Editing Naomi Wolf (section)

===''Promiscuities'' (1997)===
''Promiscuities'' (1997) reports on and analyzes the shifting patterns of contemporary adolescent sexuality. Wolf argues that literature is rife with examples of male coming-of-age stories, covered autobiographically by [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Tobias Wolff]], [[J. D. Salinger]], and [[Ernest Hemingway]], and misogynistically by [[Henry Miller]], [[Philip Roth]] and [[Norman Mailer]], while female accounts of adolescent sexuality have been systematically suppressed.<ref name="NWPromisc">{{cite book |last=Wolf |first=Naomi |title=Promiscuities |location=New York |publisher=Balantine Publishing Group |year=1997 |oclc=473694368}}</ref> Schools, in Wolf's opinion, should teach their students "sexual gradualism", masturbation, mutual masturbation and oral sex, which she sees as a more credible approach than total abstinence and without the risks of full intercourse.<ref name="CNNTime19991201" />

Wolf uses cross-cultural material to try to demonstrate that women have, across history, been celebrated as more carnal than men. She also argues that women must reclaim the legitimacy of their sexuality by shattering the polarization of women between [[Madonna–whore complex|virgin and whore]].<ref name="NWPromisc" /> Partly an account of her own sexual history, the book urges women to "redeem the slut in ourselves and rejoice in being bad girls".<ref name="Harris" /><ref>{{cite news|last=Meredith|first=Fionola|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/naomi-wolf-never-before-have-i-seen-so-many-threats-to-free-speech-it-is-chilling-1.3890733|title=Naomi Wolf: 'Never before have I seen so many threats to free speech. It is chilling'|newspaper=The Irish Times|date=May 18, 2019|access-date=March 13, 2021|archive-date=May 18, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190518073912/https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/naomi-wolf-never-before-have-i-seen-so-many-threats-to-free-speech-it-is-chilling-1.3890733|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Macdonald |first=Marianne |date=April 12, 1997 |title=Not nearly naughty enough, Naomi |work=The Independent |location=London |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/not-nearly-naughty-enough-naomi-1266841.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220618/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/not-nearly-naughty-enough-naomi-1266841.html |archive-date=June 18, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=March 13, 2021}}</ref>

''Promiscuities'' generally received negative reviews. In ''The New York Times'', Kakutani wrote that Wolf is "a frustratingly inept messenger: a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer" who "tries in vain to pass off tired observations as radical ''aperçus'', subjective musings as generational truths, sappy suggestions as useful ideas".<ref name="NYT19970610">{{cite news|last=Kakutani|first=Michiko|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/10/books/feminism-lite-she-is-woman-hear-her-roar.html|title=Feminism Lite: She Is Woman, Hear Her Roar|work=The New York Times|date=June 10, 1997|access-date=March 2, 2021|archive-date=March 2, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302165134/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/10/books/feminism-lite-she-is-woman-hear-her-roar.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Of Wolf's claims about accounts of female sexuality being suppressed, Kakutani wrote: "Where has Ms. Wolf been? What about the raunchy confessions that surface daily on radio and television talk shows? What about all the memoirists—from Anais Nin to Kathryn Harrison?"<ref name="NYT19970610" /> Two days earlier in the ''Times'', Weaver Courtney praised the book: "Anyone—particularly anyone who, like Ms. Wolf, was born in the 1960s—will have a very hard time putting down ''Promiscuities''. Told through a series of confessions, her book is a searing and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the complex wildlife of female sexuality and desire."<ref>{{cite news|first=Courtney|last=Weaver|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404EEDD133AF93BA35755C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 |title=Growing Up Sexual|work=The New York Times|date=June 8, 1997|access-date=March 2, 2021}}</ref> In contrast, ''[[The Library Journal]]'' excoriated the book, writing, "Overgeneralization abounds as she attempts to apply the microcosmic events of this mostly white, middle-class, liberal milieu to a whole generation. …There is a desperate defensiveness in the tone of this book which diminishes the force of her argument."<ref>''The Library Journal'', June 1997.</ref>