Customer Reviews

The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality

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The Story Of V: A Natural History Of Female Sexuality by science writer Catherine Blackledge is a methodical, meticulous discussion of female sexual organs and their role in sexual pleasure, reproduction, and myth throughout history. Black-and-white illustrations are sparsely included; the text itself is straightforwardly clinical as it describes physical biology and representations of the vagina in art and architecture in-depth. A serious and scholarly treatment of an often-overlooked portion of the human body.

In The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality, Catherine Blackledge entitles her final chapter, "The Function of the Orgasm," an obvious nod towards Wilhelm Reich, whose most famous book has that title. And in keeping with the title of the chapter, Blackledge does discuss Reich's ideas, but the discussion is riddled through with inaccuracies, one of which is totally scandalous.

First, Blackledge refers to Reich's book, The Function of the Orgasm, as having been published in 1927. The full citation in her end-notes to this chapter is "Reich, Wilhelm (1927), The Function of the Orgasm-sex-economic problems of biological energy, London: Souvenir Press, 1983" (p. 307 of the Rutgers University Press edition). While Reich did publish a book entitled Die Funktion des Orgasmus in 1927, the book that your author cites is a very different one, having very little in common with the 1927 text. The Souvenir Press edition of 1983 is a translation of a book written by Reich in 1940 and originally published in English in 1942.

One wonders how Blackledge could have possibly read the book in question, and have come away thinking it had been written in 1927. Even a casual perusal of the text makes it completely clear that the book was written much later, with references to Hitler and his rise to power in 1933, references to Reich's other writings, like Die Bione, published in 1938, and Reich's discussion of orgone energy, which he didn't claim to discover until 1939. Indeed, the passage she quotes is from the "General Survey" that precedes the text and is clearly dated 1940. Did she read past page seven, where this passage occurs?

Misdating a book is minor and understandable, in one sense, since Reich did write a book in 1927 entitled Die Funktion des Orgasmus. But what follows the reference to this text is absolutely outrageous.

I quote Blackledge:
"Reich's views of the importance of sexual pleasure were not shared by everyone, perhaps because of his controversial exhortations to f*** freely. A propaganda film he made in his youth, Mysteries of the Organism, promoting what he called orgasmatherapy, declares:
The human being averages 4,000 orgasms in a lifetime. Do not turn off this pulsating motor of joy and life force... The biological charge and discharge produced by the genital embrace causes the orgasmic reflex, supremely pleasurable muscle contractions. Subjection to social disciplines may cause gastric ulcers, respiratory, coronary and vascular diseases. Comrade lovers, for your health's sake: f*** freely" (p. 264).

What Blackledge is referring to is a film entitled, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, made by Dusan Makavejev in 1971, long after Reich's death. While the film does include some footage from Reich's early days, no one who has seen the film could possibly think that it was made by Reich himself. Indeed, the film begins with the words, "This film is in part a personal response to the life and teachings of Dr. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957)." Just as there is evidence that Blackledge didn't read the Function of the Orgasm, I also think it rather obvious that she didn't watch Makavejev's film. Like all too many young scholars these days, she was probably relying on some third source.

Reich never called his therapy "orgasmatherapy," though that term does occur in the film. It is said by the lead character, Milena. The passage quoted above that begins "The human being averages 4,000 orgasms in a lifetime..." nowhere occurs in Reich's writings but was written by Makavejev, piecing together fragments of things Reich did in fact say. Nor did Reich ever advocate that one should "f*** freely." This too is Makavejev. Indeed, Reich contrasts what he refers to as the "genital embrace" with f***ing. From Reich's The Murder of Christ:
"The longing for the fusion with another organism in the genital embrace is just as strong in the armored organism as it is in the unarmored one. It will most of the time be even stronger, since the full satisfaction is blocked. Where Life simply loves, armored life "f***s." Where Life functions freely in its love relations... so Life also lets its love relationships grow slowly from a first comprehensive glance to the fullest yielding during the quivering embrace. Life does not rush toward the embrace. It is in no hurry... Armored man, on the other hand, confined in his organismic prison, rushes at the f***"The Murder of Christ (p. 26).

What is truly sad about all this is that many people's only contact with Reich is through Majavejev's film, and those of us who have studied Reich's work seriously are appalled by this film and its distortions. That the film should be attributed to Reich himself is beyond the pale. And this is not some academic quibble: I remind you that Reich died in prison, due to the gross misunderstandings of his work. Blackledge's totally inaccurate treatment of his ideas and work only contributes more to such misunderstanding.

Sincerely,
Philip W. Bennett, PhD

I bought this book because of a lifelong interest in the subject, but I did not expect it to be as good as it was. I thought it would be full of tiresome feminism like "The Vagina Monologues" but how wrong I was.
The book is fascinating and I defy anyone, male or female, to read it and not learn something, whether it's about the hyena with its enormous clitoris or the human being with her enormous clitoris (it's bigger than you ever thought!)
It's sad that I bought this in a remaindered bookshop. I don't remember it being in a real bookshop or pushed on Amazon. I suppose the subject is taboo even today.
And don't get confused by the title. It doesn't tell you much about sexuality, just the V, although sometimes she uses a more earthy word.

I'm writing this review in response to Midwest Book Review's summary of the book as "A serious and scholarly treatment of an often-overlooked portion of the human body". It is an interesting book, but it is definitely not scholarly. The complete lack of referencing or footnotes is instead incredibly frustrating. Combined with Philip W. Bennett's identification of inaccuracies with a single source, this makes me very cautious about trusting the information in this book, let alone citing it.

There is a small section of "further reading" for each chapter, but it is hard to know if it covers all the material included in the book. One small example; on page 182 Blackledge refers to Wallis Simpson's noted control of her vaginal muscles, which she quotes as having "the ability to make a matchstick feel like a Havana cigar". I've long read coy allusions to the Duke of Windsor's sexual dysfunction, and Wallis Simpson's compensatory sexual skills, but never found any source detailing these. I was interested, therefore, to see where Blackledge found this quote, however no source is given, and the further reading section has no title specifically relating to the Duke and Duchess. Did she simply not list the source she found this quote in, or does it rather come from one of the number of broad-ranging sex advice books included in the list, such as "Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy" (1979) or "Are We Having Fun Yet: The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Sex' (1997)? I certainly wouldn't assume content of these was well-researched.

The lack of references means I feel my time was a bit wasted reading this. However I do like the way Blackledge includes her own subjective opinions and experiences regarding the vagina, orgasms, and sex. For a generalist reader it's a good book on a very interesting topic, just not a scholarly one.

Blackledge writes from research and experience, inserting bits of her life in this work. I did the same thing! The Sacred Female It is very comprehensive, covering sexuality in many cultures throughout the ages: comparing and contrasting.
It is really humerous to me that only the European edition allows color plates in her book. US and UK have all the plates in B&W, showing how far we have to go. This book will help us get there.

The author gathers a lot of interesting material, but what stunned me was her apparent severe hatred for the important and pioneering sexual research findings of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, who in fact was one of the very first of the Freudians to speak favorably about female orgasm. But he also spoke about both male and female sexual impotence, identifying a lot of sexual behavior as rooted in sex-frustration and incapacity to achieve orgasm. This idea is hated by the S&M, "anything goes" advocates of "multiple sexualities". They hate Reich's guts. But instead of the author honestly making a criticism of Reich, citing from his publications that which she disagrees with, she instead quotes from the narrative of a pornographic film by the Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavajev -- "WR Mysteries of the Organism", which is uniformly rejected and criticized by every authentic clinician and historian as a severe distortion of Reich -- claiming this was some kind of "propaganda film" MADE BY Reich. There is not a shred of fact in that claim. So are we to assume author Blackledge does her "research" by watching porno flics? And then mis-attributes what she sees to Reich??!! Merely because the director of the porno flic says so? Sloppy scholarship doesn't get any worse that that, and it may have been a delberate slander for all we know. What other falsehoods are in this book? It never should have gotten past the academic reviewers, but hey, the "new sexualities" allows anybody to claim anything, without worry of getting tagged by equally uncritical academic reviwers. This book is Not Recommended if you want a scientific discussion on sexuality. See Reich's "Function of the Orgasm" instead. It is still a light-year ahead of this nonsense. The Function of the Orgasm: Discovery of the Orgone (Discovery of the Orgone, Vol 1)