Things I Found in Naomi Wolf's "Vagina"

(Update May 2021:  I have since has the great misfortune of discovering that Naomi Wolf has gone completely daft weird-ass theory about chem trails and the like. Does that discount this, which I really loved at the time? Dunno!)

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Let's see, I looked in Naomi Wolf's Vagina and found:  an Adam Ant Album, a Bag of Bacon and...I'm sorry. I'm a child.

No, what I found was information--completely fascinating, mind-blowing information. Naomi Wolf's book Vagina: A New Biography--seriously--gave me a whole new Vaginal Worldview. Which is good because I previously held no Vaginal Worldview. So I can tick that off my "to-do" list.

Anyway, here's the story:

1. The basic premise.
Women are wired in complex neurological ways that make sexual touch blend with emotional experiences, creativity, and the experience of connectedness with the world. "Women are designed to receive pleasure, and experience triggers to orgasm from skillful caressing and rhythmic pressure of all kinds over many, many parts of their bodies. The pornographic model of intercourse--even our culture's conventional model of intercourse, which is quick, goal-oriented, linear, and focused on stimulation of perhaps one or two areas of a woman's body--is just not going to do it for many women, at least not in a very profound way, because it involves such a superficial part of the potential of a woman's neurological sexual response systems," writes Wolf.

2. Release the hounds.
When a lover stimulates a woman properly, it sets off all kinds of chemical fuckery. A lover who suckles a woman's nipple for example, will set off a release of the bonding love chemical oxytocin and she, perhaps without quite realizing why, will favor that lover over another. If a man* gives his lover a deep, deep orgasm, the kind where it feels like his cock is hitting some deep emotional/physical/spiritual place within, a woman can have a profound experience. Some women will feel an exquisite rapture, some will burst into tears, and 100% will take that dude's call next time around.

3.  Truly great sex is a spiritual experience.
Yeah, I said spiritual. When a woman is fully relaxed, open and receiving pleasure she can enter sort of a trance state. And when a woman comes, she gets a heavy dose of opiates, and the regions of her brain involving self-awareness and inhibition go dark. "This can feel to the woman involved like a melting of boundaries, a loss of self, and, whether exhilaratingly or scarily, a loss of control," writes Wolf. This blissful state is a transcendence, a falling/melting into something Divine.

4. Well fucked women get bombarded with all kinds of delicious sexual chemicals and get cranky when denied.
The heavy dosing of all these lovely chemicals--the bonding love squishiness of oxytocin, the rewarding high of dopamine, the sublime bliss of opiates--means that yes, love is a drug for women, and we can turn into fucking addicts. Our pleasure/chemical hit is potentially greater than a man's so we suffer more, biochemically, from withdrawal. Edith Wharton wrote that her lover's touch left her with "je n'ais plus de volonte": "no more will." "Addictedness to a lover who is 'right' for the autonomic nervous system in women is hard-wired," writes Wolf. "...If this is the person with the right touch to activate your unique neural network, you will go into withdrawal if he or she is not around you to do this again, and fairly soon. Actual, painful, real withdrawal." Uh, yeah. (See also: Elliott Smith, excessive playing of)

5. Maybe it's okay to go with your crazy?
The addictive force of sexual chemistry has such a tempting, strong pull--just an open-hearted leap into ancient currents of Passion and Life--but it also feels kinda...anti-feminist, weak and possibly unhealthy. Being so raw and open to someone is both frightening and wonderful. Especially since men might be experiencing the chemical bath on a less heady level. But Wolf spins this longing for connection as something important and essentially female : "Are we masochists, are we pathetic, or trivial minded? No, to the contrary. Rather, we are subject to a force that is extremely powerful--one that perhaps no man can truly understand. I think that what drives us is rather noble," she writes. "I believe we should respect the potential for 'enslavement' to sexual love in women; to our place with Eros and love."

6.  The optimum ways to fire up a women's sensuality look a lot like Tantric sex.
A lot of Tantra--at least as far as I can tell from studying it exactly zero days---has to do with setting the scene, enjoying the process, relaxing the woman and coaxing her to open up gradually--literally and metaphorically, until she is sort of bursting with ripeness. A lover offering reassurance and admiration will affect what's going on between a woman's legs, reports Wolf: "If he or she keeps talking along those lines, watch how readily your vagina responds to the touch--as the Tantric masters say, it should literally yearn toward and open for the lover's hand, to draw it closer, or do the same for a lover's penis."

A slow, non-goal oriented touch will take a lover over the contours of a woman's body, kissing, stroking and coaxing each one to open up before moving to another. After going through each "gate," a woman will be fully receptive--probably pretty fucking blissed out--and only then it is then okay to enter her. Wolf describes this Eastern model of vaginal opening as "akin to an 'unfolding' or an 'unfurling,' a 'coming alive,' or an 'expansion'--more like a time-lapse photograph, like a lotus expanding in the sun."

7.  Whether you think it's a G-spot or not, it needs to be stroked.
"Find her 'sacred spot,' then hang out there far longer that you think is necessary." While scientists are still dithering about whether there is a G-spot or not, Tantric masters have been in there stroking said "sacred spot' and making the ladies come. Carefully, slow stroking of the spot--which is part of the whole neural tangle, but can also be considered to be sort of a back end of the clitoris--is highly effective at making women purr for you. In one study researchers gave 89% of their female subjects orgasms by "systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls." This despite the lab conditions and calling it "systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls." Considering 43% of women report sexual desire and response problems, the results are truly stunning.

8.  The usual idea of tensing and focusing to reach orgasm might not be optimal for women.
"Many women--and Tantra gurus--report that while clitoral orgasm involves bodily tension and release (a lot like male orgasm), 'sacred spot' orgasm involves relaxation. Many women learn to have sacred spot orgasms, those Tantric four-star never-ending orgasms, by actually directing themselves to relax and lose consciousness during sacred spot stimulation--to their surprise, this can make the orgasm come in sequential inexhaustible waves--rather than tensing up and focusing on sexual thoughts or fantasies, which women then to do to secure clitoral orgasms (and which Western images of sexuality model.)"

So yeah. There you go. I am still kind of processing it all but am curious what you all think.... Do tell.

xoxox
jill

p.s. I also found the object below in Naomi Wolf's Vagina.**

* I'm going with some hetero language here today b/c I am hetero. For now.
** Statement is untrue.

This is a rerun. Please adjust expectations accordingly.

(photo source: Lady Cheeky)

This is How You Please a Woman.

(*This originally appeared in Alternet and Salon. I hope I'm allowed to run it my damn self...Um...maybe don't tell anyone about this.)

Yes, everyone knows porn is just fantasy blah blah blah, but for some people, porn is--seriously!-- their primary source of sex ed. Less than half the states require sex ed in public schools and only 19 require it to be “medically, factually or technically accurate”(!) Even when the sex ed is there and semi-decent, there tends to be way too much information on fallopian tubes and little, if any, on what one should do upon encountering a clitoris. People genuinely want to be decent lovers, I think, and scrutinizing porn for love tips can be all kinds of fun, but as a source of actual lady-pleasin' info, it kind of sucks.

“Every technique you learn in porn is wrong. If men are going to porn to figure out to how to please women they're going to be very disappointed, ” says Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. “Everything that makes sex fun--the creativity, mutuality, enjoyment, connection, intimacy--is bled away and in its place is kind of a robotic fucking of women's orifices.”

So, lesson number one: “robotic fucking of women's orifices,” maybe a “no” on that. But with that off the table (at least most of the time...), what you do instead? Great thinkers from Ovid to Master Tung-hsuan to Naomi Wolf have offered their own answers, and there are certain Great Truths that run through them all.

We're getting into the Deep Magic now, my friends. Use it wisely.

Embrace the Erotic Outside the Bedroom

“Most men, if you breathe on them or look at them the wrong way, they're ready for action. But for most women, you have to get between their ears before you get between their legs. You have to build the story,” says Dr. Adam Sheck, aka The Passion Doctor.

So build the story. “A man should tell his wife, detail by detail, what he wants to do to her, how he wishes to touch her,” counsels Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in his book, The Kosher Sutra. “Eroticism is the thrilling desire to connect: to know, to explore, to penetrate, and to comprehend. When our lives are electrified by an erotic pulse, all existence becomes illuminated.”

Express Your Desire

According to studies by Marta Meana, president of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, being desired is the source of a woman's desire. It is “at once the thing craved and the spark of craving,” explains Daniel Bergner in his beautifully written book, What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire. So, by all means, let a women that you think her body is insanely hot—so hot you can barely take it--and it's making you hard just thinking about her. (Ratchet this language up or down, filth-wise, depending on the chick.) Tender, respectful love is fine enough but please note that approximately 1 billion percent of romance novels are about a woman inciting a man with a passion so savage and hungry that he can barely control himself. (Spoiler: he doesn't).

Don't Be Afraid to Ravish

The desire to be taken by force consistently sits there, all petulant and non-PC-like, among women's top sexual fantasies. This doesn't mean that women want to be raped, obviously, but it is related to the tip above on desire. Being taken strongly and urgently is a clear physical expression of a male's searing desire for a woman. Bergner describes Meana's take on it thusly: “The ravager, overcome by craving for that particular women, cannot restrain himself; he tears through all codes, through all laws and conventions, to seize her, and she—feeling herself to be the unique object of his unendurable need—is overcome herself.” (See above: plot of every romance novel.)

“For the heterosexual female 'ravish me' fantasy, the man embodies the masculine and takes charge with those masculine qualities to be focused, direct, relentless in pursuing his goal, in this case, loving his woman into 'submission.' This can range from simply initiating sex, to being a little more assertive than usual, to being more aggressive, to being a little 'rough' all the way to role play and using restraints and sex toys,” writes Dr. Sheck. “I’m 6’3″ and around 200 pounds and have found that many woman have simply enjoyed the weight of my body pressing into them and found that arousing. Perhaps that is enough to begin your journey. I also happen to have large hands and usually able to hold both of a woman’s wrists in one of my hands. Even that small step can often be assertive enough to feed into the submission fantasy.” (And if you did not just experience a little unbidden thrill thinking of Dr. Sheck holding you down, well, then that's where we differ.)

Focus on Goalless Touching

“The whole sexual experience can be totally enjoyable, but most men and women are taught to go straight for climax. We educate guys to enjoy the whole ride,” says consultant Robert Kandell, who coached men at Onetaste, where “orgasm” is defined as the entire sexual experience beginning at the first thought of making out with someone. He offers a metaphor: “The climax of a symphony is the cymbals crashing at the end, but that’s not the main draw.

What is “the whole ride”? “Non-genitally focused sexual behavior, referred to popularly as 'foreplay'...is a broad category of activities which are usually undertaken with the goal of increasing one’s own and/or one’s partner’s sexual arousal and pleasure. These activities can include, but are not limited to, kissing, stroking, massaging, and holding anywhere from one part to the entirety of a partner’s body,” writes Dr. Adena Galinsky, in a woefully unsexy passage.

Not only do you miss out on plenty of fun if you skimp on the “non-genitally focused sexual behavior,” you increase the odds of squelching orgasm or arousal, according to Galinsky's recent study. Just don't call it “non-genitally focused sexual behavior” and you should be go to go.

The More Time You Put in, The Hotter It Gets

The mid-7^th century sex manual “Ars Amatoria of Master Tung-hsuan” advises much “dalliance before penetration.” “He presses on her slender waist, he caresses her precious body, he whispers endearing words and engages in passionate discourse,” writes the Master. There is extensive stroking, loving gazes, and deep rich kisses until the Jade Stalk rises “standing strongly, pointing upwards like a a lonely peak towering high up in the Milky Way” and the Cinnabar Crevice becomes “moist, exuding a rich flow of secretions like a lonely well springing up in the deep vale.” Even when it gets to the point when the man is kneeling between his lover's open thighs, Jade Stalk in hand—and it's pretty clear what's going to be going down--he continues to tease and woo, letting his member “play about in this portal” while continuing his impassioned speech, sucking her tongue and stroking her belly, breasts and labia.

In another Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) the Roman poet Ovid counseled lovers of 2 A.D. to take their time in love, too: “If you will listen to me you will not be too hasty in attaining the culmination of your happiness. Learn by skillful maneuvering to reach your climax by degrees. When you are safely ensconced in the sanctuary of bliss, let no timid fear arrest your hand. You will be richly rewarded by the love-light trembling in her eyes, even as the rays of the sun fitfully dance upon the waves. Then will follow gentle murmurs, moans and sighs, laden with ecstasy that will sting and lash desire.” Sigh.

Whether You Think It's a G-spot or Not, Try Stroking It.

"Find her 'sacred spot,' then hang out there far longer that you think is necessary," writes Naomi Wolf  in Vagina . While scientists are still dithering about whether there is a G-spot or not, Tantric masters have been in there stroking said "sacred spot” and making the ladies come. Carefully, slow stroking of the spot--which is part of the whole neural tangle, but can also be considered to be sort of a back end of the clitoris--is highly effective at making women purr for you. In one study researchers gave 89% of their female subjects orgasms by "systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls." This despite the lab conditions and calling it "systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls."

Don't Lock In to A Successful Sequence of Moves

A systematic approach in which a man “politely lets himself into the vagina, perhaps waiting until the retraction of the clitoris tells him that he is welcome, is laborious and inhumanely computerized,” writes the ever-blunt Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch. “The implication that there is a statistically ideal fuck which will always result in satisfaction if the right procedures are followed is depressing and misleading.”

“You want to be present. You want to feel what you're partner's feeling, you want to sensitive to the amount of lubrication, to the engorgement of the labia. And from there, you know when to be rough, when to be aggressive, when to pull on hair, when to smack things, when to be kind,” says Dr. Sheck. “It's really a tuning to the body.”

A Well-Fucked Woman Kind of Loses It (And That's Good)

“Feminine sexual excitement can reach an intensity unknown to a man. Male sexual excitement is keen but localized, and—except perhaps at the moment of orgasm—it leaves a man quite in possession of himself; woman, on the contrary, really loses her mind; for many this effect marks the definite and voluptuous moment of the love-affair, but it also has a magical and fearsome quality,” writes Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex.

When a lover stimulates a woman properly, it sets off all kinds of chemical tomfoolery. A lover who suckles a woman's nipple, for example, will set off a release of the bonding love chemical oxytocin and she, perhaps without quite realizing why, will favor that lover over another. When a woman is fully relaxed, open and receiving pleasure she can enter sort of a trance state. And when a woman has an orgasm, she gets a heavy dose of opiates--the regions of her brain involving self-awareness and inhibition going dark. "This can feel to the woman involved like a melting of boundaries, a loss of self, and, whether exhilaratingly or scarily, a loss of control," writes Wolf. If a man gives his lover a deep, deep orgasm, the kind where it feels like his cock is hitting some deep emotional/physical/spiritual place within, a woman can have a profound experience. Some women will feel an exquisite rapture, some will burst into tears, and 100% will take that dude's call next time around.

xoxox
jill

A Farewell to Vagina

In Poland, you get a "pochwa"* to work with.

Vagina, vagina, vagina. Nope, still not comfortable saying it.

Oh, we tried. Believe me. But vagina, well, it rankles.

This despite Naomi Wolf's  Vagina: A New Biography becoming a best-seller, thus providing the enjoyable side effect of listening to NPR newscasters having to choke out the word.

This despite the general vindication of Representative Lisa Brown after she was boorishly silenced for saying "vagina" on the Michigan house floor.

And this despite (or, in may case, perhaps because of) my own dear Fight-the-Power mother being involved in a vagina-saying vaginal protest at the Michigan capital. (With t-shirts featuring Statue of Liberty saying "Vagina."  That no one wanted to wear again, ever.)

Yes, we made a valiant stab at vagina, as it were, but it's time to accept that "vagina" is just not gonna happen.

Vaginas get examined and might require special ointments. Vaginas rile overly vigilant feminists when used improperly in place of vulva. Vaginas do not get fucked.

Yes, I covered this breaking news back in 2010 in The Land Down Under, but it delights/pains to tell you that Caitlin Moran did it 8 thousand times better in her Jezebel article Naming a Vagina is Tricky Business. I mean, her bullet points alone!

There is a panoply of slang words that are, in their ways, just as truly awful as "vagina." Let's bullet point!

• Your sex: sounds like a preemptive attempt to shift blame.
• Hole: a bad thing that can happen to stockings or tights. My Johnnylulu is a GOOD thing that happens to stockings and tights.
• Honeypot: inference of imminent presence of bees.
• Twat: an unpleasant mélange of cow-pat, stupidity, and punching. No.
• Bush: the band of the same name are tiresome. The vegetation has spiders. No.
• Vag: sounds like the name of a busybody battleaxe, à la "Barb" and "Val." Suggestion also of chain-smoking Marlboro Lights, and borderline addiction to bingo. No.

So this whole idea of re-claiming "vagina"--well, I feel like we've given it a fair shake. And when it gets down to it--oh, just fucking admit it--no one really likes saying vagina.  Even Eve Ensler, Little Miss Vagina Monologues, wrote "Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say."

Saying it more is not going to make anyone more comfortable with the word. Vagina is, and will always be, just too...vaginaey. And I, for one, am still on the lookout for a suitable replacement.

xoxox
jill

*Hej kretynie, srom pochwa nie jest! (translation from the Polish: Hey, moron, a vagina is not a vulva.)