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Naomi Wolf and the Sacred Vagina
Wow. I almost want to read it just for the lulz.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/10/naomi-wolf-and-the-sacred-vagina/
Oy Naomi Wolf. Why are we all still referring to you as some sort of feminist thought leader?I am very happy for you that you are having wonderful earth-shattering shivering mystical sex. You are correct that the vagina and the brain are, in fact, part of “one whole system” —the same way that the left hand and the brain or the nose and the brain are also part of one whole system (the human body, for the slower to catch on). I even think you’re probably correct that many women (most women?) could be having better sex, and that our own cultural constructions of sex (begins with a boner, ends with ejaculation) are not only centered almost entirely on male sexual experience and desire but also thwart female sexual pleasure and understand a woman’s experience with and desire for heterosexual sex only in relation to a man’s (assumed to be neutral, standard and true) definition and understanding of sex. All of that is bad for women, in and out of the bedroom. But here, as explained by a lovely reviewer in the New York Review of Books, is where you lose me:
There is something really sweet about Wolf’s romance novel take on what constitutes good sex, and in a porn-heavy sex culture where rougher, badder sex is better, it’s nice to see Wolf put an alternate vision of good sex on the table.* But just like using evolutionary psychology to argue that women have evolved to protect themselves from rape or that men have evolved to prefer tiny-waisted young blonde blue-eyed women with large breasts (because obviously blonde-haired blue-eyed women have always been present and desired in societies all over the world for the whole of human histery) or that suicide bombers are always Muslim (seriously, science says so!) or that black women are “objectively” unattractive,it’s intellectually lazy to start with “I really strongly believe this one thing, so I will work backwards from that thing and come up with some evolutionary reason for it.” It’s a game that people play all the time, and I understand its appeal. Recognizing that human behavior, and especially human sexual desire, is undoubtedly some incredibly complex mix of biology and sociology doesn’t lend itself easily to a 500-word essay on the essential goddess in every woman. The biological and the cultural and the socialized and the experiential aren’t even close to separable from each other (given that our interactions with other humans and our cultural backgrounds and our experiences literally shape our brain, and are capable of healing it and damaging it and creating new pathways and destroying old ones, and that our physical bodies are also shaped and grown and impacted by forces outside of ourselves and our basic genetic make-up). This truth does not offer easy answers to tough questions. The recognition of this complexity necessarily requires that we admit we don’t know everything, and we don’t understand everything about how we came to be who we are, and we may have less control than we would like to believe —or we may have more control, which is terrifying in its own way.
...
Bad science aside —although Wolf’s book has a lot of bad science —she also relies heavily on gender essentialism and cherry-picked facts:
Apparently homosexual vaginas are simply constructed differently. And of course clitoral orgasms are not as evolved or mature as vaginal orgasms —Freud,as we all know, was a solid feminist.
...
Oy Naomi Wolf. Why are we all still referring to you as some sort of feminist thought leader?I am very happy for you that you are having wonderful earth-shattering shivering mystical sex. You are correct that the vagina and the brain are, in fact, part of “one whole system” —the same way that the left hand and the brain or the nose and the brain are also part of one whole system (the human body, for the slower to catch on). I even think you’re probably correct that many women (most women?) could be having better sex, and that our own cultural constructions of sex (begins with a boner, ends with ejaculation) are not only centered almost entirely on male sexual experience and desire but also thwart female sexual pleasure and understand a woman’s experience with and desire for heterosexual sex only in relation to a man’s (assumed to be neutral, standard and true) definition and understanding of sex. All of that is bad for women, in and out of the bedroom. But here, as explained by a lovely reviewer in the New York Review of Books, is where you lose me:
The problem is that conventional models of heterosexual intercourse do not serve their needs. The “linear, goal-oriented” sex that predominates in the West does not take sufficient account of women’s extreme sensitivity to the emotional conditions in which sex takes place. Both pornography and classic second-wave feminism have tended to promote sexual technique as the key to female sexual satisfaction. Feminists in particular have tried to persuade women that they can “fuck like men, or get by with a great vibrator…and be simply instrumentalist about their pleasure.” But these, Wolf argues, are damaging myths. In order to achieve high orgasm, women need to feel safe and protected. (Ideally, they will feel “uniquely valued” and “cherished.”) They need atmosphere (candlelight, attractive furnishings, dreamy gazes) and “unique preparatory tributes or gestures” (flowers, drawn baths). It also helps a lot, apparently, if their male partners address them as “Goddess.”
...
There is something really sweet about Wolf’s romance novel take on what constitutes good sex, and in a porn-heavy sex culture where rougher, badder sex is better, it’s nice to see Wolf put an alternate vision of good sex on the table.* But just like using evolutionary psychology to argue that women have evolved to protect themselves from rape or that men have evolved to prefer tiny-waisted young blonde blue-eyed women with large breasts (because obviously blonde-haired blue-eyed women have always been present and desired in societies all over the world for the whole of human histery) or that suicide bombers are always Muslim (seriously, science says so!) or that black women are “objectively” unattractive,it’s intellectually lazy to start with “I really strongly believe this one thing, so I will work backwards from that thing and come up with some evolutionary reason for it.” It’s a game that people play all the time, and I understand its appeal. Recognizing that human behavior, and especially human sexual desire, is undoubtedly some incredibly complex mix of biology and sociology doesn’t lend itself easily to a 500-word essay on the essential goddess in every woman. The biological and the cultural and the socialized and the experiential aren’t even close to separable from each other (given that our interactions with other humans and our cultural backgrounds and our experiences literally shape our brain, and are capable of healing it and damaging it and creating new pathways and destroying old ones, and that our physical bodies are also shaped and grown and impacted by forces outside of ourselves and our basic genetic make-up). This truth does not offer easy answers to tough questions. The recognition of this complexity necessarily requires that we admit we don’t know everything, and we don’t understand everything about how we came to be who we are, and we may have less control than we would like to believe —or we may have more control, which is terrifying in its own way.
...
Bad science aside —although Wolf’s book has a lot of bad science —she also relies heavily on gender essentialism and cherry-picked facts:
It would be interesting to know how Wolf explains the creativity of virgin artists like Jane Austen and Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson, or the rapturous experiences of history’s actual women mystics (whose lives tended to be short on liberating sexual relationships). Whatever moral Wolf draws from the fact that Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence after experiencing orgasms for the first time is surely rather undermined by the fact that Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights after having no sexual intercourse at all. (She might have masturbated, of course, but Wolf specifically disqualifies masturbation as a method of achieving high orgasm: “A happy heterosexual vagina requires, to state the obvious, a virile man.”)
Apparently homosexual vaginas are simply constructed differently. And of course clitoral orgasms are not as evolved or mature as vaginal orgasms —Freud,as we all know, was a solid feminist.
...
Much more at the link, and even more in the book review itself.
7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
so long as it stays firmly in perspective. 
Despite my brief stint as a practicing Wiccan, I don't get her enthusiasm for this idea of the lady business as a sacred special meaningful thing, any more than the man parts. We've seen what centuries of placing way too much importance on the male sex organ has wrought, so why on earth would we want to do the same thing with the yoni?
Also, I just loved this part at the end of the linked review:
Toward the end of Vagina, Wolf offers two inspirational instances of the sort of “Goddess-focussed” sexual practice she wishes to promote among her readers. The first is the “sacred sexual healing” administered by Mike Lousada, a self-described “somatic therapist,” who provides massage, masturbation, and intercourse to “erotically suffering” women in his north London studio. The second is a weekend Tantra workshop in Manhattan, at which female attendees get to select the male attendees who will give them “sacred spot massage” in their midtown hotel rooms on Saturday night.
For Wolf, these are heartwarming examples of vagina worship. And perhaps they are. But they are also examples of women achieving intense erotic satisfaction from paid sex and sex with strangers. So much for female sensitivity to “emotional environment.” The Goddess, it seems, is ready to acknowledge, even if Wolf is not, that different folks like different strokes.
Greer objected to the word “vagina” on the grounds that it properly refers to only part of the multifaceted female genitalia—the passageway between vulva and cervix—and that its Latin meaning, “sword sheath,” obliged women to think of their sex “as a container for a weapon.”
For Wolf, these are heartwarming examples of vagina worship. And perhaps they are. But they are also examples of women achieving intense erotic satisfaction from paid sex and sex with strangers. So much for female sensitivity to “emotional environment.” The Goddess, it seems, is ready to acknowledge, even if Wolf is not, that different folks like different strokes.
Greer objected to the word “vagina” on the grounds that it properly refers to only part of the multifaceted female genitalia—the passageway between vulva and cervix—and that its Latin meaning, “sword sheath,” obliged women to think of their sex “as a container for a weapon.”
That last part makes me want to reclaim the c-word, but solely as a term for lady business. Sadly its most often used as an insult, so I won't bother hoping for that.
That is... unacceptable.
It also drives me nuts that people have a tendency to use the word "vagina" to refer to any and all parts of female genitalia, when as mentioned, it is a specific part.
"Vagina worship"?
I go through asexual phases during which everything about the world's preoccupation with sex just seems ludicrous to me.
Right now, I like sex just fine when it happens, but don't ever really think about it otherwise. It's like 27th on my list of Things I Give A Shit About.
Is it because of.... religion?
Or maybe you should see a doctor. Maybe some sort of pill could fix your "FSD problem"... or some invasive surgery, perhaps?
