I’ve gone on a deep dive into Vaginas! I just read these books: Vagina, Pussy, Wild Feminine and I’m working on Cunt. Yahoo! They’re totally blowing my mind and I recommend everyone with a vagina and all those who love someone with a vagina, or who were born from a vagina read these books. That’s everyone! This writing is part book report, part love sonnet to vaginas everywhere! After reading the book Wild Feminine by Tami Lynn Kent, I signed up for her class to learn Holistic Pelvic Care. I am soon to be a Vagina Whisperer. A Vagina Superhero!
Pussy is the sparkly magical side of femininity, Vagina gets into lots of science and history, Wild Feminine gives us practices to heal vaginas, and Cunt is a manifesto to inspire us to find our true power. Reading these books makes me realize how cut off most of us are from vaginas and our feminine power. Being cut off from this juicy feminine creative energy that we all share, means that we are missing a sense of the sacred, our connection to our bodies and the earth.
Diving into all these books, I’ve been shocked about how much I don’t know about my own anatomy. About the creative force I am capable of as a cyclical bodied person, and my birthright to experience limitless pleasure, joy, and a deep connection to all things. My body opens and closes, fills and empties like the phases of the moon.
Here’s what I’ve been learning from these vagina books. The pudendal nerve (or pelvic nerve) expands throughout the vagina, clitoris, g-spot, and cervix connecting through the spine up to the brain and has the potential to release enough dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins/opioids to give us an experience of oneness. A small death of sorts, where our thinking mind stops- the part that separates and analyzes- and we are thrown into a wild state of pleasure so intense we feel one with everything.
We can melt into the cosmos becoming the powerful wild witches that terrify the patriarchy. When we can access the totality of the brain vagina connection and have beautifully mind-blowing cleansing orgasms, we have the opportunity to embody enlightenment- to experience the connection between all things. This type of full-body-mind pleasure experience inspires power, confidence, and creativity.
Originally I borrowed the book Vagina from a friend and then dog-eared so many pages that my husband said, “You know you can’t give that book back. You’re going to have to buy her a new one.” I gladly did, so that I could keep this copy for myself and share with you all the glory that is Vagina, the first door we all walk through, the place we all come from (even babies born through cesarean birth arrived in their mother’s wombs through the vagina).
The beauty of this book is that Naomi Wolf weaves together the history of the Vagina, how it went from sacred to evil to pornographic. She collects numerous scientific studies about the brain vagina connection and how important it is for the female body to experience true holistic mind/body pleasure both for a sense of happiness and satisfaction but also for confidence, power, and creativity. When we live in a world where nearly all of us have been stripped of this powerful connection we lose our sense of sacred, our sacred duty to care for the earth and each other. For all genders. Look around. Most of us are walking zombies, looking at our phones. We rush around barely noticing our bodies while shoving fast-food into our mouths in a state of perpetual hurry, stress, and disconnection.
What if there is another way? What if we could remember the Goddess inside all of us and look to the bleeding women, the mothers and grandmothers for this sacred holy connection to the body and the earth. There are some cultures that look to the menstruating women for answers on how to care for the community, how to move forward. It’s believed that during this time we open a portal to the divine and are more intuitive and wise. Imagine that!
Imagine a world where we followed our cycles and taught our communities how to listen to the body, connect deeply to the earth, to rest, renew, cleanse, and replenish before going back to create again. What if we didn’t have to hide when we are bleeding, when we are birthing, when we are menopausal, when we are dying? These are the sacred cycles. When we hide the sacredness of these portals, when we don’t give them the weight they deserve and listen to these cycles for guidance of when and how to rest and to create, we are not able to be fully alive. This is true for men, women, and everyone. We are all connected through the sacred womb, our first home.
Let me share some of my favorite quotes from Vagina and then you should go read the whole book:
“The vulva, clitoris, and vagina are just the most superficial surfaces of what is really going on with us. The real activity is literally far, and far more complexly, under these tactile surfaces. The vulva, clitoris, and vagina are actually best understood as the surface of an ocean that is shot through with vibrant networks of underwater lightning- intricate and fragile, individually varied neural pathways. All these networks are continually sending their impulses to the spinal cord and brain, which then send new impulses back down through other fibers in the same nerves to produce various effects.”
“Patriarchal societies, even without the benefit of what current science is now documenting, have, I contend, noticed the link between sexually assertive, sexually self-aware women- and focused, motivated, energized, biologically empowered women. This is why I call dopamine the ultimate feminist chemical. If a woman has optimal levels of dopamine, she is difficult to direct against herself. She is hard to drive to self-destruction, to manipulate and control.”
“The ‘modern’ Western conception of the vagina, the one we inherit today- shamed, sexualized in a narrow and functional way, desacralized and scientifically scrutinized- developed in the 19th century. As Michel Faucault points out in The History of Sexuality, this was the century of medicalized control of sexuality in general. The vagina was medicalized and controlled in highly specific ways in this era that were unprecedented at the time, but that have endured since- and that descend to us, often intact.”
The premise of all of these amazing books is that the vagina and the whole pelvic bowl is way more than just sexual. It’s a creative hub full of messages for the mind and body about when we are safe, when we are in danger, and how to manifest our dreams, to be fully alive. But most of us have been taught that the vagina is gross, smelly, and not a safe space to pay attention to. We should just ignore it, keep it tight, locked up, and controlled, and make sure it’s not stinky or dirty. It’s time we take our power back and realize that Vaginas Are Magic. This is where life is created and the tissues of our bodies can teach us how to live our lives, how to find pleasure, when to rest, and how to let go during our bleeding times.
What if all the bodily functions we’ve been taught to fear and dread are actually portals to empowerment and clarity: bleeding, birth, and menopause. They all come through the vagina and have the power to open us up to the wild wonderful powerhouse leaders that we are. What if we’ve been duped? After reading these books I’m coming to believe that women, mothers, and grandmothers are meant to be the teachers, leaders, space holders and wise ones that guide humanity back to the earth, back to our bodies, to our cycles. What if the cycles of our bodies that fill us with hormones, that slow us down and bring us inward, are meant to be the sacred portal experiences that bring us beyond the mundane and show us what is needed to care for mother earth, to heal humanity and awaken us to the pleasures of being alive.
We were taught that pleasure and sex are shallow or only for making babies or dangerous. That our bodies are dirty and unpredictable. What if these bodies and the experience of pleasure are meant to teach us about holiness about connection and beauty, about ego death and sacredness? That is what the female body is capable of because of the amazing neural pathways from the vulva, clitoris, and vagina to the brain that create enough dopamine and oxytocin and endorphins to cause an “ego death” where our inhibitions disappear and we can feel the invisible web of life that connects us all, that reminds us that every speck of dust, every spider, plant, man, woman, child, and being is holy and filled with Goddess energy. What if that is what the female body, the vagina is meant to teach us?
We must unlock ourselves from these fucked up puritanical roots, from all the distractions, from technology, and porn and awaken to the intricacies of our bodies right here and right now. We must learn to listen to our bodies, to the incredible pulses in the vagina communicating with the brain, showing us what is right and what is wrong. We must break these shackles that bind us to rushing, to hurrying through our lives and believing that productivity, consumption and greed hold the secrets of our value. Our creativity comes from within. Our bodies are holy. Our vaginas are sacred.
*Since reading these books I’ve decided that I hate the word vagina because it means sheath for a sword. What the fuck people?! This place in our bodies is the sacred portal where all human life comes from. It’s the home for sexual energy, for creative life force. We need a new name. Some other options are: Yoni, Pussy or Cunt. I’m trying them all on because I’m not sure which one I like best yet. It’s tricky though, because what do we teach our children? When this anatomical name is clearly demeaning and belittles this beautiful jewel of anatomy to merely a holder of a weapon. Gross! For the time being I’m teaching my boys the terms Vagina and Vulva, because vagina only refers to the vaginal canal and doesn’t include the labia, clitoris, cervix... These are some really important parts that get left out of this mainstream term for female genitalia. I think it’s time we vote on a new name officially! Please comment your vote below.
*Also it was mentioned in some of these books that we really need a book called Penis too. Some scientist, journalist, and writer needs to write the male trilogy as well: Penis, Cock, and Dick... I want to know about the sacred neural pathways between the cock and brain and all the pleasure that the male body/mind is capable of as well, but I don’t know as much about that yet. I hope some of you do the research and write these books!
Resources
Vagina, Naomi Wolf, Harper Collins, New York, 2013
Wild Feminine, Tami Lynn Kent, Atria Books, New York, 2011
Pussy, Regena Thomashauer, Hay House, California, 2016
Cunt, Inga Musico, Hachett Book Group, New York, 2018
My vote is for pussy because, like vulva, it includes everything, and it sounds right to me for some reason.
I had a Native American sweetheart who spoke of her ‘goddess’ and I really liked that as well.