Vagina (48 page)

12
. Kamil Dada, “Dalai Lama Talks Meditation with Stanford Scientists,”
The Stanford Daily,
www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/18/dalai-lama-talks-meditation-with-stanford-scientists.

One / Does the Vagina Have a Consciousness?

Chapter 1: Meet Your Incredible Pelvic Nerve

1
. Netter image 5101. “Innervation of Female Reproductive Organs,” www.netterimages.com/image/5101.htm, and 2992; compare “Innervation of Male Reproductive Organs,” 2910, www.netterimages.com/image/2910.htm.

2
. “Innervation of External Genitalia and Perineum.” Ibid.

3
. www.netterimages.com/image/3013.htm.

4
. “Innervation of Internal Genitalia,” www.netterimages.com/image/3093.htm.

5
. Ibid.

6
. Naomi Wolf,
Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood
(New York: Doubleday, 2001), 165–67.

Chapter 2: Your Dreamy Autonomic Nervous System

1
. Cindy M. Meston and Boris B. Gorzalka, “Differential Effects of Sympathetic Activation on Sexual Arousal in Sexually Dysfunctional and Functional Women,”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology,
vol. 105, no. 4 (1996): 582–91.

2
. Herbert Benson, M.D.,
The Relaxation Response
(New York: Avon, 1976).

3
. Janniko R. Georgiadis and others, “Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Changes Associated with Clitorally Induced Orgasm in Healthy Women,”
European Journal of Neuroscience,
vol. 24, no. 11 (2006): 3305–16.

4
. Naomi Wolf,
Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood
(New York: Doubleday, 2001), 165–67.

5
. Ina May Gaskin,
Spiritual Midwifery
(Nashville, TN: Book Publishing Company, 2002), 86, 440–41.

6
. Carter, 1998, cited in Mark R. Leary and Cody B. Cox, “Belongingness Motivation: A Mainspring of Social Action,” in
Handbook of Motivation Science,
ed. James Y. Shah and Wendi L. Gardner (New York: Guildford Press, 1998), 37.

7
. Wolf,
Misconceptions,
118, 141.

8
. Netter image 3093, www.netterimages.com/image/3093.htm.

9
. William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson,
Human Sexual Response
(New York: Ishi Press, 2010), 69.

10
. Rosemary Basson, “Women’s Sexual Dysfunction: Revised and Expanded Definitions,”
CMAJ,
172, no. 10 (May 2005): 1327–1333.

11
. The female pelvic neural structure is so complex that at least one researcher, Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, found that Sudanese women who have been clitorally excised and even infibulated still report having some kinds of orgasms. Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, “The Sexual Experience and Marital Adjustment of Genitally Circumcised and Infibulated Females in the Sudan,”
Journal of Sex Research,
vol. 26, no. 3 (1989): 375–92.

12
. Barry R. Komisaruk and others, “Brain Activation During Vagino-Cervical Self-Stimulation and Orgasm with Complete Spinal Cord Injury: fMRI Evidence of Mediation by Vagus Nerves”: “Women diagnosed with complete spinal cord injury . . . have been reported to perceive, and respond with orgasms to, vaginal and/or cervical mechno-stimulation.”
Brain Research
1024 (2004): 77–88. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/piis0006899304011461.

Chapter 3: Confidence, Creativity, and the Sense of Interconnectedness

1
. George Eliot,
The Mill on the Floss
(London: Penguin Classics, 2003), 338.

2
. Ibid., 573.

3
. Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market,”
Poems and Prose
(Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics), 105–19.

4
. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp,
Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 115, 135; Sarah Greenough, ed.,
My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz,
vol. 1,
1915–1933
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 127, 217.

5
. David Laskin,
Partisans: Marriage, Politics and Betrayal among the New York Intellectuals
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 151.

6
. Kate Chopin,
The Awakening and Other Stories
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 219.

7
. Hermione Lee,
Edith Wharton
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 327.

8
. Chopin,
The Awakening,
82.

9
. Edith Wharton,
The House of Mirth
(New York: Barnes and Noble Classics), 177.

10
. Gordon Haight,
George Eliot: A Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 226–280; Greenough,
My Faraway One,
216; Candace Falk,
Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman: A Biography
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 66.

11
. Greenough,
My Faraway One,
56–57, 217.

12
. Isabel Allende
, Inés of My Soul
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2006), 8.

Chapter 4: Dopamine, Opioids, and Oxytocin

1
. See Stanley Siegel,
Your Brain on Sex: How Smarter Sex Can Change Your Life
(Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2011).

2
. Marnia Robinson: Dopamine Chart.

3
. Dr. Jim Pfaus, interview, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, January 29, 2012.

4
. Ibid.

5
. David J. Linden,
The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
(New York: Viking, 2011), 94–125.

6
. Dr. Helen Fisher,
Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 162
.

7
. Ibid., 175.

8
. Cindy M. Meston and K. M. McCall, “Dopamine and Norepinephrine Responses to Film-Induced Sexual Arousal in Sexually Functional and Dysfunctional Women,”
Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy,
vol. 31 (2005): 303–17.

9
. Claude de Contrecoeur, “
Le Rôle de la Dopamine et de la Sérotonine dans le Système Nerveux Central,”
www.bio.net/bionet/mm/neur-sci/1996-July/024549.html.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Dr. Pfaus interview, January 29, 2012.

12
. See Mary Roach,
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).

13
. Ibid., and Susan Rako,
The Hormone of Desire: The Truth About Testosterone, Sexuality, and Menopause
(New York: Harmony, 1996).

14
. Linden,
The Compass of Pleasure,
94–125.

15
. Ibid., 94–125.

16
. Marnia Robinson and Gary Wilson, “The Big ‘O’ Isn’t Orgasm,” www.reuniting.info/science/oxytocin_health_bonding.

17
. Ibid.

18
. Navneet Magon and Sanjay Kalra, “The Orgasmic History of Oxytocin: Love, Lust and Labor,”
Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism
Supp. 3 (September 2011): 5156–61.

19
. Agren, 2002, cited in Beate Ditzen,
Effects of Romantic Partner Interaction on Psychological and Endocrine Stress Protection in Women
(Gottingen, Germany: Cuvillier Verlag, Gottingen, 2005), 50–51.

20
. C. A. Pedersen, 2002 and Arletti, 1997, cited in Robinson and Wilson, “The ‘Big O’ Isn’t Orgasm,” http://www.reuniting.info/science/oxytocin_health_bonding.

21
. R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis,
The Letters of Edith Wharton
(New York: Scribner, 1988), 324–36.

22
. James G. Pfaus, and others, “Who, What, Where, When (and Maybe Even Why)? How the Experience of Sexual Reward Connects Sexual Desire, Preference, and Performance,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior
41 (March 9, 2012): 31–62:

Although sexual behavior is controlled by hormonal and neurochemical actions in the brain, sexual experience induces a degree of plasticity that allows animals to form instrumental and Pavlovian associations that predict sexual outcomes, thereby directing the strength of sexual responding. This review describes how experience with sexual reward strengthens the development of sexual behavior and induces sexually-conditioned place and partner preferences in rats. In both male and female rats, early sexual experience with partners scented with a neutral or even noxious odor induces a preference for scented partners in subsequent choice tests. Those preferences can also be induced by injections of morphine or oxytocin paired with a male rat’s first exposure to scented females, indicating that pharmacological activation of opioid or oxytocin receptors can “stand in” for the sexual reward-related neurochemical processes normally activated by sexual stimulation. Conversely, conditioned place or partner preferences can be blocked by the opioid receptor antagonist naloxone. A somatosensory cue (a rodent jacket) paired with sexual reward comes to elicit sexual arousal in male rats, such that paired rats with the jacket off show dramatic copulatory deficits. We propose that endogenous opioid activation forms the basis of sexual reward, which also sensitizes hypo-thalamic and mesolimbic dopamine systems in the presence of cues that predict sexual reward. Those systems act to focus attention on, and activate goal-directed behavior toward, reward-related stimuli. Thus, a critical period exists during an individual’s early sexual experience that creates a “love map” or Gestalt of features, movements, feelings, and interpersonal interactions associated with sexual reward.

23
. www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/14/female-orgasm-recorded-brain-scans and Barry R. Komisaruk, PhD, and Beverly Whipple, PhD, “Brain Activity During Sexual Response and Orgasm in Women: fMRI Evidence,” presentation, International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health, 2011 Annual Meeting, Scottsdale, Arizona, February 10–13, Program Book, 173–184.

24
. Ian Sample, “Female Orgasm Captured in a Series of Brain Scans,”
The Guardian,
November 14, 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/14/female-orgasm-recorded-brain-scans.

25
. Dr. Pfaus interview, January 30, 2012.

26
. Simon LeVay,
The Sexual Brain
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 71–82.

27
. Sappho, “Fragment,”
Sappho’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece,
trans. Diane J. Rayor (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 52. “Come to me now again, release me from / this pain, everything my spirit longs / to have fulfilled, fulfill. . . .”

28
. “Song of Songs,” 2:5–16
, The New International Version,
www.biblegateway.com.

Chapter 5: What We “Know” About Female Sexuality Is Out of Date

1
. Liz Topp, interview, New York City, April 15, 2010.

2
. See Shere Hite,
The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004); Shere Hite,
The Shere Hite Reader: New and Selected Writings on Sex, Globalism, and Private Life
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006).

3
. Anaïs Nin,
Delta of Venus
(New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 1977), 140.

4
. J. A. Simon, “Low Sexual Desire—Is It All in Her Head? Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder,”
Postgraduate Medicine
122, no. 6 (November 2010): 128–36.

5
. Dr. Helen Fisher and J. Anderson Thompson, Jr., “Sex, Sexuality And Serotonin: Do Sexual Side Effects of Most Antidepressants Jeopardize Romantic Love and Marriage?,” www.medscape.org/viewarticle/482059.