­ships, in an in­ter­view with The Dart­mouth.

On the sub­ject of plea­sure ed­u­ca­tion, Pierce put forth her the­ory of “ass­hole tick­ets.” The idea is that men are granted a num­ber of “ass­hole tick­ets” — es­sen­tially a li­cense to be­have cal­lously — in pro­por­tion to their charm and in­tel­lect, and the tick­ets are ac­cepted as legal ten­der every­where.

Pierce scolded the crit­ics who only “wag our fin­gers at young men” with­out pro­vid­ing guid­ance about to how to be a re­spon­si­ble, con­sci­en­tious lover or part­ner, and went on to say that, “we, as women, we as par­ents, need to stop tak­ing these tick­ets.”

The witty come­di­enne also crit­i­cized women for fail­ing to share the “knowl­edge of or­gasms” with each other. She de­scribed her quest to achieve or­gasm as a se­ries of dis­cus­sions with sis­ters, older fe­male rel­a­tives, team­mates and fel­low stu­dents, all of whom failed to men­tion or­gasm as a part of sex. A per­va­sive theme through­out the per­for­mance was one of peer-to-peer guid­ance — she de­scribed how in re­ac­tion to her first or­gasm she thought, “We re­ally need to get the word out!”

Pierce lamented the al­co­hol and hook-up cul­ture, which she at­trib­uted to a com­bined de­sire to find a re­lease from aca­d­e­mic pres­sures and a de­sire for so­cial lu­bri­cants in order to fa­cil­i­tate at­tain­ing as much sex­ual ex­pe­ri­ence as pos­si­ble.

“Mileage does not guar­an­tee ex­pe­ri­ence,” Pierce said. Being truly good in bed re­quires “com­mu­ni­ca­tion, trust, re­spect, humor and,” she added to laugh­ter, “know­ing a per­son’s last name.” She de­scribed the com­mit­ment needed for fe­male sex­ual sat­is­fac­tion both on the part of women them­selves (“No guy is going to know how to give you an or­gasm until you know how to give one to your­self”) and on the part of their part­ners, cit­ing sta­tis­tics such as the av­er­age time needed to achieve male and fe­male or­gasms (4 and 20 min­utes, re­spec­tively).

Pierce em­pha­sized that the peer-pres­sure fu­eled cul­ture of drink­ing in order to hook up doesn’t dis­ap­pear after col­lege, and that in­di­vid­u­als needs to make an ac­tive choice if they want to re­ject those pres­sures, say­ing, “sev­enth grade never ends ‘til you grab it by its col­lar and pull it down.”

Pierce also talked about the alarm­ing in­crease of vagi­nal re­con­struc­tion clin­ics — there were eight new clin­ics founded in one year in New York City alone — and the dis­con­nect be­tween fan­tasies cre­ated by pornog­ra­phy and the re­al­ity of sex­ual en­coun­ters. Anec­do­tal ma­te­r­ial from her male friends and men who have seen her per­form showed the schism that porn is cre­at­ing be­tween the sex­ual ex­pec­ta­tions of men and women, cit­ing ques­tions she had been asked like, “Why do women like it when we come on their faces?”

An­other split that needs to be ad­dressed for the sake of healthy sex­ual re­la­tions was that of stu­dents’ pri­vate and pub­lic lives, or their “base­ment selves and class­room selves,” Pierce said.

Pierce has per­formed at Dart­mouth V-Week twice, and has spo­ken to soror­i­ties, fra­ter­ni­ties, teams and se­nior so­ci­eties. She has also per­formed at nu­mer­ous other col­lege cam­puses.