Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Feminine Power: Divine to Demonic

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

From goddesses to demons, witches to saints, women have held power of many shapes and sizes throughout history and around the world. Whether they were bringers of chaos, salvation, desire or justice, this year these women are being given the spotlight.On this Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, Kate went to see the British Museum’s new exhibition ‘Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic’.Curator Belinda Crerar joins Kate Betwixt the Sheets to explore some of the most powerful items on show, and the women that they represent.More information on the exhibition can be found here. *WARNING this episode includes themes of an adult nature*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Annie Coloe.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, it's me Kate Lister, jumping in once again to forewarn you that this episode will contain descriptions of sex, some fruity language and the odd swear word dropped when nobody was looking. So if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to skip this one. From a goddess so powerful, the people who worship her refuse to speak her name, to the personification of compassion, to the woman banished from the, Garden of Eden for refusing to put out in the way Adam wanted her too. Today, betwixt the

sheets, join me, Kate Lister, to explore feminine power throughout history. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, with me, Kate Lister.

This weekend in Britain, hopefully most of us are getting to have a little bit of time off. And actually, I hope that that includes Queen Liz herself, who although she's been very busy over this bank holiday, she has been on the throne for 70 years now, which must be pretty exhausting. But Liz is nothing, if not a powerful woman. And today we are speaking. about powerful women and it's easy to forget sometimes when there aren't enough pockets in your

clothes and the gender pay gap's still a thing and the underwire from your bra is poking you in the chest that women can be powerful and have been revered as powerful all throughout history and all around the world so to help remind ourselves of this the new exhibition at the british museum is showing us all the different ways that women have done just that from the divine to the demon from Artemis to Lilith to Pell. I am joined by Belinda Creer for a tour of some of her favourite parts of the exhibition. Hold on to your hats. So we are on a first today.

This is betwixt the sheets on location. And what location I am in, I am, stood in the British Museum, in their new exhibition, feminine power, divine to the demonic or demonic to the divine, with the curator of the exhibition, Belinda, hello. Belinda, hello. Hi. Hi.

This is, I'm surrounded by the most incredible artefacts. I feel so privileged and lucky, but can you tell us what was this exhibition about? Why did you decide to put this together? Yeah, well, it's a real eclectic mix of objects from throughout history, from ancient world, through to contemporary art and from cultures all around the world. And what we wanted to do through this exhibition was look at all of the different ways that female, female authority and power has been framed in beliefs and spiritual traditions around the world to really show the complexity of how at times female power has been seen as something dangerous,

something chaotic, but also something elevating, something that leads to salvation, something powerful that liberates and teaches. And so we have figures in the exhibition who encompassed ideas of desire and sexuality through to justice and wisdom. And it's such an inspiring range that we're asking, what does this mean about how we view femininity? It's incredible and the breadth of what you've got here. We've got everything from ancient Greece through to Hawaiian and Maori cultures and voodoo deities and it's extremely impressive.

Where did you even start with something like this? Most of the objects come from the British Museum's own collection, because we have such a phenomenally expansive collection, and there's so many objects in there that speak to this theme. And when I was walking around the galleries, when this idea was sort of formulating and just noticing how many images of women there were and how many images of female deities or spiritual forces were,

it just got me thinking about how has this been viewed in different cultures, why is female authorities so highly revered in many traditions, both in the past and around the world today, living traditions today? And do you feel more powerful? I feel quite powerful walking around, actually. Definitely feel more enlightened from it, from researching this project over the last few years. I've learnt so much, and so much that is positive about the way that feminists is viewed.

Because I thought we were going to go around, it was just going to be like, it's been really shit to be a woman. Like all throughout history, this is just going to be loads of stuff. We could put in an exhibition called, oh, men are dicks. But that's, it's actually, like, there's so much positive stuff here. And like there's, like you said, knowledge and power and creation and really beautiful things. So I wasn't expecting that. Well, no, I feel like a lot of people don't know.

They sort of come at the subject because from a lot of people's background in the West, certainly, there isn't a strong tradition of venerating female authority in a spiritual context. sort of lost that over the last 2,000 years somewhat. But that's not the case today in other parts of the world. It certainly wasn't the case even in Western history thousands of years ago. So I think it's worth reminding ourselves of that. Actually, this is just a sort of cultural anomaly and not a universal phenomenon. And there's some amazing women here. Let's talk me through some of your favourite ones, because I don't even know what we'd start with here. But it's not a fair question. It's like, who's your favorite child? Let's pick some of your favorites then. Like what,

Which one would you, this is the one for me? So I really love this sculpture. This is a contemporary Hawaiian sculpture by an artist called Tompico in which he shows the Hawaiian goddess Pele, who is the embodiment of volcanoes and lava and she's a very fiery, volatile entity. And he's called the work Tiara Wahin, which means a flowered woman.

And this sounds very nice and gentle. It does, doesn't it? Actually, it's because there's a belief that you shouldn't say her name out loud because she is so formidable that you don't actually want her to appear in front of you. So that's why it's called the flowered woman. But you've got her name right here.

We do. I'm taking a bit of a risk. That's a bit of a risk. She actually, looking at this sculpture, she doesn't look like somebody that you would mess with, does she? She's very brooding. She is, look at that. She's properly stacked as well, her legs and her arm muscles. Yeah, she is.

And she's got this hair, which is just flaming red, flowing down to the ground like larva. She's almost like a volcano herself, the way that she is positioned, and she's got this enormous flower crown, and she's sort of glowering from underneath them. But if you've been put in charge of volcanoes, that's quite a responsibility.

The way that Pico has made this, she's carved it out of a hairlwood, which is a tree which is endemic to Hawaii, and it has this natural red colour to the bark. So this isn't stained. This is the colour of the wood, and it's very evocative of volcano. goddess of fire and lava.

But it's also one of the first plants that grows on fresh lava flows. So it's also about creation and regeneration. So the material itself is very symbolic. I mean, he understood that assignment, didn't he? That is... And it's also about the duality inherent in Pelle, which we see for a lot of the figures that we're exploring in this exhibition. They're not just one thing, there are many things.

Pelle is destructive, but also creative. I can see the tattoos on her leg. Yeah, she's got her arms and her... and her legs and her chest are covered in these tattoos which are of Polynesian design and this relates to belief about Pele that she originated from Tahiti and then traveled overseas to Hawaii. So this is looking at her origin stories as well. She is so beautiful. I think she's one of my favorites. I'm not surprised. She's like a volcano goddess tattooed and you can see here we've got this image next to the sculpture which shows how

she's worshipped today. This was taken in 2018. Oh yeah, let me have a look at that set. which is the eruption of Mount Kilauei, which is supposedly Pele's home. And you can see the lava flowing down the road, and these offerings to Pele left in front of the lava throat. Now, that's a devoted follower. So when the volcano erupts, and I'm looking at a picture now of lava, actual lava, on a road, people run out and make offerings to.

This is the expression of Pele's power, which is a constant force in Hawaii, because it's such a volcanic landscape. It's constant presence in the natural world. and we're in a section here where we're looking at beliefs from different cultures which relates female power to the natural world and creation and destruction and life and death. Wow. That's incredible. That's absolutely gorgeous. So Hawaiian deities manifest their presence in the landscape.

So she exists in lava and in certain plants and in volcanoes. That's how you know her. So these are, all of this is her essentially. She's in a way, in a way she's not the statue we're looking at. She's the lava. She's the lava's incredibly destructive. She just is the natural world. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm not going to mess with her. She's incredibly impressive. All right, so we're now in a section called Passion and Desire, so this is definitely on my home turf. Oh, it's Aphrodite. Hello, Mama. Tell me about this statue. This is an incredible statue of Aphrodite. Tell me about... Yeah, so this is a Roman statue, which was inspired by a very famous Greek statue of Aphrodite, you probably know it, the Aphrodite of Nidos, which is thought to have been

the first full-scale female nude in Western art, and it was a sensation when it was unveiled. I mean, they lost it, didn't they? They absolutely lost their shit completely. Oh my gosh, yes, yes. We have accounts of men trying to have sex with the statue and then this is why we can't have a thing. Throwing themselves off a cliff afterwards. It caused a sensation. Have you got extra security on? Just in case. Anyone coming to see this? Just behave yourselves.

And I think what's interesting about this is today it's quite a familiar image. We're used to seeing images. It's quite tame. It does feel quite tame, but you have to put yourself back two and a half thousand years to when this was the first time you've seen a statue of this scale of the naked female body. And I think that helps you understand the erotic power that Aphrodite and her success of Venus wielded and that really comes across strongly in the imagery here but what I find also interesting about this is her nudity is so central yeah that it's very much eye height

isn't it yeah it is and it's designed to be seen in the round so we've tried to recreate that a little bit because you can see her behind from I know she has a really nice hat yeah like you're really does that it's impressive but the way her nudity is so prominent here I feel really emphasises her sexual power as a goddess of desire and passion and beauty. She's kind of, she's almost like got one hand on her left room. Yeah, it's what's she doing with her hands? Is she trying to hide her body or actually you find yourself looking at where her hands is,

which is exactly over her body? You have to move around to see what she's covering and you can because she was positioned in the round. So it's quite a playful image in that sense. as well. And the original was supposed to have been modelled on the Greek cortisan Frini. Oh, is that right? Yeah, she was like legendary for her beauty. Oh. She earned so much money. She was so good at what she did. At one point she offered to rebuild the wall of Thebes after Alexander the Great knocked it down, but only if they

put up a plaque saying destroyed by Alexander the Great rebuilt by Frini the Hoar and they said no. I think it's very interesting that these stories just really make us question or assumption that all women in the ancient world were sort of quiet and locked away in the house and domesticated. Women had a lot of power. It's a really complicated, because Freeney, like she really did. Like she's run rings round men. She was incredibly powerful. She was put on trial for heresy. Partly maybe they think because she was the model for Aphrodite. You know, you've overstepped your mark there a bit, love. But it's also quite a complicated thing because she was also a courtesan, so she has to be in the world of men. Yeah, it's a power, but it's also a powerlessness.

Yes. So it... Can we talk about her hair? I've just noticed... You probably wouldn't actually note the hair is definitely not the first thing that you'd notice. But that is a complicated head.

Yeah, it certainly is. And she's just meant to have got out of her bath, or maybe she's getting into her bath, but I'm not sure. So maybe that's why it's all piled up on her head that way. It's like in a mini-mouse bow, isn't it? It is, yeah.

It does look like a mini-mouse bow. That probably wasn't the desired effect. But she's incredibly beautiful. It's so interesting as well, because it's thousands of years later to see how the ideal of the female body has shifted. Yeah, definitely. And actually, next to her, we have this contemporary artwork by Kiki Smith. This is an incredible face. Like halfway up a wall, there is, is it bronze? It is a bronze sculpture of a crouching woman and she looks like a spider, like she's going to kind of

jump down and get you. But tell me who she is, who's there. So this is Lilith. Lilith is a demon from Jewish mysticism, who was said to be the first wife of Adam, And in the Garden of Eden, Adam insisted that Lilith recognizes his dominance over her as her husband. And she said, no. She said we were made at the same time, from the same earth, we are equals. And Adam wasn't too happy about this. He went and complained to God. And instead of submit, she chose to leave.

She left Eden and she refused to return even when she was chased down by angels. And she said, this is not for me. And then all these stories emerge about how she is Satan's lover and she killed babies and she's got this sort of very darkly sexual aspect to her character. What I love about Kiki Smith sculpture is it is modelled on the body of a real woman. So we're not looking at the classical beauty of sort of idealised female beauty according to Greek canons of Venus. We're looking at the body of a real woman. Do we know who the woman was? She was a dancer that Kiki Smith was working with at the time.

I don't know her name, unfortunately. I used to be a life model, you know, and I love knowing that sometimes there's just paintings of my tits, sometimes on walls, in people's houses that I don't know. But this is amazing. The interesting thing about this is that, I mean, when you look at this right next to the Statue of Venus, you can see obviously how differently the body is being used to present this sort of same ideas of sexual power. But you can't really see Lilith's body at all. if you want to, you have to really try and strain your head to see her very much unlike Venus.

It was sort of... It's quite a gentle pose over here with Venus. This one, there's a lot of anger in it. Like she's kind of really scrunched up, isn't she? She's a demon. She's a demon. Of course, of course. I'm talking about.

I think she's also presented here as a figure of defiance and transcendence, but she's also got this unsettling quality that speaks to her sort of malevolent power. she is the figure of insubordination, female insubordination. She's not even respecting gravity. She's up on the wall. I love that. It says here on the little information thing, that the transgression that she committed was that she wouldn't let Adam go on top.

He said that he should be the one who goes on top because he's the husband and he is dominant. And she said, no, you should lie under me. And I'm going to get mine. I didn't go down well. No, it doesn't. So, yeah, all hail Queen Lilith. Imagine that. Imagine like just being like, no, it only works for me if I'm on top

and I'm willing to be chased by angels to make that happen. Yeah. Well, actually, over here we've got a sort of slightly related idea. Another story, which weirdly involves sexual positions in a religious context. So this is a print looking at the goddess Rata and the god Krishna from Hindu belief. And do you know the Gita Gavinda? Explain just for anyone. So their relationship is celebrated in the Gita Gwinda, which is an epic poem.

Highly erotic sexual poem, which describes their passionate love affair, Krishna's infidelity, Radha's distress, Krishna's remorse, and eventually they're reconciled. And it's all described in very, very sexual terms. and it culminates with Krishna submitting to Rhaagnar entirely by lying under her. Oh, I like that. And this is a very tender scene of their courtship where Krishna is cradling Rata in his arms and stroking his face and they're surrounded by beauty and opulence.

And their relationship and the way it's ascribed in the Guit and Vinder has often been interpreted for the mortal souls longing to be united with divine. So using these erotic language and sexual language and sexual metaphors to convey sort of knowledge of divine mysteries, really. And you do get that tradition in Christianity. It kind of crops up here and there as well. Mystical traditions, you definitely do. Christian, mystical texts, you do find more sexual allegory for understanding and being united with divinity. It hasn't entered quite so much into popular religious teaching, though. No, they've not quite got there yet, have they? But that's extremely beautiful.

I love that. We're going to have a short break from all this walking around, and I'll be back in a few with Belinda. Did Edison really take credit for things he didn't invent? Were treadmills originally a form of corporal punishments? And would man have ever got to the moon without the bra? You can expect answers to all these questions and more in the brand new podcast from history hit,

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wherever you listen to your podcasts. Can you show me the malefica? Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to go from Divine Feminine. Yeah. Swing the other way. So I was quite shocked when I first thought this, actually,

when it arrived at the museum and I looked at it, and I did have a little like, oh my God. There it is. I find it very creepy, actually. That is actually creepy. It is, isn't it? It's got this real malevolence that radiates off it. So the Malifahum, it means hammer of witches,

and it was a text written by two German monks. Yeah, it's attributed to Heimerick Kramer and Joseph Spragner, although it's generally understood that it was really written by Kramer and his pregnancy name might have been added later to try and give it more authority because he had he was a sort of higher status inquisitor so she just give it that legitimacy and obviously if you want to know anything about women the person to ask is a german monk absolutely right yes everyone knows that everyone knows that and what's kind of quite disturbing about this is like that you can read translations of it online and it's just mad it's just it's like

scrolling through the mind of a psychopath it's like he should have been under section is what this is like How could you say it with a straight face that women steal penises and put them in trees? He was fanatical and fanatically obsessed with women's sex lives and questioned women that he accused of being witches under torture about their sex lives. And it's worth saying that this didn't go down very well even with the Catholic Church at the time. This was not well received at the time. It was published. It did create a huge backlash even among Kramer's other inquisitors. That's quite extreme. This is not appropriate to all balance.

It is a fanatical misogynist text. But over the centuries, it was reprinted and reprinted and reprinted and it circulated. And it may have inspired imagery as well, which also circulated. So here we can see a print by Hans Baldong Green, which is believed to be satirical prints. So here we're not seeing it a sort of serious reflection of what the artist felt, which is were in it may even be inspired by the malias, might be poking fun,

the sort of exaggerated idea of witches in the mallets. This image, this is a definite, don't threaten me with a good time. It's like there's a group of women nude in the woods. One of them was riding a goat. They seem to be having quite a good time, actually. But there's something quite chaotic about it as well. Something extremely over the top.

Very over the top. If that was your hangout with your friends, That takes a lot of effort. We just order pizza, like me and mine, that's... But the Malifahs Malifacarum, what I find quite disturbing about it is not so much the fact that there was one monk who, where he came up with this stuff, I've no idea,

but it's not the fact so much the fact it was written, it's the fact that eventually it had papal support, like the Pope supported. Is that right? Have I got that right? Well, Kramer got people's support to persecute witchcraft or hunt out witchcraft, and that was his vocation. So this kind of became.

like the handbook then. So yeah, I'm not quite sure of the details of the papal support. I'm afraid I know he did get a papal ball when he was kicked out of it. Paper bull when he's kicked out of Innsbruck, I think was permission to produce this text or just ramping up the we have to do something about witches, now the popes are so. So I've got the authority now and no one can challenge me is that sort of idea, but I'm not 100% sure. So the Malifis Malifakarum printed 1494. We're looking at the actual book. We're looking at the actual thing. and it's so weird because I know that this is real.

I know this is the actual genuine article, but my head just keeps, it looks like a prop from something out of Harry Potter. It's like it almost doesn't look real. And it's got like columns of, is it Latin or is it Latin? And I might have been doing my job for a long time as a sex historian and I see sex everywhere, but I can't help but notice there is what looks like

a giant penis drawn on that page. There is. There is. Oh, good, right. There is. So this is a passage in the malice. I mean, it says a lot of absolutely bonkers things. But this is a passage where Kramer accuses witches of making men's penises magically disappear and hoarding them and feeding them oats.

And it seems like somebody who owned this book has drawn a little penis next to this section, perhaps just to flag that this is an important bit. We need to pay attention to this pain. They might steal your penises, lads. If you had that kind of power, if you were a witch, you could come up with something better to do than steal a load of dicks and feed them. porridge. So that little doodle wasn't part of the original text. No. Somebody's dropped that on. If you look through the other pages of this book,

you'll find other little annotations and notes. So there's annotations in the columns. There's a drawing of two hands in prayer with a cross between them as well. So yeah, and they're in different hands as well and different coloured ink. So it looks like the book was passed between readers. You're all sort of scribbling notes in the column. There is something dark about it because you know that this book played a not insignificant part in the witch trials across Europe. Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly fair to say that this had a big influence in associating harmful magic with women. Before this time with earlier texts, there's a sense that harm for magic is a diabolical, demonic force, but it can be practiced by anyone who's an enemy or seem to be an enemy of the Catholic Church.

and that's a sort of fairly equal balance of who that is. It doesn't matter. This text, Kramer always goes out of his way to argue that harmful magic is a woman's skill. And he relates us to, you know, scriptural interpretations about Eve being tempted by the devil and therefore women are more susceptible to the devil and essentially in his mind weaker and... Do we know anything about his personal life? Oh, yeah. We do.

Tell me something about the man that produced it. Well, we know that before he published this book, he was involved in trials of several women accused of witchcraft that he'd accused of witchcraft in Austria. And his methods and his questioning, particularly about their sexual behaviour, his advocacy of the use of torture, was so bizarre and abhorrent to the local judiciary

that they kicked him out. And they acquitted all the women. and one of the women actually turned the tables and accused him of heresy because of his obsession with witches and women's sex lives. And it was a bit of a shambles and he had to leave in disgrace. And so it seems to be that that event might have spurred him to actually write his series down in a book, get papal, you know, sanction for that.

Pierre Morgan and the whole Megan Markle debate. We still say it. still see like a man spurned and a man who couldn't get what he wanted. And that's always interesting about, yeah, about the witch trials is, especially the ones in this country, is they seem to be inherently sexual in nature, like making women confess to having sex with the devil and kissing his ass. There are a lot of that and a lot of the things that Kramer points out because he does say, you know, in theory, men could be witches, but he sort of makes it clear that it's not,

he doesn't think that that's likely. So a lot of the things that he accuses witches of doing a very specifically female. things like nursing from extra nipples and yeah secret women only meetings and having sex with demons and stuff like that it's just the ravings of a pervert isn't it really it is a little bit yeah right so we are just walking around and now people are starting to come into the exhibition of course they are because it's incredible but there might be some background noise but we are going to finish off by talking about another one of your favorites who is this is Tara Tara so Tara is perhaps the most important female spiritual being in Tibetan Buddhism and she is seen as a Buddha or a Bodhisattva

or a goddess variously described in these terms of a very important spiritual being and she is the embodiment of compassion and wisdom or Tara so here we've got a small gilt bronze figurine of Tara this is white Tara and behind you you can see a text which is painted with the 21 different forms of Tara that she can take. These are all her different manifestations that she sends out in the world. And each of these is labelled with a vice, like envy or greed, which that form of Tara, meditating on that form of Tara, helps you to overcome.

Which Tara are you today? Yeah. Well, that's it. And you've got, at the top, you'll see her manifestations are quite serene and calm. And then as we move down the image, we get to her more wrathful emanations, her more aggressive, but always in the service of compassion and salvation. Oh wow.

Oh, Tara is very beautiful. I like, so she can be associated with like rage, but also with compassion? Yeah, and this is something that we see in other traditions as well. Compassion is not always framed as something gentle or patient or passive. That's true. Sometimes it's very active and around the corner we look at the goddess Kali, Hindu goddess Kali, who is ferocious, almost uncontrollable, aggressive,

warrior goddess, but she is an instrument of compassion in that she uses her sort of bloodthirstiness to sever all of your limiting qualities, like your ego and your attachment to worldly concerns. So her aggression is her compassion, and you see that in some of the manifestations of Tara as well. But the other thing about Ty is she's also incredibly attractive. She's beautiful. She's alluring. You can see it in the statue. She's draped in silks and jewels. She's got, just sort of radiates beauty. And this is intrinsically part of how she's seen. It's this attractiveness and this sort of sexiness in a way

that makes you want to be near her. And the more you're near her, the more you want to be like her, and the more compassionate and wise you become, and that's the path to salvation. It's really nice to see a sort of example of a deity, a powerful goddess figure who is beautiful but not condemned for it, that you see so much in Western tradition. I think what's interesting about this concept

is that it's framing female seductive influence as something positive. It's a positive force in the world that can make humanity better. It says it here, I'm glad that I just saw this because Tara is translated to She Who Saves. Yeah, she's the savior. Because Tara doesn't sound like a goddess's name.

And occasionally you find that, like I learned recently that King Herod's wife was called Doris. Really? She's always stuck with me. So this is Tara and Doris, but Tara does not mean Tara as we know Tara. It means she who saves. Or she who carries across because she carries you across from the world of suffering and rebirth to Nirvana.

She's absolutely beautiful. Oh, thank you so much for taking us around. I feel so unbelievably. You're welcome. Thank you for coming. This is just incredible. Please come and see this exhibition at the British Museum. It will blow your tiny mind.

So what we want people to be doing as they walk around the space is having conversations about all of these different ideas and how they relate to each other and how they relate to people's own lives and own experience. And so what we've done is we've invited five guest commentators to do just that for us. They've come to the museum, we've talked to them through the objects and the ideas for each of the section and they've allowed us to record their personal This is what they think. You may not think the same thing, but this is what they think. And it's just a way to start a conversation.

So as we move through, you'll hear from Bonnie Greer, Mary Beard, Elizabeth Day, Rabia Sadiq, and Deborah Francis White. That's quite a squad. You can hear them talking about what they think. You can reflect on that. We've got some quotes that they provided next to the figures, which it's just there to sort of prompt conversation, really. And then when you get to the end of the exhibition, we've created this interactive space,

where we're hoping that people will leave their thoughts. Tell us what they think. Tell other people in the gallery what they think to make it that conversation. And how long is the exhibition running for? It's on until the 25th of September. Honestly, it's so good. And then it's going on an international tour. Oh, wow, okay.

It'll be opening in the National Museum of Australia in December, and then after that, it's going on a five-venue tour of Spain. See, that's a perfect. World Tour. Thank you so much for talking to this. You're welcome. This has just been incredible. Thank you. Thank you so much to Belinda and to the British Museum. In fact, thank you to all the divine feminines for having us and listening to us. We hope that you've enjoyed our quick tour and if you want to know more, this amazing exhibition is on until September and then it goes on an international tour.

If you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. In the next few weeks, we've got episodes on BDSM and the 19th century scandal that shook Paris and more. So join me again the Twix the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.