Naomi Wolf

[BombusBombus]

She's completely self promoting and a bit nuts isn't she? I just saw her on Newsnight and I wanted to throw thing at the screen. Why talk about defined consent when we can talk about your book?

It'll be great if she does a (proper) letter of apology. I'd feel very proud of MN and all of us if she does. She'd also go up a lot in my estimation.

Can anybody explain what she is on about?

She says the brain is connected to the vagina. Isn't all the body connected to the brain? If somebody hacked at my arm with a machete, I would have all manner of chemical reactions in my brain. I would also not want that person to touch my arm again.

The things she say happen 'in the vagina' to do with chemical, what does that mean? If you cuddle a dog you release oxytocin. I'm assuming nothing happens in the vagina. Or is there a special kind of vaginal oxytocin?

Is it a problem if one third of women have no sexual desire for other people?

MySpaniel, please take your logic and go and play elsewhere.

nearly typed [groin]!

Resurrecting this thread to post a link reporting that Naomi Wolf's book has been pulled because of concerns about accuracy. I used to admire her when I read The Beauty Myth but my illusions have been well and truly shattered:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50153743

Commercial feminism should never be confused with either women's rights activist Feminism or academic feminism. The only thing the have in common is that they center women, but only one of them always centers women all the time.

Like that distinction creepster. It explains a lot!

Times today

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/naomi-wolf-and-publisher-houghton-mifflin-harcourt-split-after-book-errors-exposed-qw0c8cw62?shareToken=cb8d8e2e00157342e20c48d9a2fb3624

And a leading article

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-naomi-wolfs-outrages-crying-wolf-3sgktrljc?shareToken=810dae305aefa979f4bf76b576cc8b1e

Didn't have much time for her to start with, but once she went all wokey and started centring TRAs she can def do one.

Just listened to the interview where Matthew Sweet points out her entire book on gay men being executed is based on a massive research error. It's quite good in a horribly cringe way.

Can anyone summarise the error? The reporting has been quite confusing.

AutumnRose Not understanding the legal lingo of the time, Wolf misinterpreted an expression for a convict being NOT sentenced to death for the convict actually being executed.

She then built an entire book on that basic but massively misleading misunderstanding.

To make it worse, it seems that many of the cases she cites to argue an increased crackdown on consensual romantic homosexual relationships, were actually criminals convicted of non-consensual sexual attacks and assaults, one was convicted of bestiality, another child sexual abuse, violent assaults etc.

The term 'death recorded' is a weird way of saying 'no death sentence', to be sure. But if you're researching a subject the onus is on you to understand the terminology used in that field.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_recorded

Thank you Charlie and Errol

I believe the word of the day, today, is schadenfreude.

Perhaps Naomi ought to ponder the possibility that her ignorance of English legal terminology is part and parcel of her ignorance of U.K. feminism, and should stop telling UK women what they’re doing wrong and should instead listen, read, and learn.

Just as “death recorded” doesn’t actually mean a death in material reality, so the word “transwoman” doesn’t actually mean, in material reality ....

The full programme is still available:www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00057k4

As well as the Wolf car crash there's a rather good discussion about two rather odd Victorian lesbian poets

I do love this story.

Did she get a doctorate based on the thesis that predates the book though? There's questions to be answered there. Why did no one pull her up? Surely she didn't get a PhD in history?

Katvon - yes, she did get a PhD from the thesis. It was in English literature, apparently, which might explain why neither her supervisor nor her external examiner spotted the error. It's not good enough in my view - if a large part of someone's thesis relies on understanding the historical context, then one of those two people should have checked.

I don't think the bit about the executions was a major part of the thesis/book, but it lent support to her main argument about increasing intolerance towards homosexuality in Victorian times.

Normally if your PhD is in a cross disciplinary field, you would have an examiner from each side, and some additional supervision from outside your department if necessary.
If this didn't happen her Oxford department is at fault.

it lent support to her main argument about increasing intolerance towards homosexuality in Victorian times.

Apparently she also didn't correctly distinguish between the cases which were consensual and non consensual (including child rape) which led to the latter being more severely punished (probably including executions, I don't know the details). That doesn't seem explicable on the basis of not understanding obscure terminology. More like she either had either not fully read the source material for her 'research' or else had some serious errors of comprehension.

There's a particularly cringe bit in the interview where she explains that she's just going on what she found on the Old Bailey website and Matthew Sweet points out he found the explanation of the term she'd misunderstood there, too...

According to one of the reviewers of her book on Amazon she has also completely misunderstood the context of the Divorce Act and the cultural understanding of the word divorce at the time.

Apparently she is a very poor researcher, I had not realised her PhD thesis involved the same topic though.

Slight digression from the current topic but am I really the only person in the world who found "Vagina" to be a pretty great book?

Yes obviously the "neuroscience" was simplistic but everything she said about the "vagina-brain connection" rang true. What she wrote seemed like a great starting point for understanding something important about how our culture of sexual violence affects women physically and mentally.

It did not seem to me like something we should throw away because she oversimplified the role of dopamine (even neuroscience textbooks do that! brains are wildly complex.)

And her point about every woman having a different, individual pattern of nerve wiring in our sex organs is so important and needs to be understood by everyone.

Katvon - yes, she did get a PhD from the thesis. It was in English literature, apparently, which might explain why neither her supervisor nor her external examiner spotted the error. It's not good enough in my view - if a large part of someone's thesis relies on understanding the historical context, then one of those two people should have checked.

I'm actually gobsmacked. This was OXFORD right? Honestly. Gobsmacked.

I think Wolf fell into the trap I've seen a few academics fall into - she rather enjoyed the limelight and forgot why she got it in the first place. You see it with some politicians too. Ann Widdecombe for example for all you might've disagreed profoundly with her politics was nevertheless a serious politician. She has become a pantomime joke now and it all started with the attention she received from the media which she lapped up and in the end she became a grotesque.

I see same thing has happened with Wolf. I fear Alice Roberts may go the same way.

The whole "death recorded" misunderstanding had me sitting there with my mouth HANGING open in horror and embarrassment for Naomi!

Sounds like the same old misogyny about how feminists can’t get laid and are all hairy ugly man killers rebranded.

Women love to buy into men’s ideas of what feminism is, then assure men that don’t worry, THEY aren’t like that, they LOVE men but are independent and feminist thinkers.

Guess what - feminists have never been ugly man hating and unable to get laid. How you have sex is your business and that of your partners, not men’s in general. Apparently that makes me a sex negative man hater