Vagina: A New Biography

#906
Title: Vagina: A New Biography
Author: Naomi Wolf
Publisher: Ecco
Year: 2012
400 pages

One wonders what factors other than randomness lead to winning this book as a Goodreads giveaway. I look forward to carrying this around at work.

***
While reading: While some reviewers find this "dry," I'm not finding it dry enough, as in: Science. I'm in a chapter on neurotransmitters that contains much information that appears to be overgeneralized or just misunderstood. Wolf begins many sections with a piece of science, then rapidly draws overinclusive or anecdotal conclusions from it. It's both reductive and weirdly amorphous. Her central idea may be worth considering, but it's oversimplified and made mysterious by turns. Also, if she and the female lab tech feel sad for the rat that's getting an opioid inverse agonist, then this isn't a controlled experiment since they know which rat gets which injection. And might not Wolf and lab tech's moods affect the rats'? And might not some of the rats be not melancholic, but rather, happy to read for awhile, maybe take a bath, and go to sleep instead of mating? There is much anthropomorphism in the lab.

As a woman, I do not see my experiences mirrored here in any profound or affirming ways. As a feminist, I do not see my feminism here. Frankly, I have been around for a long time, including the much-maligned 1970's, and I have never heard a feminist disparage any kind of orgasm. I'm not saying that none have, but political rhetoric at a podium or in a text and what people actually believe and say to each other are different things. As one of my feminist theory professors once said, "Irigaray ('When Our Lips Speak Together') isn't saying that women literally have orgasms just by walking around. That would be stupid. She's making a symbolic point."

And I keep being astonished by Wolf's revelatory experiences. She really didn't know until she was older than 46 that all female mammals have a clitoris? Goodness. I'm so distracted by this sort of anecdote that I forget what she was discussing.

I'll keep reading, but at 70 pages in, this seems to be getting sloppier, not cleaner.

***
The middle sections are crisper, but they're not well-integrated. So far it reads like this:

1st hundred pages: I have a really cool idea! It's too cool for real methodical exploration! I'll keep saying it, and quote anecdotes from my gynecologist.

2nd hundred pages: This is where I write like you remember, and it's about vaginas in literature. Relational pornography is better than zipless fuck pornography, which relates to my cool idea. Plus, anecdotes from my gynecologist.

***
I skimmed the last third, starting when I encountered one too many repetitive statements. It worked on the assumption that what had been asserted in the first 2/3 was solidly supported, then continued on this shaky base. While I have no opinion about the veracity of her premise, I just can't see that she substantiated it.

A few notes:

Both masturbation and orgasm by clitoral stimulation here get, in some ways, the same bad rap they got from Victorian medical culture--they're inferior. It's probably just as well that Wolf stuck to heterosexual women, because I can't imagine how she'd account for lesbian sexuality. That happened to Freud, too.

"Cooter" and "poon" are not "funny little sibling [names]" that "young lexicographers" give their vaginas (p. 209). "Poon" is a shortened form of "poontang." Here's the first hit I got for "poontang etymology", from Online Etymological Dictionary: c.1910, probably via New Orleans Creole, from Fr. putain "prostitute," from O.Fr. pute "whore," probably from fem. of V.L. *puttus (cf. O.It. putta "girl"), from L. putus, with derogatory sense. But also possibly from O.Fr. put, from L. putidus "stinking" on notion of the "foulness" of harlotry, or for more literal reasons (among the 16c.-17c. slang terms for "whore" in English were polecat and fling-stink). Shortened form poon is recorded from 1969. From the same source, cooter is: name for some types of freshwater terrapin in southern U.S., 1835 ...from obsolete verb coot "to copulate" (1660s), of unknown origin. The turtle is said to copulate for two weeks at a stretch. I could go dig out the OED or keep searching to substantiate that this is the origin of "cooter" for vagina (I can trace it to the 1980's for this use), but I'm not going to. If this is the quality of Wolf's research on such easily discoverable information, I really worry about the rest of it.

"Specific scents have been found to boost vaginal blood engorgement: cucumbers and Good 'n Plenty candies both are at the top of the vaginal-engorgement-activating scents, according to one study (and both are phallic in shape)" (p. 284). Really? So is a turd, but I'll bet it's not at the top of the vaginal-engorgement-activating scent pyramid. I'll bet a silicone dildo isn't either, though it arguably has more in common with a phallus than does a Good 'n Plenty.

Finally, "[S]everal [women] reported that they believed, in retrospect, that this [swallowing semen] may have affected their mood to some extent--the sugar rush..." (p. 316). However, I will point out that "Each teaspoon of ejaculate has about 5 - 7 calories" (according to http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/nutrit...), and according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejaculation, "The ... amount of semen that will be ejected during an ejaculation will vary widely between men and may contain between 0.1 and 10 milliliters," or a maximum of two teaspoonfuls. That's a max of 14 calories. That's the amount of calories in 3.5 ounces of cucumber, or 4 Good 'n Plenty pieces (http://caloriecount.about.com/calorie...). That's really not the stuff of a sugar rush, especially since some of that's protein, not sugar. How much sugar, you ask? Fructose is the main sugar in semen, which is good news if you're watching your glycemic load ("load" is not a joke, nor is "dry," above). Bad news for the sugar rush, though. Wikipedia quotes WebMD as saying that in semen analysis, the normal level is "at least 3 mg/ml." In our theoretical two-teaspoon ejaculate above, that just isn't a lot.

If further scientific inquiry is required: Eliasson, R. (1965). Accurate determination of glucose in human semen. Journal of Reproduction and Fertility, 9, 325-330: "The mean concentration [of glucose] in semen samples] was 7.24 mg/100 ml" or an average of 0.724 mg in the maximum ejaculate above.

That's all. I wish this were a better book.