Show notes
The ancient Greeks believed a woman's womb wandered through her body and made her ill. Medieval Europeans believed a woman's orgasm was necessary for conception. And the Victorians believed masturbation would drive you to madness. Sex historian Dr. Kate Lister — host of Betwixt the Sheets and author of Flick: A History of Sexual Pleasure — joins me for a tour through the wildly strange, often infuriating history of women's sexuality. For most of that history, women were believed to be the more sex-crazed gender. What can we say, girls will be girls... ★ Support this podcast ★On this episode: Isabelle Roughol - Host Kate Lister - GuestWhat do you think?Read & comment at broadhistory.comEmail me: [email protected] to: (00:00) - AUDIO 07 Kate Lister(01:37) - Intro(03:06) - "Girls will be girls": women as the emotionally unstable, hypersexed gender(05:36) - Why is women's sexuality so much more policed th an men's?(07:40) - The medicalisation and pathologizing of sexuality or the Victorian terror of masturbation(11:30) - The wandering womb(13:16) - Women as baby-crazed, emotional beings(15:20) - Are we talking about the menopause too much? (16:31) - The first woman to describe a female orgasm (she was a medieval nun) (21:30) - "Sex means putting a penis into something" (24:08) - Why lesbians have been relatively left alone (27:31) - The invention of privacy (30:02) - Victorian middle-class morality and the angel in the house(33:42) - Empire and the racialisation of female purity(36:34) - "Go and ask your mother"(40:59) - Where does a sex historian find sources?(42:39) - Why researching the history of pleasure matters(46:22) - The final question(49:12) - ConclusionGet the book🇬🇧 Buy the book in the UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/9178/9780857506436 🇺🇸 Shop in the US bookstore (Flick is not yet published in the US)(Affiliate bookshop.org links support Broad History and indie bookstores.)Click here to view the episode transcript.
