A Vagina of One’s Own by Vagina Wolf
I like this title so much I have to write a post to go with it.
Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography has been panned by Zoe Heller, Laurie Penny, Katie Roiphe, Suzanne Moore and Neuroskeptic (a neuro-scientist who questions Wolf’s science bits). (Entertaining quote mine here.) The book outlines Wolf’s quest for the transcendental orgasm that she had mislaid somewhere. Suzanne Moore describes it as a “self-help” book. So I’ve decided not to read it – it sounds very American and earnest, and as for searching for the transcendental orgasm, I have trouble enough locating my keys and spare pair of specs. As for the power of the vagina that she extolls, mine won’t even charge up my moby. Laurie Penny groans, “Has feminism come to this?” Quite.
Putting “Vagina” in a title does make a book sound more exciting and feministy, so I am jazzing up titles of books I’m reading, or have read recently:-
The Curious Incident of the Vagina in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
In the Shadow of the Vagina by Tom Holland
Vagina’s End by Ford Madox Ford
Letters to Vagina by Philip Larkin
We Need to Talk about My Vagina by Lionel Shriver
The Lonely Planet Guide to the Vagina
A Vagina for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul
The Vagina of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
Changing My Vagina: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
The Vagina Stain by Philip Roth
The Odd Vaginas by George Gissing
This heavy solemnity about sex – Wolf, it seems, thinks her vagina is a “goddess” and chaps should cover you with rose petals before you go transcendental on them – does bring out the Vagina Wood in me.
Sarah AB said,
September 13, 2012 at 6:38 am
It sounds just awful. I hate that kind of mystical feminism – in fact I’m not too keen on mystical anything.
A little off topic (!) but when I was trying to answer someone’s question about why I had been banned from Socialist Unity and turned to my husband for inspiration he suggested ‘because you have a vagina’?
Rosie said,
September 13, 2012 at 6:55 pm
There’s this awful “female consciousness” strand to feminism – a rejection of rationality and logic as being male constructs and we should just ride the wave our femaleness. It always made me furious as the feminists I like – de Beauvoir,, Greer, Woolf – were analytical, acerbic, literary and in Greer’s case, witty (though like Naomi Wolf her biology is shaky and skipped over in The Female Eunuch).
I don’t want to dismiss transcendentalism, mysticism, epiphanies etc and appear a spiritual oaf. But they aren’t an easy thing to describe in discursive prose, and belong more to poetry (Hopkins, Wordsworth, Donne) , music etc. You end up with D H Lawrence’s blood consciousness and the rest of it i.e. fall into absurdities and gushing.
I was banned from Socialist Unity because I went there in a jeering spirit. However, as you are always reasonable, I’d say it was because you disagreed with them. Tony Collins is declaiming more and more how good the debate is, as he bans more and more people, and falls into factional squabbles.
Just saying said,
September 13, 2012 at 7:01 am
Mysoginist for a male is woman degenorator.What is the word for a female degenorator.Feminist is not allowed i believe as it is to, genarlist.
Rosie said,
September 13, 2012 at 7:01 pm
A female can be a misogynist, just like a Jew can be an anti-semite.
I read this today:-
http://thehumanist.org/september-october-2012/a-woman%E2%80%99s-place-the-dearth-of-women-in-the-secular-movement/
“Ayn Rand, the great heroine of the far right (which is willing to overlook her atheism because of her idolatry of the free market), was extremely misogynous in her views.”
That’s from a piece by Susan Jacoby (excellent by the way). .
sackcloth and ashes said,
September 13, 2012 at 8:20 pm
If you’re referring to women who hate men the term is ‘misandry’.
Neuroskeptic (@Neuro_Skeptic) said,
September 13, 2012 at 10:17 am
Heh. Very good.
What’s amazing is that if you take Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers right now, all the titles work really well if you replace a word with ‘vagina’: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bestsellers-Books/zgbs/books
The Hairy Vagina
Lorraine Pascale’s Fast, Fresh and Easy Vagina
Fifty Vaginas Freed
Fifty Vaginas Darker
Fifty Shades of Vagina
Bared to You (Vagina, Book 1)
Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Vagina Course
Vagina of the World (Century of Giants Trilogy 2)
Reflected in You (Vagina, Book 2)
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Vagina and Disappeared
Roger McCarthy (@RF_McCarthy) said,
September 13, 2012 at 11:45 am
Classics too:
The Diary of a Vagina by George and Weedon Grossmith
The Notebooks of a Country Vagina by Mikhail Bulgakov
Remembrance of Vaginas Past by Marcel Proust
War and Vaginas by Leo Tolstoy
The Vagina by Nikolai Gogol
Confessions of an English Vagina Eater by Thomas de Quincy
The Vagina at the Worlds End by William Morris
A Vagina of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Having said this very few of Harold Bloom’s 1,524 canonical works of literature that we are all supposed to have read are improved by substituting a vagina.
Rosie said,
September 13, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Hey! – I thought of that first. Read the title of this piece.
sackcloth and ashes said,
September 13, 2012 at 8:18 pm
‘Confessions of an English Vagina Eater by Thomas de Quincy’
I think we have a winner. But can I propose ‘Homage to Vagina’, ‘Keep the Vagina Flying’, ‘The Thirty Nine Vaginas’, ‘The Riddle of the Vagina’ and ‘No Vaginas for Old Men’.
I considered doing the same with Mikhail Sholokhov’s first novel, but it was rather disturbing.
Jim M. said,
September 13, 2012 at 2:42 pm
At the risk of appearing all chauvinistic and over-aggressive I offer the following:
Love in a Cold Vagina: Nancy Mitford
Foucault’s Vagina: Umberto Eco
The Taming of the Vagina The Boss
Tender is the Vagina: F. Scott Fitzgerald
and let’s end with an anthology…
The Penguin Book of Modern British Vaginas: Ed. by Malcolm Bradbury.
Rosie said,
September 13, 2012 at 7:05 pm
The Dickens Collection
The Vagina Papers
Vagina Twist
A Christmas Vagina
Our Mutual Vagina
Vagina Times
Great Vaginas
Bleak Vagina
The Old Vagina Shop
A Tale of Two Vaginas
George Eliot isn’t much good at vagina titles and Jane Austen isn’t very satisfactory either. Vagina Park and Vagina Abbey sound like classy erotica, in the line of The Story of O. Pride and Vaginas and Vaginas and Sensibility sound like alternative titles for Naomi Wolf’s own work.
Jim M. said,
September 13, 2012 at 9:28 pm
The Wilde Bunch
The Vagina of Dorian Gray
The Happy Vagina & Other Stories
Lady Windermere’s Vagina
A Vagina of No Importance
An Ideal Vagina
and pleease may we include
The Importance of Being a Vagina
Rosie said,
September 13, 2012 at 9:39 pm
That really made me laugh. The Importance of Being a Vagina could have been written by Naomi Wolf herself.