Dan Snow's History Hit - Sex in Pandemics

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

I invited Kate Lister to join me after the enormous popularity of her last appearance on the pod. But this time we talked about how our sexual habits are both dulled and invigorated in unprecedented times - wars, plagues, pandemics. We discussed licentious widows who let loose during plagues, the separate brothels for British officers and soldiers, and how the lives of sex workers have been compromised in times of hardship. She also told me about sex in the coronavirus lockdown and the modern data on sending nudes ... Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Down Snow's History. One of the good things about this lockdown has been everyone's increased familiarity with things like Zoom and Google Hangouts and stuff. We're all doing video conferencing, we're all pros at it now. And so it's been a really lovely thrill for me that we've been able to offer subscribers to History Hit one live Zoom webinar every week, one live podcasting record. And so every week we get a historian on. We started Peter Frankopan, we got Rutger Bregman, we had Natalie Haynes talk about the Trojan War. That was so good this week. And last week we had Kate Lister. Kate Lister has been on the podcast before. She wrote A Curious History of Sex. She is the genius historian of sex behind Whores of Yore

on Twitter, on social media. You've got to go and check that out. It is remarkable to have a unique Twitter account, something no one else is doing, and whores of yore is exactly that. If you want to look at some vintage pornography from the earliest days of photography in the 19th century, or hear the etymological root of some of the rudest words in the English language, then whores of yore is the feed for you.

But Kate Lister came back on this podcast and she thrilled both me and all the listeners to the Zoom with her description of sex in lockdown, sex in quarantine. Humans have been through great pandemics before. There is nothing new about quarantining, about being locked down. And funnily enough, being humans, people have been having sexual relations within that context. So this is a podcast when I was very aware of the fact I need to be mindful about not oversharing my own experiences within lockdown, within my marriage. And I think I mostly avoided that. So if my wife's listening to this, I hope it's okay. This was a great one to record. We had John Nicol do a live podcast. That was great fun for everyone involved

natalie haynes as i said we've got some really exciting ones coming up in the next few months you get to join those zoom calls you get to ask questions you get to hang out with us if you are a subscriber to history hit tv it's like netflix for history but you get all the old podcasts on there lots of audio not just my podcast lots of other podcasts too hundreds of history documentaries and you also now get access to the zoom call stuff of that and you can become a member of whatsapp group just in case your phone isn't exploding enough with whatsapp messages please go and do that at historyhit.tv use the code pod1 p-o-d-1 and you get a month for free and then a second month for just one pound euro

or dollar go and check it out in the meantime everyone here is the wonderful Kate Lister enjoy Kate Lister thank you very much for coming back on the podcast we had to have you because the last one was so popular we had to get you back on again well done I think most of that was my mum downloading it but thank you I appreciate that well actually speaking of success I just want to quickly follow up on a Twitter video I saw where you donated, I think, a proportion of your book, The Success. Can you just tell us what that was about? Because it was very moving. I published the book Curious History of Sex with a group called Unbound, and they use a crowdfunded model. So they kind of work out exactly how much it's going to cost to publish it. And then people effectively preorder it, but preorder it by several years.

So thank you for everyone for being really patient with that. But I said that everything that I got in the pledges, I was going to split 50-50 and all the profits 50-50 were going to go with Basis Yorkshire, who are a very, very small charity. They help women and they have a section that is devoted to supporting sex workers. And they were set up in the wake of the Peter Sutcliffe attacks in Yorkshire. So they do some really amazing work with super vulnerable people. And right now, as you can imagine, sex workers are even more vulnerable than usual. I finally got the money, all the figures were tallied and counted and everything, and they cut me the check. And then I was able to give half of it to BASIS. And that felt really nice. Well, it felt really nice for the hundreds of thousands of people that liked and watched that

video as well. So that was fantastic. Now, Kate, you have been doing some research lately following up on your brilliant book, A Curious History of Sex, which I read in about one sitting. You have been doing research on sex in the time of lockdown and quarantine. What evidence do we have? How far back can we go? What's the best sources you've come across? It depends really on what kind of sources do you want to look at, because if you're going to look at something like the Black Death, for example, we've got chronicles and we've got monks writing about things, and they do write about sex, but they're not exactly reliable for peer-reviewed data and social science and sample sizes and all that stuff. But we do have the evidence there.

So in a lot of epidemics and pandemics, people worry a lot about sex and they worry a lot about sexual sin. That tends to be what happens. What on earth have we done to deserve this? We must have done something. Who's been shagging someone they shouldn't have been shagging? That sort of theory. And that goes a lot with the Black Death.

You see that. But then as you're kind of getting into more like 20th century, then we get more what you probably call reliable peer reviewed data. So people have been researching this, the supposed, I think they called it the blackout baby phenomenon. It's not as horrible as it sounds. It's not somebody literally blacking out a baby. But in 1965, there was the big New York power power cut and there was lots of anecdotal stories that you know nine months after that it was oh baby boomer crisis so they called them the blackout babies so there's lots of anecdotal evidence about it and there has been some studies into it and kind of most of them say it's not true unfortunately but there's a lot of anecdotal stuff about it so

it's quite a recognised phenomenon. Just going back to the Black Death, which everyone's talking about at the moment, but you do get people talking about extreme licentiousness, that wonderful word that scholars use to describe people having a good time and shagging. It's my favourite thing that is scholars being academic, talking about sex and the stuff that they come up with. Auto-erotica was one I heard for once for someone having a wank. I loved that. I thought that was brilliant.

When I hear that, I think asphyxiation like that Tory MP in the 90s, that sounds kind of scary to me. Yeah, that sounds scarier, doesn't it? Auto-erotica. Do you think the act of being locked down, there isn't much to do? So I guess, do you have any evidence of sexual activity increase between partners?

I got to say, as someone with three kids, if there is a baby boom after this, they will be babies that are the first born. I just think it's pretty tough if you've already got children. Well, you'll be pleased to know that the Kinsey Institute in America, they're currently running research on COVID-19 and people's sexual behaviour right now. So this is kind of very much emerging research. In fact, I think it might even be ongoing. So go to their website. Maybe you could start giving them your info. I don't know. But what they're finding is that it isn't actually making people hornier. In fact, it's decreasing people's sex drive.

So we went into this thinking exactly what you were saying is, you know, oh, it's really quiet. Everybody's locked in together. Of course, we'll all be shagging like crazy. But that's not what's actually happening. But I suppose that then we need to distinguish between that and the times when we come out of lockdown, and you get the kind of release of the 1920s. And you get perhaps the release following the Black Death, is there a kind of boomerang effect? That's something that's coming out in the research as well, is that people, although they're not really making any difference right now, while people are in lockdown, there is a general feeling that as soon as we're let off the leash that we're going to kind of go a bit nuts and that's something that you see all throughout history when the black

death it first took out europe in the 14th century and then came back periodically there was descriptions after it abated in italy of women especially widows being completely quote unrestrained in their lust and going after absolutely everybody and there's lots of monks and religious theologians who are really upset that they thought this terrible terrible pandemic this epidemic would have stopped people from misbehaving and it hasn't it seems to have had exactly the opposite in fact there had to be a papal bull that was, I think it was sent out in 1393 to try and stop people shagging in the graveyards in France. There was this kind of just real, like, oh my God, we got through it. But maybe we'll be doing that, I'm not sure. I wonder if that's the same as the sort of roaring 20s, you know, the early years

of the 1920s following the war and Spanish influenza, whether it was a similar... The research that's going on at the moment, published in 2008, and it was in the Journal of Population Economy or something like that. And that was looking at that effect of what you're saying is like low level trauma versus high level trauma. And what they found is when a population has been through something that's really traumatic, it doesn't increase their sex drive. But when it's through something kind of moderately traumatic, then it does. So there is something going on with exactly what is it that

you've been exposed to. And I can completely see why war would do that to somebody. Yeah, totally. But if you're on the Eastern Front and your village has been destroyed, there's been genocide and vast sexual crimes, that doesn't make you that horny. But you can see that what we've been through, which is actually for most people in this country thank goodness a fairly mild form of trauma you could see that would be quite exciting a point here from Liz just a reminder everyone listening to this podcast that's history hit subscribers this is one of our live zoom podcasts so we've got lots of history subscribers listening in and a point from this game I work with families and babies and we're always busy in nine months after a scare or an extra holiday see that's the thing people say this and i believe

them completely but it's one of those weird things where the research doesn't fully bear it out although there are some studies that show that after a kind of a low level trauma i don't know quite how you'd categorize that, that it does make people, I guess, maybe not horny, but it kind of flicks something, doesn't it, is that death and sex do go quite closely together in the human psyche. There's nothing quite like being reminded of your own mortality to think, well, I'm going to get it on. Of course, you're aware that there's a massive sort of genre of books about war, which says exactly doesn't it extraordinary the effect that being in the war zone has i haven't seen it much this time around interestingly i thought there'd be more of it people complaining about with the exception of

professor neil ferguson of course not the historian i quickly add that people are breaking the lockdown to go and have sex i would imagine that in previous lockdowns or quarantines that that would be a sort of complaint. And I haven't seen that much at this time. Has there been much bellyaching around that? You see a little bit like young people out on the streets together, but I haven't had that specifically saying, typical, you know, these people are sneaking around to each other's house.

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stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week I think that people have been quite well behaved in this pandemic I mean I've got absolutely no doubt that people have been breaking the lockdown we've heard of a few recently haven't we of course they have but generally what happens with these things is it's sort of like a social group peer pressure is we all come together and then we stop operating as individual and we start operating as a collective almost and we're censoring our own behavior which is why you get the curtain twitches and the people looking out the window going like oh my i don't think they're going on exercise again for the third time today is yeah they are being busy buddies but it's also part of a group psychology is where we are actually policing each

other's behavior and one of the things that's allowed us to do that very effectively this time is social media, TV, the technology that we can keep in contact with one another. We didn't have any of that in the past. So people would have been breaking lockdown a lot more. This is a question about very recent history and sort of contemporary history. As a scholar, are the data figures around things like, do you remember when there was the false alarm of a nuclear strike on Hawaii

and everyone went onto Pornhub immediately? And are those going to be useful to you and future scholars and activity on dating sites? Is that information released? Oh, it's amazing. Like it's an absolute goldmine. I mean, you know, there's a lot of ethical issues, loads with companies like Pornhub

and the people who they're posting aren't getting paid and are effectively stealing stuff. So, you know, on know on principle I absolutely hate them but once a year they release their data their data sets and it's just an absolute goldmine you can see what people have been looking at at what dates what things spike what countries are most into lesbian sex what countries women are most into watching gay porn you can see country by country city by city and you can see an absolute breakdown of every single demographic. It's fascinating. And you can go and have a look at it as well. It's for anybody to look at. So if anyone catches you looking at Pornhub, just tell them I was looking at the data sets for 2019.

Brilliant. But things like whether there's a massive spike in the dating apps, I mean, presumably all of these sites, whether it's porn or whether it's dating, are able to tell the story of this quarantine in a previously unimaginable way. Absolutely. In a way that it's never been able to do before. And it's all data scraping. It's all what they do with your data. But if there is a positive side to that, it's that we will be able to see exactly when the spikes in online dating and hookup culture. Apparently there's already been like a big surge in people sending nudes to one another and online dating has surged already. So you can see that behaviour creeping in. This is going to be able to lead us to be able to document human sexual behaviour in a time of pandemic like never before. Do we include spousal and domestic abuse

where it's traced over into sexual assault? This is something we're hearing a lot about at the moment. Is this something that you've come across in historical record as well? It's difficult because when you're dealing with things like sexual assault, sexual violence is of course they happen, of course they did. But anybody who's researching that will know that it's a very, very difficult subject to research. Think for for example, of just today, how difficult it is for people to come forward and to talk about something that's happened and the difficulty in getting a conviction. And that's today with all of our sensitivities and awareness. For example, in the Middle Ages, if you made a report of rape, the woman would have to go and report it to effectively like the council of the village

elders, if that's not scary enough, having to stand there and say that. But the solution to it was almost always to marry the attacker. So why would you possibly report that? And then, of course, something else that happened is if you want to get married to somebody, but you know that your family don't approve of them, if you make that accusation, then you'll have to marry them. So the date is completely off the kilter. But we do have evidence for it, certainly. And in times of war and in times of violence, sexual violence does increase exponentially.

Just think of the Red Army marching on Berlin. Obviously, the violence on the battlefield, as it were, an advancing army, that's one thing. Why do we think sexual violence is intensified in the home during times of lockdown? Is it a feeling of the abusers feel that they can't control what's going around them and that becomes an act of perverted control? It seems to be. I mean, I'm not for one second suggesting that you or anybody who's watching this is a domestic abuser, but I think we can all know that it feels very stressful to be in this situation. Everybody's felt more stressed. Everybody's felt more emotional, more snapping. So it turns up the heat and the intensity on every single situation

that everybody is living in. And if you're living with a domestic abuser, that will increase as well. And domestic abuse is about control. So if you're suddenly in a situation where you don't have as much control as you thought you would, then it does increase. And there's also very, very solid research to show that domestic abuse increases around the time of pregnancy as well, because that's about not having control over the woman and maybe being jealous and those kind of feelings. So there are very strong factors that will influence it and can make it worse. And as we're seeing is that reports to women's refuges and shelter and domestic violence helplines have skyrocketed now. On a lighter note, we just got

a comment from Steve. I'll just call him Steve. How do they know when someone sends nudes? Question mark, exclamation mark. Steve, are you asking for a friend, buddy? They're monitoring everybody's text messages. That's not true. This research came out of the Kinsey Institute, where they are sampling people, they're surveying people. So it'll be somewhere in the data that they are asking those questions. They're not just checking up on you, Steve. Don't worry, they're surveying people. So it'll be somewhere in the data that they are asking those questions. They're not just checking up on you, Steve. Don't worry, you're safe. Steve, tell your friend, tell your friend everything's going to be OK.

You do a huge amount of advocacy work with sex workers as well. Looking back through history, quarantine presumably is an even more difficult time for them. It is. It absolutely is. So we'll start by saying that sex work is a hugely broad experience and it's very very complex there's lots of different people within it but the people that i work with and basis work with are the most vulnerable so they tend to present with things like homeless issues and addiction issues they engage in what's known as survival

sex work so they're kind of working to feed a habit and obviously because they could be recognized as self-employed but they haven't filed tax, so they can't get any money at all. So they're completely cut off. But the whole time, which is try and keep soldiers out of the brothels and away from women. And they did that by targeting the sex workers. For example, in America, the Rockefeller Foundation issued a $35,000 grant in 1914 to run an experiment in a Virginia town called Newport News. to run an experiment in a Virginia town called Newport News. And part of that meant rounding up and quarantining women suspected of sex work, where they were held indefinitely against their will until the end of the war. And what was that supposed to prove?

I'm sure that you know this, but just if anybody doesn't. So they started the First World War. And at the beginning of the war, for example, Kitchener, when all of our troops were going off, he put a little note into all of the soldiers' pay packets, which was on the correct conduct of the British soldier, which went on and on and on. And then it had this little bit about how you must stay away from wine and women. That was the advice. So in the beginning, everyone thought that was enough. We'll just tell the soldiers, please don't do that. And that will be fine. And then a couple of months in, STD levels rocketed. Now, if you get an STD, it's really no big deal. It's a few embarrassing phone

calls, some antibiotics. Yes, there are STDs that can be life changing, but we can deal with the majority of them. In 1914, if you got syphilis or gonorrhea, that would be four weeks in the hospital. And the treatment for it was regular scrubs with a wire brush and antiseptic and then filling the bladder full of antiseptic through the urethra. They do it for four weeks. So you're losing every man that this happens to for four weeks. He can't fight. It was like 10% of the armed forces they were losing. So then suddenly they have to come up with an idea of how the hell can we stop them doing this? And then it's really fraught between people that just think, well, we'll just ban them from having sex. And then other people that say, well, they're about to go to war.

Let them have sex. It's a real moral battlefield. And it was really divided between the Americans who went, right, we're going to go hardcore here. We're going to lock up anyone, lewd women. Any soldier who is caught with venereal disease will have his pay stopped. If he doesn't report having venereal disease, he can be court-martialed. And they did these public penis inspections designed to be really humiliating. And then along with that is they had the powers to arrest and quarantine any women suspected of sex work

and basically send them to re-education centres throughout the length of the war. And then there was the Germans who went, I know what we'll do, we'll be really practical. And they provided brothels and condoms and sex heads and all these kind of things. And then the Brits were in the middle going, la la la la la la la la la la la la, it's not happening. That's what we did. That sounds very British indeed. It's true that they had different brothels for the officers and the men,

which is also quite British. They did. They were called blue lamp brothels for the officers and red light brothels for the grunts, for everybody else. And the British had a really uneasy relationship with it because we didn't want to be seen to encouraging this, to be encouraging vice. But at the same time, we didn't want to say that they couldn't do that because they're about to go and die. And we knew it was good for morale. We were really

paralysed with inactivity. We didn't really know what to do. It wasn't until the final months of the war that we said that, right, British soldiers aren't allowed in French brothels anymore. We dallied for ages. We've got so much wonderful information on this from the 20th century. When you're going back to the Black Death, you must be clutching at straws, are you? Yeah, you don't want to say you're clutching at straws,

but what you'd have to say is that the resources are not as thorough and as complete as they are in the 20th century, not at all. But that doesn't mean that you don't have evidence. People were really meticulous records of what it was like to live through that. And you can kind of piece it all together. But there's no denying that the records are not as thorough as Germany kept on French brothels in the First World War. And so this is why you're encouraging everyone to take part in these modern surveys of sexual activity during because it's going to make your successors going to make their lives so much

easier oh it's so well just imagine that if we knew that stuff about the black death if we could get that detail from just every peasant locked inside what were they doing what were they thinking about what porn were they looking up and we don't have it you know were they just watching porn by tapestry or something we'll never know we'll never know well listen thank you very much for coming the podcast the book is called a curious history of sex it's a fantastic book thank you very much it was my pleasure I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand

if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating

and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the chance it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you