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

• Read & comment at broadhistory.com
• Email me: isa@broadhistory.com

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

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Paris, 1897. The Bazar de la Charité blaze killed 118 women and girls. Where were the men?

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On this episode:

• Isabelle Roughol - Host

• Read & comment at broadhistory.com
• Email me: isa@broadhistory.com
• Watch & comment on Youtube
  

Jump to:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:35) - Member shout-out
• (01:55) - Upcoming guests
• (03:04) - This week's story
• (04:25) -  Tuesday, May 4th, 1897: A fire at a Catholic charity sale.
• (08:13) - Cowardly Gentlemen and Working Class Heroes
• (10:43) - The "Knights Jitters"
• (11:54) - Heroes and martyrs in a political storm
• (14:32) - And women in all that?
• (16:41) - Did the behaviour of men cause more women to die?
• (17:56) - An intimate tragedy
• (18:46) - Outro

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Don't work but don't get married and don't count on a living pension. This is an audio read of The gender pension gap of 1539, or how women got screwed by the Dissolution of Monasteries.

★ Support this podcast ★
On this episode:

• Isabelle Roughol - Host

• Read & comment at broadhistory.com
• Email me: isa@broadhistory.com

Jump to:

• (00:00) - The Gender Pension Gap of 1539
• (01:17) -  The gender pension gap, or how women got screwed by the dissolution of monasteries.
• (02:37) - Dissolution 101
• (04:01) - The (near) impossibility of marriage or work
• (06:00) -  Pay on your way in, get paid on your way out
• (08:20) - Sidebar: What happened to "Jillian Heron the idiot"?
• (09:57) - The making of a pension gap
• (11:25) - Sidebar: How do we know all this?
• (13:56) - Sidebar: Could you live on £2.67 a year?
• (15:00) - "Many a young nun proved an old beggar"
• (18:06) - Outro

Click here to view the episode transcript.