Saturday, September 8, 2012

Some Thoughts on Naomi Wolf's Vagina

She writes:
My new book, Vagina: A New Biography, has just come out in the UK – to a whirlwind of reaction. Why write about the vagina? And why now?

The main answer is that new neuroscience, which has been very little reported outside of scientific journals, is providing truly revolutionary new information about what the vagina is and does – information that, in my mind, makes our entire way of seeing that organ, which is regarded generally, in this culture, as merely a sex organ – obsolete. New information in related fields is also transforming, or should transform, our understanding of sex itself for women.

The main headline, in my view? The new science has established a radically new insight: that there is such a strong brain-vagina connection in women that many of the neuroscientists whom I interviewed called it "a single system". More remarkably, few of us know that when a woman has an orgasm – and, even before that, when she feels empowered to think about pleasurable sex, anticipate it, focus on how to get it, and feels in control of and knowledgeable enough about her body to know she can probably reach orgasm during sex – her brain gets a boost of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Then, in orgasm, opioids and oxytocin are also released. This experience does not just yield pleasure, a fact that is well known; it also yields specific states of mind.

Dopamine is what I call the ultimate feminist neurotransmitter: it yields motivation and goal-orientedness, trust in one's own judgement and, most notably of all, in my mind, confidence...So, given this chemical bath, it is fair to say that the vagina is not just a sex organ at all, but a powerful mediator of female confidence, creativity and the sense of the connections between things.
Thus, shouldn't she disclose to us whether she wrote this after she just had an orgasm or whether this has been a struggle to write in a period absent orgasms? So we can judge what level clarity, confidence and creativity her brain was at?

She goes on:
Drs Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple have recently found that when you stimulate different parts of a woman's vagina, cervix or clitoris, she experiences different emotions and the touch activates different brain functions.
So perhaps, we may also need to know where she has been stimulated, in order to best determine what brain functions are active when she writes this stuff.

Note to Julian Assange, if you ever go to trial in Sweden, make sure that none of the jurors have read Wolf:
The, to me, mindblowing insights from this cutting-edge science do not end there: I learned that a strong body of data now show that the harm or injury of "nonviolent" rape goes far beyond what we (or the courts) have realized.

Wolf goes on:
The new science offers some remarkable positive insights. These are especially in a situation such as ours in which, 40 years after "the sexual revolution", studies show that 30-40% of western women self-report "hypoactive sexual desire". In other words, they are just not that into it, probably because they are not having reliably good enough experiences with it.
Oh puhleez, new science? There's always been a large percentage of couples where sex does not occur very often, if at all.

But it doesn't take a new science to fix this situation. For years, I have been telling women how to change the situation. The reaction I consistently get is that after they do what I tell them to do, they then go out of their way to find me, thank me and tell me to write a book. In this sense, it is a mental game relative to who has the answers about the universe and who doesn't--I tell the women how to act in a way that gives the impression they have the answers to the universe--every man wants to be with the woman that has the answers to the universe. I think Richard Feynman had it figured out from a male perspective, decades ago.

But back to Wolf, I tell you, it's easy to get into the head of anyone that writes the way Naomi does and that's my final thought on Naomi's vagina.

15 comments:

  1. I think we need to have the government establish a Department of Vaginas(DOVe) and a Vagina Czar to get to the bottom of this.

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    1. Should have let Schiff know about this idea before he headed to the DNC. I'm sure he could have convinced enough delegates to get it imbedded into the Democratic platform.

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  2. Final comment too good. I was building up several during the reading. Thank you for giving her the treatment that she deserves. I'm just glad that most women don't think like her.

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  3. I read EPJ everyday and I normaly enjoy the content. With that being said this post has nothing to do with economics, her article is obviously a promotion of her book (which you have now helped to promote), and the premise is ridiculous among other things. In short, this post was a waste of space and your readers time.

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    1. Hear hear. I do not come here to read such useless parsings.

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    2. Nah...idiots deserve ridicule.

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    3. Nope. There are much bigger, much more pertinent targets for ridicule than Naomi Wolf. Let the "conservatives" of Pajamas Media do the shallow idiot-bashing; this blog should be above that.

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  4. Did I miss who Wolf is, or are you saying Wolf when you meant to say Klein?

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    1. Naomi Wolf, author of "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot." I highly recommend the book, or the youtube video of the same name where she lectures on the subject of the book. Her premise is that after studying closing societies she discovered there are 10 steps which are always taken to facilitate the transition to authoritarianism. America has already completed or begun all 10 steps.

      She is also my favorite guest on The Lew Rockwell Show. She was interviewed for episodes 58, 152, and 179. She is worthy of far more respect than she typically receives on EPJ.

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  5. Thanks to Wolf for clearing all this up. I thought I understood vaginas even better than women themselves. It's women I still don't understand. But I still love them. Reminds me of The Godfather scene, where the bodyguard, Calo, tells Michael Corleone: "In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns."

    I wouldn't mind hearing what Amanda abillyrock would say about this. A pity people don't think more like her.

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  6. Please make this your last Ms. Wolf. I love you

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  7. lmao at Wenzel. I'm not sure whether to feel bad for her or you.

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  8. Silly me. I had no idea that cliteroectomy [no 'd'] is removal of a part of the central nervous system. Could it be that 'Projection Alert' is an appropriate response to the sexist cliche about men thinking with their penises whenever the cliche comes from a woman's lips?

    Speaking of lips, take another look at the photo at The Guardian. The caption reads "Activists in vagina costumes", and it appears that the activists' heads are the clitorises. Yet I see only labia and, of course, the clitorises. There isn't a sheath in sight, nor even an opening to the bladders. Maybe that sign should read, "Congress: Respect Uppity Little Brain-Vaginas Who Lack An Understanding of Their Own Bodies".

    Now, if what Naomi says about innervation of female pelvises is true, straight men should benefit from the mental effort necessary to figure out each woman's unique features, provided that the men are inclined to put forth the effort to investigate, say, whether or not any particular woman has an anterior fornix erogenous zone.

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  9. "The new science has established a radically new insight: that there is such a strong brain-vagina connection in women that many of the neuroscientists whom I interviewed called it 'a single system'. "

    Great, now when a woman asks me what I like the most about her, I don't have to lie.

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  10. I read that Naomi Wolf actually defended Julian Assange, saying he did not commit "real rape" on an episode of "Democracy Now!".

    I like the post and did not know Richard Feynman was such a ladies man! I have a nerdy scientist friend who is somehow amazing with women too. Do you have any books that you would suggest about sexuality or something about Richard Feynman Mr. Wenzel?

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