Getting in touch with our own bodies and possibly someone else’s too can seem like a little too much to ask.  If you are a woman and have ever wondered what the big deal is about sex, or if you are a partner who has ever wondered why women fake orgasms or are just not that interested, then this is a book for you.  Do you wonder whether you are normal?  Come as you are while I review what’s good and what’s bad about Emily Nagoski’s book on the surprising new science that will transform your sex life.  The first place to start is by learning how to love the vulva, vagina, and mons and I tell you about the experience that I and 3 other women had doing the exercises in chapter 1 of Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life.

The Good

Emily Nagoski is a passionate sex educator who is up to date on the latest science on the subject.  She loves science, and she combines this with warmth, kindness, and care to present an accessible book on sexuality in general, with the specific purpose of promoting women’s sexual well-being, autonomy and pleasure.  She uses the singular pronoun “they” instead of “she” and “he” because it is simpler and because it is more inclusive of people outside of the gender binary.  At the same time, she acknowledges that there is very little research on trans and genderqueer sexual functioning to generalise from cisgender women’s sexual functioning to that of trans people.

The writer busts many myths about women’s bodies and their genitals.  You definitely want to read what she has to say about the hymen in this regard.   Now, if the clitoris is new to you, then I recommend you check out this article on cliteracy by the Huffington Post even before you read Come As You Are.  In addition to exploring the science of our genitals, Nagoski talks about things like arousal non-concordance (and non-concordance in other emotions), as well as the fact that desire is not a drive. 

Everything she writes about sex, desire, context, mindfulness, culture, etc., is designed to show the ways that women’s  and men’s sexuality are different while sharing similarities.  There is a great biology and anatomy lesson in which the author demonstrates the concept of homology: that we are all made of the same parts, just organised in a different way.  She says this is true for every aspect of sexual expression, including how our sex accelerators (excitation) and breaks (inhibition) work.  She also applies homology to how women’s bodies change over the course of their lives.  Nagoski is at great pains to show that we are all normal (and does give some clues as to the rare occasions when we are not), and that variety may be the only truly universal characteristic of human sexuality. She celebrates it all.

This book is deeply body positive and sex positive.  What I love about the book is that it is not just about your body; it’s also about how you feel about your body, and how your context affects your body’s sexual response and functioning.  There are two things you will definitely come away with after reading this book: you are normal; and you are beautiful in every way.  You will also understand your unique sexual personality and how you can get the most out of it alone and/or with a partner.  Once you understand the dual response model in yourself and others, as well as the roles that emotion and stress play, you will be able to enjoy sexuality a whole lot more.

The book is arranged into four main parts that map onto the biological, psychological and social aspects of our sexuality.  Each chapter includes a summary at the end referred to as tl;dr (too long; didn’t read).  There are also exercises and questionnaires that you can use to understand yourself, sexuality, and your context better.  The two additional exercises in the appendices: Therapeutic Masturbation and Extended Orgasm, come highly recommended.

The Bad

This book is long, and perhaps this is why the writer includes the tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) sections at the end of each chapter.  I must say, though, that while these cover the take away messages in bullet points, you won’t get the full idea of what Nagoski wants to say, or see how the points hang together.

Nagoski makes very valid critiques of the metaphorical meaning that has historically been given to women’s and men’s genitals. She is all about the science, and she uses what we know about anatomy and biology to give new meaning to women’s genitals.  I have no problem with this, per se.  We are story-making animals and I love the meaning she is attaching.  She is still attaching meaning to women’s genitals without openly acknowledging that, though.  

The book is written from a Western perspective with a heavy focus on North American culture.  That does not mean her book has nothing to say to people from other cultures.  The three elements that determine sexual functioning and response: biology, psychology, and social processes, are addressed – culture is only one part of that.

The author is very enthusiastic about her topic and the things that she has discovered in her practice as a sex educator.  She freely shares what has worked for the students and women she has come into contact with.  This is encouraging but at the same time gives the impression that these actions alone can lead to a better sex life.  In my experience, there is a lot that lies behind each of the exercises and ideas she puts forward (see the caveats below).  You have to do the work and it can be lengthy and emotionally taxing.  I also feel she does not sufficiently address the hurdles we face in trying out some of the exercises.  She does mention the importance of therapy, in particular for women who are traumatised by sexual abuse.  So be warned, your sex life will not improve just by reading this, while it does have the potential to open a whole can of worms, but a good can of worms to go fishing for better sex with. 

While there are extensive notes and a thorough reference section, the book falls short on where to find more resources.  Emily Nagoski’s answer is — within.  It’s a good answer but not good enough.  I know where she is coming from, though.  It is a response to a culture that teaches us not to trust our own intuition, especially with respect to sex.  It is a response that seeks to reassure us that we are normal and that there is nothing wrong with us.

How To

Look on your vulva with love

Emily Nagoski is clear that your best source of knowledge about your sexuality is your own body and that how you feel about your genitals, along with loving your body as it is, will give you more intense arousal and desire, as well as bigger and better orgasms.  Hence, the first exercises in her book are about getting to know your vulva by looking at it with a hand mirror and identifying all the parts.  Then she invites you to make a note of all the things you see that you like.  Don’t include the things that you don’t like.  Do this again every week, or twice a week or more often.  She says that the more you do this, the things you like will become more salient and the noise in your brain will get a little quieter.  Maybe even consider telling someone else about what you see and what you like.  Better still, tell someone who also did the exercise!

I have frequently looked at my vulva and vagina over the years, but usually with 1/3 hate, 1/2 worry and 1/6 gratitude.  Hate because it was a source of shame resulting from sexual abuse; worry because I struggled with vaginitis for years and also wondered whether it would all stretch enough for the birth of both my daughters; and gratitude because it did all, in fact, stretch enough for both births.  I had never tried to consider what I like about these intimate parts of my body, my genitals, until I did this exercise.

I did this practice solo and in community.  Three other women did the exercise for a couple of weeks and then we talked about it.  We did so one-on-one and not in community; the women are scattered across the globe, do not all know one another, and don’t all share a common language.  One woman is starting in on her 30s, another in her 40s, I am on the cusp of 50, and the fourth woman is in her early 70s.  I highly recommend doing this with a friend or even in a women’s circle.

It was fascinating to discover the truth behind what Nagoski says about our attitudes towards a woman’s vulva, vagina and clitoris and how that affects each one of us.  Three of us had to confront the truth that we have been conditioned to think that looking at our vulva is not normal.  We had to overcome the shame we felt before we could even start. Then we had to cope with our own judgement towards ourselves for being so disconnected from our own bodies. Also, having this conversation led to a wider ranging conversation about ideas related to what it means to be a decent woman; how we experience our sexuality; our attitudes towards menstruation, menopause, self-pleasuring i.e., masturbation; and what we hope for ourselves and future generations of women related to all these topics.  The conversation would have been incomplete without talking about labiaplasty, and one of the women told me about a plastic surgeon in Colombia who only does this procedure.  We joked about how the women who go to him will all come out with a vulva looking like what he thinks the perfect (sic) vulva should look like.

When Hilde Atalanta asked “What can I do to start liking my vulva?” on her IG @the.vulva.gallery account, one person responded: 

My suggestion is to aim towards neutrality before attempting to climb the mountain of love for your vulva.  Sometimes when we’ve felt insecure for so long, trying to flip all the way to love can be very hard, and it’s easier to focus on a more neutral stance.  ‘My vulva exists’.  ‘My vulva does not seek to harm me.’ ‘My vulva is hairy and that it normal’.  ‘My vulva is brown/pink/purple/beige in color.’ Simple statements of fact like this can be much easier for our brains to handle.  After that you can try to find things to love!  For instance, my vulva has really fluffy hair, and I think my labia look great!”

You probably will not want to show your vulva to all and sundry, but if you can do that with the mutual consent of at least one other woman, I recommend this too.  This is easily said, but must be cautiously done.  It is so open to misunderstanding with people who have not already done some thinking and feeling about women’s sexuality and their own.  The friend I did this with spoke about having to confront associating the vulva with abuse and violation; the notion that someone else seeing your vulva is invasive; what it means for our sexual identity — will the other woman get the wrong idea?  Because of all the taboos around our genitals, being able to look with a friend depends on trust, respect and depth of relationship.   The ability to do it is evidence of the presence of this in your friendship.  What we found was that the act of showing and looking wasn’t nearly as difficult as getting past our ideas and fears about doing it.  It was a sacred and liberating moment.

As I already mentioned, Nagoski is all about body positivity and I encourage you to learn to look on the other parts of your body that you are not so keen on with love, and find the beauty in them too.  To get this right, take some advice from John O’Donahue:

“… if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us.  We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything.  When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.” 

Excerpt from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by John O’Donahue

Conclusion

Emily Nagoski has written a deeply body positive and sex positive book about the science that explains women’s sexuality.  Through the exercises and questionnaires you will gain insight into your own very normal and unique sexual functioning.  Be aware — doing the work laid out in the book is far from easy, and bringing a friend along can make all the difference.

Today we delve into a book about the world’s best-selling and most widely distributed book: the Bible.  Rachel Held Evans addresses Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again to:

• People with an Evangelical background who find themselves navigating the great chasm between Scripture as they learned it and Scripture as what it actually is; and
• Those Christians affiliated with progressive mainline traditions who are itching to explore more deeply the background, significance and relevance of the texts sampled in the liturgy each week.

I would add, that anyone who has read the Bible and has an opinion about it (even a literary one) will get something out of this book, whether they profess to be Christian or not.  

So, welcome one and all as we explore what’s good and what’s bad about how Rachel Held Evans recommends we respond to the Bible.

The Good

Rachel Held Evans writes to us as a story-teller and literature lover, not a theologian. She has read many theologians in the course of her journey back to the Bible, and she shares what they have to say in this book.  

The author accomplishes a tour de force by reviewing the different genres and characters present in the Bible: origin stories, deliverance stories, war stories, wisdom stories, resistance stories, gospel stories, (big) fish stories, and church stories.  She talks about the stories of the prophets, women, widows, slaves, disabled people, sexual minorities, exiles, foreigners, people of other faiths and outcasts.  She demonstrates how the Bible is generally written in a way that shows up the childishness, injustice and violence of empire in contrast to the care and concern that God has for all of creation.  In this sense, she highlights and centres the voices of the marginalised during Biblical times and now.  If you have at any point had the experience of being a social outcast, I believe you will feel welcomed.

Inspired models different formats of how to practice the Jewish tradition of Midrash — inventing a backstory, interpreting the text behind and beyond the text, and the text between the lines of the text.  It is playing with the stories, the intent of which is to open the conversation, as opposed to be the final word  It’s a practice I will tell you more about in the how-to section below.  Along with the Bible stories, she tells her stories and the stories of others to make her points and invites us out of our own self-centred story into God’s story of reconciliation and restoration. 

Each genre in the Bible is introduced by way of the author’s retelling of a Biblical passage as if it were happening today.  The writing style is easy to follow and clear.  The telling is done with a great sense of humour too.  Because she covers the great breadth of genres in the Bible, you will have a sense of context, history, and how all of them fit together to form a complete, yet not totalising, narrative.  Perhaps the most important lesson you will walk away with comes from the wisdom literature of the Bible, along with the Epistles (letters):  “to engage the Bible with wisdom is to embrace its diversity, not fight it.  Wisdom is situational.  It isn’t just about knowing what to say; it’s about knowing when to say it.  It’s not just about knowing what is true; it’s about knowing when it’s true.”

Held Evans faces the problems of purportedly God-induced genocide, crimes against humanity, clear contradictions, multiple versions of the same events, miracles that go against the laws of physics, offensive laws and prescripts, whether Revelation is future telling, and the problems with Paul and whether he is a misogynist.  She also looks at whether to read the Bible as literal and fundamental, allegorical (with a Jungian or Gestalt approach), or inspired.  You can already guess where she is going to come out… some combination of it all.

The Bad

Like Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, Held Evans writes about her own experience and invites you to try out what she has tried.  So, while the book draws the reader in, it is difficult from the table of contents to identify the steps she proposes you take.  But see the end of the How To section for a list of the things she suggests.

It is easy to identify an area / theme of the Bible that you may have questions about or trouble with, and then dive deeper from there to tease out how to approach the issue at hand.  However, you won’t find a ready list of resources to fall back on, other than the notes at the end of each chapter.  You won’t find a way to measure your progress or successes either.  These are the issues that lead to a 3.5 out of 5 stars rating for this book.

This is a difficult book to take on, hence being classified as scaling the highest peaks.  This is not bad in and of itself.  It is difficult because the author does not shy away from controversial topics and she will come out at a non-fundamentalist, non-self-righteous position on them.  It is also difficult because I think that you, as the reader, have to have some experience with the Bible and you have to be ready to be real about yourself and about life.  You also have to be open to being challenged with regard to your own lifestyle and being urged to do things differently.  Held Evans is not judgemental; far from it.  She just stands firmly in the Biblical tradition of redemption for sin, not condemnation for sin, and this is ultimately offensive.  As she says, “the apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget — that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.”  

The question she will ask you to ask yourself is: “Am I behaving as though life is more than a meaningless, chaotic mess, that there is some order in the storm?”  As she says, fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us they can be defeated.  The same holds true of the Biblical narrative.

The How To

Tell a Story

It is no surprise that the power of story comes through so strongly in Inspired.  The Bible is a collection of different types of stories written over thousands of years.  We are invited to tell our own stories and link them with this grand narrative.  The promise is that as we imagine the details within and surrounding the stories of the Bible, we will learn to love what this book has to offer us and what it teaches us about how to live.

Midrash is the most common form of biblical interpretation in Jewish tradition.  It consists of an imaginative exploration and expansion of Scripture.  It is about inventing symbolic meaning for elements that appear in the text, or creating side stories that explain the background to what happens in the story.  It’s about engaging with the tensions and questions produced in Scripture.  It’s also about reading between the lines — what is left unsaid?  It’s an invitation to play with the story and add your layer of interpretation and explication to the text.  The point is not to come to a definitive conclusion about the text but rather identify what is up for questioning and debate.  Ideally, you will also share your ideas with friends and theologians over a meal or coffee.  In so doing, we will learn something important about our faith, our community, and ourselves.  We are invited to engage with the text as a conversation starter, not a way to end the conversation and have the last word.

Later in the book, the author tells us about a practice she learned from Lauren Winner called “dislocated exegesis”.  This is about reading Scripture in unexpected places and encountering familiar passages in striking environments.  It’s based on the idea that where you read the Bible changes how you read it and what you get out of it.  It’s kind of like an embodied Midrash, rather than an imaginative one.  

A friend of mine living abroad found the answer to a question she was asking herself about her experience there.  She was unhappy in her workplace and was wondering whether she was turning her back on her calling by quitting.  Was she being a coward by running home to the US?  One Sunday she listened to a sermon in church about the parable of the seeds.  Of course the sermon did not stray far from Jesus’ own interpretation of the text.  But my friend is a gardener, and rather than thinking about whether her heart was in the right condition to receive the word, she wondered whether the country she was in was the right soil for her to be planted in.  It is the antithesis to that poster or bumper sticker we see so often: “grow where you are planted.”  Each plant needs its own kind of soil.  South African fynbos will not grow in rich soil.  It needs poor soil.  My friend realised that the context she was in was not conducive to her growth, that she could not bloom and contribute there as a result, and that it was time to move one.  Now she is flourishing.  I learned a new way to think about this text because she shared her embodied alternative reading of the text with me. (Back to The Good)

Here are some of the other practices you will learn that will draw you into the richness of the Bible:

Back to The Bad

Conclusion

Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water ,and Loving the Bible Again is a wide-ranging exploration of the power of stories that have stood the test of time to inspire us.  They invite us to live in accordance with our belief that God is a reconciling and restoring presence in our lives and our communities across time and space.  In this book Rachel Held Evans will offer you ways for how to take on the thorny issues in the Bible.  She will also dare you to read it with an open heart and mind, and open yourself to all those people you may have been keeping out of your Bible, your life, and your community.  She does it simply, mercifully and with a sense of humour.  I hope you will dare to slay the giant and walk on water with her.

This review looks at the good, the bad and the how-to of implementing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s suggestions for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman.  It is a start to an urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.  She gives both practical advice and philosophical reasons for raising a girl to be herself.

The Good

You can easily read Dear Ijeawele in one sitting over a morning or an afternoon.  The tone is conversational, intimate, and amusing.  It is well-written with language that is economical, simple and accessible.  This is what makes for its remarkable breadth and depth. I envy people who can cover so much ground in so few words and take you along for the ride. 

It truly is a feminist book in my opinion!  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie takes her two feminist tools seriously and applies them to both men and women throughout her essay.  She is not rigid, insisting on 50:50 everything as a way of raising children differently in order to create a fairer world for women and men.  For her, feminism is always contextual.  Equal means mattering equally.  And her test of equality in the home is when resentment does not exist. 

Adichie introduces the reader to the ins and outs of gender analysis with practical examples while avoiding feminist jargon.  She questions so many gendered assumptions that are prevalent in many, if not most, cultural contexts.  As she gives both practical advice and philosophical reasons for raising a girl to be herself, she addresses societal expectations and ideas in terms of marriage, gender roles, sport, power, gendered behaviour and attributes (like anger, likability, humility, ruthlessness etc.), femininity, beauty ideals and body politics, boundaries, sexuality and virginity, biology, shame, love, the list goes on.  

The whole essay is a critique of language use and how words create worlds.  This is very helpful in terms of giving you tools to subtly shift / adjust thinking and core beliefs about men and women, boys and girls, leading to other ways of being and doing. 

She is unapologetic about being Nigerian and is proud of being African.  Her anecdotes about being Black, and about Nigeria, are wonderfully uplifting and at the same time eye-opening for people of other backgrounds.  If you fall into the latter, you will grow as an ally as you grow as a feminist.  Adichie also names a trap that allies and the oppressed easily fall into… “Saintliness is not a prerequisite for dignity, so don’t turn the oppressed into saints.  People who are unkind and dishonest are still human, and still deserve dignity”.

The Bad

The brevity and simplicity of this book can also be its downfall.  It’s one of those books that draw you in, that you race through nodding your head and then get to the end and think, “what all did I just read?”.  I recommend devouring this book and then sitting down to chew on it slowly and thoughtfully a second time.

The book is an adaptation of a letter to a Nigerian friend in response to a request for advice.  This means that it is heavy on references to Nigerian culture and customs.  Since I have lived and worked in Africa, I could see some of the subtext and fill in the blanks.  I think that as you read through the book you will be able to pick-up and understand the cultural references.  However, some footnotes might be useful to readers from other disimilar traditions.

Because it is an adapted letter, you will not find any references to academic articles, philosophers and deep philosophical texts, or hard-core feminist theory.  If you are looking for this, you will need to look elsewhere.

This book is about systemic and cultural change.  As such, you may have to wait a loooong time to see the results of your actions.  I don’t mean months.  I mean possibly generations.  That being said, I have done some of the work laid out by Adichie, and by comparing my daughters to myself at their age, I can see huge steps forward in the feminist agenda.

For instance, look at this poster done by my 13-year-old daughter in response to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 in the US. 

I would never have been that aware or that concerned or even thought that way when I was 13!  I don’t claim all the credit. Gen-Z is so much more aware than Gen-X, but I think as a generation we do have something to do with Gen-Z being where they are!  And so do our mothers, and our grandmothers.  We stand on one another’s shoulders.

The author tangentially addresses the issue of raising feminist boys and raising awareness in men.  This is not a surprise as it is not the stated purpose of the book.  She also tangentially touches on sexual orientation, giving freedom to make an untraditional choice, but acknowledges that she is writing to her friend who is in a heteronormative marriage.  

The How to

The book is long on awareness raising and general guidelines, and shorter on actionable steps. In this sense, it operates more as a check-list of core beliefs and thinking that needs to be changed.  This is as it should be. Real and lasting change only happens when we change what we believe about something first. It will whet your appetite for issues that you want to learn more about and to look for actionable steps that you can practice in your daily life as a woman and mother.  Think of it as a first step in the journey, a map as it were.  Use it to plot your route, then look for ways to get there…

That being said, there are a couple of practical suggestions that I want to tell you about:

1. Teach your daughter to read: Adichie’s Fifth Suggestion

 “Teach her to love books.  Do this by casual example so that she will understand reading is valuable.  Books (the ones she chooses and you choose to show her, not the ones she has to read for school), will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become. If all else fails, pay her to read.”

I wholeheartedly embrace and endorse this suggestion!  Adichie also mentions in her ninth suggestion that you should expose your daughter to female heroes that share something of her heritage and she can relate to.  Books are a good way to do this.  They are also one of the ways of exposing your daughter to difference and teaching her that it is normal (Fifteenth Suggestion).

My daughters and I have loved reading Robert Munsch stories together because so many of them have plucky girl protagonists who are determined to be themselves, learn, and overcome fears and challenges.  We have had some great conversations about the stories and the decisions the girls make too.  For instance, in the Paper Bag Princess, Elizabeth decides not to marry Prince Ronald after all because of how he behaves.  This opened the door for casually talking about women being able to choose, whether women must get married (see Seventh Suggestion), how appearances can be deceiving, and also how someone should behave under similar circumstances regardless of whether you are considering them as a partner or not. These stories appeal to 3-to-10-year-olds on average. Since you will read them over and over again, each reading provides a new opportunity to talk about one aspect at a time. Among our favourites are:

• The Paper Bag Princess
• The Fire Station
• David’s Father
• Angela’s Airplane
• A Promise is a Promise
• Pigs
• Where is Gah-Ning?

Roald Dahl wrote a couple of books that celebrate resilient girls facing awful circumstances. These are ‘Matilda’ and ‘The BFG’.  Both books have been made into movies that are worth watching too, although Steven Spielberg did adjust the ending to the BFG and in so doing eliminated Dahl’s anti-war statement at the end.  Reading level and interest is pre-teen.

Some books about heroic women that we have enjoyed include Rad Women Worldwide, and Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls.  Note, though, that each culture has a specific idea of what heroism looks like.  Also, if your daughter is introverted and reserved, you may need to look harder for heroic women with her temperament that she can relate to.  Gain some valuable insight into female temperaments through Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman.

2. It takes a Village to raise a child: Adichie’s Tenth Suggestion

The author says to surround your child with a village of Aunties and Uncles who have the qualities you would like them to admire.  (Clarification:  all older women and men are thought of as Aunties and Uncles in Nigerian culture.)  Talk about how much you admire them and what you admire them for.  Children copy and learn from example. 

This is often easier said than done, especially when it comes to finding suitable men.  Not for this reason should we give up the attempt, though!  It probably means having a community with a diverse age spread to get this right.  Obviously, surrounding children with real, flesh-and-blood people who can become their examples and mentors is ideal.  However, in their absence, it might also mean a virtual village in the form of books, movies, social media groups etc.  So, falling back on suggestions Five and Seven will have to do sometimes.  

Conclusion

I love this book, Dear Ijeawele.  It has something for everyone  For the seasoned feminist it is a great reminder of where we want to be going and the work still to be done.  As such, I suggest reading this book often.  It will bring you back to centre, which, after all, is the purpose of a manifesto!   It is also a great book for any woman who is dipping their toes into feminism for the first time and wanting to raise their daughters (and sons) for a more dignified and equal future.  The book draws the reader in and is not a rant against men making it a wonderful book for men to read.  What I said earlier applies to men too; they will grow as allies as they grow as feminists.  And God knows we need a lot more men around who are feminist and allies as well!

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