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. She boldly goes into the clitoral v vaginal orgasm argument saying we can have it all. Call me repressed, but in between work and kids and watching this recession hit the poorest women hardest, for some time now this argument has not been uppermost in my mind. Or should I say vagina?
---SPSmith
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