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booksnug's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
noemi_sc's review
informative
medium-paced
3.0
4 stars for Part I and II, 2 stars for Part III (except perhaps the "The Pornographic Vagina" chapter) and IV.
mogffm3's review against another edition
2.0
Some parts made me pause & reflect.
Some parts were just outrageous.
Some parts were just outrageous.
mouseyness's review
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
came away feeling very reassured and with a lot more self respect, which I wasn't expecting.
encyclopediabrown's review against another edition
4.0
The first 130 pages are a must read. The rest, well... the way Wolf writes is neurotic, irritating, and supremely heteronormative.
But the first half is great!
But the first half is great!
ovenbird_reads's review against another edition
4.0
First a caveat: the author admits that this book is a study from a heterosexual perspective. She states that other relational arrangements deserve parallel books of their own, but that she could not write about all the permutations and their effects in a single book. So this book is probably most relevant for heterosexual women, though I'm sure there's a fair amount of cross-over for women with different sexual orientations and preferences along the gender continuum.
But with that caveat aside, I think that anyone who has a vagina or might come in contact with a vagina should read this book. There is a ton of fascinating research cited here that has completely altered my understanding of the neurological systems of the female body and reinforced some thoughts I had come to intuitively. Wolf explores everything from the most cutting edge neurological research to tantric practice to sexuality in the Han dynasty of China. She delves into feminine spirituality, mind-body connectivity, emotional states, sexual trauma, and ultimately provides a big picture approach to female sexuality in relation to male partners. Never one to be swayed by the allure of esoteric mumbo-jumbo, Wolf shows, wherever possible, the places where ancient tradition overlaps with advances in modern scientific understanding. What she finds is that ancient female sex positive cultures knew a lot of things about female bodies, arousal, and pleasure that are only now being corroborated by science.
A really fascinating read.
An update: There seems to be a lot of controversy about the legitimacy of the science cited in Wolf's book. I don't really have the time or means to corroborate her evidence, but I can say that it was all presented very persuasively. I think that this book will resonate with some women's personal experience and not with others. I suppose it resonated with my own experience so I was less likely to question its scientific validity. In conclusion though I think the criticisms are overwrought in some places. People seem to be getting really ANGRY about this book and I would be curious to discover why. Whether the science is perfectly interpreted aside, I think this was a brave and necessary exploration.
But with that caveat aside, I think that anyone who has a vagina or might come in contact with a vagina should read this book. There is a ton of fascinating research cited here that has completely altered my understanding of the neurological systems of the female body and reinforced some thoughts I had come to intuitively. Wolf explores everything from the most cutting edge neurological research to tantric practice to sexuality in the Han dynasty of China. She delves into feminine spirituality, mind-body connectivity, emotional states, sexual trauma, and ultimately provides a big picture approach to female sexuality in relation to male partners. Never one to be swayed by the allure of esoteric mumbo-jumbo, Wolf shows, wherever possible, the places where ancient tradition overlaps with advances in modern scientific understanding. What she finds is that ancient female sex positive cultures knew a lot of things about female bodies, arousal, and pleasure that are only now being corroborated by science.
A really fascinating read.
An update: There seems to be a lot of controversy about the legitimacy of the science cited in Wolf's book. I don't really have the time or means to corroborate her evidence, but I can say that it was all presented very persuasively. I think that this book will resonate with some women's personal experience and not with others. I suppose it resonated with my own experience so I was less likely to question its scientific validity. In conclusion though I think the criticisms are overwrought in some places. People seem to be getting really ANGRY about this book and I would be curious to discover why. Whether the science is perfectly interpreted aside, I think this was a brave and necessary exploration.
amalauna's review against another edition
1.0
I gave this up as a bad job. The book was interesting in the first part, but shifted to be overly weird in the second part. The author cries about a rape joke (which bad taste and stupidity aside) seems a bit excessive. There are some great points about loving and respecting oneself, but the author's personality quirks were too much for me personally.
ancoetsu's review against another edition
3.0
Very intriguing book. I find the terminology might bog down someone who doesn't have at least a better than average knowledge of human anatomy, but you can get through it. If you have a vagina or plan to be intimate with someone who has a vagina, this book is for you.
bluestjuice's review against another edition
2.0
Wow, this book made me angry. I don't even know how to rate it, I'm so conflicted in my feelings about it. The list of things wrong with Wolf's prolonged study of the vagina is long, but at risk of becoming irrationally ranty I will try to keep this brief:
- Wolf's approach to scientific inquiry is to find an idea or an insight or a piece of new information, latch onto it, and run laps searching out evidence to support her claim. There is a lot of real science invoked here, and much of it is interesting in and of itself. What is tenuous at best are the conclusions she draws, which she never really questions throughout the entire work. Based on A, she concludes, J must follow, where J is conveniently the idea she began with and was aiming at the whole time. One assumes there must be a body of work which did not lead to J which was ignored or sidestepped in order to ensure her theory maintains its primacy unchallenged. This in addition to the fact that quite often the conclusions she draws are only one possible interpretation of a set of presented data. She bills herself as hard science but really this is an opinion piece with lots of justification. Additionally, using evolution as the justification for things you already wanted to believe is sloppy and stupid.
- This book, and Wolf's approach to the vagina, is all about the experiences of heterosexual ciswomen. Mostly white women. Mostly women exactly like her. Despite giving lip service to ideas like 'every woman's sexual response is different,' she makes broad sweeping claims about the way in which the vagina interfaces with the brain and the way to optimize female experiences of sexuality and romantic/sexual relationships that completely ignore transwomen, lesbian or bisexual women, even unpartnered heterosexual women. If your theory falls apart when considered from any other lens, it's either nonsense or extremely limited in usefulness, and you should stop peddling it as transformative.
- Despite her assertion that she wants to base her claims on biology and hard science, it is impressive how many times Wolf segues into a passage in which she finds her theories corroborated by her own friends over tea, or relates some supporting anecdote from her own experience, or cites the letters and fictional writing of certain female authors to prop up her argument. She also has a fondness for weird mystical language and romanticizing ancient and eastern cultures in regards to their approaches to the female body and person, which is frustrating as these cultures are in no way homogenous nor uniformly positive in their views.
- Sexual violence is a real and serious problem, and I found the descriptions of sexual violence survivors offensive at times, because of how sincerely Wolf believes her premise that the connection between the vagina and the brain is so profound that damaging the vagina (specifically) is a shorthand way of subjugating and disempowering women. This narrative doesn't leave a lot of room for healing or overcoming wounds left by sexual violence, instead creating a dynamic that leaves sexually assault victims hamstringed by their victimization.
- The asserted link between sexual satisfaction in women and creative/mental awakening is paternalistic in the extreme, especially when posited in a deterministic 'you must have X to experience Y' way. Wolf conveniently ignores anyone who had a great artistic or transcendant mystical experience that did not involve getting laid, which must be a big disappointment for the purposefully celibate, the lesbian, and all men everywhere. Sorry, dudes, you can't be creative geniuses in the same way as sexually satisfied women, not ever.
Underneath all of this disgust (and no kidding, I had lots!) are some ideas which resonated for me, and which are worth discussion. This is the reason I'm conflicted about this book: although Wolf gets lots wrong, and overgeneralizes to the point of laughability, she brushes up on ideas that are interesting.
- This idea of the brain-vagina connection is an interesting one, although Wolf makes it sound like a very simple and also very direct link. Conflating the personhood of ciswomen to their genitals is obviously a wildly problematic idea, but the link between pleasure and various hormone levels and activation in various areas of the brain is probably not sufficiently understood.
- The section about the etymology of words relating to the female genitals was interesting to me, of course. And it probably goes without saying (though Wolf is happy to provide plenty of scientifically-based evidence) that women can be pretty sensitive to descriptors/attitudes adopted towards this piece of their anatomy, and that psychologically it is not great for women to have the vagina derided, mocked, or shamed, whether personally or in general on a cultural level. I could probably have used this section skipping the sad tale of how some generalized vaginal mockery gave Wolf a six-month bout of writer's block, though.
- There is a great deal of sexual dissatisfaction in the western world, among both women and men. From a sociological standpoint it seems worthwhile to try to discern why that might be, and how it might be addressed. Rolling back the clock to a magical time a hundred years ago when everybody had much better sex probably isn't it, not least because I see no reason to think they did. But this is fruitful ground for exploration as it likely is linked to systemic societal trends, rather than a biologic problem.
- Honestly, the last section of the book, which read effectively like scientifically-justified Cosmo advice for male heterosexual lovers, was maybe the most promising. Was it cliched and one-size-fits-all advice that will vary in effectiveness when applied to actual specific women? Totally. Did some of it sound accurate to me, a heterosexual cisgender woman with Opinions on how I would like to be treated by a man? Yep. That chapter would be interesting reading to share with a male relationship partner, although various relationship self-help books have likely covered the same ground with more or less success.
In conclusion? Aaaaahhhh. This is what I get for picking random Naomi Wolf off the library shelf in a library-request-lull.
- Wolf's approach to scientific inquiry is to find an idea or an insight or a piece of new information, latch onto it, and run laps searching out evidence to support her claim. There is a lot of real science invoked here, and much of it is interesting in and of itself. What is tenuous at best are the conclusions she draws, which she never really questions throughout the entire work. Based on A, she concludes, J must follow, where J is conveniently the idea she began with and was aiming at the whole time. One assumes there must be a body of work which did not lead to J which was ignored or sidestepped in order to ensure her theory maintains its primacy unchallenged. This in addition to the fact that quite often the conclusions she draws are only one possible interpretation of a set of presented data. She bills herself as hard science but really this is an opinion piece with lots of justification. Additionally, using evolution as the justification for things you already wanted to believe is sloppy and stupid.
- This book, and Wolf's approach to the vagina, is all about the experiences of heterosexual ciswomen. Mostly white women. Mostly women exactly like her. Despite giving lip service to ideas like 'every woman's sexual response is different,' she makes broad sweeping claims about the way in which the vagina interfaces with the brain and the way to optimize female experiences of sexuality and romantic/sexual relationships that completely ignore transwomen, lesbian or bisexual women, even unpartnered heterosexual women. If your theory falls apart when considered from any other lens, it's either nonsense or extremely limited in usefulness, and you should stop peddling it as transformative.
- Despite her assertion that she wants to base her claims on biology and hard science, it is impressive how many times Wolf segues into a passage in which she finds her theories corroborated by her own friends over tea, or relates some supporting anecdote from her own experience, or cites the letters and fictional writing of certain female authors to prop up her argument. She also has a fondness for weird mystical language and romanticizing ancient and eastern cultures in regards to their approaches to the female body and person, which is frustrating as these cultures are in no way homogenous nor uniformly positive in their views.
- Sexual violence is a real and serious problem, and I found the descriptions of sexual violence survivors offensive at times, because of how sincerely Wolf believes her premise that the connection between the vagina and the brain is so profound that damaging the vagina (specifically) is a shorthand way of subjugating and disempowering women. This narrative doesn't leave a lot of room for healing or overcoming wounds left by sexual violence, instead creating a dynamic that leaves sexually assault victims hamstringed by their victimization.
- The asserted link between sexual satisfaction in women and creative/mental awakening is paternalistic in the extreme, especially when posited in a deterministic 'you must have X to experience Y' way. Wolf conveniently ignores anyone who had a great artistic or transcendant mystical experience that did not involve getting laid, which must be a big disappointment for the purposefully celibate, the lesbian, and all men everywhere. Sorry, dudes, you can't be creative geniuses in the same way as sexually satisfied women, not ever.
Underneath all of this disgust (and no kidding, I had lots!) are some ideas which resonated for me, and which are worth discussion. This is the reason I'm conflicted about this book: although Wolf gets lots wrong, and overgeneralizes to the point of laughability, she brushes up on ideas that are interesting.
- This idea of the brain-vagina connection is an interesting one, although Wolf makes it sound like a very simple and also very direct link. Conflating the personhood of ciswomen to their genitals is obviously a wildly problematic idea, but the link between pleasure and various hormone levels and activation in various areas of the brain is probably not sufficiently understood.
- The section about the etymology of words relating to the female genitals was interesting to me, of course. And it probably goes without saying (though Wolf is happy to provide plenty of scientifically-based evidence) that women can be pretty sensitive to descriptors/attitudes adopted towards this piece of their anatomy, and that psychologically it is not great for women to have the vagina derided, mocked, or shamed, whether personally or in general on a cultural level. I could probably have used this section skipping the sad tale of how some generalized vaginal mockery gave Wolf a six-month bout of writer's block, though.
- There is a great deal of sexual dissatisfaction in the western world, among both women and men. From a sociological standpoint it seems worthwhile to try to discern why that might be, and how it might be addressed. Rolling back the clock to a magical time a hundred years ago when everybody had much better sex probably isn't it, not least because I see no reason to think they did. But this is fruitful ground for exploration as it likely is linked to systemic societal trends, rather than a biologic problem.
- Honestly, the last section of the book, which read effectively like scientifically-justified Cosmo advice for male heterosexual lovers, was maybe the most promising. Was it cliched and one-size-fits-all advice that will vary in effectiveness when applied to actual specific women? Totally. Did some of it sound accurate to me, a heterosexual cisgender woman with Opinions on how I would like to be treated by a man? Yep. That chapter would be interesting reading to share with a male relationship partner, although various relationship self-help books have likely covered the same ground with more or less success.
In conclusion? Aaaaahhhh. This is what I get for picking random Naomi Wolf off the library shelf in a library-request-lull.
hallbrooke's review
3.0
I both loved and hated this book at various points.
The topic was interesting but at times it was quite pseudo sciencey and often the chapters felt disjointed.
It in the end felt like a bit of a slog to finish which is a shame as I've heard fantastic things about wolf and it did have some fantastic bits.
The topic was interesting but at times it was quite pseudo sciencey and often the chapters felt disjointed.
It in the end felt like a bit of a slog to finish which is a shame as I've heard fantastic things about wolf and it did have some fantastic bits.