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Description:
This fascinating history of female sexuality takes you on a journey through female sexual anatomy over the ages. You will learn when the clitoris was first described (in the first century A.D.), cultural differences in how female sexuality is viewed and taught, and the many different names for our genitals that have been applied over the years. This is a wonderful resource for anyone wishing she or he knew more about the cultural evolution of sexuality.
Here's what one of our reviewers wrote about the book:
This book is a fascinating exploration of female sexuality that combines biological, anthropological, historical, and mythological evidence to elucidate this often misunderstood and neglected topic. Somewhat academic in nature (I could imagine discussing it in a Women's Studies course), this book is packed with thorough, well-researched information and arguments. However, Blackledge has written this book with the public in mind; far from being a dry text, it is highly entertaining and interesting. It's a thoroughly sex-positive and feminist book and therefore has political significance; it is not, however, political in tone (unlike Cunt, for example). Blackledge's main argument is that the vagina is not, as sometimes thought, a passive vessel for sperm and pregnancies to pass through, but rather a dynamic and "intelligent" organ that plays a vital role in reproduction, fertility, and evolution. The vagina-as-passive-vessel paradigm, she explains, is closely tied in with misogyny and the devaluing of women's sexual experience. Cultures that consider women to play a vital role in reproduction tend to put a higher value on women's pleasure and sexuality than cultures that don't. In conjunction with these anthropological assertions, Blackledge discusses the biology of the vagina, and in showing that the vagina is actively involved in sexual reproduction in many ways, suggests that women's sexuality is something to be respected and revered (and researched, since we know more about male sexual anatomy and function than female).
She discusses the amazing array of vaginal structures found in the animal kingdom and how they function to store and select sperm. She also discusses human female anatomy, especially the clitoris, in depth. She doesn't believe that the clitoris is for pleasure only, but rather that sexual pleasure is neccessary for coitus to be safe and effective, and therefore vital to reproduction and the survival of the species. She also explains the paralells between male and female anatomy, explaining that the clitoris is not analogous to the male penis, but rather to the male clitoris (sounds familiar to me!). Some other interesting things discussed include: the role of scent in sex and the connection between the nose and genitals, the importance of the female prostate and ejaculation, perceptions of the vulva/vagina and the power of female sexuality in a variety of historical moments and cultures, the pervasive myth of the vagina dentata, the linguistic evidence of sex-positivity or sex-negativity in different cultures, and much more. I was so fascinated by some of the ideas in this book that I frequently said to my co-workers, "did you know that...?" I highly recommend this book as a thought-provoking, engrossing, and well-argued book about female sexuality.
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