Naomi Wolf: live webchat TODAY, Thursday 6 September, 12pm to 1pm

[RachelMumsnet]

Naomi Wolf is joining us for a live webchat on Thursday 6 September at 12 noon. Naomi's latest book, Vagina - A New Biography, has attracted major media attention this month and we're delighted she's joining us to tell us more about the book and answer your questions.

Described as 'exhilarating and groundbreaking', Vagina combines cultural history, physiology and personal memoir to explore the role of female desire and how it affects female identity, creativity and confidence.

Naomi Wolf is author of seven books including the bestseller, The Beauty Myth. She travels regularly to speak about gender equality and social justice. She lives in New York and is working towards a doctorate at New College, Oxford University.

Please post your question to Naomi in advance, or set the date in your diary to join us this Thursday at midday to chat to Naomi 'live'.

It could be really useful. If she does it right and doesn't just go all defensive and keep on about how many people keep telling her how wonderful her work is.

It's true that she did say at the start she was going to talk about her book.

I wish she'd answered my question about the wandering womb! The close identification Wolf seems to make between the vagina and the self (i.e. the neurological connections between vagina and the "female brain" and between orgasm and mood/temperament) echo very strongly the earlier quasi-medical mystification of woman as being the products of their wombs (hysteria etc).

That is such a disturbing echo that, especially coupled with a sexual culture in which women are demoted to body parts (and people are aggressively identified as "cunts"), I don't think I could begin to look properly at her empirical claims without some preliminary discussion of how on earth so close a connection of a woman's selfhood with her sexual organ could possibly avoid collapsing her into a mere fragment of herself at best (and an illusion at worst).

Added to that, as I think the Guardian review of her book makes salient, there is a pervasive tendency at the moment to react in an oversimplifying and overly determinist way to the numerous and complex relations between brain and self that are constantly being discovered and which are usually only partly understood. Phrases like "feminist neurotransmitter" and "feminist impulse in the brain" are an almost comically egregious example of mapping brain to self in a reductionist way, reminiscent of phrenology.

Great post OatyBeatie - thank you for putting so cogently something I've been trying to articulate all morning.

It would be really interesting to read a review of her book by a proper neuroscientist with a specialism in sexual issues. Everything I've read suggests that it's not yet possible to draw any serious conclusions from which areas of the brain light up on an MRI scan.

We should suggest that Cordelia Fine reviews it :)

FWIW it screams bullshit to me.

Ok, I missed it and now I've only read to page 6. Does her Vagina book amount to:

"Treat your woman good and you'll get more?"

I can't believe I bloody missed this.

My vagina is ROFLing all over the shop.

BOF your one liners made me do actual lolz.

(imagine the furious wanking Ms Wolf must have had to do after that, her vadge must have been in pieces )

Check this blog neuroskeptic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/naomi-wolfs-vagina.html?m=1

How can you get a whole book out of "Wanking Makes You Feel Good?"

Just how?

Did anyone ever think that there WASN'T a link between orgasm and feeling good?

What an excellent blog post. Thank you for linking it, Msrisotto.

Hmm, yes, New Statesman article points out her attribution to "sexually threatening stress" of effects that are in fact common to all stress sources and that does seem to be a sleight of hand on Wolf's part. Also, I think she misuses Austin's notion of a performative utterance in one of the quotations the New Statesman article includes.

It does seem increasingly that the book would have been better named after a different sexual organ -- Bollocks.

Naomi Wolf, you sound like you?re on crack.

(MNHQ please note this is a compliment )

She didn't answer my question about Ali G

I rather enjoyed Ariel Levy's comments on the book:

Wolf claims that vaginal slander?referring to the vagina by its "awful" feline moniker, for instance?"apparently affects the very tissue of the vagina." She bases this conclusion on a study of female rates whose vaginal tissue showed signs of change after periods of stress. The experiment did not, however, entail researchers yelling "Rat pussy!" at the animals; stress was manufactured physically. Wolf's interpretation of the science is, as usual, rather free.

My vagina weeps when Gove/Cameron/Gidiot appear on the telly

So she's right

And

We need a [flabbergasted] too

What we need is for all the emoticons to be replaced by vaginas reacting in various ways [grinningvagina] [shockedvagina] [angryvagina] [confusedvagina] [enviousvagina]

(Not winking vagina though. Too disturbing)

YES

Vadge emoticons

top idea

I have suggested it, Oaty

Not sure I want [flowersvadge]. I have enough vases.

we could have ol Paggy for the flowery vadge

Thanks for this, Mumsnet. I was impressed by Wolf's responses and am interested enough in her vagina/self/politics theories to get hold of the book.

I'm not going to dismiss it as reductionist without a proper read and a think. Our vaginas are still culturally associated with fear and shame (often covered up by humour) and it is true that medical understanding of women's genitalia is pretty pathetic on the whole. For these reasons alone, I think it's worth doing a proper investigation to learn more about the defining anatomy of women, and raising its status if you like.

One of the best webchats ever, imo. Credit to Wolf for her directness and professionalism.

garlicnutty did you used to be someone else? I like your posts.

Thank you! Yes, I'm always garlicky, though

Well, that was a bit of a fun bloodbath.

I'd still rather chat to Jilly Cooper though, or perhaps we could have Boris back to toy with a little more.