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

409 replies

RachelMumsnet · 04/09/2012 15:22

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'.

OP posts:
OatyBeatie · 07/09/2012 09:33

Warrior Training is testament to the power of the penis-brain connection. It stimulates the powerful "bloke neurotransmitter" that is essential to male well-being.

TunipTheVegemal · 07/09/2012 09:46

I like this line in the Levy one:
'If my vagina heard a potential partner murmur, ?Welcome, Goddess,? she would turn to me and say, ?Get us out of here now.?'

BIWI · 07/09/2012 09:46
Grin
garlicnutty · 07/09/2012 09:48

Doesn't anybody remember the Weird things your body does thread? 48 MNers (my count) saying they get a 'nervous fanny' ... must be something!

NormaStanleyFletcher · 07/09/2012 09:53

Love that new yorker article.

MySpanielHell · 07/09/2012 09:53

Well fortunately there is a solution to nervous fanny for a reasonable £200. Naomis Wolf's adviser will dress you in a sarong, blindfold you, ring bells in your ears, rub a toy monkey over your body and then see the Virgin Mary in your vagina.

NormaStanleyFletcher · 07/09/2012 09:55

Love that new yorker article.

garlicnutty · 07/09/2012 09:55

What the hell's she doing up there? Having a picnic with the toy money? Hmm

garlicnutty · 07/09/2012 09:56

Norma, it's not obligatory to say 'new york' twice! Grin

OatyBeatie · 07/09/2012 10:06

Having read the Levy article I feel quite angry about Wolf's book. She really does seem to claim that if you don't get good enough orgasms you can not be a creative person. I very often struggle to write the things I want to write and it is more than infuriating to be given a version of the male claim that all I need is a good seeing to, even (and perhaps especially) when that male claim is softened by resort to pseudoscience and a bizarre mystification of my body. It is a vast irrelevance, which is bad enough, but it is also such a retrograde and diminishing one.

ShirelyKnort · 07/09/2012 10:15

" it is more than infuriating to be given a version of the male claim that all I need is a good seeing to"

YES!

MyDogShitsMoney · 07/09/2012 10:16

personally I'm okay with my vagina. We get on.

Actual roar!

TunipTheVegemal · 07/09/2012 10:22

As it happens I used to generally do my best writing after a break-up when I was getting no sex at all. I have never in my life found that orgasms unlock creativity.
If Naomi does that's very nice for her but cherry-picking neurology to try and impose that on everyone else is ridiculous.
I'm all for people writing books about the vagina but it is immensely depressing when people get the impression that this ill-judged unscientific narcissistic twaddle is in any way representative of contemporary feminism - when there is so much politically engaged, outward-looking, well-researched new feminist writing out there.

NormaStanleyFletcher · 07/09/2012 10:23

Grin @ garlic

IawnCont · 07/09/2012 10:31

I just don't get it. I am probably thick may be in denial, but I really have no issues whatsoever with my vagina. And I don't really get the "let's own the word VAGINA!" I no more use the word vagina than I do call my elbow my olecranon. I don't think that makes me repressed. I know no men who refer to their dicks as penises either.

MySpanielHell · 07/09/2012 10:38

I do refer to my vagina as a vagina, although to be honest my vagina rarely comes up in conversation. I don't think it makes me less repressed though.

MyDogShitsMoney · 07/09/2012 10:54

to be honest my vagina rarely comes up in conversation

please stop, I can't take anymore!

IawnCont · 07/09/2012 10:57

Your vagina rarely comes up in conversation? You poor repressed soul... :o

FushiaFernica · 07/09/2012 11:59

This webchat took me totally by surprise. I only knew Naomi Wolf from one book that I read 'Misconceptions' during pregnancy. How out of my depth was I? The Mumsnetters that posed those challenging questions were brilliant. Yesterday I had a look on her performance on Newsnight on 3rd Sept where she discussed the Julian Assange case with Jeremy Paxman, she even attempts to plug her new book at the end of his conversation, it is shocking.

StewieGriffinsMom · 07/09/2012 13:08

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AitchTwoOhOneTwo · 07/09/2012 13:22

while my vagine gently weeps...

ThisWeekonFancyPuffin · 07/09/2012 13:22

In all seriousness I'm now very worried that I have a [sadvagina] I need to sort this ASAP.

I think I will buy it a hat

SuperB0F · 07/09/2012 13:41

My family planning clinic won't do Dutch caps any more [sadvagina]

IawnCont · 07/09/2012 13:48

No, not a hat. A fascinator. It's more celebratory. [jollyvadge]

ShiirleyKnott · 07/09/2012 13:50

I can't work out what a quark is.