Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Ecco (2012), Hardcover, 400 pages
Description
"When an unexpected medical crisis sends [the author] on a deeply personal journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers, much to her own astonishment, an increasing body of scientific evidence that suggests that the vagina is not merely flesh, but an intrinsic component of the female brain--and thus has a fundamental connection to female consciousness itself."-- From the dust jacket.
Media reviews
Wolf’s opinions lurch over-excitedly between a sensibly holistic view of female sexuality and a more absurd and offensive hole-istic one.
The truncated version of Wolf’s cultural survey may give us no reason to wish it were longer, but her enthusiastic foray into the “new science” comes with its own set of problems. Like many who have drunk shallow drafts from the fountains of evolutionary biology and neuroscience, Wolf is so
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excited at the idea of explaining complex, overdetermined features of human behavior with simple reference to the prehistoric savannah or the hypothalamus that she often ignores the promptings of common sense and logic. Show Less
The ultimate misunderstanding would be to conclude that a woman is her vagina, and Wolf comes perilously close, apparently unconcerned that some such notion is the central tenet of misogyny.
This unlikely combination of pseudoscientific and mystical elements provides a little something for everyone to hate. Among neuroscientists, howlers such as "dopamine is the ultimate feminist chemical in the female brain", oxytocin "is women's emotional superpower" and the vagina is "not only
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coextensive with the female brain but also is part of the female soul" have been making the rounds of social media.
I almost feel sorry for Ms. Wolf because it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Show Less
Fascinating as it may be to watch Naomi Wolf disappear up her own vagina, we’ve had too many centuries of being fobbed off with flowers and appeals to the inner goddess to fall for that again. The vagina can monologue, but it takes a cunt to throw a brick through a window.
The New Yorker
"...in returning to the sexual body, the site of radical feminism's last internal battle, Wolf ends up marshalling the worst arguments from both sides of the porn wars."
In a world with Jessie J and Jamie Clayton in it, Caster Semenya and the work of Judith Butler, why are we still letting one of the Anglophone world's most famous feminists waste everyone's time with all this burble about the "universal feminine" with its "Goddess-shaped" hole?
I am however a neuroscientist, and for a book about the vagina, Wolf seems to mention the brain a lot.
So let’s see how brainy it is.
The large bully pulpit Wolf garnered after her impressive 1991 debut with “The Beauty Myth” has shrunk with each new outburst. Here, in her eighth book, she presents a “vagina” inevitably, sadly defanged from its real raging, sweet power. And with her graceless writing, Wolf opens herself
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to ridicule on virtually every page: “an overtakenness with disinhibition.” Huh?... She likes to coin phrases, as with the “vagina-brain connection” that populates her book. Call it what you like, but the fact that a woman’s genitals are connected to her brain is not news. It never even was news. It is a ridiculous redundancy so basic that even bonobos know it — and act accordingly..... Wolf gives you a choice: do you “want to be married to a Goddess — or a bitch?” O.K., don’t answer that. In truth, you have no say, since all the problems of the world are pretty much your fault and, God knows, your equipment is very mismatched to ours: your five minutes to takeoff does not suit our 20-minute minimum. Reading Wolf’s book can really make a woman foot-stomping mad about all those lovers who want to have sex the way men like to have sex. Who do you think you are: men? Don’t you know that only the girly-man can really ring our bell? But stay plenty manly while running our bubble baths because “a happy heterosexual vagina requires, to state the obvious, a virile man.” That’s right, you can’t win. Surrender, Dorotheus! Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member cmlloyd67
I gave up about 75% of the way through this. Not sure how to state that in Good Reads?
This is a rather controversial book - people seem to either hate it or love it. And I can see why - it's an emotionally manipulative book. While Naomi Wolf brings up some very good points, and reveals some things
She's also wildly inconsistent. At one point she states that you cannot generalize about people's sexual experiences. That every woman experiences sex differently (and men possibly do as well - she's not certain). Then states - that all creativity arises from orgasms or is directly linked to the Vagina and orgasms. Uh, sorry, Naomi, but I beg to differ. Most of the women I've met who had lots of orgasms, aren't that creative, and the one's who haven't had any - are highly creative. Great Sex does not necessarily equal Great ART or Heightened Creativity, or vice versa. To state that it does for everyone, immediately took me out of the book. I ended up scanning pages and pages of literary quotes where she attempts to prove her point - with isolated letters from Edith Wharton, George Eliot and Georgia O'Keefe, who ahem, were wildly creative without having sex as well. While ignoring completely Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Emily Dickenson, Lousia May Alcott, and various others. I'm certain if you identified with or related to her hypothesis, you loved this book, but if you didn't and know it's untrue, you may have stopped right there.
You'd think from her prior statements that everyone experiences sex differently she'd have figured this out on her own? And there's the main problem with this book - the writer generalizes about a topic that ironically, she herself states up front, you simply cannot generalize about.
The unreliability doesn't stop there, unfortunately. Nor do the generalizations. I gave up when she attempted to convince me that Shakespeare's use of the word "Nothing" in King Lear meant "Vagina".
This was after she attacked the Hebrew, Christian and various other faiths for being misogynistic and against the vagina. Taking various texts out of context, much like she does with Shakespeare. It's clearly meant to manipulate the reader's emotions, making Wolf somewhat unreliable.
So unfortunately, the good points - such as the section on how rape has some horrific long term effects (although I think she generalizes a bit here as well, not everyone has reacted to it in this manner - I know I've known and worked with rape victims), and how sex is different for everyone - is a bit lost amongst the crazy stuff. Making it difficult to take the book or the author seriously. I wish she had a better editor - someone who could have convinced her to tone it down a notch and not go on for 20 pages regarding the various ways Shakespeare may have denigrated the Vagina, depending on your interpretation. Some of it is rather hilarious in retrospect.
Overall, disappointing, and not worth the bother.
This is a rather controversial book - people seem to either hate it or love it. And I can see why - it's an emotionally manipulative book. While Naomi Wolf brings up some very good points, and reveals some things
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about the long-term consequences of sexual violence that are worth noting, she is unfortunately unreliable in her scholarship. I think this would have worked better if she had taken a few steps back from the subject matter and made if far less personal? She's also wildly inconsistent. At one point she states that you cannot generalize about people's sexual experiences. That every woman experiences sex differently (and men possibly do as well - she's not certain). Then states - that all creativity arises from orgasms or is directly linked to the Vagina and orgasms. Uh, sorry, Naomi, but I beg to differ. Most of the women I've met who had lots of orgasms, aren't that creative, and the one's who haven't had any - are highly creative. Great Sex does not necessarily equal Great ART or Heightened Creativity, or vice versa. To state that it does for everyone, immediately took me out of the book. I ended up scanning pages and pages of literary quotes where she attempts to prove her point - with isolated letters from Edith Wharton, George Eliot and Georgia O'Keefe, who ahem, were wildly creative without having sex as well. While ignoring completely Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Emily Dickenson, Lousia May Alcott, and various others. I'm certain if you identified with or related to her hypothesis, you loved this book, but if you didn't and know it's untrue, you may have stopped right there.
You'd think from her prior statements that everyone experiences sex differently she'd have figured this out on her own? And there's the main problem with this book - the writer generalizes about a topic that ironically, she herself states up front, you simply cannot generalize about.
The unreliability doesn't stop there, unfortunately. Nor do the generalizations. I gave up when she attempted to convince me that Shakespeare's use of the word "Nothing" in King Lear meant "Vagina".
This was after she attacked the Hebrew, Christian and various other faiths for being misogynistic and against the vagina. Taking various texts out of context, much like she does with Shakespeare. It's clearly meant to manipulate the reader's emotions, making Wolf somewhat unreliable.
So unfortunately, the good points - such as the section on how rape has some horrific long term effects (although I think she generalizes a bit here as well, not everyone has reacted to it in this manner - I know I've known and worked with rape victims), and how sex is different for everyone - is a bit lost amongst the crazy stuff. Making it difficult to take the book or the author seriously. I wish she had a better editor - someone who could have convinced her to tone it down a notch and not go on for 20 pages regarding the various ways Shakespeare may have denigrated the Vagina, depending on your interpretation. Some of it is rather hilarious in retrospect.
Overall, disappointing, and not worth the bother.
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LibraryThing member GlennBell
This was a very intersting book on a topic that is rarely discussed. The book is aimed at a female audience but I felt that I learned alot about female sexual response and male involvement in this. I hope to appropriate some of what I learned and become more in tune with the needs of women. I wish
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that I had read this many years ago. Show Less
LibraryThing member GlennBell
This was a very intersting book on a topic that is rarely discussed. The book is aimed at a female audience but I felt that I learned alot about female sexual response and male involvement in this. I hope to appropriate some of what I learned and become more in tune with the needs of women. I wish
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that I had read this many years ago. Show Less
LibraryThing member AJBraithwaite
This should be required reading for anyone who owns a vagina and anyone who would like to have a sexual relationship with someone who owns a vagina. It's a fascinating exploration of science, social history, literature and pornography in relation to the female sex organs, particularly focusing on
Minor editing point - the green Teletubby is Dipsy, not Ditsy. ;-)
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the close relationship between a woman's emotional wellbeing and her sexual experiences. Naomi Wolf has done extensive research and presents her findings in a very accessible and quietly humorous way which is easy to read. The chapters on porn and on the systematic use of rape in wartime to subdue women were more challenging and heart-breaking to read, but important to know about.Minor editing point - the green Teletubby is Dipsy, not Ditsy. ;-)
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LibraryThing member SonoranDreamer
I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I think women and girls should know everything there is to know about their body. I like knowing that there are two different nerve clusters in my vulva.
On the other hand, I was confused and annoyed by the terms the author uses. She uses vagina
She also criticizes radical feminism with what I think was a lack of understanding of it.
Overall, I liked this book, but was annoyed with the style and the way she wasn't consistent with terms and often used them incorrectly (vagina is the birth canal, not the entire female genitals!!). I also didn't like her style of writing in this book. I did finda few topics I'd like to explore further. Too bad she didn't explore those in further detail.
On the other hand, I was confused and annoyed by the terms the author uses. She uses vagina
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both for the vagina and to mean vulva. She also introduces other terms, such as the "goddess array", and I'm often unsure as to what she is referring to. I also didn't like her section that refers to male and female brains, as if the differences in our brain structures are significant, which they aren't. Nor did I like the reasons she gives for women to be attracted to abusers. It is much more complicated than what she says (that it is natural) and is instead due to the influence of a patriarchal society.She also criticizes radical feminism with what I think was a lack of understanding of it.
Overall, I liked this book, but was annoyed with the style and the way she wasn't consistent with terms and often used them incorrectly (vagina is the birth canal, not the entire female genitals!!). I also didn't like her style of writing in this book. I did finda few topics I'd like to explore further. Too bad she didn't explore those in further detail.
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Original publication date
2012
Physical description
400 p.; 9.1 inches
ISBN
0061989169 / 9780061989162