There seems to be a lot of opposition in the media to Naomi Wolf's new book, Vagina: A New Biography.
Here's a thoughtful opposing point of view. After all, if you've seen a TV commercial for Viagra or other "ED" meds you know that there's a definite brain-penis connection.
A curious dialogue has developed with the publication of Naomi Wolf's new book, Vagina: A New Biography, one that seems hellbent on poking holes in her central theme that the connection between the vagina and the brain influences a woman's mood and creativity.
Two advance reviews, one by David Dobbs in Wired Science Blogs, and one by Zoe Heller in the New York Review of Books, take Wolf to task for her reliance on neuroscience to help explain the progressive decline that her lower lumbar and sacral nerve blockage had on her sex life, an effect that clouded over her life in general. It would have been easy at that time for Wolf to construct a socially acceptable and perhaps even politically correct explanation for her lack of desire and passion. But to her utter astonishment, getting her spinal cord repaired restored her to her former self. This experience had a profound effect on her and prompted her to look deeper at how biology -- in this case, the neural reality of her clitoral, vaginal, and cervical sensations -- added desire and passion to her life.
Judging from numerous quality-of-life studies done on men with erectile dysfunction who have had it treated, one could easily argue that the penis-brain connection has a major influence on the emotional and intellectual wellbeing of men. So I must ask why the same would not hold true for a vagina-brain connection?
Wolf's search took her, among other places, to my laboratory. We had been doing research on the role of clitoral and vaginocervical stimulation in the sex and reproductive lives of female rats, work that has been published in high-quality peer-reviewed scientific journals. This work revealed that such stimulation, when applied in the right way, induces a state of sexual reward that conditions place and partner preferences (the latter of which was unexpected in an allegedly promiscuous and polygamous species). Taken together with previous work from my laboratory showing the profound role of dopamine and opioid neurotransmitters in both male and female sexual behavior, and in the context of a more general scientific literature in animals and humans showing that blockade of those transmitters induces varying degrees of an "anhedonic" state akin to depression in which reward does not occur and animals do not focus their attention toward it anymore, it became clear to Wolf that these neurochemicals were important parts of the sexual desire and pleasure systems of the brain. They were activated by clitoral, vaginal, and cervical stimulation, something that had gone missing in action due to Wolf's progressive deterioration of her spinal cord. She was thirsty for knowledge about how those sensations activated the brain. She spent an enormous amount of time carefully making herself aware of the scientific literature on the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of desire and reward and she and I had numerous discussions about how these things work, and how they can be disabled -- by culture, by experience, by events that ultimately perturb neurons in specific brain networks.
In his review, Dobbs argues that Wolf oversimplifies the role of dopamine, noradrenaline, opioids, and oxytocin. Yet the feelings associated with the decline and resurgence of her sexual self were very real, and I would argue that her take on the role of those neurotransmitters is entirely consistent with current conceptions of their role in, among other things, sexual behavior, feeding, and drug addiction. Heller is more allegorical in her review. She takes Wolf to task for ignoring "common sense and logic" and for "drinking shallow drafts from the fountains of evolutionary biology and neuroscience..." because emotional states like desire, events like orgasm, and the interpretation of pleasure are obviously too complex to be left to anything reductionist. Certainly these are socially constructed at several levels, but there is no denying the reality of Wolf's spinal condition or the way that her sexual and creative feelings came thundering back when the problem was fixed. Is Wolf right in regarding dopamine as the "ultimate feminist neurochemical"? It is certainly unlikely that sea slugs and nematode worms are feminists. But can't we allow an accomplished writer and social critic a little poetic leeway to make a point? If dopamine mobilizes attention to reward, and sexual reward is something that has been elusive for so many women for a slew of cultural and experiential reasons (all of which impinge on the kind of sexual stimulation women learn to allow themselves to make or receive), then the lack of dopamine transmission in the brain in a sexual circumstance would likely lead to disorders of desire, and de facto little or no sexual reward since the person in question would either no longer get herself entangled in a sexual circumstance, or if she did, no longer care if she "spread her legs and thought of England."
Heller should recognize her own glass house before throwing stones. There are more than a few straw men set up in her review. One of the criticisms she levels at Wolf, and is reiterated by Dobbs in his blog, is the "upsuck theory" of orgasm, and how it could facilitate pregnancy. Heller dismisses this as being derived from one study from the 1990s with a single subject. Dobbs suggests that Wolf should have read the literature more carefully. Yet a cursory review of this literature on Pub Med shows papers from Shafik and others that studied specifically this cervico-uterine reflex (sometimes referred to as the "Shafik reflex"). This reflex clearly increases sperm transport into the uterus, and was studied in many women, not just one.
Now, does the cervico-uterine reflex actually influence rates of pregnancy? It could. And it could therefore be a reproductively relevant reason (one of several out there in the scientific literature) to answer the seemingly mysterious question of why women have orgasms. And that is as far as Wolf takes it. Cervical stimulation has long been known in animals to increase sperm transport and induce neuroendocrine reflexes that result in increased prolactin secretion from the pituitary, two essential steps to initiating and maintaining pregnancy. Cervical stimulation occurs during heterosexual sex through mechanical stimulation by a penis and prior to and during orgasm as a "dipping reflex" that is part of a "vaginal tenting" response. Does this make orgasm necessary for pregnancy? Not at all. Nor is Wolf saying so. It simply makes cervical stimulation (and in reality, stimulation of the pelvic nerve) a potentially important promoter of pregnancy. Is orgasm the only reason women have sex? Clearly not. And Wolf does not try to make that case either in her book. Sexual stimulation has many rewards, orgasm being one. Now, saying that, there is no doubt that orgasms feel good and that they are associated in female rats and women with the rush of opioid release in the brain.
Dobbs states that "Neurocritic says he can find little peer-reviewed literature to back Wolf's claims." Really? I am not sure where he looked. As with the Shafik reflex, a simple Pub Med search on the role of dopamine, oxytocin, and opioids in the sexual behavior of rats, voles, monkeys, and humans reveals plenty of peer-reviewed literature to back Wolf's take on the role of these neurochemicals. This is definitely not, as Dobbs states, "quick-dip pop-science." At least Dobbs doesn't doubt my scientific credentials, though he seems to doubt things that I say. In one, he quotes me as saying:
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