History's super confused ideas about women's sex lives (Kate Lister)

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...

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On this episode:

• Isabelle Roughol - Host
• Kate Lister - Guest

What do you think?

• Read & comment at broadhistory.com
• Email me: [email protected]

Jump 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) - Conclusion

Get 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.