9 maj 2026
51 min
History's super confused ideas about women's sex lives (with 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?
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.)
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