This is a great fast read covering a bunch of current thoughts on female sexuality. The history of women as sexual beings is pretty messed up, and always only placed in juxtaposition with men's sexuality. The clitoris was "discovered" and "lost" (read: covered up) so many times over the years (by men - it's harder to know what women thought of this because they didn't get to be in the medicine or write shit down), and still today women's sexuality is seen as more shameful than men's (compare all the disparaging words we have for women who have multiple sexual partners to the positive, encouraging ones for men). So no wonder so many women have trouble seeing themselves as sexual beings, or are so inside their head about what sex is "supposed" to be that they can't enjoy themselves. Society exerts a lot of pressure. And I really liked that Barmak talked about the important of sexual health as a part of health and wellness in general. It's easy to dismiss these problems as first world and privileged because women's sexuality has been dismissed throughout history. And the fact is that men's reproductive and sexual health has been studied so much more than women's, to the extent that stuff is still being discovered and renamed! Barmak tells a story about a women who suffered from infected Skene's glands for years because her doctors didn't believe that the "female prostate" existed (even though they were written about in the literature in the 1800s!!!).

So basically, even though a lot of this book describes some stuff that sounds real bullshitty to me (the word "yoni" was mentioned by white folks a lot), it's kind of understandable when you think that these are modern women who are trying to live in the space between being shamed for being sexual and being shamed for not being sexual (this idea is partially from porn, where multiple orgasms are the norm, and partially from the narrative of the liberated strong feminist woman who is fully in control of her own sexuality - both almost impossible standards to meet when girls aren't taught about pleasure in sex ed and aren't expected to masturbate (and therefore learn about their bodies and what they like) in the same way that boys are)...basically there's a lot of baggage and it's not weird that some women are trying to find their orgasms through some scammy-sounding yoni retreats. ( )

Definitely an interesting read, but I wish this had gone further in-depth. ( )