An astonishing work of cutting-edge science and cultural history that radically reframes how we understand the vagina—and consequently, how we understand women—from one of our most respected cultural critics and thinkers, Naomi Wolf, author of the modern classic The Beauty Myth.
When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf 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.
Utterly enthralling and totally fascinating, Vagina: A New Biography draws on this set of insights about “the mind-vagina connection” to reveal new information about what women really need, and considers what a sexual relationship—and a relationship to the self—transformed by these insights could look like.
Exhilarating and groundbreaking, Vagina: A New Biography combines rigorous science, explained for lay readers, with cultural history and deeply personal considerations of the role of female desire in female identity, creativity, and confidence, from interviewees of all walks of life. Heralded by Publishers Weekly as one of the best science books of the year, it is a provocative and deeply engaging book that elucidates the ties between a woman’s experience of her vagina and her sense of self; her impulses, dreams, and courage; and her role in love and in society in completely new and revelatory ways sure to provoke impassioned conversation.
A brilliant and nuanced synthesis of physiology, history, and cultural criticism, Vagina: A New Biography explores the physical, political, and spiritual implications of this startling series of new scientific breakthroughs for women and for society as a whole, from a writer whose conviction and keen intelligence have propelled her works to the tops of bestseller lists, and firmly into the realms of modern classics.
About Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf is the author of Promiscuitties and Fire With Fire, and her essays have appeared in The New Republic, Esquire, Ms., The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She holds a degree from Yale University and New College, Oxford University, and lives in New York City.
Editorial Review
When the author began noticing her own distressingly diminished sexual response at age 46, she visited a gynecologist, who diagnosed her with an impacted pelvic nerve. Since this nerve connects women’s genitalia to their brains, any damage to it can lead to sexual dysfunction or pain. After recovering from surgery and regaining sexual pleasure, Wolf set out to document the mind-body link with the goal of informing women of the crucial role that neurology plays not only in their sex lives, but also in fostering their creativity and sense of well-being. The author undoubtedly has good intentions, but her propensity to seek out research that mirrors her own beliefs too often reduces the wide scope of female sexuality to a one-size-fits-all approach. Wolf also frequently uses New Age terms like “Goddess Array” to describe the sexual techniques she claims all women crave, and she falls victim to tantric sexual healers whom skeptical readers will regard as mere charlatans. Wolf’s tendency to ascribe independent consciousness to the vagina as an alternately traumatized, depressed and sacred site further stretches her credibility. However, the author takes a more measured approach in the second section, a fascinating history of the way that various cultures have viewed the vagina throughout history. Even here, though, she emphasizes the belief that many ancient societies worshiped the vagina, despite the fact that anthropologists have largely debunked this theory. The author also cites informal polls and questionnaires on her Facebook page as evidence for her hypotheses. – Kirkus Reviews
Daum: Naomi Wolf’s vaginal sideshow
The Chicago Tribune Book Review – September 13, 2012 (Excerpt)
It’s a strange time to be a woman. I say this not because state legislatures enacted no less than 95 restrictions on reproductive rights this year. I say it not because at the same time, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repealed his state’s equal pay law and Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman conjectured that “money is more important for men.” Or because, just last month, an alarming number of male legislators demonstrated serious confusion about the birds and the bees.
I’m saying it because Naomi Wolf has written a book about her vagina. It’s called “Vagina: A New Biography.” And it’s kind of bad news for everybody who has one.
Wolf is often described as “one of America’s foremost feminist thinkers,” an assertion that has been something of an article of faith since the early 1990s. That’s when she became famous for “The Beauty Myth,” which argued that culturally sanctioned notions of beauty are entirely the product of societal norms, which are in turn defined by the patriarchy. [Read the full article...]
Upstairs, Downstairs - ‘Vagina: A New Biography,’ by Naomi Wolf
The New York Times Book Review – September 14, 2012 (Excerpt)
Sit back and relax, will you? Naomi Wolf has got her orgasm back. Yep. I know you were worried. We were all worried. I mean, to lose one’s orgasm at a time like this, what with Syria undergoing mass civilian murder and Romney closing in on Obama, it is really enough to put a liberated gal’s thong in a knot.
But Wolf didn’t just get back one of those little clitoral thingamajigs that Masters and Johnson so laboriously put back on the map after Freud had brushed them aside. Or rather inside, where he felt they belonged. She has reclaimed the Great Big Cosmic I-Am-a-Gorgeous-Goddess (Feminist-Goddess, that is) kind. Phew!
“Vagina: A New Biography” should have been an important book. A very important book. The 5,000-year-old continuing epidemic of unhappy, disrespected female sexuality, as Wolf rightly maintains, not only influences our world, our wars, our cultures, our economies and even our love affairs, but also produces, literally, the lifeblood of humankind: talk about biting the vulva that births you. [Read the full article...]
Naomi Wolf Sparks Another Debate (on Sex, of Course)
The New York Times – September 19, 2012 (Excerpt)
“WHO gets to say it? Who gets to own it? Who gets to say what happens to it?”
Naomi Wolf is talking about her vagina. So are scores of other people, though they are mainly talking about “Vagina,” her new book, and the talk has been nearly universally damning.
“A shoddy piece of work, full of childlike generalizations and dreary, feminist auto-think,” wrote Zoë Heller in The New York Review of Books. Ariel Levy asked in The New Yorker, “Is it going too far to say that Ms. Wolf’s book, which clearly belongs to the same realm of the erotic imagination as the Grey trilogy, is itself a kind of pornography?”
Meghan Daum wrote in her column in The Los Angeles Times that “Vagina” is “bad news for everybody who has one,” while in her 2,700-word excoriation in The New York Times Book Review, Toni Bentley called it “scattered” and “humorless.” [Read the full article...]
“Vagina: A New Biography” by Naomi Wolf
The Washington Post Book Review – October 27, 2012 (Excerpt)
Once upon a time, journalists were discouraged from mentioning genitalia in print. If you wanted to do so, you needed a compelling reason, and about 300 editors had to sign off on it. Meetings would be held. Layers of bureaucracy would be invoked. Style manuals would be wielded.
Then one day near the end of the 20th century, a woman named Lorena Bobbitt took up a knife, and there was no way to describe which part of her husband she went after without using the word “penis.” And so writers began to use it. Penis, penis, penis! We were like preschoolers; you couldn’t stop us.
Not long after, Eve Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues” came along, and it became necessary to name the female counterpart. Vagina, vagina, vagina. After a while, nobody cared. See? I can write this — vagina — and nobody will stop me. Editors will probably ask me to use it more often, for better search engine optimization. [Read the full article...]
We are the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. The Washington Post
