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  • Published: 6 March 1998
  • ISBN: 9780099205913
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $45.00

Promiscuities

An Opinionated History of Female Desire




In this provocative and highly personal book, bestselling author Naomi Wolf explores a subject that has long been taboo in our society: women's sexual coming-of-age.

By following a group of four contemporary girls - including her younger self - as they come of age in the seventies, Wolf shows how our culture tries to shape and confine women's desire. Embarking on a voyage of discovery, she illustrates how flawed and prescribed are the notions of what women want, and how these change through the ages - from Taoist techniques for giving women pleasure, to Victorian repression, and the so-called liberated nineties.

Drawing on scholarly texts, secret diaries, real life and fantasy, she demonstrates that female sexuality is wilder, more demanding and more powerful than our culture dares to accept.

  • Published: 6 March 1998
  • ISBN: 9780099205913
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $45.00

About the author

Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf is a bestselling American writer, known for her advocacy of feminism and progressive politics. She studied at Yale before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, and working in Edinburgh. She became internationally famous with the publication of her first book, The Beauty Myth, in 1991, and has gone on to write many subsequent titles, including: Fire with Fire, Promiscuities, Misconceptions, The Tree House and Vagina: A New Biography.

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Praise for Promiscuities

Her book is a searing and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the complex wildlife of female sexuality and desire.

New York Times

At last, a new generation of women writers is addressing the powerful issues of female sexuality. I gulped this wonderful book down in one sitting, like a novel. Brava Naomi Wolf for your courage, your intelligence, your lucid prose.

Erica Jong

Refreshing... Highly evocative... Wolf does two important things very well: reminding readers her own age what it felt like to be a teenage girl, and providing a crash course on the wildly varying cultural meanings attached to female sexuality throughout history

The Ottawa Citizen

Naomi Wolf [is] the best writer about women and sexuality that we have

Toronto Sun

Fascinating... Wolf celebrates the ancient concept, heavily suppressed in the 20th century, that women are the more carnal sex

Vancouver Courier