{"id":1202,"date":"2012-09-08T20:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-09-09T00:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2012-09-08T20:00:58","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T00:00:58","slug":"does-sex-make-us-more-creative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/09\/08\/does-sex-make-us-more-creative\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Sex Make Us More Creative?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hpc2NjUAtOY\" width=\"515\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anna North <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/annanorth\/16-strange-claims-naomi-wolf-makes-about-vaginas\">excerpts<\/a> 15 of the strangest passages from Naomi Wolf&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0061989169\/?tag=buzz0f-20\"><em>Vagina: A New Biography<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Throughout this book, I will be referring to a state of mind or a<br \/>\ncondition of female consciousness I will call, for ease of reference,<br \/>\nbut also for the sake of the echo, &#8216;the Goddess.&#8217; [&#8230;] I am carving out<br \/>\n rhetorical space that does not yet exist when we talk about the vagina,<br \/>\n but which refers to something very real.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nZo\u00c3\u00ab Heller <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2012\/sep\/27\/pride-and-prejudice\/\">tackles<\/a> Wolf&#8217;s claim that good orgasms make women more creative: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Wolf claims to find strong evidence in the biographies<br \/>\nof women writers and artists (Georgia O\u00e2\u20ac\u009dKeefe, Emma Goldman, Edith<br \/>\nWharton) that women often &#8220;create best after a sexual awakening or a<br \/>\nparticularly liberating sexual relationship.&#8221; &#8230; Whatever moral Wolf draws from the fact that Edith Wharton wrote <em>The Age of Innocence<\/em> after experiencing orgasms for the first time is surely rather undermined by the fact that Emily Bront\u00c3\u00ab wrote <em>Wuthering Heights<\/em><br \/>\n after having no sexual intercourse at all. (She might have masturbated,<br \/>\n of course, but Wolf specifically disqualifies masturbation as a method<br \/>\nof achieving high orgasm: &#8220;A happy heterosexual vagina requires, to<br \/>\nstate the obvious, a virile man.&#8221;)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Neurocritic <a href=\"http:\/\/neurocritic.blogspot.com\/2012\/09\/feminist-dopamine-conscious-vaginas-and.html\">demolishes<\/a> the book&#8217;s spotty science:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This unlikely combination of pseudoscientific and mystical elements<br \/>\nprovides a little something for everyone to hate. Among neuroscientists,<br \/>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2012\/sep\/02\/naomi-wolf-women-orgasm-neural-wiring\" title=\"Naomi Wolf: 'Neural wiring explained vaginal v clitoral orgasms. Not culture. Not Freud'\">howlers<\/a><br \/>\n such as &#8220;dopamine is the ultimate feminist chemical in the female<br \/>\nbrain&#8221;, oxytocin &#8220;is women&#8217;s emotional superpower&#8221; and the vagina is<br \/>\n&#8220;not only coextensive with the female brain but also is part of the<br \/>\nfemale soul&#8221; have been making the rounds of social media. I almost feel sorry for Ms. Wolf because it&#8217;s like shooting fish in a barrel. Dopamine is <em>not<\/em> a feminist neurotransmitter, unless <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/4356548\">snails and insects<\/a> have been secretly reading <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Betty_Friedan\">Betty Friedan<\/a> and listening to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kathleenhanna.com\/category\/projects\/music\/?video=music-bikini-kill\">Bikini Kill<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/andrewsullivan\/rApM?a=RhGQoBdzZrY:vFhwlL3pblM:H0mrP-F8Qgo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/andrewsullivan\/rApM?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo\" border=\"0\"><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/andrewsullivan\/rApM\/~4\/RhGQoBdzZrY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com\/2012\/09\/does-sex-make-us-more-creative.html?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29\">http:\/\/andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com\/2012\/09\/does-sex-make-us-more-creative.html?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anna North excerpts 15 of the strangest passages from Naomi Wolf&#8217;s Vagina: A New Biography: Throughout this book, I will be referring to a state of mind or a condition of female consciousness I will call, for ease of reference, but also for the sake of the echo, &#8216;the Goddess.&#8217; [&#8230;] I am carving out &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/09\/08\/does-sex-make-us-more-creative\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Does Sex Make Us More Creative?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[182,6,183],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-reader","tag-andrew-sullivan","tag-ifttt","tag-the-daily-dish-by-andrew-sullivan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2skW4-jo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}