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'.

Am still mildly irritated by the idea that DH stroking me for 10mins would somehow enhance my day. I bloody hate being stroked!! Drives my skin barmy in about 20 seconds (as poor DS is discovering, as he's already overstepped his allowance of hand-stroking this morning and my hand is now hyper-irritable)

has anyone actually read Naomi Wolf's book?

I'm reading it now and finding it very very interesting and helpful:)

What has the book helped you with, mercury7?

Pretzel hi, well, I'm about 1/3 though it, I felt very moved by some of what I read, lots of insights, lots of 'aha' moments relating to my own experiences wrt sex and relationship.
Very very thought provoking, and really a great sense of validation.
There is a kind of mystical goddess slant at times which made me slightly dubious at first, but now I'm really enjoying it and finding it very beneficial.

This thread has got very negative, I just wanted to chip in and say that my actual experience of the book is very very positive.

It feels very helpful to focus on the complexities of female sexuality which kinda gets drowned in the flood of porn

you didnt like the book?

OK, I see your point, although I'd say that she was discussing various things in the book rather than using science to prove things.

I think the mind body connection is inherently mysterious since we cant know whether mind is purely a function of the brain and are a very long way from even beginning to solve the 'hard problem' of consciousness.

Anyhow, like I said, so far I'm really enjoying the book :)

Good review of Wolf's book by Zoe Heller (although a lot of her points have already been made here by mumsnetters):

www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/pride-and-prejudice/?pagination=false

That is indeed a good review.

I hadn't previously picked up on the inconsistency of her attitude to rape - when she was supporting Assange it was that rape shouldn't be treated as a uniquely different crime, now she's saying that (because of the sacred vagina) rape is uniquely damaging to women.

Yes Tunip, I found that incredibly strange too.

From the review: Wolf specifically disqualifies masturbation as a method of achieving high orgasm: ?A happy heterosexual vagina requires, to state the obvious, a virile man.?

So

1. For a heterosexual woman, only interourse will get you a "real" orgasm. All others are just not special and creativity inducing enough
2. Apparantly lesbian, bisexual, asexual etc women have a different type of vagina

I dont especially disagree with the Zoe Heller review, but still enjoying the book and finding it interesting to look at things from Naomi Wolf's view point.

Has anyone else on this thread actually read the book that's being discussed?

...hmmm, 60% through and it's all gone a bit 'venus & mars'
:(

I've read enough, in extracts, and pieces quoted by reviewers, to feel disobliged to spend my money on it. In the same way that I don't have to read Fifty Shades Of Grey to know that it's shit.

Oh, and does anyone else find the idea of that London "somatic therapist" deeply creepy? It reminds me of the Victorian doctors who would stimulate their middle-class female patients with vibrators to cure their "hysteria". In fact, wasn't hysteria itself initially believed to be caused by a wandering womb? The male medical establishment held that women were uniquely emotional creatures because of their sexual biology, and unsuited to manly pursuits such as much of an education, or the vote. Wolf appears to have simply put a fresh spin on a very old and tired idea. The fact that she uses the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology makes it no less reactionary.

Mercury, I haven't read it. I don't think I will bother I'm afraid. I don't feel qualified to say that it is shit, exactly (not having read it); but I do feel qualified to say I will almost certainly find it very annoying.

I love this quote from Zoe Heller's review to refute Naomi's assertion that women "need" to be made to feel safe by the big strong man in order to achieve orgasm because they will be "so carried away":

"Anecdotal evidence suggests that a female in the throes of more than culturally adequate passion can snap to attention with astonishing rapidity if one of her children happens to wander into her bedroom, and the response time might even be quicker if the intruder were a woolly mammoth"

loving that quote too

that shit about 'needing a virile man' is jaw-dropping. it would be best if she just stopped using the term feminist when she is very clearly not now but in fact a heteronormative handmaiden peddling tired old myths about how women just need a good seeing to.

well, I was jiving with it until she came in with the evolutionary psychology angle..mind you lots of people DO take evolutionary psychology seriously.
I think it's bunk

it's teleological bollocks and any serious academic or scientist knows it. populist nonsense.

Don't think all of evo psychology is bunk

But there is a very strong tendancy for populist idiots who don't understand how evidence works to use pseudo evo psychology to justify all sorts of rubbish. Sadly, Wolf has just placed herself firmly in this latter category.

Talk about missing the point:

m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sOOcOa9VqTJeuj41C1_S3Xg/view.m?id=15&gid=commentisfree/2012/sep/11/feminist-perspective-knowledge-is-power&cat=commentisfree

ouch.

i'd have thought her next piece for the guardian would have been 'why i really regret writing that cack about the Assange case'.

Yeah