Published by Orion Publishing, 2003, hardcover, illustrated, 322 pages, condition: as new.
It is the seat of female sexual pleasure, the passage for both the creation and the birth of humankind, and the channel for menstrual blood. Yet we know less about the v****a its structure and function than we do about any other organ of the human body. For the first time in history, however, scientists are making a concerted effort to discover what it is, how it works and what it does.
THE STORY OF V explores what science can now tell us about the female g******a as well as providing a fascinating cultural history of our perceptions and mis-conceptions. More than two millennia of misinformation have resulted in a culture where we hold back from mentioning the v****a, where it is most commonly viewed as p********ic and where scientists are unsure about the nature of its role in sexual pleasure and sexual reproduction. Of all the organs of the human body, the vagina remains the most clouded in mystery, myth and superstition. In the past, medicine may have misrepresented female sexual anatomy, but, as this book aims to show, science is at last beginning to reveal its remarkable complexities in a more positive light.
I love Blackledge! Her writing is so good! She's thoroughly informative with an academic bent while at the same time giving her works her own personal flavor in a way that the reader is aware of when they are reading scientific fact versus the author's (well informed) conjecture. I'd never before realized how late in the game the male role in fertility was recognized and probably would not have thought about it without the discussion on pg. 40. How language shapes the current feeling toward anything is obvious, but I quiet enjoyed Blackledge's survey of linguistic terms and their origins on pg. 84 and throughout; I am gratified with how she doesn't forget to cite her sources in the Further Reading.
There were so many interesting things I shared with other people I know after reading about the systematic repression of or the marvel of female biology! The biological facts as well as the past pride and how our current ideas about female sexuality came to be in both Eastern and Western culture, so for myself, remember that pgs. 72, 114, 119, 138, 174, 179, 209, 223, 239, 241, 249, 255, 263, 292, 295 and 297 are especially interesting. While I was surprised that there was not a discussion of r**e in human and other animal interactions, as it's possible only humans actually perform that act with malice aforethought, I can understand the exclusion. In such a comprehensive book on the subject that covers every aspect of the vagina from bad Renaissance science to bad 19th Century science, modern science and science in places that are not Western-minded, a book that discusses the diversity of animals from humans to one-celled bacterium, the role of pop culture and pop psychology, from hormones to scent to the vagus nerve, where our heart-shape actually comes from...just know that if you read the introduction and are intrigued, you too will love, love, love this book. That, and never use a product with nonoxynol-9 in it (pg. 172).
