Tag Archives: religion

Description

Meet the women throughout history who, quite literally, came before us.

From the host of award-winning History Hit podcast Betwixt the Sheets.

There is a common misconception that before modern day feminism, women throughout history simply lay back and thought of England or their respective place of origin; that the modern ‘sex positive’ movement is a radical break from the past. But women demanding better sex did not arrive with free love or the Rampant Rabbit. It has been a very long fight indeed.

From Ancient Mesopotamian sex goddesses to the contraceptive pill, Kate Lister takes us through history to show us how women’s sexual pleasure was controlled, understood and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed.

FLICK is a rousing history of women enjoying sex: sex with themselves, sex with each other, and occasionally sex with men as well.

My Review

Yes, it’s another Netgalley book! Took me a whole month to read it! This was actually a really fun read. But then I wouldn’t expect anything less from Dr Kate Lister, sweary Yorkshire monarch of sex history. I love her podcast. Betwixt The Sheets, so obviously when I saw this book available on NetGalley I had to request it.

The book is exactly what it says on the cover, a history of female pleasure. It covers goddesses, ancient approaches to female sexuality, masturbation, sapphic love, menopause, medicalisation of female sexuality, and everything in between. It mostly focuses on what can broadly be called Western traditions, occasionally venturing further afield, but mostly Europe, south west Asia (when talking about ancient goddesses), and North America.

The overarching theme is one of suppression due to fear. Blame the ancient Greeks, they were weird about women and worshipped the almighty cock (or Zeus as he was also known (my joke)), made up crap about the Mesopotamian civilizations, and then infected the rest of the European world with their misogyny and dodgy medicine for millennia. I am paraphrasing, obviously, and attempting to condense a lot of information into one paragraph, but there is a throughline from ancient Mediterranean civilisations to the modern world, in which female sexuality is feared and vilified, and so is suppressed and made shameful. Whether it’s the Roman disgust at the ‘unmanly’ cunniligus (I learnt so many new euphemisms!), or wandering wombs, or clitorectomies for ‘over sexed’ women, the result is the same. Suppression of female sexuality is a tool in the oppression of women in a patriarchal culture.

Dr Lister’s final point in the book is that until female sexuality is held to be equally acceptable as male sexuality, there is no full equality. While girls are told it’s dirty to touch themselves, but boys are ‘just being boys’; while women are called sluts for having sex because they enjoy it, but men are ‘proper men’ if they get laid a lot; while older women are bullied into dying their hair and having facelifts, but older men are silver foxes, there can be no true equality.

I found it easy to follow and entertaining to read. I could almost hear Dr Lister’s voice, and filthy laugh. This book is not an in-depth exploration focusing on one specific topic in one place and time, but an overview of a variety of related topics that circle around female sexuality and the ways it has been suppressed, controlled and vilified over the last couple of thousand years.

Highly recommended.