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...
(01:28) - "Girls will be girls": women as the emotionally unstable, hypersexed gender
(03:58) - Why is women's sexuality so much more policed th an men's?
(06:02) - The medicalisation and pathologizing of sexuality or the Victorian terror of masturbation
(09:52) - The wandering womb
(11:38) - Women as baby-crazed, emotional beings
(13:42) - Are we talking about the menopause too much?
(14:53) - The first woman to describe a female orgasm (she was a medieval nun)
(19:52) - "Sex means putting a penis into something"
(22:30) - Why lesbians have been relatively left alone
(25:53) - The invention of privacy
(28:24) - Victorian middle-class morality and the angel in the house
(32:04) - Empire and the racialisation of female purity
(34:56) - "Go and ask your mother"
(39:21) - Where does a sex historian find sources?
(41:01) - Why researching the history of pleasure matters
(44:44) - The final question
(47:34) - Conclusion
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