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PROMISCUITIES: THE SECRET STRUGGLE FOR WOMANHOOD...

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Promiscuities:
The Secret Struggle
For Womanhood
by Naomi Wolf

Random House Books
Reviewer: Leah Wyman

"What would male adolescent sexual behavior look like if boys were taught to treat teenage girls neither like prudes nor sluts but like nascent sexual goddesses, and respect their sexuality and reproductive potential accordingly? What would our violent landscape look like if men believed that true masculinity meant becoming an extraordinary lover to a life partner? What would we get if we let women's passion truly enter and dwell in our social world? Above all else that would accrue us, we would have our girls enter into womanhood fully alive" (p.232-233).

This quote, which appears at the end of Wolf's book Promiscuities, captures both the subject of the text as well as the perspective from which it is examined. This book is an exploration of how young girls learn about their sexuality throughout childhood, and the ramifications such leanings have on both individual adult women and society as a whole. The book is the result of interviews Wolf did with several women regarding their childhood memories of sexual development, along with Wolf's own recollections that are discussed in what she calls "first person sexual." She states that by analyzing her own "erotic history," along with those of other women, she can offer the reader stories and share feelings that many women can probably relate to and learn from.

Overall, Wolf does an excellent job of providing the reader with insights about emerging female sexuality, the social poisoning of female sexuality, and the shame, guilt, and subsequent constraints that are put on it as a result. This book deconstructs the cultural myths of female sexuality in such a way that it shows the reader how artificial these myths are and hence how unnecessary it is for women to draw upon them when defining themselves sexually. By telling stories of girlhood that will probably be familiar to most women, this book has the potential to facilitate emotional healing for the reader by articulating that which is often felt but rarely expressed, namely, the messages we receive as girls regarding the stigma that supposedly surrounds are bodies, our physical desires, and our very identities as women.

Specifically, Wolf examines such social constructs as the categorizing of women as virgins or whores and how adolescent girls are encouraged to do this to themselves and each other, the teaching of female desire (or, more importantly, lack thereof) in high school sex education classes, the myth that it was only because of feminism that the clitoris was "discovered," and the predatory nature of the sexuality that young boys are encouraged to identify with and emulate, and what shaming messages this sends to girls. By unearthing the ideologies behind constructs such as these, Wolf gives women a way to reclaim their sexuality by realizing that these conditions are not inherent to sexuality itself, but rather are the result of a society that does not recognize women as fully sexual, and thus fully human.

The only criticism I have of this book is that Wolf in a few places alludes to feminism as being part of the problem, as it supposedly is so overly concerned with women not being viewed as sex-objects that it alienates women from their sexuality. For example, in one chapter she states that because of feminism, women feel guilty about wanting to look sexy for their boyfriends or husbands, or enjoying knowing that their boyfriends/husband like to look at them. By making such claims, Wolf is falling for the anti-feminist rumors that feminists and feminism are anti-sex.

Nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that their are many camps of feminism, most feminist theory regarding sexuality simple challenges the patriarchal framings of sexuality that underpin how we as a society define it; namely, that it is always about male dominance and female submission, that men should be promiscuous while women should be monogamous, that the sexual abuse of women is erotic, etc. Most feminist would fully embrace the woman-centered, emancipitory sexuality that Wolf sets up as the ideal in her book. I would urge her to look further into modern feminism before blaming it for ideologies it is not responsible for.

Overall, however, this book does a wonderful job of illuminating how female sexuality is so cloaked in mystery from the time we are young and first discovering our sexual wants and needs that by the time we reach adulthood, we have internalized the negative messages society has fed us. It is possible that through reading books such as these women can begin to see how contrived and artificial such messages are, which is the first step in rejecting them and creating a sexual identity that lies outside the boundaries of patriarchal needs and demands.