A Quietus Interview
Glenn Branca
Black Sky Thinking
Enter the Yoni: The Problem Of Naomi Wolf's Vagina
Enter the Yoni: The Problem Of Naomi Wolf's Vagina
Cay McDermott
, September 27th, 2012 05:56
Cay McDermott pries open the femme-provocateur's latest work and discusses the irreconcilable contradictions between its covers
Naomi Wolf wants to talk to us, openly and frankly, about her vagina. She wants to tell us about the post-medical-crisis epiphany she had, which led to a "thought provoking, revelatory experience that suggested a possibly crucial relationship of the vagina to female consciousness itself." She wants to inform us about the "scores of men...who responded to my questions about their relationship with the vagina with hearteningly endearing answers." She wants to make us all jealous of her amazing vaginal orgasms, which allow her to "experience the sense of heightened interconnectedness, which the Romantic poets and painters called the Sublime" and "hint of a sense of all things shivering with light" (lucky cow). And most of all, she wants to share her great insights with the women of the world: she wants to teach them the secrets of the "Goddess array", a set of head-stroking, armpit-sniffing, pulse-quickening behaviours that will allow us to experience the kind of earth-moving shags that Naomi seems to have on a daily basis.
These may all seem like noble, laudable aims - all presented by someone we're told is one of the most eminent voices of the third wave feminist movement. It's a shame then that Vagina reads like a 355-page nervous breakdown.
In Vagina, Wolf posits a sense of sexual fulfilment ruled by heterosexual desire and a keen sense of monogamy, all wrapped up in some seriously dubious pseudoscience: according to her, a woman's brain and her vagina are inextricably linked together and our creative potential can only be unleashed via penetration by a strong virile man (pity all those poor single women, their potential remaining untapped as they comfort themselves with their vibrators and pints of Haagen Daas). Women are presented as ridiculous, simplistic creatures whose fannies act as neural divining rods, constantly seeking out and defining ourselves by the amount of male attention we receive and falling into a deep depression when none is forthcoming.
In Wolf's world, we are very much "the fairer sex", a bunch of swooning hothouse flowers who like nothing more than burying our faces into our lover's sweaty shirts so we can bathe ourselves in their awe-inspiring masculinity. A curt word or unthinking action from an unfeeling male can cut us to the quick and cause irrevocable damage to our magic vaginas: damage that can only be healed by a trip to a "yoni massager," a shamanic individual who can heal our battered egos by palpating our pubises, sweet-talking our inner goddesses and even entering our "sacred spots" for the low, low price of £150 an hour.
Floating above this all is Naomi herself – a weirdly schizophrenic persona. One the one hand, she's all 70s Earth Mother schtick, so in touch with her inner goddess that it's surprising she's not formed her own Church of the Holy Punani. On the other, there's a fragile, consumptive Victorian heroine, ready to take to her bedchamber at the mere mention of minge. Take, for example, the now infamous section of the book where she discusses the pasta party she attended where guests made "cuntini", which was to be accompanied by "several dozen enormous sausages" and "several immense salmon fillets". Wolf was so affected by this show of culinary cuntdom that she "could not type another word of the book - not even research notes - for six months." Why? "I felt on both a creative and a physical level that I had been punished for going somewhere that women are not supposed to go."
Wolf's work has always been contradictory. A supposed third-wave feminist who is gender essentialist and anti-porn; she's pro-choice yet thinks abortion is murder. The author of The Beauty Myth (a book she has dined out on for 20 years) who took a job giving Bill Clinton fashion advice and an intellectual heavyweight who allegedly files copy to newspapers in ALL CAPS. For a self-described liberal writer, there is a nasty streak of sexual conservatism running through her Vagina: while Wolf waxes lyrical about women such as Edith Wharton, Anais Nin and George Eliot, whose work was born out of sexual awakening, she is curiously silent on the subject of those women whose creativity was born out of lesbian or even celibate desires. Wolf freely admits that her writing is influenced by her own experiences of heterosexual sex, but there seems to be almost no acknowledgement of same-sex impulses expressed through non-penetrative actions. While she occasionally acknowledges the existence of women-women relationships, it's more as a kind of lip (labia?) service; a kind of "yeah, yeah, you lesbians might claim to have great sex, but you don't know what you're missing."
Take, for example, a quote from a conversation she has with a fellow attendee of a "yoni massage workshop":
"'Do you feel your emergent sexuality equals emergent aspects of yourself?’ I asked. 'Yes,’ she replied. Then she added, 'Some wounds women have can only be healed by man.’"
If you're wondering what the sound you can hear after reading that little snippet is, it's Andrea Dworkin turning so hard in her grave that she's almost tunnelled her way to Tartarus.
In fact, Dworkin – like most feminist theorists – barely gets a look-in in Wolf’s Vagina. Sure, there's the odd bit of fashionable neurobollocks (just-so stories told via pictures of brains with blobs of colour on them), but this book, like pretty much all of Wolf's work to date, consists largely of personal views and anecdote rather than anything grounded in theory. Remember, it's Naomi Wolf's Vagina. Not mine. Not yours.
When you're not laughing at Vagina (and I'd like to apologise to the passengers of the train I was on for mumbling "You can fuck off if you think I'm calling my fanny a 'Jade Gate', love" slightly louder than I really should have in public) you find yourself feeling incredibly depressed by it. Here is an eminent self-styled feminist suggesting that women are defined and governed by the bits of flesh between their legs (and, perhaps more irreconcilably, the bits of flesh between men's legs). If we are unlucky enough to ever be raped, we become "damaged goods", as our vaginas will seize up from the trauma (an argument worryingly similar to that made by US Republican senator Todd Akin, who recently stated that women's bodies "shut down" during "legitimate rapes"). This is feminism for the 50 Shades of Grey crowd - a belief that all a girl needs for a lifetime of fulfilment is the love of a good, emotionally domineering, sexually aggressive man – that, and the odd yoni massage. Is it cynical to suspect that Wolf is peddling this heteronormative guff, knowing full well that the patriarchy she used to rail against will lap it up, as an example of someone with capital-F feminist bona fides confirming their own prejudices?
At the beginning of Vagina, Wolf states that "the vagina may be a 'hole' but it is, properly understood, a Goddess-shaped one." I suggest that, if she ever wants to be taken seriously again, Wolf pulls her head out of her "Goddess-shaped" hole and starts living in the real world.
Vagina is available now on Virago
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Ms. Gentle
Sep 27, 2012 1:12pm
Sep 27, 2012 1:12pm
This review sounds like you either didn't read the book in its entirety, or you went in with a complete bias. Not everyone is going to relate, and certainly many feminists are not fans of Wolf, but the equations made here are laughable, particularly the remark about Akin & Fifty Shades - she's speaking against the culture that perpetuates that clueless hetero-normative standards.
Ali l sleem
Sep 27, 2012 1:17pm
Sep 27, 2012 1:17pm
Trurhfully this is the most consistently hilarious utterly genious review i have ever read. This beats The Wire's review of Rustie, even. the mindfuck of Vagina Wolf's noni.
Sep 27, 2012 1:30pm
In reply to Ms. Gentle:
Oh, come off it. Wolf has clearly been taken in by self-help charlatans and didn't bother to much proper research or thinking for this book. Her argument sounds basically religious, albeit from bowdlerised tantra rather than Texan Christianity. Most reviews have picked her up on this, so it's hardly fair to suggest the author of this one didn't read the book, or had some unspecified bias.
Christina McMc
Sep 27, 2012 3:13pm
Sep 27, 2012 3:13pm
In reply to Ali l sleem:
Thanks! Although I should probably go and read that Rustie review in 'The Wire' now as a means of comparison.
Brian1001
Sep 27, 2012 5:23pm
Sep 27, 2012 5:23pm
For a different take on some of the subjects in Naomi Wolf's book,
watch "It's Not You...It's Sex." on youtube.
Sep 27, 2012 8:37pm
In reply to Christina McMc:
Well i believe you'll find so if you enjoy his music. Regardless read it and let a
Jigguh know what you think?
Ms. Gentle
Sep 28, 2012 2:29am
Sep 28, 2012 2:29am
I stand by the remark on comparisons - they're irrational if one has read the entire book. Funny read if you dislike Wolf, but not truthful or accurate about the content of 'Vagina.'
Anyone who has read the whole book knows the concerns about science are minimal. You can spot where she doesn't go further - it's a thought, a possible correlation for some, not a definitive statement. These issues have been publicly addressed by several researchers as valid theories, with background to go further than Naomi's book. She's not Mary Roach, and she never implies anything more than theory, to toss around and discuss.
Andi
Sep 28, 2012 9:41am
Sep 28, 2012 9:41am
Look, it's simple. Naomi WOLF. YONI massage. This whole thing's a WHY? marketing campaign.
ajdehany
Oct 24, 2012 11:05am
Oct 24, 2012 11:05am
Thomas Laqueur, writing in the TLS, delicately says of Naomi Wolf's 'Vagina' that "It is hard to know how seriously to take this book." Lolz.
Here's the last couple of paragraphs of his review:
Wolf found religion through a tantric sex healer in north London named Mike Lousada who does yoni massage for £100 an hour. She did not undergo the full treatment, but even his non-sexual touching left her in a "dopamine high", in which the world was brighter and "full of joy and sensuality". One does not want to make light of this man's therapeutic work, nor of the report of a client whom Wolf interviewed and who confirmed that it had helped: only clitoral orgasms before, blended ones with Lousada; not one or two orgasms as before, but a dozen; she had always wanted to go into opinion writing and now succeeded. Her creativity was released.
But it is worth noting that in a book called a new biography of the vagina Lousada gets thirty-five pages and Eve Ensor's widely translated Vagina Monologues gets one sentence.
The north London guru brings together the strange admixture of pseudo-science and New Age religion that informs this book. In the West, he explains, a woman's opening of her vagina to the male penis is regarded as mechanical, like a door or a box opening. In the East it is a coming alive, an unfurling. The vagina sucks in Lousada's finger after he addresses it as a goddess and asks for entry. A few pages later, Wolf reports on scientific studies that purportedly show that in vaginal or "blended orgasm" - this is where we came in - the vagina sucks in the semen. Different kinds of orgasm, science tells us, are more or less likely to make a woman pregnant. If a Rhodes Scholar from Yale with a post-graduate degree from Oxford can write this without a hint of scepticism is it surprising that a right-wing Congressman in the United States can claim, vice versa, that in "real" rape where there is no orgasm there can also be no conception? We might conclude, as Katha Pollitt does in her review of this book in the Nation, that Wolf has simply gone loopy. Maybe the "Goddess network" is the royal road to oceanic orgasm. Evangelical Christians claim that they can do this through Christ and spare us the neuro-physiology. But if Wolf is loopy she is not loopy alone. We seem to be back in the nineteenth century, when phrenology, neurology, and sex hormones supposedly could explain our essence, and religion, no longer based primarily in faith, could be shown to be true by psychology, or anthropology, or some other science. God spare us from hubris.
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/reviews/other_categories/article1151215.ece
Jonaki Roy
Oct 31, 2012 12:02pm
Oct 31, 2012 12:02pm
Cannot believe The Quietus is publishing such a crass idiotic article on an interesting book. McDermott shows a jaded sad pathetic soulless voice full of cynicism. We are aproaching an age shaped by the apotheosis of pornification. The above article is a sensationalist tabloid attempt at best to deal with a book not worthy of the writers faculties on any level. McDermott's article is full of convenient inaccuracies and ommissions about the book - cheaply added in order to add weight to her flimsy arguments. Hugely disappointing that a magazine with usually high standards has published something so full of idiocy. Whether you agree with Wolf or not - McDermott's substandard sensationalist whining is not worthy of what I thought this site was all about. Incredibly disappointed in The Quietus for publishing this supposed journalist's idiotic and innacurate ramblings when there are so many fantastic writers out there - this is an unecessary scraping of the barrel!
pfitz
Oct 31, 2012 12:19pm
Oct 31, 2012 12:19pm
I have a feeling this is the review Camille Paglia referenced in her recent Salon interview. http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/camille_paglias_glittering_images/
www.scottsdalemaids.org
Dec 7, 2012 12:10pm
Dec 7, 2012 12:10pm
Its quite nice to read your article, as it confirms our deep seated desire to degrade sex or the dependence3 of woman-man on each other to a level from where no constructive perception can be viewed. www.scottsdalemaids.org
william
Dec 8, 2012 11:39am
Dec 8, 2012 11:39am
Its quite nice to read your article, as it confirms our deep seated desire to degrade sex or the dependence3 of woman-man on each other to a level from where no constructive perception can be viewed. removing wisdom teeth
New York bankruptcy lawyer
Dec 31, 2012 9:58am
Dec 31, 2012 9:58am
(just-so stories told via pictures of brains with blobs of colour on them), but this book, like pretty much all of Wolf's work to date, consists largely of personal views and anecdote rather than anything grounded in theory. Remember, it's Naomi Wolf's Vagina. Not mine. Not yours.
william
Dec 31, 2012 11:42am
Dec 31, 2012 11:42am
Its quite nice to read your article, as it confirms our deep seated desire to degrade sex or the dependence3 of woman-man on each other to a levhjhel from where no constructive perception can be viewed..
solar road studs
Jan 2, 2013 7:52pm
Jan 2, 2013 7:52pm
that, and the odd yoni massage. Is it cynical to suspect that Wolf is peddling this heteronormative guff, knowing full well that the patriarchy she used to rail against will lap it up, as an example of someone.
marble cleaning denver
Jan 16, 2013 12:04pm
Jan 16, 2013 12:04pm
.who responded to my questions about their relationship with the vagina with hearteningly endearing answers." She wants to make us all jealous of her amazing vaginal orgasms, which allow her to "experience the sense of heightened interconnectedness, marble cleaning denver
Cash Advance For Business
Jan 19, 2013 9:03pm
Jan 19, 2013 9:03pm
I think it's too private. So I can't give any comments for it.
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Sep 27, 2012 12:13pm
Its quite nice to read your article, as it confirms our deep seated desire to degrade sex or the dependence3 of woman-man on each other to a level from where no constructive perception can be viewed.
The fact that you call it a " flesh between the legs" and want to remain in denial of its phenomenal power..in both men and women, is really a wake up call for the ones who have begin to understand their bodies on levels of feelings and hence the experienced reality.
I am a Fashion Photographer, a Content developer, have been single from past 4 years, and definitely a living threat to most men in India, where I currently reside, as I really don't give a damn about what happens to me in the long term...and yes I am pretty, compassionate, men want to date me from all walks of life, I can live without a man , very happily, causes no distress to me and my vagina, but Its also true that some wounds can be healed by men only!...no matter how liberated from wanting a man I am,and I truly am, I don't feel the need of a Man or a woman's companionship, I am experiencing freedom on a very different level..yet ,on the same note, Vagina is undervalued and undiscovered, it is like a dirty word..and hence the outer reality of women was too...it is the woman who will raise the man, and if she instills or lets him go ignored about the most important interaction of his life..which is his interaction with Vagina, he will give rise to a chaotic world as we see today, If we had devoted time in studying vagina instead of making an atom bomb or wasting time in world wars, I would have been writing a different comment today. Vagina has a total power, it always had and it always will...the piece of flesh between a woman's leg..well...we better start looking at what it really means, and why is it so bad? if it rules or has a detrimental effect on a person?
Is it better if our brain had a detrimental effect? Is this some sort of favor game for the brain, is this a competition between vagina and brain...I mean nobody argued..when it was said that Brain rules a man? why is there an argument if Vagina rules? Its quite funny, to live in denial and not give ourselves the honor and respect we deserve, i mean a happy woman is after all...a happy company to a man..and Happy man is a very rare specie on this planet...happy vagina..happy..women..happy man..happy children...lets focus..for real!!!!
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