Vagina: A New Biography

Dedication......Page 3
Epigraph......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Introduction......Page 7
One: Does the Vagina Have a Consciousness?......Page 16
1: Meet Your Incredible Pelvic Nerve......Page 17
2: Your Dreamy Autonomic Nervous System......Page 28
3: Confidence, Creativity, and the Sense of Interconnectedness......Page 39
4: Dopamine, Opioids, and Oxytocin......Page 51
5: What We “Know” About Female Sexuality Is Out of Date......Page 67
Two: History: Conquest and Control......Page 75
6: The Traumatized Vagina......Page 76
7: The Vagina Began as Sacred......Page 108
8: The Victorian Vagina: Medicalization and Subjugation......Page 122
9: Modernism: The “Liberated” Vagina......Page 136
Three: Who Names the Vagina?......Page 158
10: “The Worst Word There Is”......Page 159
11: How Funny Was That?......Page 172
12: The Pornographic Vagina......Page 182
Four: The Goddess Array......Page 198
13: “The Beloved Is Me”......Page 199
14: Radical Pleasure, Radical Awakening: The Vagina as Liberator......Page 226
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Goddess......Page 274
Notes......Page 278
Selected Bibliography......Page 305
Index......Page 310
Photographic Insert......Page 336
Acknowledgments......Page 345
About the Author......Page 347
Also by Naomi Wolf......Page 348
Credits......Page 349
Copyright......Page 350
About the Publisher......Page 351