Oh What A Time... - #180 A History of Female Pleasure with Dr Kate Lister (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

**THIS EPISODE CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND THEMES OF AN ADULT NATURE**Our guest this week is British historian and author Dr Kate Lister who is here to discuss her new book ‘Flick’ which explores female pleasure throughout history; from Ancient Mesopotamian sex goddesses to the contraceptive pill.The book itself is fascinating and you can get it here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463104/flick-by-lister-dr-kate/9780857506436Elsewhere, our inbox this week has been rocked by the news that there are venomous sharks in the Thames! Can you blow our minds with any facts like that one? Please attempt it: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh Water Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the Oh Watertime group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. Hello and welcome to O-Watertime. Hello and welcome to Oh What a Time. This episode in particular has themes of asexual nature and also has the strongest language imaginable. If you listen with little kids, you might want to think again just for this week, I'm afraid. Yeah.

By which we mean just don't listen to it with little kids. Yeah. Really do mean that. And there is bad language, but it's all in a historical setting. We're not just angry. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you're not going to get me on that. I'm not going to get expelled from school.

No way, because I'm 45. This is not for the faint of heart. Hello and welcome to Oh, what a time. Welcome to this history podcast. And we have a special guest today, Dr. Kate Lister, who has a new book, Flick, a history of female pleasure. We'll be getting into that. But I'm going to talk about my own pleasure just quickly.

Non-sexual. I'll be the judge of that. My coffee machine broke last week. I was immediately taken back to essentially the Stone Age. Okay. Losing the ability to. to make a coffee in their own home, having to walk up to Greg's, get a coffee from their machine instead of my own house.

Having gone from not liking coffee a year ago, a year into my coffee addiction. Chris, I love this. I can't imagine life. I'm not sure this is the tear-jurking story you think listeners. You've been on such a journey and I love it. I love it. Are you into posh mugs yet? No, not posh muck.

I haven't even, no, just regular old mugs. Do I need a posh mug? He needs to get into posh mugs. Yeah. And then it just completes the occasion. But Chris, at least you went to somewhere famous for its coffee in Greggs. I went for proximity, Tom. Your point is you're basically having to live as our forefathers did and you're not liking it.

It was suddenly like losing central heating and having to make a fire. Yeah. It was that level of like retrograde. It felt like I went way back in time. Well, when I went on my medieval coffee talk, Hall of London and I was made coffee to 1600s specs. And it had mustard and cracked eggshell in it and black pepper and all sorts. It was absolutely disgusting.

Can I stop you there, Elle? Have you ever got a coffee from Gregs? I think they may have stolen the recipe. Crushed eggshell. It was horrific. Yeah. Well, Chris, I'm very sorry for that. It was bad.

It's not massively resonating with me, is it? It's the story of sort of heartache and woe, but still, nonetheless. Do we should do? Me and you, because obviously Tom can't drink coffee, so mixed amongst us. Me and Chris, we should go to a lovely coffee shop, and we should go drink for drink with each other. First person to shit himself wins. I don't know what point is proving.

It'd just be a great day. I don't know who is the bigger loser in that story. Me who hasn't been invited because I get anxiety or you two, one of whom is going to soil himself in a Costa. We'll both soil themselves. It's just a race to the bottom. Yeah, yeah, you could come and drink water and watch us. That's going. I might be busy, I think.

Welcome to a special, as Chris said. Today we have Dr. Kate Lister. She has a fantastic book out called Flick it we'll be talking about on today's show. Before that, though... It's on May the 28th. May the 28th. Before that, though,

we are going to plunge, head first into some correspondence as we always do, because your emails are always wonderful. So we must do that right now. This email, it's a familiar theme, cropping up again.

This is the second week in a row this theme has come up. Oh, it is Sharks. Sharks again. I thought you're going to say it was another o'clock shame than I've got some historical factor on. You can have a breather for a week.

Tamara Palmer says, Sharks in the Thames, fire bloke, Tamara here from... Thames? Yes. I know, this is the one river I didn't want to read about as a Londoner. Tamara here from Darwin, Australia, where we can't swim in the ocean because of the crocs. Just letting you know, there's a species of shark in the Thames that is venomous.

I mean, this feels like it's made up, but remarkably it's not. So just thought, I'd blow your mind a little more about our finned friends. Continue the great work. I love the pod. It says here, venomous sharks exist in the River Thames estuary, according to the Zoological Society of London ZSL. The spur dog, which is a spiny dogfish, is a small shark species found in the Thames that has venomous spines on his dorsal fins.

I didn't even know that was an option. Come on. I thought it was just sharks were like very teeth-based in their sort of aggression. Yeah. Their attacks. You don't know how to poison into the mix, do you? Poison fins.

Are you kidding? They are part of a recovering ecosystem that includes other shark species like tope, which you might be pronouncing wrong, and starry smooth hound. Key details about the venomous sharks in the Thames. The venomous species, the spur dog is the venomous species featuring spines in front of their dorsal fins

that can cause significant pain and swelling in humans, although they are generally not deadly to people. They are found in the wider Thames estuary, but they generally inhabit the saltwater parts of the river rather than freshwater areas in central London. The big question here, why are they there? Now, I'm normally all four sort of, you know, doing our bit to preserve the planet,

but improved walker quality and a healthier river ecosystem has allowed these sharks to return to the area. I've never been more... I will be poisoning the Thames tonight. Getting ten shopping trolleys. Yeah. Listeners currently walking down the Thames going,

you know what, it's not dirty enough actually. Exactly. So much so that it now serves as a nursery and breeding ground for these sharks. So there's poisonous sharks in the Thames swimming around. Should you ever go for a paddle? Watch your feet.

You could get spiked. I had no idea. That feels like it's in the world of Shark Nado or all the sort of things, poisoned sharks, isn't it? It feels like one of those B-movie movies. They can grow as long as six foot. Yeah. Wow.

So they're big sods. And they have poisoned fins. No, thank you. I mean, I wasn't swimming in the Thames much. But still, that has put the fear of God in me. Yeah, you must you fall into the Thames because you've had a drink, then you get bitten by a poisonous shark and you're like, can my day get any worse?

A cup of coffee will pick up my spirits down it, a taste of eggshell. Thank you very much for sending that in tomorrow. I will avoid the terms like the plague now. And if any of you have anything you want to scare me with, here's how you're getting contact with the show. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show.

show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. Well, this show is also available on Patreon if you want to get a couple of bonus episodes every month, but also there is another bonus as part of the patron.com 4 slash oh what a time, all-timer tier, we will figure out where in history your name may have been. And up this week, gentlemen, it's Mr. John Orton. First buying Yorkshire to own a bike. Let's delve into this Ellis,

to walk me through it. How did he get it? What does he look like? Where's he taking it? Yeah. He'd gone to Paris on holiday, had seen someone on a bicycle, inquired about it, thought, what is this witchcraft? Bought one. Learned to ride it on the ferry home.

Doing laps of the ferry. Then he cycled up to Yorkshire and it made him, he was the quickest baker's boy, like delivering bread in all of Yorkshire because he was the only one with the bike. He was mayor within a week. People were so impressed. It was a local town. Huge thighs.

And lived until he was 106 and he was cycling it to the very end. And he was buried on his bike, I think, lying on his side. It's like he was riding it. Proper bone crusher, zero suspension. Wheels were really hard. John Orton Have you heard about John Orton on dual wheel flying machine?

I think you are I think you're definitely right Mine I'll just chuck it in was someone who basically came up with the same idea of the internet at the same time as the guy who invented it was his name Tim Berners-Lee

But basically Tim Berners-Lee is the one that took off Yeah he's the bit of max of the internet Exactly It was essentially the internet But it didn't really It never took off Yeah There you go

Thank you John for subscribing And if you would like to have your name postulated upon, here's how you can join us on Patreon. Hello again, you are of a lot, enjoying the show. Well, why not show the love by becoming a Patreon supported today? For a mere handful of farthings, you can get ad-free shows, two bonus subscriber episodes each month, access to all the past bonus eps,

first dibs on live tickets and even help decide what subjects the boys cover next. Your support makes everything possible, so sign up today at patreon.com slash oh what's the time or oh what's the time.com. What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling! Okay, here we go. This is Dr Kate Lister talking about her new book, Flick, a history of female pleasure, get ready for 2,000 years of female sexual history.

I'm delighted to say we are joined today by Dr. Kate Lister, who is a historian, the host of the brilliant award-winning podcast, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal and Society, and also, crucially, the author of a brilliant new book, genuinely brilliant. I've finished it this morning. It's called Flick, A History of Female Pleasure, and I love this book so much, Kate. You've done a fantastic job.

Also, on the back, it has one of my favourite ever quotes on the back of a book, which is Meet the Women Throughout History, who quite literally came before us. I was quite proud of that. Well, it's in big text. You can see why. Absolutely. So, Kate, do you want to start by telling us about this book where the idea came from and basically what people were getting if they pick it up? So I think this book was born out of, like, everyone's got their bug bears, things that really, really irritate.

Well, one of my many bug bears is this idea that, that men enjoy sex more than women do, or that men have higher sex drives than women do, and that this kind of idea that, you know, boys will be boys, or that women somehow go off sex. And it annoys me so much because it's not borne out by any of the evidence,

and it's not true. But what is true is a lot of heterosexual women are having shit sex. And it really irritates me that we've got this narrative that's emerged, that women don't enjoy sex as much as men do. And then we stop interrogating it. But what if it's,

what if it's because they're having bad sex? Yeah. Why is that the narrative? Women just don't enjoy it as much as men. Well, do it better then. Because I read your pieces in the eye, in the eye paper. And this is quite a common theme in your columns. Do talk about other things.

You just read it and you go, Kate Lister's never been laid properly ever. Does it feel like in your academic life that you've, be leading up to writing a book like this? Yeah, it does actually. It does. It's sort of a culmination of things that I've been researching and looking into for a very, very, very long time. I've been researching the history of sex for like 20 years now,

but it's an inexhaustible subject. It just goes on and on and on and on and on. But particularly how women have understood and experienced sex, and I'm really passionate about joining up the conversation. So it's not just things that happened in the past, things that old-timey people did, but stuff that we're still living with and trying to unpick and unpack today. Yeah. That's amazing, actually. One of the points of this book is that so many of these poisonous themes that have existed about male power and all this

sort of stuff have existed for so long. You can't get your head around how even, you know, within the last 50 years, far more recent than that, these things that have been issues way back in ancient Greece, Rome still exist today. And that's just what's amazing. These things haven't No, it's weird, isn't it? Like, especially when you're researching something as far back. I mean, the book sort of start, well, the book starts like 300 million years ago, and then it does a big jump forward. But even like the earliest writing in Greece and earlier than that,

you're looking at it and going, this feels eerily fucking familiar here. This is, like, when the ancient Greeks are going on about how women are too emotional to be trusted with anything sensible and that men are stoic and that men shouldn't show their emotions and that men need to be the ones in charge. You're reading it going, this is, what? There's thousands of years old and we're still living with. You can just flip onto a men's right podcaster and it's like basically the same thing that he's saying, only not as eloquently.

One thing you mentioned, talked about heterosexual women having bad sex. There's a stat you give in the book around like lesbian women have the highest percentage of orgasms of any woman. Yes. Yeah. So that was a piece of research. There's been a lot of research in this. It was published in the Archives of Sexion. behaviour in 2017, and they were looking at orgasm frequency

in different social demographic groups, particularly around sexuality. And they found that, do you want to guess how often heterosexual men are orgasming? It was something like, 88% wasn't it? Something like that was 96%. 96% of the time of furious. I know, well done. Well fucking done, last. And then it starts to drop quite significant.

Part of the 4% though, Kay, unfortunately. That's what's heartbreaking. I've never worked a how. And then gay men, I think, I mean, it's like 80, 88%. And then it's lesbian women who are 86% in the time. They get an orgasm. And heterosexual women are right down there at the bottom, 65% of the time. So heterosexual men get to get their marbles cracked, 96%.

and heterosexual women are trailing behind at 65%. Is that the first time that kind of research has been done? Or that question has been asked? It's, the field of sexuality, it's been studied, well, it's been, so for a very long time, but it became sort of like a proper field of study. Late 19th century with the early sexologists, but it never, it always kind of had this like,

teahee-he-he, like sort of reputation around it. It's really only become established as an actual proper field of science. inquiry within the last 50 years or so. Right. Wow. And there have been lots of research into orgasm frequency and into what people are doing in bed with one another. And more needs to be done still.

Because it was the kind of thing you'd read about in things like More magazine. Remember that in the 1990s? More magazine. What was that? Yeah, it was when I was a teenager, the girls used to read More magazine. Yeah. The boys used to read 4-4-2. shoots.

And there was such different reads. My mum used to read Woman's Own. That wasn't in there. But Woman's Own used to be stories like, my son was eaten by a crab. Just like total horror, cover to cover. I've got a ghost in my womb. Well, were the magazines still going?

Historians will study those in years to come. They'll be a treasure trove. So, Kate, the ancient Greeks. Let's go back to the ancient Greeks. One thing that's stuck out from me, And I think it is them. I think I've chosen the right group. The Wandering Womb is one of the early bonkers ideas

that I could not get my head around. But it was a real belief, is that right? Let's start with that. And also broader, the ancient Greeks in general, what were their attitudes to sex like generally? Great if you're a man. You're having a smashing time. I mean, not all men, enslaved men, no.

Gay men, that was a bit iffy as well in Greece. but straight men who wanted to have babies, you're having an absolute whale of a time. The wandering womb theory was, so they, I don't know where to begin with it, basically they believed that all causes of ill health and women were caused by the womb, right? That all causes of upset, emotional distress

and physical and mental unwellness were caused by the womb in women. And they believed quite seriously that it moved around the body and that this was what caused ailments. So if you had a headache, it could be that your womb has wandered up to your head. If you have heartburn, that could be your womb.

And so they really thought that this was the epicenter, the cause of all ill health. That feels quite a lazy approach to sort of... If your answer is always, yeah, the womb's move. It's still the womb. It's very easy Greek medical exams. It just answered womb for everything and then you're fine. But this actually stayed with us for a really long time.

And we're still living in the legacy of it today when you think about how women are still characterised as being more overly emotional and that we do still have that link to women's physicality to, like, you know, every woman has heard the time of the month love, that, you know, that you're being emotional and that is linked somehow to your body.

That is an ancient Greek idea. It's been around that long. But yeah, they really did think that the wound around messing stuff up. And then more generally for women in ancient Greece, what was the experience of sex in ancient Greece for heterosexual women? I mean, it depends who you were.

I mean, generally the idea was it's to have babies. That was the idea. And a lot of this is, see, the problem is getting to the real experience of people because we just don't have those sources available. What we have is medical texts, legal texts, stories, but they're all written by men about women. So they're a bit difficult to get into. Then there's Sappho, obviously, lesbian.

But again, we know so little about her. But sex was, they believe that women were more highly sex than men. And that was actually with us until the 19th century, this belief. And it was stemmed in this idea that women were more emotional than men were. So of course they were more highly sexed. They couldn't control themselves. So men needed to step in and do the controlling. So they had this idea that women were more lusty than men were,

that they needed to be controlled and needed to be controlled through marriage as well. I was going to ask about this actually because I didn't know what the book was about until I was sent it. So when I saw that it was called Flick History of Female Pleasure, I thought to myself, before I read the book, I thought, how do you go about your source material and how do you research something like this? So can you talk to us about the process of beginning the book from scratch and think to say, right, where do I start and how do I prove the theories that I have?

So what I really wanted to do is I wanted to tell the story from women's point of view. That was what I really wanted to do. And then every historian who ever says they're going to do that discovers the same thing, which is you go charging in going, I'm going to tell women in their own voices. And then you go, no, I'm not. They're not there. They're just, the sources just, they aren't there.

And you kind of left to sort of like piece things together. And you've got a lot of sources that are ventriloquizing women, basically, or they're writing about women. They're obsessing about women. And they're useful because you can piece things together. But you've also got to be really careful. with the sources. I mean like if it was 5,000 years from now and people found, you know, like the remnants of a porn mag somewhere in a hedge and tried to piece together our sexuality

by understanding that, it's like you're going to end up somewhere really weird with it. So you've always got to try and take it with a pinch of salt. But it's sort of putting everything together and forming your best estimation really. It gets much easier as we're moving through time. then you get loads of sauces, and then that's brilliant. There are some artefacts, though, that exists. One thing that sticks out is the Vindalanda Fallas, which is... Unless I'm mistaken, like an early dildo, is that right?

It's like a Roman dildo, made of wood, which panics me for some reason. Is it not the earliest dildo? Oh, it's a doorstop. It's not a dilder, for God's sake. It's a paperweight at worst. They thought it was a downing tool for the longest time. Oh, did they? It was excavated at the site of Indaland and I think it was the 80s or 90s

and they just labelled it downing tool so something to help people men socks I guess and then it was really recent it was things in 2023 that two archaeologists Rob Collins and another Robb, two robs decided they took another look at it and they went that doesn't look like a downing tool to me and it does look like a big cock

but because they're serious academics they weren't going to go because it really looks like a cock and that's worth to Dilto. So they subjected it to loads of studies. The end does look, it has a sort of head, a penis head. It's got blams. Yep, it tapers. And the shaft of it is very smooth as if it has been used. Yes, like all of my door stops, it's exactly.

And they pointed out that the end of it, not the penis, a head end, but the other end is kind of like round. So it wouldn't have been able to stand up on anything. So it's not decorative. How old do they think this is, by the way? That's second century. Second century, wow. So a couple of thousand years old.

And if it is a dildo, then that is probably the oldest example of a dildo. We've got fallacies that are older than that. And that's when it gets really murky, especially in museums with archivists, who they don't really know what this stuff is. Like there was a phallus that was found in Germany, and it's 36,000 years old. Wow. It's roughly cock-shaped as well.

It's made a stone. But it's got like marks on it that they think were made by flints. So it's like they'd cut flints on it, flint rock. So it might have just been like a novelty flint rocker or something. But they don't know what it is. Wasn't that sort of stuff often to do with crops and renewal and all that sort of thing? Possibly. Or was that a misunderstanding on my part?

No. No. Your guess is as good as anyone with this stuff. We don't know. Like what did our ancestors see? when they saw that. Was it funny? Was it novelty?

Was it something really serious? Was it interior decor for them? Was it like what was it? Those are the bits that we can't really get hold of. But we know that there is a lot of fallacies in Paleolithic art. They seem to favour a big erection. That seems to crop up quite a lot. And when we do start to get more written sources,

yeah, penises are generally associated with fertility, rebirth and renewal. So just one more question about the Romans, because you mentioned Caesar in it as well, obviously those in power and their relationship with sex being very particular to their position. What would it have been like? How debauched were the lives of the emperors and the people around them at that time? What were in Roman society? Right. Well, would it surprise you to know that very, very rich and powerful people get to do a lot of what they want to do?

No shit. And other people aren't really allowed to do that. Caesar was an absolute dirtbag, Julius Caesar. Like, even by Roman emperor standards, he was notorious for it. There's like a list that historians write about all of his friend's wives that he shagged. It was one of his moves was to shag his friend's wives and shag his enemies' wives as well. As a kind of, fuck you. And apparently his troops used to sing songs about him being the bold adulterer

because he was really sensitive that his hair was falling out. But he was known as this great adulterer. And yeah, if it stayed still long enough, he would. would shag it. It's amazing he was able to get anyone to come to his parties. It's stunning. But he's the emperor, isn't he? It's like, what are you going to do if you get the invitation drops from Julius Caesar?

Darling, we've been invited for a party. Shit. Before we wander too much into the rest of the book and the history of female pleasure, we wonder if we could ask a few of our settling questions. So we ask these of all the historian guests we have on the podcast. The first one is, Kate, I gave you the option to go anywhere in history for a single day in a one-day time machine, you can pop in and pop out, and you could be a ghost, you could just witness stuff, or you could

actually partake in the action, where would you go and why? Oh, I can change stuff. Oh, well, right, okay. You can change stuff, or you can just observe stuff. Most people choose to be sort of a bit of voyeur, not in a creepy way, but they tend to sort of just to watch rather than sort of, I mean, there's also the coffee table option where you just go back as a coffee table and you're there just sort of watching it for 24 hours and when you come back.

I'd feel a lot of responsibility there. I'd probably go to Sarajevo 28th of June 1914 and try and stop the Archduke from being assassinated, which would be insanely easy because his assassins were a group of teenage lads. He'd got themselves all riled up about Bosnian independence. And they tried to bump him off earlier in the day. And they fucked it up. It went wrong, right?

There were a bunch of teenagers. No way. Yeah, and then Franz Ferdinand, he went to the hospital, he kind of got checked over, and then for reasons no one just stands, he went out again in his motorcade open top car. He's just been shot at, why would you do that? And then they took a wrong turn, and by sheer accident, one of the assassins, his name was Prince, was stood there eating a sandwich, and he happened to have his gun with him, and he just pulled it out, and he went, oh, fuck, it's you, and he's shot him.

So, well, how are you going to break it up, though? Are you going to try and advise the Duke? No, I didn't have to do that. I just have to offer Prince of a Sam. sandwich and get him away from... That's all I have to do. It's just all like give them different directions. All like something.

It would have been so easy to avoid. And then if that hadn't happened, the First World War wouldn't have happened. No Treaty of Versa. No Treaty of Versa. No Second World War. No Second World War. No Hitler maybe.

Wouldn't have happened. Like what would the... No Spanish flu. I mean, it's got to be... No hyperinflation. Right? It's got to be 200 million lives saved. So who we lay the blame on? The nurses or the hot...

The hospital porters that let him out, let him out. Is that what we're saying? The blood of millions of people is on the hands. There's a few people who are... That's a really bad day. The orderly, yeah. There's a few people who were sort of in the frame for it, but obviously they didn't know what they were doing.

There was one of them who didn't get the instructions that the directions had changed, and he was following the wrong route. So it might be him. But yeah, it was just sheer just if they hadn't taken that wrong term. He sounds like a real optimist, Archduke Frans Ferdinand, doesn't mean. He's shot up once. She's like, do you know what?

I'm going to do the open top motor kid. That's a nice day. What's that saying? Lightning doesn't strike twice. I think I'll be all right. Good answer. Our next question is, do you have any famous historical relatives? No, I don't.

People ask me all the time if I'm related to Ann Lister, the lesbian landowner from Halifax in the early 19th century. And I'm not. Someone did the genealogy. and I think my ancestors were actually working in her pits at the time. Price enough. Yeah. And then some people think I might be related to the guy who invented,

is it, penicillin Joseph Lister. But no, I'm not related to anybody famous at all. In fact, my brother did one of those ancestry DNA tests, and it came back as 99.9% Northern English. Yes, I did. Like, there's nothing interesting. 100% West Wales. 100%.

The map is hilarious. basically stretches from commandant to a brown to Braswit and it's a dark green and the rest is... The heat map is embarrassing. I was hoping something might be something a little bit interesting in there but no.

Well I got... They changed mine. The first time I did it it was 98% West Wales 1% Swedish, 1% Portuguese. Oh wow. And I thought the 1% Portuguese maybe the Iberian Peninsula the Celts might have come from there and I thought you know the Vikings

ended up in West Woffer, it might be that. And then they sent me an email about a week later saying, oh, no, we've had another look. Oh, Rob. It's a 1% error of margin. Yeah. One more settling question before we come back to the book. You've mentioned the Vindalanda Fallas.

Another question we ask is if you could own any historical artefact, literally anything, and have it in your house, what would it be? Real or fictional? Dealers choice. Good question. Whatever you think. Now I want to know what your answer is for both.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I want that necklace, that lunatic on the Titanic through into the water. And I want it. Old Rose. Fucking Rose. And I want it so I can beat her around their head with it. Oh, it makes me so angry. We're told that that necklace came from Louis XVI before the Revolution.

And it survived the Titanic. That would make it the single most important historical. artefact of all time and that maniac threw it in the ocean. Why? Is it called the heart of the ocean? What is it called? It's called the heart of the ocean. And we're told it's worth more than the Hope Diamond. So that's about 300 to 400 million quid. And she kept it with her the entire fucking time, didn't she? She was married. She had children. She had grandchildren. She has a full-time granddaughter carer. Did she give it to her? No.

She's already refused to budge off that massive piece of wood. and save her part. Selfish. Selfish. Absolutely not moving. I get an, and that poor guy on his salvage expedition is going to get sued now because she dies on board his ship.

He's never going to know. He's never going to know that she had that thing the whole time. His career's over. Sell it. The money could do good. It can help people. It's quite right, yeah. Thank you.

So that, I'd have to have that one. I can't even watch that film. I get so angry about it. Well, we'll calm you down by returning to your book. to your happy place, your safe place, which is the history of female pleasure. Let's move to the medieval period now. You mentioned there's a lot of erotic stories written during that time,

depending who's reading it, whether you experience is erotic or not, I suppose. One is the mourner that fucked at the gravesite, which is one that stuck out for me. But in general, am I right in thinking this was kind of a time where pleasure from sex came to be seen as a bit wicked, a bit wrong? It's a weird time, wasn't it, the medieval?

It's quite complicated. Do you want to sort of take us through this period in Europe and the journey of it, basically? It's very complicated. I mean, the first thing you need to know about the medieval period is 1,000 years of history. So it's a huge, huge chunk. So looking at sexual attitudes contain within that is going to, I mean, think how much sexual attitudes have changed within like the last 20 years, let alone. Yes, yeah.

A thousand years. But you do some really interesting things going off in the Middle Ages. Now, they weren't as prudish as you might think that they were. In fact, they seemed to have had quite a healthy, open attitude to sex. It doesn't seem to have shocked them in quite the same ways as it did the Victorians or even into the early modern period. Now, they had their own hang-ups. They absolutely did.

But they were also, like, they would name their streets, things like shitting lane and pissing alley and broke-cuntz lane. And so there was sort of an earthiness and an honesty about them. And generally historians think, and it wasn't just them, but it's because most people would have been sharing space with a lot of other people. Unless you were very rich. Yeah, which is something, which is fascinating.

I hadn't thought about that. And it comes up in your book, the fact there have been so many people sharing often with your neighbours, let alone your family. So how is that affecting your sex life? How are you doing? When are you doing it? I tell you one thing, it would really adversely affect mine.

It would, mine would come to. an end. You write the book, Kay, like, in a typical medieval household are all in the same space, you put at your one point, they're all going to watch each other urinating, shitting, and ultimately, you know, fucking as well. This is, that's one of the most haunting, disturbing images

you can see your parents having sex. And everyone in the middle of medieval age was essentially witnessing that. I'm just thinking about our neighbourhood WhatsApp group. I'm like, it tends to be about which bins are going out and when. Not about how long Ellis last in. Yeah, yeah. They weren't doing it on the coffee table probably.

Maybe some of them were. But, like, you know, there's some privacy, I guess, in that you might have, like, you know, a little corner that you go off to. But this is people living together in one space. So you would have been aware of that. But what privacy is a corner offering? Well, exactly, right? But essentially, are that people would have been aware of the fact you're having sex,

even if they weren't watching their hearing it, I'm guessing. Yeah. So, like, you get in the medieval records, like, sort of, descriptions of people going to find places to have sex. And the only thing that I've been able to sort of mentally liking this to is like when you were a young teenager trying to get off with someone, you didn't want your parents to know, like, where would you have gone to do that? They go and you get descriptions of people like shagging in graveyards.

Yeah, yeah. That crops up in France, things like that. Inside churches as well, like just trying to find somewhere to go. I was very, very pleased to see reference the Welsh poet Guelphilm. Legend. And it reminded me of Wales, the Welsh language's most famous medieval poet is a guy called David Upgwillim,

who was probably our chaucer. So I've got a book of his poetry. It might be up there actually, but canny Masweather, that'd be in English, erotic poetry. So he's, in terms of his impact on Welsh literature, he's, you know, he is our chaucer, our Shakespeare.

But an awful lot of it is very sexual. Yeah. And it's very, very explicit. Yeah. And I'd never heard of Guelmeich, to my great shame. But she was writing bawdy verse. She was writing incredibly bawdy verse. And it seems that she was very much within a tradition at the time.

It doesn't seem that anyone was pointing at her and thinking that it was particularly unusual that she was doing that. Like I said, the medieval people. Well, they had it in other languages. So the French would do this as well. Exactly. But the Welsh apparently it's dirty than the French stuff. Yes.

The wealth are absolute filth-facts. It has to be said. And Guirful is extremely good at it. She writes, one of her most famous poems is it's called, also often called Ode to Pubic Hair or Ode to a Vagina, or sometimes it's called Ode to Cunt. And what she's doing is she's taking male poets to task because male poets will spend ages talking about how beautiful women's faces

or how much they like her hair, when actually we all know what you really want to get into is that. So she writes like this really boring. verse about how like we should all just be celebrating Quim, she calls it, and about, you know, that it has a fine curtain that flaps in place of greeting and it's really like visceral stuff. And she's...

Who's reading this and where is it being performed? What's what we think, we don't know? It almost certainly would have been performed. Wales were very big on oral performing traditions. Hugely so, yeah. But also, literacy rates weren't great at this period. so most poetry would have been performed and would have been read out.

But if you were a poet, you were extremely respected in Welsh society. And they're still extremely respected in Welsh language society. They're on a real pedestal. It'd be quite surprising. I just imagine going, let's go. Let's have a nice evening of poetry sitting down first poem, O to Cun. Okay, all right. I've misjudged what this was going to be.

It would be weird today. It's the PTA meeting. It's a fundraiser, for God's sake. You brought your parents with you. It's weird today, but that shows us how much sexual norms have shifted because it wouldn't have been weird to them. So they clearly had an attitude where that kind of poem is it's obviously meant to be funny and entertaining and witty.

But they have a culture where that's permissible to laugh at and to talk about. You also interesting touch on the fact that actually the sort of sexualised language and rude words didn't have the same value of due today. Actually, anything that would be blasphemic would be an issue. Is that right? But actually, a lot of these words were just part of general pattern. Exactly, yeah. So the word cunt even turns up in medical texts of the time.

That's how just every day it was to them. Piss, shit. There was a translation of the Bible in the medieval. The guy put the word bollocks in there as well. Just didn't think anything like because these words didn't carry offence. They had their own hang up. Like they have their own, you know, like, let's not be too crazy about this. But those words were just descriptive to them.

But a word that would have offended people in the medieval period was anything that blasphemed. So if you said God, God damn, anything like that, if you took the Lord's name in vain, then you could get in a lot of trouble. And we see in the early modern period, which is sort of like the 15th century moving towards the 18th century, that what is offensive starts to change. Because now our most offensive swear words, actually, I think we're in another state of change. Our most offensive swear words are now relating to race, whereas for the longest time, they were body parts relating to sex. And they're starting now to just lose their power.

Although if you say the word come to an American, they still might get quite upset. That's the end of part one of Flick, a history of female pleasure. If you want part two, you can get it right now via Patreon or via subscribing. on Apple. Otherwise, we'll see you on Wednesday for part two. Goodbye. Bye. Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh, What a Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh Water Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name

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