Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. Story highlights Author Naomi Wolf says recent controversies reveal biased views toward women's bodies The Pussy Riot trial and Arab Spring protests showed women stripped of autonomy Women's bodies are battlegrounds used to wage culture wars, Wolf says It's scandalous when women take ownership of their own bodies, Wolf contends. It seems as if we are in a time of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of women's bodies and sexuality. Controversy is swirling about an American University professor who breast-fed a baby in class ; topless photos of Kate Middleton have been released ; and a Time magazine cover showing a mother breast-feeding her toddler sparked even more tittering in May.
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This week it came to light that when Lena Dunham was 7 years old, she looked at her little sister's vagina, and an alarming number of people have dubbed her a "child molester. I'm shaking my head in disbelief as I write because I can't believe that such innocuous things have become the subject of so much vitriol. If I had a penny for all of the sexual organs I looked at as a child, I'd be rich. OK, maybe I'd only have an extra ten or so dollars, but you know what I mean.
What can we learn from a vagina museum?
You stood outside naked in Cologne earlier this year as a response to the horrific coordinated attacks where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted on New Year's Eve. Was there a specific event that prompted "Mirror Box? Yes, this performance was [also] based on the Cologne attacks, and the discussion about respect toward women. There's always a picture that women are victims. When you show that a woman has a voice when it comes to sexuality and has rights, I think it's a better way to show that women are not only victims. What were people's first reactions when you began announcing into a megaphone that they could come touch you? Woman and men made big eyes.
C atherine Blackledge immediately knew what her first book, a cultural history of the vagina spanning more than two millennia, should be called: Vagina. I think it sounds regal. But the publishers were having none of it. Twenty years ago, when Blackledge had the idea for a book celebrating the beauty and power of the vagina, she was working as a science journalist for the European she has a PhD in chemistry.
