Woman's Hour - Nottingham Inquiry, New generation thinkers, Female sexual pleasure, Serena Williams

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Almost three years ago, Valdo Calocane – who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia – killed Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates. After three months of hearing evidence at the Nottingham Inquiry, Nuala McGovern talks to Emma Webber and Sinead O’Malley-Kumar, the mothers of Barnaby and Grace, about what they believe must change and what they want to see happen now.Serena Williams - who after nearly four years is making her return to competitive tennis, playing in the doubles event, alongside Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko. Serena - a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion - has said she has 'nothing to prove', and her main motivation is the prospect of her daughters seeing her play again. BBC Sports reporter Karthi Gnanasegaram joins Nuala to discuss. BBC Radio 4 has announced its latest cohort of New Generation Thinkers—early-career academics selected for a year-long residency run in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. As part of the scheme, participants contribute research-led insights and historical context to programmes across the network, including Woman’s Hour. Nuala speaks to a PHD researcher at Oxford University about her academic work. The history of female pleasure has often been misunderstood, according to the historian and broadcaster Dr Kate Lister. In her new book, Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure, she traces the history—from Ancient Mesopotamian sex goddesses to today—examining how women’s sexual pleasure has been feared and controlled, but also celebrated, persistently fought for, and enjoyed.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Dianne McGregor

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The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Hello, this is Newellamoghren, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the program. Barnaby Weber, Grace O'Malley Kumar and Ian Coates were stabbed to death by Valdow Calicane in 2023. Now, a public inquiry into the killings heard the final evidence on Friday. So Barnaby's mother, Emma and Grace's mother, Shanade, speak to me this hour about what they learned and what they will call for in their press conference which is taking place in the coming half hour.

Also today, Serena is back. Now 44, Ms. Williams says she wants her daughter. to see her play. But what does that mean for tennis? Many of us are very much looking forward to watching her. We're going to be a Queen's in just a moment. And also a different kind of pleasure this hour. A Victorian woman who felt anything other than mild desire for her husband could be diagnosed with nymphomania, a problem to which females with a taste for luxurious novels, strong wines, and an excessive use of chocolate, were especially susceptible. Where did I learn this nugget?

From Dr Kate Lister and her new book, Flick, A Story of Female Pleasure. We will hear more. Also, with us, we're going to hear from our new generation thinker who is joining the women's art team as our academic in residence. She wants to introduce a term to medicine,

particularly relating to women. We're going to hear all about that. If you do want to comment on anything you hear in the coming hour, you can text the program. The number is 844-4. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note.

That number is 0-3-700-100-444. But let us begin, a little bit of tennis. Today sees the start of play at Queens, kicking off this year's grass court season. There is a lot of excitement. Pick-up any paper this morning you will see, Serena Williams. After nearly four years,

she's making her return to competitive tennis, playing the doubles event. That's alongside the Canadian teenager, Victoria Mboko, what must be like for Victoria. Serena is, as you probably know, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion. She said she has nothing to prove. And her main motivation, as I mentioned,

is the prospect of her daughters seeing her play. So joining me from Queens is our BBC sports reporter, Carty Nanna Gowdh. Yanna Segram, excuse me. Welcome to Women's Hour. Good to have you back with us, Carty. Right. Well, let us begin.

do we know about why Serena has decided to pick up the racket? It is, as you say, she's got two children now. She had her first child and then came back to tennis. She reached Grand Slam finals but didn't win one of those Grand Slam finals after having her first child. And now she's moved. The face she was at the time was she evolved away from tennis. So I think within tennis, we knew that might mean that she wasn't fully retiring and might come back at some point. She evolved away from tennis after the US Open in 2022. She's had a second child. And she does seem to be in this phase of her life where she would like to come back, show her children what she used to do as a living. And she wants to play doubles, as you mentioned,

with a Canadian teenager who is in the top ten. She's a really exciting young prospect. They've been in touch for a while. Serena Williams has been following Victoria and Boko's career. And so she's coming back to Queens. But I think there's another slight element to this which hasn't been mentioned yet publicly is that Serena's sister, Venus Williams, is still playing tennis. And I think they would like to perhaps play doubles together at a tournament before Venus Williams decides to retire. And that's maybe partly why Serena Williams has come back. And she had to go on the doping list, which she did do a while ago, six months ago, which is why we learnt that she potentially was going to come back and play tennis a little while ago,

because you don't go on that doping list unless you might be playing competitively. See, I was looking at Victoria in Boko. She is 19 years of age. So we've 25 years between those two players. It's quite something. It is extraordinary. And Mboko has spoken about how in all she is of Serena Williams. That's somebody that she watched growing up her idol in tennis,

both Serena and Venus, who is older at 45 years old. Venus has continued to play tennis. Serena has had those four years away. But for Mboko, yeah, to play doubles alongside Serena Williams, to learn pick up all of this experience from a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion is incredible at this stage in her career. And she did mention, as I said, that Serena had been texting her during her career. She's played a lot in the last couple of years, Mboko, and has moved up the rankings to be in the world's top 10 and has picked up some very big titles.

So she is going to be a very exciting young player. But to have the experience of playing next to Serena Williams to see what that attention is like is fantastic for the teenager. Immeasurable and fantastic for audiences as well. I mean, what do you think it says about tennis? You know, we've done quite a bit Carty recently on the programme with women. who feel they're really getting stronger as they get older and able to compete at levels that they didn't expect their bodies to be able to do. What do you think it means for the game?

I think it's exciting at the moment because a lot of people are looking at the fact that there are a few players out injured. So Serena is bringing the limelight to tennis in a way that tennis hasn't had for a little while. We've got big names on the men's side of the game at the moment, Carlos Alcaraz and Yanik Sinner. But on the women's side, Cocoa Gough, Arena Sabelenko, Elena Rabakana, who won Wimbledon a few years ago.

But I think there's just this bit of a discrepancy in terms of the focus. And we discussed this on the program last week when it came to the French Open. The women's matches are not being given the highest profile billing. Other tournaments are a bit more equal. Serena Williams is back at the age of 44.

I have to mention that she has and is publicly advertising her husband, Alex O'Harnie, and part of his company, is the GLP1 drugs. So she has lost quite a lot of weight over the last two years while she's been taking those injections and she's part of the advertising campaign for that. And she feels like she has lost weight

that now means that she is moving better and feels better about her health. But she is advertising these injections. And she feels that now that she is in this space physically that she is at the point where she can come back and play tennis again at an age when most people have retired 10 years ago. Yes, indeed. I'm also watching the Rafa documentary.

I don't know. If you've watched that way, yeah. It just shows how hard it is on your body, though. Like even sometimes by your late 30s, you could have really be the equivalent of putting it through a ringer. But, you know, I am thinking about Serena. As she comes back on the court, it does give that star power to the women's game.

And I'm just wondering who else you think is following in her footsteps that we should be looking out for. Well, I do think Victoria Mbocco will become a bigger name. Unless you follow tennis all year round, maybe people don't know about her in this country at the moment. But Cocoa Goff is a star. She has won Grand Slam titles. She burst onto the scene at Wimbledon, funny enough playing Venus Williams four or five years ago when she was 15 years old.

We have lots of international stars. You know, maybe the British players at the moment are not doing quite so well in the world rankings. And in terms of winning tournaments, we obviously had Emma Adikarni winning the US Open. That was now five years ago. So it is the big names like the World Number One Arena Sabres. Balenka, who I think until you do something at Wimbledon, the UK public doesn't always notice who you are until that happens on a grass court during these few weeks where the focus is on tennis. Obviously people who follow tennis all year round know all of these names that I'm talking about. But it is just making a little bit of a difference. We've got Eagos Chonek who won Wimbledon last year. And I don't know how many people will have followed that she had won four French Open titles before she won Wimbledon last year. So on the women's side, there are lots of brilliant characters. And there's a fantastic depth in the competition on the women's side that there might not be on the men's side because you have Carlos Alcarous and Yannick Sinner, the top two who are so far and above

everybody else. But on the women's side, you can have a different Grand Slam winner at every tournament because there's just this depth of competition there on the women's side. And they are fantastic characters. It just needs a bit of a showcase sometimes for people to understand and see that. And Queens is always kind of the precursor to Wimbledon. We know summer has started even if it is lashing rain outside. But I'm wondering, do you think we'll see Serena at Wimbledon? Could that happen? I think that that is a distinct possibility.

Yes, this tournament raises the profile of the women's game. That's part of the reason of having this grass court event here. There hasn't been a women's tournament here until last year since 1973. So part of the objective of this tournament is to raise the visibility of the women's game and to raise the visibility of the start of the grass court season. But obviously, all eyes are on Wimbledon. And Serena Williams could get a wildcard into Wimbledon to play in the doubles. I think there are rumours that she at some point wants to play singles,

and the grass court is slightly easier on the body to do that. I think it would be a rather brash and bold move to do that immediately at Wimbledon and whether she would get a wild card or not is up for debate at the moment because usually they go to British players. But there is a possibility that she might come back to singles, and she has said in her press conference yesterday, which I have to say was absolutely packed. We've got CNN, we've got Good Morning America,

we've got all sorts of international global outlets here that would not normally be at the Queen's Club for this championships that are here for her press conference yesterday. It was very busy and she said, I haven't ruled out singles, but it's not the reason for me being here, as you said at the start. She's not here to win. She's not here to prove anything. She's just

here to have fun, enjoy tennis and show her children that she can do that. But Wimbledon, potentially the US Open and don't rule out the LA Olympics in 2028 because that's where Venus and Serena are from. From them to bow out at home at a home Olympics in the

place that they came from would be a great end to both of their careers. Oh, Carty, you've given us lots to look forward to, potentially. Carter, Yanna Seagram, thank you so much for joining us this morning. You can follow all the action from Queens, from 1pm, BBC 2 today and the BBC Sports website as well. Now, I want to turn to the Nottingham attacks

following the conclusion of the public inquiry last Friday, that's the evidence that was given. The families of Barnaby Weber, Grace O'Malley Kumar, and Ian Coates were holding a press conference, really, I'd say in the next 15 minutes or so, setting out what they believe must happen next and they are calling for immediate accountability. Valdo Calicane had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

He stabbed to death, Barnaby Weber, Grace of Malicumar, and also Ian Coates that was in Nottingham on the 13th of June of 2023. These families have fought tirelessly for answers to try and understand what led to these terrible events. The inquiry has heard for more than 160 witnesses looking at the lead up to the attacks, also the investigation that followed and the aftermath was also examined.

Emma Weber and Sheenade O'Malley Kumar are the mothers of Barnaby and Grace. Barnaby and Grace were just 19 when they died. Their mothers joined me earlier this morning and I began by asking Sheenade how she's feeling at this point. Pretty exhausted, to be honest with you. I'm sure. I think you can even hear it in my voice. the inquiry ran from the 24th of February until the 5th of June.

Sometimes sitting five days a week for like six, six, seven hours a day, not including, you know, traveling in from Greater London. So, yeah, it's been exhausting. And, of course, it's not just the physical toll, but it's the, yeah, the emotional toll of what we've had to witness and what we've had to listen to. Nothing can prepare you for the reality of what we, we had to witness. It was something we always were expecting because, and we feel completely

validated because we were calling for this public inquiry because we realized there were so many failures. But when you hear it from the horse's mouth, particularly from my perspective as a doctor hearing it from the psychiatrist, it was, yeah, it was enlightening, disappointing. And yeah, it's taken its toll. But you know what, it's all with the view to making a difference. and to calling people out who didn't do their jobs properly and holding people accountable so that it doesn't happen again. It was on Women's Hour in February 2025 when we had both of you in the studio

for a very moving interview and you were calling at that time for a public inquiry, Emma. Did it give you any of the answers, you know, Sheenade mentions there, for example, accountability? Gosh, so that was February, so what year and a bit ago? Yes. Sometimes that feels like yesterday and sometimes it feels like it was another lifetime. And yeah, we were calling for the statutory public inquiry.

And I think that's the key thing because by it being statutory, the witnesses were compelled to attend. The documentation was compelled to be released. And as Cheneid's alluded to, we knew that so much was so much was so well. wrong, but the sheer scale across every single agency and institution and the sheer incompetence and negligence, and I would say cover up that's been revealed over the past nearly four months, has been brutal, harrowing, but validating in the, it's proven what we knew. So you had this feeling which you're expressed

in Women's Hour and now you've gone through this. But, you know, cover up is very strong. It is. Emma. It is. And I'm prepared to say that in that we fought for the inquiry to not only be a public inquiry, but for it to be publicly live streamed.

And for the transcripts and witness statements to be made publicly available. And all of that did happen with very few exceptions. And so I think anything that I would say would be on the basis of what we've seen that's also publicly available. And we've had evidence of complete U-turns and changes of stories, for example, the senior investigating officer who told all of the families that there was no CCTV footage available of the interviews in custody with Callicane

because they were audio and no comment so they wouldn't have been of interest anyway. And it's only at this inquiry we've learned actually. there were six hours worth of video footage of him in custody being interviewed on a number of occasions and they weren't no comment. He was answering non-evidential questions and that's very different to proving somebody's state of mind and very often when we see these awful crimes and we see the footage on the news of the perpetrator in custody and we've seen the footage released of him arriving in custody. custody, assaulting yet another police officer, him arriving at the front desk.

But we haven't publicly revealed the interviews yet. But that was one example. And we were continuously told, and it's in minuteed meetings, that it wasn't available. And so you believe that was a coverer? Well, I just don't understand. And why we were told that he had no fix to bode and he was a sofa surfer, whereas only two weeks ago, I saw the witness statement from his flatmate in Nottingham, where he was evicted on the 11th of June

that the police had gone in two days later to interview and seize property. So none of it started, none of it was making sense. And I do therefore believe there was an active decision made to dumb it down because of the sheer level of failure that had already been made available. The police realised they hadn't executed their warrant. The health services must have realised

the four sectionings for assault and a discharge with no risk assessment was going to be of massive public interest and public scrutiny. So I think that the best way to have dealt with with this horror and this tragedy was to get it away quickly and quietly. And that's what you feel that they did. I believe it was a considered decision to get it done as quickly as possible. And who do you blame for that?

The NHS for their catastrophic level of failure in managing, detaining and treating Calicane and two police forces for failing to do their jobs properly and detain him. The mental health failures were abundantly clear to me and my husband from the outset. As a doctor. As a doctor that he was not treated. My own mother's a psychiatrist, Nula, who worked in. up and she used to go to Mount Joy prison and treat patients in there.

She said she's in her 80s now and even she said straight off, he should have had a depot. It's quite simple. And he didn't. Depo medication for his antipsychotics. Which would be something under the skin? Under the skin and mean that he couldn't pretend to take his tablets and not take him, you have your medication

and you are treated. It's long-lasting as well, isn't it? It's long-lasting. He just was not treated and that's become abundantly cleared that the psychiatrist were really quite lazy. If they thought that their kids were sharing a flat with him or that their kids were going to be, you know, come across him, you know,

when he was untreated and acutely violent, which he knew he was when he wasn't treated. They would have thought, and I think had a different, you know, idea about what, you know, they would have been, they should have put themselves in the patient's shoes, you know. Psychiatry is, I've said it, I said it when we were here the last time. Apart from infectious diseases, when you don't get treated, you can end up harming or killing somebody else, and that's exactly what Valdolcalcane did. He wasn't treated.

He was known to be violent. They didn't bother treating him. They could have. They could have enforced treatment. He should have been under Section 3, which is a long stay in hospital, but he wasn't. He was under Section 2.

And I will get a response from the NHS to some of the aspects that you've mentioned there. In regards to the police forces, Emma, I do want to mention. and it was Nottinghamshire and Lesothshire exactly the two forces from Nottinghamshire

we do have a spokesperson who says we remain committed to supporting the inquiry and will fully consider any recommendations made a spokesperson for the IOPC they're the Independent Office of Police Conduct said we have four ongoing investigations concerning Nottinghamshire Police and Leicestershire Police

their involvement with Valdo Calicane we have assessed evidence heard during the recent public inquiry and we aim to complete our work as soon as possible. To that end, we have assigned a dedicated team. We continue to provide the families of Ian, Grace and Barnaby with regular updates and with the third anniversary fast approaching. They have our sympathies at what will be a particularly difficult time for them.

You have mentioned some of what you have gone through over these past few months and I can't imagine what would be like to get some of those knocks. Yes, validation, but. but also I'm sure very difficult to hear things being validated, perhaps fears that you had. You have a press conference that you're going to be holding this morning with your husbands and also with the family of Ian Coates, who we very much want to remember as well. What else do you want to highlight, Chenade?

Gosh, well, first of all, one of the main things I think I have come out of the inquiry is the level of poor medical practice and I believe to be medical malpractice. I think that needs to be really scrutinised on a clinician by clinician basis and that has yet to happen. So that's something that I particularly want to see taken forward from going through from the inquiry.

Can I stop you on that for just a moment just to understand a little bit more deeply so for people to be named and shamed who didn't do the jobs they were supposed to do? They didn't follow policies. They didn't follow clinical guidelines. And that's what led to Valde Calcane not being treated properly.

And that's what led to the events of the 13th of June. I want their clinical management scrutinized by clinicians. And also, one other thing I'll add, not just about the clinicians who treated VC, but also the, where it's very, confusing the psychiatrists, you know, the psychiatric assessments after he was arrested. Yeah. And how they are at odds with what was going on when he was, you know, before 13th of June attacks.

There's a lot of disconnect there. And we're a bit confused about the psychiatric evidence during his criminal justice process. Very strange. So this, you're going to the trial now that took place just to give people. It was a sentencing, unfortunately. Yeah, it wasn't a trial. It didn't get to a trial. Forgive me, that's correct.

It was a sentencing, and I think it's important for people to know that. Calicane was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order that was in January of 2024 after pleading guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and to three counts of attempted murder. So you are thinking about that. time as well, Sheenae. Well, it's only when we hear all of the psychiatrist giving evidence prior to June 13th. And then we know what the evidence was of the psychiatrist who assessed him after June 13th.

And they don't actually marry up. Their diagnosis, his response to treatment, they're at odds with each other. And that doesn't sit right with us. So what would you be looking for in that case? Well, I want to, first of all, I want scrutiny of both before and after. And the other thing is the psychiatrists

who assessed him afterwards came to the conclusion that he had treatment resistant schizophrenia and that's not what the psychiatrists who were treating him thought. They thought he responded very well to his medication. So there needs to be further scrutiny of these doctors basically is what I want, Nula. And whoever should be best to do that

on an independent medical perspective. But that wouldn't change or you're not looking for any change. to a sentence? Well, we've been told that the inquiry is not embarrassed. No, the inquiry is not. No. The inquiry is not.

So the inquiry has its terms of reference, and within that, that's what Deborah Taylor is working within, where my sort of comments, to back up and extend on what Janade said is there's clear discrepancies. There's massive concerns with regards to, the quality of the investigation and the prosecution of him and the disposal of him. In indefinite hospital is actually normally anything but indefinite, more than 90% are out within about 10 to 15 years because he's a patient. He's in a hospital. He wasn't treatment

resistant. He was non-concordant with treatment, but when he did take treatment, he did respond. And so we have a very, very deep concern and we have done for a long time about the quality of the medical experts' opinions that basically carried the sentencing. So what we will be calling for with the evidence that's come up in the inquiry itself to show his state of mind,

his insight, his culpability, his planning, and also 10 years prior history of mental health problems, that it wasn't as presented, that it wasn't an untreated psychosis for a short period of time, and that this was somebody that had been planning and knew what his attack was,

doesn't mean he was. wasn't extremely unwel, Nula. But what it does shine a very concerning light on is the processes and the quality of the expert reports that were put forward. So it may not change in any way. A sentence, for example, but you feel that there is evidence that shows discrepancies, as you say.

Huge discrepancies. Yeah. So there has to be accountability on an individual. and organizational level for those that failed. There must be because we will never learn in this country. So that's from the policing and the health service. With regard to what we believe is a gross miscarriage of justice, that's going to be something that we are looking at every single option

that could be. You are? Absolutely. Absolutely. So we will be expecting to meet with the Attorney General. And then moving forwards, obviously, It's so prevalent in the news at the moment, just how broken and how fractured as well are mental health services and the response to mental health and mental health crimes, racial bias, inequality is. And my big fear is it's going to be politicised and we're not going to ask the difficult questions and actually get into what's causing this epidemic. in this country and that we're going to end up spending our time listening to those who shout loudest

in Westminster for their own gains. And that sounds very disrespectful of me, but forgive me, I'm suspicious because of everything that we've been told over the past three years. So we have to just, we have to take a proper, a proper look at where we are and what needs to reform. You did talk about in a statement in February saying it would be a test of whether this country is prepared to confront failure and fix it. I saw this morning we spoke briefly just before we came on air that Elon Musk

the billionaire, the businessman, the entrepreneur. Nearly trillionaire, I believe. Yeah, probably. Has re-tweeted a story in relation to your children that frames it in terms of race. Well, I tell you what, okay. I'm going to tackle this.

The reality is the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Mental Health Homicides that ran from the Clunest Inquiry in 1994, sorry, the late 90s, early 2000s, looked at the risk factors for suicide and mental health homicide. The risk factors for paranoid schizophrenia and schizophrenia, which are often the more violent

patients with psychosis are violent patients, are things like trauma, childhood trauma, immigration, non-concordance with medication, not going to your hospital appointments. Substance use? And substance use, yes, absolutely. And these lead to homicide. Now, migration are often people of colour

because they're coming from other countries, other continents. So, yes, there is a disproportionate high instance of mental health homicide with, ethnic minorities, particularly Afro-Caribbean gentlemen, men, young men. But that is because there's a higher prevalence of psychosis in this demographic. And they need to be treated accordingly. They don't seek a treatment often, and that can compound the depth of their illness. That's the problem.

There's a mistrust of systems, of government, of health care, and they don't seek treatment. So it's a spiralling effect that leads to them being disproperperperper, more likely to end up in hospital. But it was felt that this was racist, that there was racist biased. Now, there's arguments both ways, but the reality is if young black men have a higher instance of psychosis,

they need to be treated appropriately. And if that means they need to be sectioned, that's what they deserve, and that's what they're entitled to. The analogy has been brought up about the higher instance of prostate cancer in black men, and they are going to be screened nationally, not white men but black men

that's because that's the reality of the prevalence of the disease diabetes in Asian people my husband's Indian his you know there's diabetes in his family you know the Irish have cystic fibrosis and hemacromatosis or you know celiac disease these are there's genetic parts but there's also

sociological contributors to mental health not just genetic and migration is one of those components so and trauma and childhood So you can't be a difficult conversation. People need to get treated. And I understand there may be sociological and societal factors that need to be addressed as well.

But if there's psychosis, it needs treatment. And often that involves admission to hospital against patient choice and the giving of medication against patient choice under the Mental Health Act. And I suppose some might wonder if you are concerned about this story being used. politically by whomever. Yes. It's not about race. It's about treatment.

Everyone getting treatment. Yeah. It is, I think that we talk about mental health being the hot potato in my non-clinical times as a non-medic. But it is. We've seen evidence of the police don't want to deal with it. But also actually we've seen evidence in Nottingsha Foundation Trust that they didn't really want to deal with it.

It seems to be everyone else's problem. But it is a problem. And 20% of medical need in this country, is mental health related, yet only 8% of the national health budget is allocated towards it. So there's clearly resources. There's been backward steps with regards to proper facilities like acute hospitals. Care in the community, as it's structured, doesn't work. There needs to be proper assertive outreach.

That's all come out in an inquiry. And do you know, all of those things were 30 years ago that were recommended in the Clueness Report. And it breaks my heart that we are no further forward. nay, I think we might be backwards now. So when you say you thought the process, the public inquiry would be a test of whether this country is prepared to confront failure and fix it, do you feel that's happening, Emma? It has to. We have to force it too. Sheneid?

Well, I tell you, Nuda, we're going to have the recommendations from Dame Debra Taylor. And there has to be a department. And there has to be a department in government that makes your recommendations are followed through. They don't fall off. One is one too many. and quite frankly let's hope that the recommendations that are going to put an end to mental health homicide

will be enforced and somebody needs to make sure they don't fall away. I want to thank Sheneid O'Malley and also Emma Weber, the mothers of Grace O'Malley Kumar and Barnaby Weber. It is a moving story as I mentioned the press conference getting underway right now. You can keep up

with developments, responses and reactions from various parties involved throughout the day on BBC news. Also, we have have contacted the bodies referenced in that interview for statements and responses this morning. But beyond those, I included already, we do not have further responses just yet. If you'd like to get in touch with the program, you can do so on social media or you can text us on 84844. If you have been affected by any of the issues that you've heard us discuss, please do go to the BBC Action Line where there are links to help and support.

The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards, sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. grow your audience, celebrate your team and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Now, to the history of female pleasure, it has often been misunderstood. That is, according to the historian and broadcaster Dr. Kate Lister. She challenges what she believes is a common misconception, that before modern day feminism, women throughout history

merely endured sex and had less desire than men. She has a new book. It's called Flick, the story of female pleasure. And she takes us through history from a sex goddess in ancient Mesopotamia to the present day and also explores how women's sexual pleasure

was feared and controlled, but also celebrated, persistently fought for and also enjoyed. Well, I spoke to Kate to get a snapshot of her vast research on this issue and I asked her more about what lay behind Flick. The book is born out of my intense and ongoing frustration at the idea that women have less desire

or experience less passion than men do. I don't think you have to look very far to find that narrative still very much in currency today. Like boys will be boys or men are only after one thing. I think that women, particularly heterosexual women, are raised to be quite almost defensive around sex. It's like quite guarded, that they're going to come after you

and they're going to want this thing and they're shouting from cars. And we just don't have space to try and unpack it and explore that ourselves. And I get so mad at the idea that women just don't enjoy sex as much as men do. So it's that narrative that overpowers because that stuff does happen.

People shout out of cars and whatnot. They do. But it's true that it overshadows actual female pleasure. I mean, how would you, or how are you thinking about female pleasure in this book? Do you see, pleasure is so much more than just something physically feeling good. It really gets to the heart of things like sexual agency, bodily autonomy, is your right to enjoy and experience sex in a way that is pleasurable to you? I think

there's still so many women, in particular heterosexual women, the lesbians are doing much better, by the way, but heterosexual women who just aren't experiencing enjoyable sex and that we've accepted this narrative that, well, sex might not be that great for you anyway. And we sort of stopped questioning it. Like, why have we let that become the dominant narrative? instead of going, well, what kind of sex are they having that they're not enjoying it as much as perhaps they should be? Because you do talk about the orgasm gap. You've alluded to it briefly there. The orgasm cavern, I think, would be.

It's not a gap. It's a huge ravines with sharks at the bottom. It's awful. There was a piece of research. I think it was done in 2017 in the archives of sexual behavior. And it showed that in sexual encounters, straight. men are orgasming around 96, 98% of the time. Heterosexual women are orgasming 65% of the time. Lesbians 88% of the time. So a significant increase. But heterosexual women are literally and

figuratively bringing up the rear with a very dismal 65% orgasm rate. Right. So that's a fact to have as a backdrop perhaps when it comes to sexual pleasure as well for, women. But I was wondering, many people will know you from listening to your podcast betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal and society. But how easy or difficult was it to find women's voices when you were researching this book? Oh, it's so difficult. I did what every historian does when they think they're going to go and tell a history from women's perspective. As you go, charge and I'm going to tell the story from women's point of view. And then very quickly you go, oh, no, I'm not actually, because the sources just aren't there. This is a history that has

largely been written by men and it's been largely written by quite privileged and elite men as well. And getting to women's voices is really, really tricky. So you've just got to do a lot more hunting and searching. And by the time we start moving into the early modern period, there is more evidence for us to be working with. It's difficult, but it doesn't mean that the evidence isn't there in the really early sources. You've got to be very careful at what you're actually looking at. And really try and read between the lines. I think, as you say as well. Okay, let's go. back to Mesopotamia. Why not?

And there were figures with sex goddesses like in Anna. Yeah. What does she tell us about those early expressions or attitudes to female sexuality?

It's difficult to say what the lived experience of your everyday Mesopotamian woman would have been. But what we do know is that the goddess in Anna and she's the goddess of sex and war,

that's quite a job share that she's got there. But she was supremely powerful. and worshipped very, very widely. We found temples dedicated to her. And a lot of the surviving texts or kaneiform tablets about her are highly erotic in nature. I mean, we'll be very careful because, you know, people might be having their lunch right about now.

But she sings songs like come plow my furrow, come water my lettuce. Leave that one to your own imagination. But her eroticism doesn't seem to be a point of shame or contention in this goddess. It's not something that we should think of badly. In fact, it's part of her veneration. So we do have this very powerful, quite petulant goddess who is very erotic and very sexual. And Victorian historians often refer to her as being a goddess of fertility.

Oh, that's interesting. She didn't have any babies. Right. And Anna isn't about fertility. That is interesting because you also write about the wandering womb as a living creature. Yeah. Where was that idea from? That's Greek. That is an ancient Greek idea. And they had this idea in Greek medicine, so the Hippocratic texts write about this a lot, that all of women's ills are about their womb. That the womb can literally move about the body. It was called the wandering womb. So if you go at the doctor and you go, I've got a headache, or then they might say, well, your womb's moved up to your head. Or if you've got a stomach egg, where your womb might have moved down to your stomach. It sounds bonkers, but this took a remarkably long time to shake off. I mean, they

Stop believing that the womb was a literal creature a few centuries after that. But I would argue that in many ways, women's health, the understanding of women is still intrinsically linked to their reproductive system. Even if it's something as simple as this idea that women are more emotional than men are and that our hormones govern our lives, I would make a direct link with that right back to the ancient Greeks and this mad idea that the womb wanders about the body. But it's so interesting if you put it in a modern context, which at the time, times particularly reproductive issues can be so difficult to get treated. You know, there has, of course, been allegations of medical misogyny. But I want to stay with the Greeks for a minute then, the ancient Greeks.

How did they understand female desire? They understood it as very important. In fact, for most of our history, until really quite recently, it was women who were considered to be more sexually aggressive than men. It was women who were considered to have far higher levels of sexual desire. And frankly, they were going to be completely rapacious if you didn't get them married off pretty damn quick. And it was part of the idea that women are more emotional than men. So obviously they're hornier than men as well. That link was made pretty quickly. And for the Greeks and

certainly the Romans and people that came after them, they understood women's bodies as being sort of pale imitations of male bodies. They viewed the male body as being perfect and it was hot and it was dry. And the female body was different because it was wet and it was cold. And it was always trying to be a male body but couldn't be. So it viewed women as imperfect men is what it viewed women as. So interesting. Let's talk about the Victorians because you see that as a turning point when it comes to women's sexuality. Yeah, I do. I think that we're far closer to the Victorians in terms of our attitudes to sex than we are to the Greeks or to the Mesopotamians. They pathologized everything. I mean, this is the industrial revolution, but we've also got

a medical revolution going on at the same time as the medical. professions become an established and they are attempting to psychoanalyze everything, to define everything, to come up with classifications. And what happens with that is they come up with classifications of what's deviant and what's not, what's normal and what's okay. And sexuality plays right into that. So before the Victorians, you've got morality coming into this. Like it's a spiritual thing. It's sin. God will be judging you. Then we get the rise of the medical profession. And that's still a part of it. But now we've got this idea of what is medically acceptable for women's sexuality.

And really what they come up with is it's only really permissible to be having sex with your husband to make babies when he would like you to be having sex. And the idea that women aren't as passionate as men, that's a Victorian idea. So it's really coming in at those points. Yeah. I mean, you talk about psychoanalysis there. Let us bring in Sigmund Freud. And some of his theories. in how it's shaped, that has repercussions to this day, in attitudes to female pleasure.

Well, when we're talking about how the ancient Greeks view women as incomplete men, Freud does exactly the same thing, except he's updated it and he's given it a lot of medical sounding kudos to it. But he views women as just basically not being men. He has theories around penis envy, which is that women envy the penis, and there's just a whole load of women stood behind him going, I don't think that we do that very much. Do we do that? No, surely not. But he continued that idea, and then he has ideas about castration anxiety,

and he just views women's bodies as an absence of a penis. And another big idea that he had, and we're still dealing with this one today, is he made a distinction between clitoral orgasms and vaginal orgasms. And he said that the only psychologically mature orgasm was one achieved through penetrative sex. And everyone went, what a fab idea that is. Well done. What he did with that is he completely dismisses any other kind of pleasure that women can experience. And we know from the research that less than 18% of women are going to get there through that method alone.

Coming back again to the orgasm cavern. Yep. As we're calling it now. Here's a woman we need to speak about that I didn't know about before. Ida Craddock. So few people know about Ida Craddock. And she is long overdue at least a four-part. documentary, possibly her own film. So she's a Victorian woman, an American, and she was born in a

Quaker household, and she just sets off on this crusade by herself to get sex education to men and women, but not just the basics of how you get pregnant, but to actually teach about pleasure and to advocate for women's bodies and to advocate for that everyone should be having orgasms. And the really fascinating thing about Ida is so she's single, and she's in her 30s when she's doing this, which opens her up to an allegation of, Ida, how do you know about all of this stuff? In specific, as she talks about particular sexual positions, about what you should or shouldn't do. Yeah, she does, she does not hold back. And then she's going to have to either cop to the fact that either she's never experienced these things herself or she's had sex outside of marriage, in which case she'll be written off. So she really commits to this, but she writes books about how she's having sex with an angel, an angel, an angel,

called Sof, and she says that she has an angel husband and that he's the one that visits her every night and that she writes in very graphic details about the kind of experiences she's having. Her story is tragic in the end. It's so heartbreaking. So she comes up against this guy called Anthony Comstock, who was basically, he pioneered suppression and censorship in America, and he basically banned anyone posting any information about birth control of sex to the post, and he harassed people through the courts. He's a horrible, horrible, horrible man. And he got Ida in his sites pretty quickly and he sets up numerous sting operations and he has a committed to jail and then it looks like she's going to go back to jail and so Ida really sadly decides that she's going

to take her own life and she writes this very lengthy letter about Anthony Comstock and about censorship and why sex education is so important. Such a pioneer really. So, so, such a pioneer. I'm so brave at the time to be writing this stuff and it really landed the first blow against censorship in America. And all of these doctors and people came forward to go, look, she wasn't a deranged pervert. She was just trying to get sex education out there at a time when it was so lacking. And I wonder, you know, because I think sex education now can focus on pregnancy or trying not to get pregnant, consent, exploitation, danger, perhaps in more ways than pleasure, for example. Yeah, we don't talk about pleasure a lot when it comes to sex. Sex is still framed as

problematic behaviour. It's something that, you know, you need to be very careful around because you could get pregnant or you could get a disease or, you know, something bad could happen. But we're not having conversations around the pleasure aspect. And for me, and certainly for a lot of other scholars worldwide, the pleasure aspect is really important because that really goes to the heart of consent, of bodily autonomy, of respecting somebody's right to pleasure. And you also bring up the fact of female pleasure, if it were, equal to heterosexual men, for example, that that could be a basis of balancing the gendering inequality in larger ways than just what happens in the bedroom? Yeah, I mean, I'm not the first person to say this. Second way feminist has been banging this drum for a while, but I'm happy to pick up the cudgels again. But sexual equality and sex in pleasure is about respecting your partner's right to their body. And it's about not feeling entitled to pleasure. I think so many women are performing sex when they're faking orgasms or they are, they're maybe having sex when they don't really want to.

They're having sex because they feel that it's something that they should do. And they're always prioritising that partner's needs over theirs. That in a microcosm is the state of a much wider issues between men and women, is that women are deprioritizing their own needs and basically servicing other people and putting their wants and needs above theirs. I mean, what would the world be like tomorrow if every single woman just stopped faking orgasms and stopped saying it was great when it wasn't great and actually said, I don't like it when you do that,

please do something else. Or if in a sexual encounter, once he has finished, that we don't just go, oh, well, that was that then, if we said that, you know, it's only half time. I took a line from your book, women orgasming is a radical act. Yes. And it really is.

Because how have we got to a state where the man's orgasm is a foregone conclusion? That's absolutely definitely what's going to happen. But if she orgasms, that's just a nice bonus. That's like a nice addition. Like, why isn't that every bit as essential? I'd be curious for my listeners think about that. The 1960s and 70s.

You're sceptical of the so-called sexual revolution that happened at that time. I'm sceptical about calling it a sexual revolution. That gives the impression that there was a revolution and we fixed it. You know, it's like the French revolution is we chopped everyone's head off and there's never been a king queen since. It's like the sexual revolution happened and now we're all done. we don't need to do anything else.

And I don't think that that's what happened. It's more helpful to think of it as part of a continuum of changing attitudes than... In one part of the world. In one part of the world for some people, right? Not everybody got to have a sexual revolution or I... I definitely in the 60s and 70s in Ireland. There wasn't a sexual revolution there, was there? But important things did happen during this period and we shouldn't pretend that they didn't.

But I'm resistant to calling it a revolution because I think that it, mischaracterises what happens. And it's not finished yet. And it's not finished yet. And coming to you, how has writing this book changed the way you've thought about your own experiences? I made a promise I'll never fake another orgasm. That was a big promise to myself. And I say that, like, it's very easy to say that when I'm sat here talking to you. But in practice, I know that that can be very difficult for a lot of women is to actually advocate for themselves and speak up. But that's what is really radical about it. We were chatting just before we started. at this interview saying, wouldn't it be interesting if there was like a sex ed campaign for adults?

Not the young people this time. That would be great, wouldn't it? And actually talk about pleasure and what sex is supposed to be. There's so many people walking around out there thinking that sex is, you know, but maybe you've never had really, really good sex because you've absorbed these messages. That was Dr. Kate Lister. Her book is called Flick, The Story of Female Pleasure. and it's out now.

Next, I want to introduce you to Women's Our New Academic in Residence, Francis Hand. Francis is part of BBC Radio 4's New Generation thinkers, so the list of early career academics who will be joining Radio 4 programmes for a year-long residency

has been announced this morning. And it's all part of a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council so our thinkers will bring scholarship and historical context to programmes across Radio 4. So good to have you with us, Frances.

Welcome, number one. And we'd like to learn a little bit more about you and your specialism. So you're a PhD researcher at the University of Oxford, I understand. Tell me about your work. Yeah, hi, Nula. It's great to be here. So, yeah, so I started my PhD back in 2022. And at the time, I had all these ideas about what I wanted to study.

But really, when I went and sat down with my now supervisor, but at the time, very patient lecturer, all I could really say was I want my work to help women. And he very kindly said, why don't I look into this new term that is emerging in academia called obstetric violence? Now, like any academic, I nodded my head as if I knew exactly what that term then, and then went home and aggressively researched, what is obstetric violence? And came across this anonymous blog called the Obstetric Justice Project,

which is based in Canada. Now, what this is is an anonymous blog of women that share their, bad birth experiences. And one of the things that I noticed was that a lot of them would say things like, well, perhaps it's my fault. Maybe it was just a bad day. But then other women would anonymously respond and say, no, you're not alone. It was me too. And when I spoke about with this with my mom and my mum's friends, I realized, gosh, this also happens in the UK. Everybody has a story about someone that's had a bad birth experience. So this term, it's not used in the UK at the moment. And I believe you've looked at different countries, how they map and response to women's experiences, and some of them

use that term. Why do you think it's helpful? So the term of etheric violence, so it sounds quite severe, but I think that language is incredibly important. So first of all, for a lot of women, I think some of the things that we were talking about today on the episode really speak to me because a lot of women described not really being taken seriously enough. So using the obstetric violence, fights back against the normalisation of a lot of the harms that women experience when they're giving birth. But importantly, this term is already used in a lot of different countries around the world to highlight systemic failures and how the government needs to be held to account for the international human rights or violations that we're experiencing.

I mean, some might feel that the term is too strong, for example, that it conjures up an intentional desire to harm or it could criminalise clinical practice or that it's just too broad because there's so many things that could happen under that term. What would you say? Yeah, and I think that that is something that I answer pretty much every week when anyone asks why I'm researching obstetric violence. But I think the important thing to highlight is that when we call it obstetric violence, what that's actually looking at is the discipline of obstetrics. So it's looking at the medical practice. So we're not necessarily saying that there are violent healthcare professionals. Actually, the vast majority of healthcare professionals I meet are doing fantastic work and truly

trying to make it better for women. What this does instead is looks at how the government has set up an NHS practice that unfortunately is broken and allows that violent practice to continue. So actually, it's shifting the focus away from healthcare professionals is actually, I think, that almost misdirects us by only looking at one bad healthcare professional. We missed the point that actually this is something that's happening across the nation. Well, let me read a little from the NHS England spokesperson who said, too often in the NHS we hear of women whose health concerns have been dismissed. We're actively addressing this through education, training and improving services, including establishing hubs with specific

services for women in local communities. It will give thousands more women access to specialist support closer to their homes and will be expanded further by the rollout of wider neighbourhood health services across the country as part of our 10-year health plan. We're also working closely with the government on implementing the renewed women's health strategy. Also covering more, obviously, than that term obstetric violence. But do you feel if it were used or understood more that it would make a tangible difference to women? Well, I think it's fantastic that the NHS and NHS England and the government are starting to take on board that women's experiences are comparatively poor in England and Wales

and across the NHS. But by using the terminology of obstetric violence, what we're actually doing is aligning it with these broader obligations that the UK has already promised to protect women from violence specifically. So what that means is if we're aligning with international human rights law obligations, yes, we're looking to improve places like the NHS specific, but by using human rights, we almost take a step back and say, well, why is this happening? Is this to do with the way we view women and how we expect good mothers to behave?

And is that way women feel pressure to accept maybe interventions that they don't necessarily want? How are we training GPs to respond to women when they talk about experiencing postnatal depression after having a traumatic birth experience? And how do we talk to police and train police to spot those warning signs and be able to signpost people correct? It's really interesting that intersection that you put with human rights and kind of looking at it in that broader international context, which I'm looking forward to hearing more from you on that as we get to know each other better on women's error. I do want to read a little from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists as well. They say they're pushing for honest dialogue, interesting, and birth conversations to take place during pregnancy so that women are prepared for the recommendations and advice provided by doctors during childbirth and the rationale behind them.

Really looking forward to hearing more from you, Francis. Who is, Frances Hand, is one of our new generation thinkers. Looking forward to having her as part of our team. Before I go, I need to let you know that Woman's Hour is heading to the Crossed Wires Podcast Festival in Sheffield next month, live on Friday the 3rd of July. Also an edition of our podcast, The Woman's Hour Guide to Life, that will be at 2pm later in the day. And you can get free tickets for either or both. We'd love to meet you.

Just visit crossedwires. Live forward slash fringe. You can get information on getting your free ticket, lots more radio four programs that are also broadcasting from there, for example, lady killers, what's up, docks and uncanny. So, I mean, I'm looking forward to that as well, but also looking forward to meeting some of you in Sheffield. But until then, I'll see you tomorrow. That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. Why do some brilliant business ideas come a cropper? I'm Sean Farrington and in a new series of Toast,

I'll be looking at five more brands, businesses and wonder products, which offered a lot but didn't stick around. Including a budget cinema selling tickets for 20 pence and the toilet paper we knew from school. I remember worrying about getting paper cuts at an area that you wouldn't wish to be getting a paper cut. Finding out what we can learn from their disappearance. Toast from BBC Radio 4.

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