Naomi Wolf's book Vagina: self-help marketed as feminism [View all]
Suzanne Moore
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 September 2012 15.00
By now we all know that Naomi Wolf has mind-blowing orgasms. I must say globally this has been a concern. Was this woman getting enough? Yes, oh yes, she has got a book's worth. I read Vagina: A New Biography in a bar while feasting on some very fine cuts of meat, so I am not just judging it by the extracts, ie the insane pasta party where "Alan", a supposed friend, served her "cuntini". This trauma upset her for six months. Someone give her a hotdog quick to spare us more of this existential despair ...
My problem with Wolf is longstanding and is not about how she looks or climaxes – but it is about how she thinks, or rather doesn't. She comes in a package that is marketed as feminism but is actually breathlessly written self-help. Her oeuvre, if I can use this word, is basically memoir, in which she struggles to tell some heroic truth that many others have already told us. The great trick is to present this material as new, and to somehow speak on behalf of all women when she is infinitely privileged and sheltered.
Hence feminism becomes simply a highly mediated form of narcissism devoid of any actual brain/politics connection. What we have here is Californication, with a little trot through some basic women's studies linking female creativity with sexual awakening. Think Georgia O'Keeffe with bit of Anaïs Nin thrown in. Which is nice.
It gets dodgy when she drags in some neuroscience as evidence and appears more clueless than someone who has failed her chemistry GCSE but has two TED talks on her iPhone ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/naomi-wolf-book-vagina-feminism
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