Woman's Hour - Chivalry, Sex, 90s Teenagers

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

Is chivalry dead? What is chivalry these days? Is it picking up the bill and opening a door? Is it just up to men or should women be chivalrous too? Podcaster and writer Tolly Shoneye talks about it with Amanda who's dating now. “To say that humans have overthought sex is something of an understatement.” That's according to Dr Kate Lister, a university lecturer who set up the Whore of Yore project in 2015. It tried to start a conversation about the history of sex. Her latest book is called A Curious History of Sex and in it she explores the strange and baffling things human beings have done over the centuries in pursuit and denial of sex.Sexual violence in literature: do we need to find the right language to talk about it properly? And how can reading classic novels like Samuel Richardson’s 18th century, ‘Pamela’, help us understand issues of consent better? Professor Rebecca Bullard and crime writer, Val McDermid join me to discuss.Were you a teenager in the 90s? Went to raves and house parties? We've been delving into archives of the The Museum of Youth Culture. They've got a touring exhibition called “Grown Up in Britain” which is showcasing objects from teenage culture through the decades. Today we hear from Molly, who was part of the party scene in 90s London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 14th of February. Good morning. On Valentine's Day we discuss chivalry and research which suggests it's dead. Why might a bunch of flowers pulling out a woman's chair or opening a door for her be considered two-dated for a 21st century date? As the Weinstein trial continues and Radio 4 broadcasts equal as we are, a thousand years of not listening, how do we find a language for sexual violence that is neither frightening nor titillating? We look to the literature of the 18th century and the modern crime novel. And the next in our series of teenage girls today, it's Molly, who in the 90s was out in London's free party scene. In the introduction to a book called A Curious History of Sex,

Dr Kate Lister writes, to say that humans have overthought sex is something of an understatement. She's a lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University who set up a project called The Whore of Yore in 2015. Kate, we'll talk about the curious history of sex in a minute. What is The Whore of Yore project? It's a very good question and it's one I ask myself quite regularly. I'd love to tell you that it was a well thought out and executed project but the truth of it is that I was sat researching medieval sex trade and I found the name of a woman that had been arrested called

Clarice Clatterbollocks from the 13th century and I thought that was so funny I wanted to tweet about it and so I needed to set up an account and I realised that whore rhymes with and I thought that was so funny I wanted to tweet about it and so I needed to set up an account and I realised that whore rhymes with yore and that was that and then it kind of took on a life of its own and I really I love just tweeting out the little bits I'm researching little anecdotes and history and then the feed started to grow and grow and more and more and it was largely very positive and the word whore that I used, I used it to kind of mean sort of transgressive sexuality. And I think, unfortunately, most women have been called that by someone at some point, whether it's yelled at them from a van or something worse.

But it was the sex worker community that kind of came and spoke to me about it and said, questioned my use of the word. And that for me, although I think it's kind of sort of maybe slightly antiquated and I knew what I was trying to do with it, but for them, it's a real term of abuse. So they were questioning my use of it. And that's completely fair. And they, that dialogue actually made me much more aware of what I was doing is it wasn't just kind of funny jolly japes and silly names it actually was affecting people today and that's something that's been really important to me so it started off as me finding about Clarice Clatterbollocks in London in the 13th century

and it ended up with me being really passionate about history, history of sex and how that's used to frame debates today and why that's important. And so we have The Curious History of Sex. Now, there's so much to examine in this book. How did you choose the subjects you included? So, yeah, so it's a smash and grab, I suppose. Do you know what it is? I suppose it's the things that have appealed to me

and the things that I've really wanted to talk about. So there's a chapter on the Victorians and the vibrators. And I really wanted to talk about that because there's this persistent myth that they invented the vibrators to cure hysteria and they didn't. I wanted to talk about smelling sexy in the Middle Ages because I teach medieval literature and every year the students make some assumption that everyone in the Middle Ages smelled really bad. so I'm forever correcting that and I wanted to write about that and I really wanted to write about language the history of language and about genitals and about the sex trade so it's things that strike me as being particularly pertinent important today. So if it wasn't the Victorians who invented the vibrator who did, no. So this is a very much beloved myth

and there's been films made about it. But the Victorians invented what you'd call a vibrator, but it was a massager. The first one that was invented was in the sort of mid to late 19th century by a guy called Granville. And he called it a hammer. And basically what it is,

is it kind of looks like a dead weight on the end of a long string that you would bang against someone's body. He called it percussing. You see, so it's not a vibrator that we would think of as a vibrator. And it's definitely not something you would put near your genitals ever. Now, the clitoris features largely. Maybe that's not the right word to use.

That's exactly the right word. Because there was fear of one that may be too large. Why? So all throughout history, the clitoris has been subject to a lot of misunderstanding and over-medicalisation. But this fear that a woman's clitoris could get too large goes right back to the ancient world and you come across all these horrendous accounts in sort of ancient egypt and greece and rome about cutting it out when it gets to i know i'm really sorry everybody um but yes cutting it out when it gets too big the idea is that it would curb sexual desire and uh contain lesbianism actually that crops up a lot as well i think it's the this really bizarre fear that it would get

too big and turn into a penis somehow or that they were becoming more masculine and male-like so you get these horrendous descriptions of operations and I'd love to tell you that ended in the ancient world but we're still doing it in Britain in the 19th century and of course FGM around the world today is still very much tied up with this idea of sexual purity. So yeah, so this idea of cutting out clitorises, mutilating vulvas to try and curtail sexuality has a really long and ugly history. Why did Renaissance man think he discovered it? That's possibly the most champion act of mansplaining in the whole of human history was two renaissance anatomists in 1559 both said that they discovered the clitoris so one was gabriel fallopio of fallopian tube fame and the other one

was called colombo rialdo not colombo like the detective but it's just amazing that the person who thought they discovered and detected it is actually colombo um but they both thought that they had discovered it independently of one another and then when they realised the other one had written about it, they got really snotty and said that they must have stolen their work. But their work is just all, I can't believe that no one's ever discovered this before. This is an amazing discovery. How's nobody found this before?

And it's just, oh, yeah, you can just imagine all the women just sat there just going, um, but no one asked them. So, yeah, and then it was re-rediscovered 100 years later by another anatomist. And it's just kind of the conversation was never joined up. So you just get this rediscovery of the clitoris throughout the Renaissance. How long has the vaginal versus the clitoral orgasm discussion been going? It's still going on now, actually.

If you... Be careful when you Google it and clear your history afterwards. But you can Google clitoral and vaginal orgasms, and there is still advice on it today. And that's caught up with the same thing. It was... So this idea that a clitoral orgasm isn't as good or proper, in inverted commas, as a vaginal orgasm, that... It's been around for a long time, but I think we can probably lay quite a lot of the blame at freud's door for this one he said

that a clitoral orgasm was immature that the only sexually mature orgasm a woman should have was vaginal so that basically means with a penis doesn't it so it's that's what this is all kind of built around is that you're suggesting that that there's not a penis involved, that you're not doing it properly, is what it is. And that was still doing the rounds in the 1950s, when the definition of a woman being sexually frigid was that she couldn't orgasm through penetrative sex. And it's had really horrendous consequences. Princess Marie Bonaparte, who was the great, great grandniece of Napoleon Bonaparte, she was one of Freud's patients, and she became obsessed with the idea that she needed

to have a vaginal orgasm. And she got this idea that she couldn't orgasm because her clitoris was too far away from the vaginal opening. So she paid somebody to remove it and reattach it near the vaginal opening three times. Sorry.

That is too horrific to even think about. Valentine's Day today. And you do write about aphrodisiac foods. So what's the truth about the oyster? Well, the oyster has got a long reputation as being the food of love and aphrodisiac. It's got associations with Aphroditeite and it's even kind of medical literature they're talking about it that it can inspire lust in the middle ages the truth of it is that it doesn't there's been research done on this and there's no reason whatsoever why an oyster would turn you on any more than a fish finger for example but they are very very good for you and they've got very high levels of all kinds of vitamins

and minerals they won't do you any damage but no they're not they're not sex sexy time they're not aphrodisiac they're not aphrodisiacs no there's a fascinating section about someone called bishop birchard of worms yes worms as one might read it in an English way. And he had a fear of love spells. What's the one with the fish? The one with the fish. Right. So across medieval Europe, there are things called penitentials,

which is basically manuals that priests and people in the church would use to kind of catalogue sin, basically. So you'd go to the priest and you'd say, I've done this terrible thing. And then he would have a book to look this up. Right, we'll do several penances. And this one was written by Bishop Burchard. And he writes a lot about sins and the kind of things you can get up to. And one of the sins he lists is if a woman has taken a live fish

and put it in her vagina until it dies and then cooked it and served it up to her, intended as a love spell, then she should have to do penance on fast days for the next two years. So yeah, he does write that. If that actually happened, I can't tell you,

or if this was just the kind of the mad ravings of Bishop. But yeah, it's definitely there, this idea that you can cast a love spell by killing a fish in your in your vagina and then serving it up to him poor fish poor fish right there's a chapter on anaphrodisiacs what what i mean obviously something that is the opposite of an aphrodisiac what are they that's that's absolutely it so that is food so if an oyster was supposed to turn you on or a fish in the vagina then an anaphrodisiac was supposed to like crush your libido it was supposed to you know it was the culinary equivalent of a cold shower and these crop up all the times

because it's people were really concerned about being too lustful and too lusty so you know how do you go about curtailing that through food and it normally comes down to like really dry food or bland food nothing spicy and something cold as well that will cool the body and this this isn't ancient ancient medicine either this you see this in the 19th century john harvey Kellogg, who made the Kellogg's Cornflake, was invented in part to try and curtail sexual desire. It was deliberately made bland and boring to try and repress sexual urges in his patients. Now, you write that the bicycle was very important to sexual equality. Why? Not in the way that that sounds. Yes, it was it was so the bicycle's been around

for several hundred years but it wasn't until the 1890s that they invented what was known as the safety bicycle which women could ride on and people it was safer to ride basically so you could ride it without getting your petticoats all caught up in the in the spokes but there was also with this a concern about well what's going to happen to these women who are put in a saddle between their legs and going over the cobbles this is just outrageously indecent for the victorians and also you can't ride a bicycle with a corset on or with like loads and loads of petticoats so they started to wear bloomers and they started to take off corsets and all of this was challenging quite entrenched

Victorian norms. And the idea that a woman could sit on a saddle and it might induce an orgasm is a concern that turns up in medical texts in Canada in the late 19th century. To what extent, Kate, are we at a point now in history where sex is free of stigma and shame and crazy stories. I don't think that we're there. I think that we are still bound up with shame and stigma. And in another few hundred years, I've no doubt that someone else will write another history book and look to all the things that we've been doing. But I also think that we are now probably more liberated and more willing to talk about sex than we ever have been. And I say that in the full knowledge that around the world

you can still be executed for being gay and there's horrendous persecution. But the fact that we can have these conversations and people are willing to listen and we're willing to talk about sex, that is really radical and that's an amazing thing. So we're not there yet, but we're moving there. Kate Lister, thank you very much for being with us. It's a curious history of sex. And as you might have gathered from our conversation, it is at times extremely funny. Thank you very much, Kate. Now, sexual violence has not been far from the headlines in recent months,

as we hear constantly of allegations made in the Weinstein trial, the stories of the women and girls caught up in the Epstein scandal. And we learned this morning that the number of women killed by a current or former partner has surged by nearly a third. Well, this week on Radio 4, you may have heard a series called Equal As We Are, A Thousand Years Of Not Listening, which has been exploring some of today's most difficult questions around gender by delving into conversations between men and women in literary works from the past. Well, how do contemporary authors find a language

to describe sexual violence, which is neither too frightening nor titillating? And how has it been examined by authors in the past, such as Samuel Richardson in Pamela, Daniel Defoe in Roxanna, or Fanny Burney in Evelina, published in 1778? Now, Evelina is visiting her cousins, the Brangton sisters in London.

On a trip to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, they're separated from the larger group they were with. A large party of gentlemen, apparently very riotous, and who were hallooing, leaning on one another and laughing immoderately, seemed to rush suddenly from behind some trees and, meeting us face to face, put their arms at their sides and formed a kind of circle, which first stopped our proceeding and then our retreating, for we were presently entirely enclosed. The Miss Brangton screamed

aloud, and I was frightened exceedingly. Our screams were answered with bursts of laughter, and for some minutes we were kept prisoners, till at last one of them, rudely seizing hold of me, said I was a pretty little creature. Terrified to death, I struggled with such vehemence to disengage myself from him, that I succeeded, in spite of his efforts to detain me. And immediately, and with a swiftness which fear only could have given me,

I flew rather than ran up the walk, hoping to secure my safety by returning to the lights and company we had so foolishly left. But before I could possibly accomplish my purpose, I was met by another party of men, one of whom placed himself so directly in my way, calling out, wither so fast, my love,

that I could only have proceeded by running into his arms. In a moment both my hands by different persons were caught hold of, "'and one of them, in a most familiar manner, desired, when I ran next, to accompany me in a race, "'while the rest of the party stood still and laughed. "'I was almost distracted with terror, and so breathless with running, that I could not speak, "'till another advancing said, I was as handsome as an angel and desired to be of the party. I then just articulated, for heaven's sake, gentlemen, let me pass. Well, I'm joined on the line by Val McDermid,

whose most recent novel is How the Dead Speak, and by Rebecca Bullard, Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Reading, who very kindly read that extract from the Burney. How unusual, Rebecca, is it to find a woman writing about that, you know, that sexual violence in a park? It is. Francis Burney really breaks new ground in doing it. There were lots of representations of violence against women in earlier literature. You've mentioned some of

them by Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. But Burney's a young woman herself. She's 24. And it was clearly part of her everyday experience and quite a difficult thing for a young woman to write about at that time. In fact, she didn't put her name to this novel immediately and it was about six months before she could bring herself to tell her family that she had written it because it was hugely successful. I think lots of young women recognised their experience in what she was writing.

I know you've said that writers have, for a long time, wrestled, and you've used the word wrestled, with sexual violence since the 18th century. What do you mean by wrestled? Well, it's a difficult thing to write about because lots of these writers are telling us that the experiences that young women had of sexual violence, of sexual harassment,

were wrong and shouldn't have happened. And yet when you try to write about sexual violence, it's very easy to sort of replicate the violence by making women into objects, by writing a titillating narrative rather than one that is empowering for women. Val, how much wrestling with sexual violence do you have to do? I think they're still the same argument. You sit there, you put the words on the page, and then you have to use your judgment as to whether you've actually achieved what you wanted to achieve. And so this is a process that still after 30 odd years of publishing fiction, I'm still wrestling with every time I write a novel that deals with this subject. Rebecca, in what other significant works do we see sexual violence

dealt with in the past? Well, I suppose one of the ones that people might have come across is something like Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which was written in the 1890s, the same period that your previous guest was talking about with women on bicycles. And Tess of the d'Urbervilles is the story of a young woman, a young countrywoman called Tess Durbeyfield, who is seduced and raped by a much more powerful man, Alec

d'Urberville. And what was really radical about what Hardy did is that he described this as the story of a pure woman. So he wants to change the narrative about how we see women who are subject to sexual violence. And I think that's one of the things that literature can do, is to change the language in which we talk about these things. So, Val, how does a 20th and 21st century writer like yourself avoid making it seem either trivial or titillating? I think the first thing you do is to avoid objectifying the victim. So that means giving them a hinterland, if you like, giving them a character, allowing the reader to have a sense of identity with them, to understand their position. And then when you write about it, you write about it in a way, as I say, that's about balancing the need to say what violence

is and what it does and the power of violence with either titillating or terrifying people. And that's the balancing act that the writer has to perform. You sit there and you look at a sentence and you think, is that the right adjective? Have I stopped this sentence in the right place? A lot of it is about technical judgments that you make as you're writing. It was suggested to me that the less specific the language is, the more invisible the violence becomes.

So to what extent do you, as a writer, have to really call a spade a spade? I think you have to call a spade a spade in some instances, but there are ways of writing around it that are not always so direct. But I think it is important to write directly about what violence is and what it does. The notion that somehow we can convey the idea that violence exists without actually writing about it seems to me to be perverse and strange. So it's up to us writers to sit there at our desks and figure out how to do this. Rebecca, for a long time, I think, the specifics were not named. How did the reader know what was really going on?

Well, different writers deal with it in different ways. In something like Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the rape is really kind of shrouded in darkness. But earlier on, there were very direct representations of sexual violence. So in something like Samuel Richardson's Pamela, there's a really appalling scene where there's an aristocratic man whose housekeeper is pinning down the hands of this young servant girl as he threatens her with rape. So different writers deal with it in different sorts of ways. And I think that that directness can be hugely powerful

and shocking, but it also risks objectifying the victim of sexual violence as we look at them rather than looking from their perspective. And I think what Frances Burney manages to do in the passage that I read out earlier is that she manages to depict this scene from Evelina's point of view. So we can't really see the men's faces, it's dark, but we can feel their hands and we can hear their voices, we can feel, we can hear their laughter and their mocking. So I think what Bernie does that's really, really clever is to give us the experience of an assault like the one that Evelina endures from her perspective rather than from the perspective of the perpetrator. But where writers have found it difficult to name what is really going on.

To what extent has that influenced the way sexual violence could be reported or legislated against? It is hard. And I think often literature will give us a language that we can then use in a legal context. So an example is Patrick Hamilton's play Gaslight from the 1930s. And we're very used to that term gaslighting now, but it comes from a literary work. It comes from a drama about a young woman who is made to feel as though she's going mad by her abusive husband. So I think sometimes what literature can do is give us scenarios that we recognise and put a name to them. And by the same token, quite often language that we develop

in a legislative context, so say the language of coercive control, which is a fairly new language for talking about sexual violence, we can recognise that in literary works of the past. Val, what impact has Me Too had on making it easier for someone like you to talk or write about sexual violence? I think it makes it more credible. One of the things that has always driven me writing this kind of stuff is to put it out there, to make it impossible to ignore the fact that this sort of thing goes on. And the fact that it's now being acknowledged in a more public sphere means that

I suppose we can write about it with the conviction that people will read it and believe what's going on, believe us when we write these things. I think one of the strong ways that we can delineate this sort of material is not necessarily to describe the Act itself, but to take us to the point of the Act and then to come back to it afterwards, to the aftermath. And I suppose in a way, by dealing with aftermaths, we give women a language of reporting. We give them a way of talking about the aftermath of what has happened to them. So what power, Val, would you say a fictional narrative can have against sexual violence? Well, I think the main thing is that it makes people aware. There's a lot of sexual violence goes on. We've just had

these statistics of women being killed by partners. And a lot of the time, there's been a movement recently to say we shouldn't be writing about these things because they're nasty and horrible and don't do anything functional or good. But I think by bringing them to people's attention, by refusing to ignore this sort of thing, we do mean that it can't be ignored in the public sphere. And Rebecca, what response do your students have when well-known in the wake of the Me Too movement, were being written about way back in the 1700s, and that people were not just writing about them, but also saying that they were not acceptable then.

And in some ways I think they find that a bit depressing, that we haven't come any further in the last 300 years. But I think also they kind of feel all the indignation of these writers, and they harness it. Well, Professor Rebecca Bullard and Val McDermid, thank you both very much indeed for being with us. You may, by the way, have heard Rebecca in Equal As We Are, which continues on weekdays at a quarter to two on Radio 4. And of course, the earlier episodes are on BBC Sounds. And next week's programmes include discussions about gender relations in works by D.H. Lawrence, Jilly Cooper and Sally Rooney.

And again, thank you both. Now, still to come in today's programme, on Valentine's Day, research which suggests chivalry is no longer necessary. Why might a bunch of flowers opening a door and pulling out a chair be considered too dated for modern manners? And the serial, the final episode of 24 Kildare Road. Now earlier in the week you may have heard a couple talking about the research they did for a book called Where's My Happy Ending? Well they've made a video with some advice on how to

make a relationship last. You can find it on the Woman's Hour website or on the Instagram account that's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, in our series about the lives and culture of teenage girls throughout the 20th century, we've so far heard from the mod in the 60s, the 70s punk and the goth of the 1980s. We've been delving into the archives of the exhibition of the Museum of Youth Culture, Grown Up in Britain. And today we're in the 90s with Molly in London's free party scene. Doing my A-levels at Latimer School in North London and there were two girls there who I shared classes with, weren't my best friends yet, but they had recently discovered the free party scene

and they were really excited. They wanted to tell other people. And I guess basically because I had an alternative look, I had black and purple hair and I had some piercings, they thought that I would appreciate them. So they've been on my case for quite a while. Like, I must come along, I must come along. And I said, no, no, I don't know.

You know, that'd be scary. I'm not ready yet. And there was the summer of 1997. I went to my first Glastonbury Festival. And I think that was a turning point for me. And it reaffirmed for me that I was missing something. Like, I could see all these really alternative-looking people there. And I was like, where do they go afterwards?

Like, do they bury underground or something? How do I these people how do I have in my life I feel they feel like kindred spirits to me and after Glastonbury I came up to my friends at school I said I think I'm you know I think I'm ready to go and so they took me to a it was quite a really big free party actually in a disused bingo hall you know I walked I'm walking through the door and it's quite a chaotic lawless kind of feeling but instead of being scared I walked in and I just knew that I'd I kind of found the home and community that I've been looking for that I've been missing from my life it's's just this sudden feeling that I belonged. I think everyone who does go has a kind of streak of misfit or adventure in them and we maybe don't

feel like we belong. So as a teenager we would have this ritual on a Saturday night you know be there with your friends and you'd be be hanging out somewhere where there's a pub or someone's house and be waiting till 11 o'clock at night when the phone lines came on. And at that time as well, you'd have one phone line that told you about several different parties in London and you'd choose the one you're going to depending on what cell systems you followed. So, you know, 11 o'clock at night, eagerly phone the phone line. You do it several times to get through because it'd be busy and then you would go somewhere in london it would you'd be just enough time to catch the last train or if it was in the countryside you'd get in a car

with a designated driver and you'd go off in the unknown until you you know in the middle of nowhere and you'd just like listen out turn the music off and listen out for some thumping beats, or you'd pass some other cars filled with ravers on the road. You're like, have you found it yet? Oh, no, I haven't, but maybe follow me. And you'd end up in a convoy or lost. So in the London city ones, yeah, you'd end up all over London. I mean, I had no idea these places existed at all at the time. I'm going to mention names that, I mean I had no idea these places existed at all at the time I'm going to mention names that

that I mean everybody knows now as quite sort of cool places to hang out like Hackney Wick but it was not at the time it was desolate industrial and a bit scary the Hackney Wick and Brixton Acton Perivale all of which are much sort of nicer places to to to be at the moment with gentrification going on but yeah it was it was it was a real adventure every time and you didn't know what kind of building you were going to be and you could be in an office block you could be in an old university you could be in abattoir or bingo halls cinema you know listed buildings railway tunnels, quarries, mountains, everything. Some people might go and dance all night long, like, till their body's broken.

I could just chat to people all night and not dance at all. Some people are there to show their creativity, whether it might be like performing with fire or having their artwork up on the walls or doing projections or DJing. Of course, the music is a huge, huge thing for a lot of people and you get to hear music you wouldn't do anywhere else. But for me, I think it's just always been about the community. It's just about meeting people. You're part of a family when you walk in there. A huge but secret family. So my experience before going to the free parties

was going to pubs and clubs. Of course, you know, still underage. But it was a very different atmosphere for women. The meat markets, almost everywhere else you go. And you don't realise how much because it's just the norm. And whether it's you in a gaggle of girls looking at which boys you fancy or what is the other way around, I don't think there are many innocent conversations

in those other places between men and women, girls and boys. It's always some underlying factor of what's this going to lead to. And that wasn't the case at all that I found at free parties. Of course people meet, they get on, they fall in love or have a relationship. But it really was not in any way the priority. It's like there was a higher purpose there, the religion of Ray people were very practical there the clothing reflected that there's a lot of cargo pants

pockets were useful it was about comfort a lot of the time so trainers, army boots or big punky boots with big soles so you could kind of like wade through the mess on the floor. And bomber jackets were really popular, army surplus stuff, camo, black clothing.

You would get anything there. You know, you could have someone walking around in a bin bag, you could have someone walking around in a fur coat and high heels or a suit or a fancy dress and nobody heels, or a suit, or a fancy dress, and nobody battered an eyelid. You really see it all and accept it all there. I would say that wider society does not have a very good opinion of the scene. My parents, they've certainly told me in later years

how horrified they were to find out what I was going to. Of course, I tried to hide it from them for quite some time. I was going round a friend's house to stay over or I was going to a car boot sale really early in the morning and not coming back for a while. Historically, there's been a lot of media moral panic about sensational headlines and police clampdowns, and there is not generally a good view.

You know, ravers are looked down upon. They are reprobates. I don't think people realise, you know, what variety of people go there and what they're getting out of it And that was Molly and you can hear the whole series so far on the website or of course

through BBC Sounds Now it used to be the case that on Valentine's Day you might expect a bunch of flowers, an invitation to dinner, the door to the restaurant would be opened for you, your seat would be pulled out and he would pay the bill. No longer according to a research project which suggests chivalry in the 21st century is a thing of the past. Well, is it? Tolly Shonai is a 30-year-old writer and podcaster. Amanda Chester is 45 and she's on the dating scene.

So, Amanda, what chivalry would you expect? Oh, I'd agree with you, I think, from this research from Plenty of Fish. Chivalry has evolved over the years and from my experience and what I would expect, I don't really expect somebody to turn up and hold the door open for me or pull out my seat or turn up with a gift. But I think what's important, I think what's important to me and what people find important is good manners and maybe making a call to you. I think that's something, an art that's been lost, rather than just texting, checking in with you when you get home. There's a debate about whether you should pay for dinner or not. But I think good manners and being authentic, authenticity, being real and true to yourself.

Tully, what, Chiloru, would matter to you? Oh, I think all of it matters to me. It's just part of being kind, I think. And opening doors, that's essential. Paying for dates is absolutely essential for me. Texting me when I get home is essential. Ideally, I want to be picked up. I want the whole shebang. I want to be picked up at 8 o'clock.

If you want to send me a dress, sure, go ahead. Paying for dinner, would you not offer to go Dutch? No, not at all. I have no reason. I have absolutely no reason to go Dutch whatsoever. And I have so many friends who really oppose getting paid for. They really oppose it because it's an element of expectation

when your date's being paid for. And I think that's why... He's buying you as well as the dinner. Yeah, yeah, so it's like a transaction, which is a little bit weird. But I reckon if you're with someone that's kind enough think that's why he's buying you as well yeah yeah so it was like a transaction which is a bit which is a little bit weird but I reckon if you're with someone that's kind you know that's polite you will not see it as a transaction that more like you're paying for my day and also like patriarchy you still get paid more than me therefore you can afford to pay for my day what about you would you offer to pay I think it's interesting because I think the research says um that people we don't expect for men to pay for our dinner anymore and I think it's interesting because I think the research says that we don't expect for men to pay for our dinner anymore.

And I think there needs to be a balance. Personally, I think if you go out for dinner, a guy should pay. You know, they should be in a position to pay for you and treat you and feel like the gentleman. But if you go on for further drinks, perhaps you offer. Because I think it's part of, of you know showing that you also have uh your your kindness and independence and your independence as a woman you know he he may there may be an equal pay question there yeah but don't you have to show that actually you're capable of looking after yourself but i do that in my everyday life like Like, I pay my bills, I came here by myself, I'm dressed.

Like, I feel like how I present myself shows to you that I'm independent when we are in that state. And I think it's the difference between being with a guy that's a friend and being with a guy that's romantically pursuing you. And I feel like sometimes the pursue is lost in, like, eye emojis and, like, let's just go for casual drinks. I don't like casual when it comes to romance it's interesting that an awful lot of dating now seems to be done

online how would one behave chivalrously on a dating website or on social media um I think that the art of um calling actually speaking to people has been lost. So on a dating app, I think it's really important to, from the off, be authentic. Authenticity is massive and that's been shown in the research that you actually say exactly, you know, your right age and who you are and be really honest about yourself. So you can really show that. And that's,'s I think what's absolutely crucial and important to people and then moving through to kind of dating call somebody up be honest be ask questions on your date about them rather than talk about yourself put your phone away so I think there's lots of opportunities

to show chivalry but in the modern terms in the sense of being a good person being kind being polite now you'd revealed that that you have met people on Instagram yes how does chivalry work then on social media so So I think for me, it's use your words, not emojis. Because emojis are so coded and loaded. For example, I absolutely hate the eye emoji. And I know it's like, it's just eyes, but I feel like it's like loaded with like innuendos and things like that. So I think chivalry, the most way you can show it on social media is using words and using the right words. So I honestly think that's like, use proper English and it feels more chivalrous than UK.

So you're OK, are you OK? Feels better, UK. Yeah, and I know it sounds really pathetic, but, like, just actually, like, using the full sentence, chivalry, online. You have, Amanda, two young boys. How would you expect a date to behave around the family um i think that personally when i'm looking for dates online i look for somebody who has kids

because it's very important to me that they understand that that's a very you know big part of my life and i come with kids and you hope that you know if it's a good indicator if they do all the correct things that they're going to be a good person and therefore when you eventually introduce them to your children that they will um act in the correct way so i think you know it goes back to the research it's absolutely important to you know not necessarily chivalry in the sense that we know it as the old-fashioned way but it's absolutely important really important to early on adopt these um kind good gestures good manners that will follow through no you haven't got children i know what effect would you say watching programs like love island or first date has on people's behavior when

they're dating so first dates is great because it actually does show how people are receptive to certain things so i think you'd watch first dates and you see some people that open up doors that are very polite and very chivalrous. And then you see women like, oh, this is nice. They like the feeling of it. Or some women are like, I don't like this. Love Island is an interesting one

because I feel like it acts like a microcosm of the actual real dating world. So you see certain things act out on Love Island and it's like, oh my gosh, that's literally how it is in dating and how things feel quite casual and things kind of like, one week I'm really into this person and I'm kind of over it now and it's most important kind of like how to politely dump people which i don't think anybody has mastered yet because no matter

what it's not going to be nice but sometimes it's done in a really awful not chivalrous way and it feels awful and you see that play out a lot on the Island where it's like, I want to be with someone else rather than having a nice conversation. I'm just going to go off and be with someone else and you can deal with it, basically. So you need to find a chivalrous way of dumping somebody. Do you know what? That would be great. Is there a way, though?

We debate about this, me and my friends, a lot. Do you send a text to say, lovely meeting you, sorry there wasn't any chemistry, but good luck on your journey journey or do you just leave it so this is also people really don't know what to do they've really lost touch of what the do's and don'ts are

and how you finish off and I think actually this should be a really good reminder of although we don't and actually it's interesting because you're younger than me tolly and but you really like the full shebang yeah of chivalry whereas i'm older and i've come from you know i'm back on the dating scene after 12 years and i accept and i acknowledge that this is moved on thank you both very much amanda Chester and Tolly Shonai. And we would like to hear from you. If you've got any ideas on how to chivalrously dump someone, send us a tweet or an email or a

text. And thank you both very much indeed. I was talking to Amanda Chester and Tolly Shonai, ending Friday's edition of the programme. We did have a number of tweets and emails from you on the history of sex. Helen tweeted, oh my, listening to women's hour whilst catching up on work emails just spat my tea out. If you're listening, I think you'll know what I'm talking about. Furness Girl tweeted, this has reminded me of the time I resigned as a school governor because I was told tweeting about clitorises is inappropriate. Melanie tweeted, Ian tweeted, Nicky tweeted, I'm discovering a whole new meaning

of a fish supper. Eve emailed, I have to object, despite a great subject, to why the guest on today's programme about the clitoris said, if you Google this, make sure you clear your history. Why? Let's not continue the stigma. On chivalry, Tammy tweeted, I never pay for men on dates. I agree with the lady saying she doesn't like casual when it comes to romance. Sarah tweeted, can't believe the speakers expect men to pay for dinner. I expect to be treated equally as a woman. That surely includes splitting dinner. Even when my husband and I were dating almost 18 years ago, we split the bills. Carrie tweeted,

Chivalry is important and during the first dates, I believe men need to swoon and woo their partners. So foot the bill until it's a committed relationship, then share them. Angela emailed, I'm appalled at your guest expecting a man to pay for her dinner. I'm 65. I've also been on dating sites over the years and I'd always offer to go Dutch. I also have sons. They don't get paid loads. Why should they be expected to fund a date?

Thank you for all your contributions. Now do join me for Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow when you can hear the Labour MP Yvette Cooper talking about the increasing number of violent threats being made to her and other MPs, particularly female ones. And Emma, which is the film that was launched on Valentine's Day, one of the most adaptive books by Jane Austen. It returned to the big screen this week and we'll hear from the director, Autumn Bewild, and Anna Taylor-Joy, who plays Emma. That's all tomorrow. Join me if you can, 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Bye-bye. If you're listening to some other podcast, then stop now and listen to some other podcast, then stop now and listen to a good one because the Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series and we're doing loads of things, aren't we, Robin? We're going to be dealing with the science of laughter, conspiracy theories, coral reefs, quantum worlds and finally UFOs.

I love UFOs. It's also, by the way, the UFO one available to watch on iPlayer. In fact, all of the series that we've done are available on BBC Sounds. I must say that I wouldn't bother with the first series. I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first two. Yeah. But we were played by different people then, I think, weren't we?

Yeah, yeah. Melvin Bragg was you. You were Debbie McGee. Debbie McGee. Bragg and McGee. Now that is a 1980s TV detective series that I will be making. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.