Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History of Sex For Sale

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Many people claim sex work to be the oldest profession, but we can likely put that down to being midwifery or medical professionals of some sort.However, since money has changed hands, it has also done so for sex.In today's episode of Betwixt the Sheets we're going back to a conversation I had with Dan Snow on Dan Snow's History Hit,How have attitudes to those who sell sex changed through history? What might you find in a Roman brothel? And were the Victorians really as prudish as we think them to be?This podcast was edited by Dougal Patmore and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT.Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Oh, and welcome back to Betwicks the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. It may not be the oldest profession in the world. Midwifery and medicine are older, but for as long as there has been money, there has been people selling sex. What does the way we treat sex work

and the people who sell sex say about our own society? Why is there so much shame and stigma around sex work? How of our views on it changed throughout history? Today we are taking you back to a conversation that I had with history hits very own Dan Snow a couple of years ago, and we are talking about the history of sex work. But before we get into that episode, I have got my own wairs to tout to you, and we are here to ask you for a little favour. We have exciting news betwixters.

We have been shortlisted for the Listeners Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards this year. Thank you so much to everyone who voted. And if you're yet to vote, you can actually bump us up and we might win the thing. We're so close, who knows, it could be your vote that swings it. Simply follow the link in the show notes to cast your lovely vote, and we'll be eternally grateful. Now let's get back betwixt the sheets to find out about the history of sex for sale. Kate, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for asking me on. It's always said to be the, what's that cliche? It's the second oldest professional, some of that. What selling sex is it as old as humanity itself? It comes from Rudyard Kipling. He was the first one that coined the phrase, the world's oldest profession in his little novelette on the wall, I think it was. But it's not the world's oldest profession,

because there's many cultures around the world throughout history that haven't had any money. So they haven't had any professions at all. So it can't be. It has been suggested by various anthropologists that the oldest profession is either the medicine man or the midwife, because those figures tend to be universally found in almost every culture around the world, whereas someone's selling sex, the sex worker, is not.

But it's a very, very old profession. It's certainly as old as money. We could definitely say that. I'm really struck in your book how the attitudes towards sex workers throughout recorded history have encompassed every single different thing and attitude can be, right? from like celebratory to absolute condemnation, wanting to kill them. It's extraordinary. Yes.

And they always seem to circle back as well. That's the other thing. Although there's a huge range of different attitudes, there's evidence that some sex workers were viewed almost as holy in the ancient world, that they're kind of aligned with priestesses and goddesses, although there's plenty of historians will take me to task for that one. But then there's also plenty of evidence that sex workers were horribly treated in the ancient world as well. And the thing is that as diverse as these attitudes tend to be, in a weird way,

we're still having the same debates and conversations around it today. People still panic about it, they worry about it. What should we do? Is it a moral issue? Is it a money issue? How can we control it? And what the authorities do to try and control it tends to be similar mechanisms throughout history. They punish, that's quite a well-established response to it. And the punishments have varied from everything, from excommunication, through to death, branding, mutilation, really horrible things. And then there's zoning. That's another tactic that gets deployed a lot. It's like, well, all right, you can do it, but you can only do it here in this place that I've told you that you can do it.

Or there's kind of like what the British have done throughout history, which is, well, we know it goes on, but we're just not going to do very much. We're just going to pretend it's not happening. That's another tactic as well. But yeah, there's a huge range of responses, reactions, systems of regulation all throughout history that we keep circling back to him one way or another. It reminds me a little bit of that Dostoecki quote when he says you can judge the level of of civilisation and society, I'm misquoting him, by looking at the way it treats its prisoners. And I think the same is true of sex workers, right?

That is a very good point. I like that, Dan. Yes, I would say that because the figure of the sex worker tells us so much about the culture that they exist within, how they're viewed, how they're treated, because they are a very visible symbol and representation of a culture's attitude around sex and gender and women and all of these things and money. And whatever the culture is, it projects their attitudes onto that figure. So in cultures that are deeply patriarchal and have kind of a controlling narratives around women,

it tends to get a lot of stigma with that as well. And it's tied up with wealth a lot. It's so classist a lot of this. All throughout history, there's been this real state of cognitive dissonance, and we still do it today, which is that if you're a sex worker, but you've got a client who has loads of money, then we'll discuss that in very, very different terms. Then you're a courtesan.

Then you're a paid mistress. Then, you know, you're an honest courtisan. But if you're poor and if you're selling sex in a brothel, then the narrative shifts again. It's so interesting because I don't just want to talk about the UK here because you talk about so many different places at different times. But in the UK, we think we're super relaxed about sex now, sex cells and our newspapers and our discourse.

We all talk about it and we're all like sex positive. And yet we still have this kind of weird issue in our society around sex work, don't we? It's like it's legality. Like, I don't even know if it's legal. I don't even know. I probably should know. But is that something that just has failed to catch up with zeitguise? Or does it show that we're actually secretly much less relaxed

and sex positive than we think we are? I think it's probably the latter of that. I think that what's really important at the moment and what's shifted is that this is one of the first times in history where sex workers have been able to speak for themselves, where their voice isn't being co-opted or being written about or spoken about. If anyone wants to know about the sex worker rights movement,

the ECP, the English Collective of Prostitutes or swarm the sex worker activist and resistance movement, a brilliant group to go and look at and see their work. sex work is legal in the UK. The buying and selling of sex is legal. That's not illegal. But what we've done is what we've done throughout most of history

is that we've got a very uneasy relationship with it. So we've criminalised activities around it. And we're not as comfortable as we think we are. And sex work seems to be a real flashpoint of that. And again, it shows our own attitudes. So for example, in the UK, it's illegal to work in a brothel. So then everyone kind of goes, oh, okay, that's fine. But then what's defined as a brothel?

A brothel in British law is defined. find as any establishment that has more than one person selling sex from it. So that law in practice means that sex workers can't work together to stay safe, that they're forced to work on their own, which is a really dangerous situation. And it doesn't help anyone stay safe. And we've got lots of things like that. And I think that you're absolutely right is that when you actually look at our own attitudes around sex work, we're not as comfortable with it as we like to think we are. Sex is everywhere. You know, you watch Game of Thrones or you can see sex sells adverts and all the rest of it, but it's a very particular type of sex that you're looking at.

And when it comes to sex work, we're just not ready to have those conversations yet. For example, if anybody's watched porn, you've used the services of a sex worker. That person was paid to do that so you can consume that. You've used the services of a sex worker. But we just, we're not ready to have those conversations. We make it always, it's about someone else. someone else is doing it. And there's so much shame and stigma heaped on it. It stifles any kind of conversation. And that makes it really dangerous because it forces it underground. And we need to talk about these things. What are the places in history, the societies, the times that have a completely different attitude towards sex work? Take me in a little time machine here.

Time machine. Let's have a thing. Well, to know the time and place that has the most radically different attitude at the moment is right now, and it's New Zealand and New South Wales, because they've decriminalised sex work, which is slightly different from legalising. Legalising means you can do it, but only in the way that I say you can do it. Decriminalising is they've taken all laws pertaining to it away, so it's protected by other laws. It's protected by worker laws. It's protected by obviously exploitation and abuse. They're already illegal and will continue to be so.

But that is a radical departure from throughout history, because that isn't an approach that has been utilised in history very often. You've got very, very different approaches to this. I'll take you back to medieval England, for example, medieval London. They deployed zoning. So it was in the area of Southwark, just across from the Thames, which was technically just outside the jurisdiction of the city. So it was where a lot of criminals and repudates and people that had been banished ended up. And that's where the sex work industry thrived was in Southwark. And it was actually under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, who collected money on all the brothels there. So they were

paying their tax that to the bishop and they were known as Winchester geese. So if you were in medieval London, you would go to what were known as the stews in that particular area of London. So that's zoning. That's where you can do it, but you can only do it there. And anyone caught doing it outside of that was punished quite severely. You could be put in the stocks. You could be paraded to the city. If you were a repeat offender, you could be banished or mutilated. Zoning happens all throughout history. The Italians were pretty big on it. So in Renaissance Italy, city set up particular areas for sex worker to happen in. And it's got some benefits, I suppose.

It kind of protects people-ish from horrible punishments, but not really. But if you look at some of these areas in Renaissance Italy, they had bureaus that were set up just to deal with complaints from sex workers, which was normally about large groups of men just coming, walking around and being annoying and a nuisance. But it was a kind of a prototype union maybe. from feeling generous. So that was an approach as well.

So that's legally, but what about culturally? We'll talk about, for the moment, men using female sex workers, because I suspect the answer might be quite different the other way around. Has there been a culture where everyone's like, yeah, this is great good idea? Where everyone's just going to get on with it, crack on with it. I don't think there has, you know, because it's tied up with money and it's tied up with class. So there are points in history that you can go back to and you can see how certain sex workers are viewed very, very, very, differently. So mistress to the king wasn't just a perk. That was an actual proper position at court.

It was an actual job description that you would go for. That's how normalized this was. So the kings of Europe would get married. Of course they would. They would sigh a legitimate issue. But it was fully expected that they would have their way with anyone that they wanted to. So they had royal mistresses. And these were hugely powerful positions at court. Like you had the ear of the king. There was really, influential and these weren't viewed as seedy horrible positions. These were viewed as very aspirational. So it's not so much that was ever a point in history where you go, well, everyone's got that right. There always seems to be stigma caught up with it, especially in a very patriarchal society that is capitalist as well. It's the poorest people that have always been

the most heavily stigmatized. I'd love to tell you that this time and this place absolutely nailed it and it was all brilliant, but I don't think that's ever happened. Hopefully we're moving towards it, that would be good. And I'm guessing the second half of my question about females using male sex workers, that is a whole separate adventure. That is a whole separate adventure. That is an area that has been very under-researched. There is current research going on at the moment to try and gather data on that

because it absolutely does happen. And that's one of the other things about our understanding of sex work now and throughout history is it's very heteronormative. We immediately think of the person selling sex as the woman and the person buying sex. is the man, that's just the way it must be. But it's not. And that obscures the experience of there must be millions of people throughout history of the men that were selling sex, the women that were buying sex, the women that were selling sex to other women. All of this would have been happening. It's finding the evidence of it and the voices for it is very, very difficult.

Because it's been so heaped with shame throughout history, people don't tend to record it or write about it unless it's an illegal context, you know? Yeah, well, that's why I talked to you before for the history of sex. podcast. The source material is so thin for you, sex historians. And I thought about keeping a really detailed sex diary. Did you do it? No, I didn't because I'm too embarrassed in English. See, that's the problem. And I think it would be insufficiently interesting as well. She's going to bury it in the garden somewhere and someone will dig it up in 200 years and I'll be so pleased.

I know, but you kept me thinking about that. So you have, you know, if anyone's listening and you have done that, please let us know. Keep a sex diary. Historians need you to do it. There you go. I've recently did a podcast about London during the wars and the culture going to shows, music, and then also sex as well. You've got millions of young men just dumped on that city from all around the world with big cash in their pockets. What have you found out about that period? That period, there's something about war in the human psyche, and I'm sure there are many psychologists who can explain to me what's going on. Maybe it's the threat of death, maybe it's the fact that everything's so uncertain, but there's something about war and sex that seem to go together. I think it's this kind of astive, like, if you're going to ship young men out,

they're going to have to pretty much walk into a cannon or a machine gun or whatever it is. Maybe they're not going to be too bothered about going to a brothel the night before. And there's a lot of money to be made, because that's their, biggest motivator for people selling sex is the money. And also, maybe she's just let them, right? Right. But you know what? It was so conflicted this, in the first World War in particular. So there had never been a World War on this scale before. And every nation fighting very, very quickly realized that they were losing vast numbers of fighting men to venereal disease. Because venereal disease in 1918 is not like venereal disease now, where it's having

antibiotic and a few awkward phone calls. You would be hospitalized for four weeks, depending on what you'd contracted. If you had syphilis or gonorrhea, one of the treatments was kind of like to scour the penis repeatedly with like wire brush and like disinfectant, but also to fill the bladder through the urethra full of a solution. Yeah, it's horrible. You can't see Down's face now, but it's a picture.

To like fill the bladder up full of kind of disinfectant solutions and then kind of urinate it out and you'd be in the hospital for up to four weeks. It was painful. It was humiliating and you were out of action for four weeks. So suddenly every nation, fighting this war had to address, what on earth are we going to do about this? Because they're all having loads of sex. For the exact reason that you've just said, why wouldn't you just let them?

Just go on, just crack on. But the manpower lost to it was enormous. The Germans went very Teutonic discipline and decided that they would regulate this really severely. So they assumed control of all the brothels in the towns that they occupied and instigated this forced examination system of all the women that they had registered, they'd force them to register and they'd be forcibly examined every two weeks, I think it was. And they gave their troops condoms, but they're kind of rubbish condoms because it was 1918, but instructions on how to use it.

The Americans went completely the other way and decided that they would just shout at their troops and just don't do it, it's really bad. And they sort of launched into this moral provalactics of just they were going to bombard their troops and propaganda about diseased women, dirty women, the dangers of good time girls. and the treatments for venereal disease, as just described, it was designed to be humiliating and painful. So the Americans, they didn't issue condoms, they didn't issue advice apart from just don't do it.

And the casualties for venereal disease were just off the scale. Because they're young, they go into war, they might not come back. You can understand that, right? Yeah. Yes. I was very struck in your book by how at various periods, The first one more obviously is a huge advantage for French women often behind the lines, but also women in British garrison towns, like when I visited on Salisbury, playing the other day. Is there an opportunity for women as entrepreneurs as well as sex workers as people,

it's just an opportunity where they can own property, they can carve out an income, they can support themselves? I've always thought that that is the case. There's lots of reasons why sex workers are horrendously stigmatized that history, and you can pick them apart. but I think a really formative one is the fact that this was a line of work that offered women an opportunity to make their own money, to have some degree of agency, and to be able to make something of themselves. And I say that in the full knowledge that there are hideous exploitations and abuses that occur. But that's been true throughout history.

What other job can you think of that a girl born in the slums of London in the 15th century, 16th century, could grow up and become the most powerful woman in the country. I'm thinking of Nell Gwynn, for example. She was born in the slums of London. What are the career opportunity? There aren't career opportunities for women. They're so limited. So the fact that you could sell sex and make a large amount of money in a small space of time, I've often wondered if that's one of the reasons that it's caught up with this kind of shaming of women taking agency. And you see that in history as well, when they've got zoned areas. So it was in medieval London, it was in Renaissance, Italy is the brothels are almost always run by women.

A matron is put in charge. So it was largely a woman's industry. And I've always wondered as well, is that one of the reasons why it's been so shunned? It's because it allowed women to not be in their place, to not be quiet and at home. And they kind of exist outside of that. And it gives them monetary power because they can earn a lot of money. I wonder.

I'll be back with Dan after a short break. Set back in time with me, Tristan Hughes, on the ancients from history hit as we unearth Pompeii's buried secrets in a special mini-series. You'll discover what life was like in this town before the eruption of Vesuvius, the bustling streets, the roar of the gladiators, and the hidden lives of sex workers. Lost for over 1,500 years and then uncovered, Pompeii's saga continues. With the help of leading experts, we'll bust myths, and reveals starsling new research. So get ready for a dramatic journey

through the echoes of the past. Experience Pompeii like never before on the Ancients from History Hit. Listen and follow wherever you get to your podcasts. I find talking about sex work really challenging because there's that aspect to it about agency, but there's also this idea that women turn to sex work because they are themselves the victims of abuse,

they are in desperate financial situations or they are dependent on boyfriends, lovers, who then become pimps or whatever it is. So this idea of like victim versus someone in charge of their own destiny, I think, comes through all the histories on this. It does, doesn't it? And the thing is, is that people are always very keen to try and make it one of the other. And what we've got to say is that all of these things are true at the same time. They're all true at the same time. there are people that have gone into sex work and have been able to make a lot of money and get some agency and become financially stable. There are also people that have been forced into it. There are also people that have turned to it because there are situations around them and poverty is so extent that they have turned to it through that.

All of these things are true at the same time. And that's one of the things that we don't really acknowledge when we're talking about sex work throughout history is it's so densely layered and a complex experience. that there isn't just one voice. There isn't. There's multiple allegiance. And that's still the truth today. People when they talk about a sex where they want them to be the happy hooker, stereotype or the horrendously abused and trafficked person.

And it's just so much more complex than that. There are sex workers working today. They're working quite voluntary and willingly, or at least as much you can in a capitalist society, because we've all got to sell something. But they hate their job. They don't like their job. But that's all right.

There are loads of people who don't like their jobs. But we make more demands on them. Like, you couldn't possibly just be doing it and not liking it. It's so complex that there isn't one version of this. There are people that are abused and trafficked and coerced in sex work, as there are in many, many professions. The number one profession that people are trafficked into in the UK today is domestic slavery and agricultural slavery.

And in the same way that you've got farmers who absolutely loved their job and are having a whale over time, you've got people that are trafficked in and are virtual slave. all these things are true. It's far more complex than we like to think of it. This is an obvious place where the history shed so much light and important context on an incredibly contentious contemporary debate. What do you want to tell policymakers about the history of sex work? And how do you think they should think about that history? The number one thing that I would tell them is that they need to listen to the sex workers themselves

because we're so lucky now that sex workers are fought hard enough and long enough and who created a space for them to be heard. So I think that's the first thing that I'd say to someone is go and speak to the sex workers and listen to them. The other thing is from just a historical point of view is look at all these attempts at legislation, abolition, punishment, deterrents, all these things that have been in place for as long as we've had records are long enough to document this. Thousands and thousands of years and they have never worked. It don't work. You cannot shame, punish, stigmatise people from doing this. You can't.

So what we need to do is start having a more open and honest conversation. I always think that the conversation around sex where it would be much more honest if all the policymakers had to show us their internet history before making the policy changes. Right? I think that would change the conversation pretty quickly and just be more honest about it. And look to New Zealand, which since they have. decriminalised sex work. Sex workers can now unionise. They are much safer. And it hasn't stopped trafficking and abuse because those things will happen, but they've been massively, massively

reduced. And it's created an environment where those things can be found and located and the perpetrators brought to justice. So what we need to do is get past this idea that we can just legislate it away, get past this idea that it's nothing to do with us because we're just a bit too embarrassed to actually talk about it and actually listen to what the people who are selling sex say. That's what I would say. Brilliant. Well, they should listen to that. Now, we're going to do the listeners questions.

So this is a bit that people want me to ask you. Let's do it. So don't blame me if you think it's all crazy. Kate, what is the best piece of hookup advice you've ever come across in the history of humans having sex with each other? The best piece of hookup advice. Presumably conquer a vast empire. The question is like, what's the best? way to get laid throughout history. I think it might be. I have lots of money. Yeah.

That will overcome any social awkwardness, physical unattractiveness, have loads of money. There you go. That's the best thing. You need to be historians, wear that one out. Look at the contemporary world. See, there you go. If I walked into a Roman brothel right now, what's the biggest surprise I would get? I think someone's directness than me. If Dan Snow walked into a Roman brothel, Mary Beard would be there going, hi, Dan. Oh, my God. That would surprise you. What would surprise you?

Okay, the size of it, I think. Have you been to Pompeii? Have you been to the brothel? It's like a work shed, isn't it? It's tiny. It's like a broom cupboard, just a stone bench. So I think the size of it would surprise you. It might surprise you that not all the people working in there were slaves.

In fact, most of the people weren't slaves. The graffiti written on the wall gives their name. names and a lot of the time they've got family names attributed to them, which isn't something that slaves have. So that might surprise you. What about a euphemism? So something that sort of is euphemistic, more polite society, you might. Something polite. I like the Victorians called trousers sit down a ponds. That was quite good. The other thing the Victorians did was they called the bottom, the buttock, the fleshy part of the thigh. I really like that. So it's like you're reading in dispatches and if somebody had been shot in the bottom, they wouldn't say injured in the buttocks.

They would say he was shot in the fleshy part of the thigh. Yeah, I like that. Very good. What's the most ridiculous law about sex that was ever enacted? Oh, now then, it might be one of those things that you read on the internet that's just not true, but I think Dildo is still illegal in Texas or something absolutely deranged. Well, there's all kinds of crazy laws around sex, isn't there? I mean, the Puritans were pretty intense on any kind of adultery of any kind.

But, you know, it's easy for us to laugh, but I'm pretty sure the Taliban's... Yeah, there you go. You can see the repercussions of laws that are going to come in, right? So it's serious stuff. But there's plenty of daft laws throughout history of people attempting. There was a bill that was floated in British Parliament that was considered making makeup illegal. It didn't get that far.

There's some truth to that. That's an internet rumour, but there's some truth to it. Were the Victorians really as prudish as we think they were? No. They exist in a state of this cognitive distance as well. So the official party line with them is, right, everything's buttoned up, starch down, we call trousers sit down a ponds, we're very, very prim and proper.

But if you just scratch the surface of it, they are absolute dirtbags. They really are. You only have to look at the vast amounts of pornography that were being produced, photographic pornography, literary pornography. If you want to waste an hour and don't forget to clear your internet history afterwards, you can read in its entirety one of the Victorian pornographic magazines, which is called The Pearl. and that was published for a year from 1889 to 1890.

So if you just Google The Pearl Erotic Magazine, you'll be able to read it. And you won't ever look at them the same way again. They're absolutely filthy. They really are. Obviously, Kate, this depends on your socioeconomic status, your sexual orientation, your gender. But when was the worst time in Britain?

If you want to have sex, consensual sex with anyone, when was the worst time? Or do you think it's huge peaks and troughs in people? people's ability to have sex. What I will say is the medieval period of this terrible reputation as being prudish and chastity belts and damsels in distress. That's not true at all. It wasn't like a feminist utopia, but they were much more laid back about sex than we thought they were. They had nude public bathing. They made jokes about sex all time. It was really funny to them. It was the Victorians that did a lot of damage. They were the ones that kind of, you know, like really

stigmatized sex. So you wouldn't want to be caught having sex in a public. scandal in the 19th century, I don't think, especially if you were a woman, because that could be pretty nasty. And I'm thinking in particular one quack lunatic, Dr. Isaac Baker Brown, who actually pioneered clitorectomies for women that he thought were overly sexed. Yeah, we've heard that in your previous book, that was grim. I think my grandpa, who I never met, but he had to ask his father-in-law, who was a doctor, how to have sex. Oh, or at least he asked. I mean, that's fascinating. It's like, where did people learn about this? Before the internet, before sex ed, before books were just widely available.

Yeah, you'd have to ask, couldn't you? I hope he helped him out and gave him a good diagram or something. Some notes to take in. My dad was born, so I presume something went right. What is the best bit of sexual graffiti you've ever come across? Oh, there's some brilliant graffiti inside the brothels of Pompeii. I'm not going to attempt my Latin now because it was just horrendous. But my favorite bits of the Latin, the actual sex workers themselves,

they leave jokes for one another. And one of the clients they refer to in Latin, but it translates as Mr. Garlic Farts. The sense of like basically Mr. Garlick Farts was here. That's pretty much what they wrote. And I love that because it's still funny. Oh, that's grim. Which famous historical figure would have their best Tinder profile?

Oh, that's a good question. That's good. Who would have the best Tinder profile? Man or woman? Well, let's say man. Same man. Okay. Do you know, I'm, Byron, would he have? What would his profile be?

He would have an amazing profile. He would have an amazing profile, wouldn't he? He wouldn't be one of those ones that's just a picture of him holding a fish. Yeah, that's the same. Which is, that happens a lot on Tinder. That's a low bar. That's a low bar. Lots of pictures of men holding fish and saying things like six foot, apparently that matters.

They say that a lot as well. Okay. And then female, I guess I'm thinking. thinking Georgiana and Dr. Devonshire would have a pretty reasonable... Oh, she would, wouldn't she? And some amazing pictures as well. She's quite high maintenance. Nell Gwynn, I think.

She's definitely one of my favour, the mistress of Charles a second, because she was funny. She was really witty as well. She was known as pretty witty now. So I think that whatever her Tinder profile would be, it would be funny. Oh my God, something about Love Island.

If they had TV, would Love Island a bit of popular concept through all areas of history? I mean, Love Island under Stuart King's, like, does my head in. That's some mental acrobatics. Of course it would. Of course it would be popular.

Absolutely it would. I mean, isn't that in The Odyssey anyway? Doesn't Odysseus end up on the act? Yeah, exactly. Chuda masks, those sort of courtly plays. All sound like Lavalant to me. Yeah, they'd have been up to that. Last for a question.

If you could be a fly on a wall for any particular moment in history, what moment would that be? Oh, God, throughout the entire history. I wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall, but I would have quite liked to have been at Woodstock. That's quite recent history. isn't it? I'd quite like to have run around in the nip and jumped in mud. That would have been good fun. I'd like

that. I'd like to have seen Janice Joplin there. Going back further, I would like to have met Queen Victoria. I'd like to have had a conversation with her about sex because she has this reputation of being so frumpy, but behind closed doors, there's quite a lot of evidence that she was a right little goer, and I just wanted to ask her some questions. Which part of history would you least like to visit? I'd like to visit. It depends on the context. Am I being a fly on the wall again, or have I got to try and live there? Fly on the wall. You're assuming that you're not going to die. I've just got to like wander around. I'll probably go for Nazi history because it's too harrowing. Huge respect for the people that can research that, but it's just too awful.

Not a good scene. If you haven't been a historian, what would you have been? I always wanted to be a special effect makeup artist for reasons I don't quite understand. But yeah, I wanted to do that. So maybe I've done that. The other job that I've always wanted and I didn't realize I wanted it until I was already being a historian, I want to be the person that recreates faces from skulls. I want that job. That's historian adjacent. Right, okay, so different. Okay. Maybe I'd just be... No, I think that's good. No, I think that's good. I'm saying you could do that one day. I could do, you. I could maybe do that. Or maybe I'd just be a massive whore and a

cortisand. That's a high-class one, yeah. Well, there you go. You see, now you're getting all that. You see, you're saying, I'd rather be a cortisand. That reminds me of Russian exiles, Russian refugees in Paris. The posh ones called themselves chauffeurs, and the others called themselves drivers. There we go. We're always at it. We're always at it. We're all in the marketing, aren't we?

Yeah. Kate, thank you so much. What's the new book called? The book is called Harlats Horson Hackabout's, a history of sex for sale. Great, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening.

And thank you so much to Dan for having me way back when. That sounded rude. If you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcast. If you would like us to explore a subject or if you just fancied saying hello, you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from bestiality to senior sex,

all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Dougal Patmore and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.