( CNN ) -- It seems as if we are in a time of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of women 's bodies and sexuality . Controversy is swirling about an American University professor who breast-fed a baby in class ; topless photos of Kate Middleton have been released ; and a Time magazine cover showing a mother breast-feeding her toddler sparked even more tittering in May . It is not just the breast that is contested : Pussy Riot , the punk band , was sentenced to two years in a Russian prison after a staged performance in which they did high kicks that showed too much of their bodies . They tried , from prison , to explain `` what pussy meant '' and `` what riot meant . '' Michigan representative Lisa Brown got into hot water -- and fought back -- for using the words 'my vagina ' in the Michigan statehouse . Michigan women supported her by standing in front of the statehouse with a giant `` V '' symbol and spelling out the words 'VAGINA ' in pink letters . Young women in Tahrir Square protesting in the Arab Spring were punished by imprisonment -- and vaginal exams by armed strangers for `` virginity tests . '' This is not so surprising when you understand the delicate brain-vagina connection that my new book documents -- female sexuality around the world is targeted because through traumatizing the vagina , you can intimidate women on multiple other levels . What is going on ? We are at an important crossroads in which it is becoming clearer to women around the world that , as one feminist artist put it , `` your body is a battleground . '' Vagina enters stage left -- or is it right ? In a hypersexualized culture , in which porn is available 24-7 , it is not female nudity -- or discussion about vaginas or breasts or `` pussy riots '' -- that is scandalous . Indeed , the female body has never been so commodified before , and female sexuality has never been so readily consumable in sanitized , corporatized formats such as pornography . Rather , what is still scandalous to our culture is when women take ownership of their own bodies . Staging a strip performance is not disruptive to social order in Moscow , but three punk poets using their sexuality to make a satirical comment about Russian leader Vladimir Putin is destabilizing and must be punished . Legislating the most intimate aspects of women 's reproductive lives , all the way to imposing transvaginal probes on them -- as states are doing across the country -- is n't shocking or obscene , because it is about taking away sexual control from women of their own bodies . What is shocking and obscene is when a serious person -- a legislator -- dares to take back ownership of her own self , with the scandalous words `` my vagina . '' The issue is not the vagina , but who gets to say what becomes of it and who owns it . Porn 24-7 does n't threaten social control . Indeed , its addictive effects , in terms of new neuroscientific discoveries , actually turns out to be a kind of drug or sedative . This turns a potentially liberating sexual revolution into yet another marketable consumer product that hypnotizes people and is creating new health and sexual problems around libido , rather than setting them free . In the struggle over sex , these choices are where the struggle lies : Who decides reproductive rights ; who decides when and how breasts might be exposed ; who decides who can say vagina and where ; who decides who is a slut ; and who must be punished with hard labor for asserting their right to define their own sexual and artistic identities . The sexual revolution came and went , and yet women are still not as truly sexually free as they deserve to be -- here or around the world . They are not yet , as these struggles show , fully free to define the meanings of their bodies and their desire , to assert their sexual wishes without punishment -- including punishment by the state . And they are not yet fully free to claim the right to sexual pleasure and autonomy without enduring public shaming . Until that real freedom arrives , we can honor the pioneers such as Lisa Brown , Pussy Riot and the young women of Tahrir Square -- and keep up the fight to be free to name our bodies and ourselves . As gender and representation expert Dr. Emma Rees notes of the struggle over how one may speak about female sexuality : `` For until we have a language and a platform for talking honestly about women 's bodies and sexual drives , we 're doomed into a cycle of objectification and silence . '' The views in this article are solely those of Naomi Wolf .
Author Naomi Wolf says recent controversies reveal biased views toward women 's bodies . The Pussy Riot trial and Arab Spring protests showed women stripped of autonomy . Women 's bodies are battlegrounds used to wage culture wars , Wolf says . It 's scandalous when women take ownership of their own bodies , Wolf contends .