The History of Vibrators, Virginity and Sex with Kate Lister | Transcript
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Kate Lister
Everyone used to find porn in bushes in the 80s. That was, that's an actual thing, like bush porn. So far nobody has come forward to explain that I did leave porn and it's it's an it's an absolute mystery of the 21st century.
Hannah Witton
Welcome to Doing It with me, Hannah Witton, where we talk all things sex, relationships, dating, and our bodies. Hello, welcome back to Doing It. I am so giddy and excited to introduce you to this guest and this episode, because that's how I felt when interviewing her. Big fan girl over here, definitely a big fangirl moment. So, my guest this week is Dr. Kate Lister. She's a lecturer at Leeds Trinity University and her primary research interest is in the history of sexuality. And same, same, same. I'm not a doctor, I don't have a PhD, I have just a humble BA at the end of my name. And I studied history at university and I specialised in sexual history. I did a few modules in it, and then also my final year dissertation was about the emergence of sexology in the late 19th century. So when I found out about Kate, and the work that she does, and everything that she like puts out into the world online, I was like, deep in, I was obsessed. She is the creator of the Whores of Yore research project, and a brilliant Twitter account, which often posts funny facts and pictures relating to the history of sexuality, would recommend giving it a follow. And she has now written a book. It's called A Curious History of Sex, and it's published by Unbound, which is a crowdfunding publisher, and I supported this book, I pledged to support it a couple years ago when it was first announced. And I am so very excited to receive my final copy, because it will have my name in the back as a person who has pledged to support it. So very excited about that. I actually was gifted by Unbound a proof copy of it. So I have read A Curious History of Sex already and it is a banger. It is, oh my god, it's so fascinating. But the final final version that comes out for everyone to read comes out on the sixth of Feb. So in this episode, I got to chat with Kate, about the book, about the history of sex, were vibrators really invented by doctors to help cure female hysteria, spoiler alert, no/it's more complicated than that. We chat about food and sex and the history of the whole concept of virginity and just so much more. This was such an amazing conversation for me to have with her, and I hope that you really enjoy listening to it. Please let us know what you think on social media, we are @DoingItPodcast, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Kate, I was so excited to talk with you.
Kate Lister
I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for asking me.
Hannah Witton
I was just telling you, before we started recording, but I did history at university and specialised in sexual history.
Kate Lister
I know!
Hannah Witton
And so I'm so excited to meet you. I think I'm definitely like having a bit of a fangirl moment, to be honest with you.
Kate Lister
I'm having a fear moment. I'm thinking all the history training's gonna come back to her, she's gonna savage me
Hannah Witton
Er, no, I can't remember, like, everything in terms, it was so long ago. I'm like if someone told me to write an essay now, but I have no idea how to form an argument. Like how does one do that? No clue. But I've got just so many questions for you. But first of all, like where did your interest in sex, like, as a subject start?
Kate Lister
Do you know, I think it was one of those personal and professional things that crosses over. I think that I've been personally fascinated by it for a long time. Like even even as a child when obviously I didn't even know what sex was, I was sort of transfixed by finding a porn mag in a bush or like, you know, like page three, just like looking at it.
Hannah Witton
Did you find a porn mag in a bush?
Kate Lister
Everyone used to find porn in bushes in the 80s. That was, that's an actual thing, like bush porn. Nobody does that anymore because of the internet.
Hannah Witton
Was there just some people who who owned that porn and they put it in the bush for safekeeping?
Kate Lister
Okay, so nobody knows who was doing this. I put things out on Twitter before to say right hedge porn, bush porn, guys who, and like thousands of people go, oh my god, me, I did, I did!
Hannah Witton
As in, everyone found some.
Kate Lister
Found some.
Hannah Witton
But no one admitting to stashing it away.
Kate Lister
So far, nobody has come forward to explain that I did leave porn and it's, it's an, it's an absolute mystery of the 21st century. Who was doing it? and why there was so much of it. That's book number two, I think, hedge porn inquiry.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, I'd read that.
Kate Lister
But yeah, I was always fascinated by by this stuff. I think that, yeah, and then just does I was doing my PhD and research and it was becoming more and more interested in sexuality because that's just the academia is such a grind and you have to be passionate about what you want to do. I mean, it's an amazing job and I absolutely love it, but it requires complete dedication. So if you're not enthused about your subject, you're going to come unstuck pretty quick.
Hannah Witton
Sounds about right. Especially because you have, you end up having such like a narrow focus.
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
That whatever you end up picking as your area that -
Kate Lister
This is it, this is you.
Hannah Witton
You go deep and deep and deep into that.
Kate Lister
Yep, I share a corridor at work with people who've dedicated their lives to 19th century railway rudders.
Hannah Witton
Wow.
Kate Lister
Yep, absolute - that's their thing.
Hannah Witton
I went to a secondhand bookshop in Scotland a few months ago, and they had an erotic section, a very small like a section of lots of books around sexuality, all secondhand, and the railway section was an entire room.
Kate Lister
That doesn't surprise me in the least. Everyone's okay talking about railways. But yeah, so it's I'm passionate about it, I'm interested about it, it endlessly fascinates me because it changes all the time. I'm always digging things up that just, that still surprise me. So I suppose that there wasn't like a lightning bolt moment of like, I'm now interested in this. It kind of evolved over years of study, and this is absolutely where I am now, and this is my thing,
Hannah Witton
And it keeps cropping up.
Kate Lister
Yeah. And of course, now that you know that there's a lot of followers on the Whores of Yore everything like that, it's like that's kind of what I'm known for now. So if I suddenly decided to publish a paper on 19th century railway rivets -
Hannah Witton
It's not your brand .
Kate Lister
No, everyone would just look at it, just like where are the tits?
Hannah Witton
Where - how did Whores of Yore come about?
Kate Lister
Now, I'd love to tell you that it was a well thought out research project. It really wasn't. It was, I was researching mediaeval sexuality and I found the name of someone who had been arrested in London in the 15th century, I think, called Clarice Clatterbollocks. And I thought it was so funny.
Hannah Witton
Wow.
Kate Lister
Yeah. Clarice Clatterbollocks, that was her name. And it was so funny that I just thought, I had to tweet it. And then I had this moment of like, oh my God, whore rhymes with yore, I'm so funny. And that, I'm afraid that that was it. And then -
Hannah Witton
So you didn't have a Twitter account before that?
Kate Lister
I did, but only like a personal one, I wasn't tweeting research or anything like that. It was just, you know, the standard, this is my cat, this is what I ate, that kind of thing. And then as the feed grew bigger and bigger, that's what I was known for. So this is where I am now.
Hannah Witton
Because you post lots of like, historical sex porn photos.
Kate Lister
It's true.
Hannah Witton
That's great.
Kate Lister
Yes
Hannah Witton
Brightens up my feed.
Kate Lister
I do, but I like to think people learn something too. You know, come for the tits, stay for the info.
Hannah Witton
That's what I say about my YouTube channel!
Kate Lister
Oh, is it? There we go!
Hannah Witton
Yeah. I like to call it like the gateway drug, like gateway feminism or something. I'm like, I'm like, hey, I'm a, you know, like a white, cis, like, attractive, young woman. Come on in, come on.
Kate Lister
Come on in, I won't bite you.
Hannah Witton
Exactly. Um, I want to hear your perspective on this. Like, why, why do you think studying the history of sex is so important? Like, is it a case of like, we can learn from it? Is it as simple as that? Or is it more complicated?
Kate Lister
It is a case of we can learn from it, that's got to be up there, underlined with a bullet point, doesn't it. But I think what I see every day, and, is that people are more willing to engage with controversial subjects, if you can place it in a historical setting.
Hannah Witton
Rather than like a present day setting?
Kate Lister
Rather than a present day, which is it's sort of like a double edged sword, I suppose, in some ways, because I know that, like if I'm tweeting about like, say, for example, the history of sex work is that it's a very valid question to ask, but why is this person who's tweeting about the history of sex work got more traction than actual sex workers themselves?
Hannah Witton
Right.
Kate Lister
But at the same token, is that people will engage more if you're talking, it just gives you that distance, and people feel a bit more comfortable about it, and then they'll talk about it
Hannah Witton
Which is kind of a bad thing. But then it's almost like meeting people where they're at as well
Kate Lister
Yes, it is. And like, people will look at Victorian porn. And you know, and it's kind of like, they'll have, you know, maybe they'll laugh, or they'll think it's unusual, or they'll they'll marvel at the strangeness of it. But if I threw them a copy of Razzle, they'd probably say, oh, my God -
Hannah Witton
If you just like put a link to Pornhub.
Kate Lister
Right! But for some reason, if it set in the past, it's kind of -
Hannah Witton
That's so true
Kate Lister
- a more comforting thing about it. So I think that it's actually really, it can be really, really powerful tool for getting people to think about debates that are ongoing.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. I think maybe that what that distance does is it, cause it removes any kind of potential that that person may think that whatever they're looking at is a reflection on them, and the world that they live in.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
Whereas you can immediately get quite defensive if you if it is set in the present, because then suddenly thatm your own views and biases or whatever are suddenly, like, held under a light. Whereas that doesn't necessarily happen if you're like, oh, well, that wasn't me that was, you know, these Victorians.
Kate Lister
That is, absolutely, and I think, as well that it can be really useful in showing how much things have changed also, how little they've changed. People have very, very short memories a lot of the time right. We forget. We think that, for example, like the debate of picked on sex, but but that's what I'll go with it. We think the debate around sex workers is new, but it's not you can see it cropping up in every society throughout history, and it's the same arguments, it's the same narratives and dialogues again, and again, and again. And when you kind of get like a really broad look at it, and you think, well, in that in the entire history of the human race, we've never managed to abolish it, not by death penalties, you know, excommunication, banishment -
Hannah Witton
It's like, we've tried everything.
Kate Lister
We've tried, but we're still not learning the lesson. We're still it's like, we're still going, oh it didn't work for the last 1000 years, maybe we'll try again, we'll just - we'll make it illegal again. It's never worked. And yeah, that's quite powerful.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Do you think, because I think a lot of people when they are looking at the history of sex and sexuality, one of the first things that kind of comes to mind is like, oh, we're so lucky now. And aren't we, aren't we better, aren't we different, we're more liberated. Like, is there a time period that you would say, is maybe the most sexually liberated period? Or is this just like a bad route to be going down?
Kate Lister
It's, I think that you've sort of tapped on something that's really important. But that's another reason people like looking at sex history, is so they can kind of sort of have a process of othering ourselves against it, like we like to look at and go, oh my God, they were so repressed and puritanical, and we're not like that anymore. Yeah, we like doing that, right. But I don't think that there has ever been like a kind of a sexual idyllic period in history, where everybody was completely at ease with themselves and everyone had rights and equality and all of those things.
Hannah Witton
Cause a lot of people might say, like, well, ancient Greece, and you're like, they had issues.
Kate Lister
They did! I mean, I suppose it depends, because if you look at like history, or sex history has this big kind of monolith, it doesn't work. It's always thousands and thousands of different histories. So if you're looking at something like, like gay history, or homosexuality, then Ancient Greece, yeah, they had a completely different attitude to the one that we do now, radically different. But by the same token, they also pretty much had state sanctioned paedophilia. And they, you know, so it's, you can't possibly look at any period in time and say, this is the one. In fact, I might be kind of close at the moment to saying our own time, actually, and I know that we've got problems and issues and I know that there's people being executed around the world and all the rest of it. But I - especially in privileged countries in the West like we are right now, I don't think we've ever been more sexually liberated than we are right now. More willing to listen, and more willing to let people explore and to not judge, and I say that in the full knowledge that it's still absolutely shit a lot the time. A lot of the time.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
But if you look back through history, we're not imprisoning people, or burning them, or exiling them. And that's a pretty low bar.
Hannah Witton
Pretty low bar, yeah.
Kate Lister
Pretty low bar. But like our ideas around consent, the debates that we're having, the idea that you can't, you're not entitled to somebody's body, the you can have sex with anyone you want, as long as they're a consenting adult, and they're happy. These things are incredibly rare. And I think that even though it can be a complete shit show, at times -
Hannah Witton
We're actually talking about these things now, yeah
Kate Lister
We're talking, right. I think that we are the most sexually liberated that we've been, right now.
Hannah Witton
So glad I'm alive right now.
Kate Lister
I know, right? We've got a long way to go, yet. But.
Hannah Witton
Indeed, um, there's a lot of stuff in your book, A Curious History of Sex, that, like, I was just learning so much new stuff from it. And one of those things which completely threw me was that vibrators weren't invented by Victorian doctors to cure hysteria.
Kate Lister
No, no, no, no, no.
Hannah Witton
This is a perpetual myth that's been fed to all of us.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
Please explain.
Kate Lister
Well, I say this, like all historians live in absolute fear and terror that in a loft somewhere, in a box ,there is a dusty book that exists that people haven't seen yet that's going to completely rip the idea to shreds. So there may well be a book somewhere written in 1865, called Why I Invented Vibrators To Cure Hysteria.
Hannah Witton
But the evidence isn't right now.
Kate Lister
Right, but until we've found that. So this is a myth that kind of came out through a book that was called, The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel Maines. She argued that doctors had been masturbating women to what was called, quote, hysterical paroxysm, to cure them of their hysteria -
Hannah Witton
To orgasm.
Kate Lister
To orgasm, basically. And that by the 19th century the Victorians invented vibrators because the doctors' hands were so tired.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, this is the story I've been sold.
Kate Lister
This is the story, right. Yeah, and we've seen it in the film Hysteria, and there's The Road to Wellville and all this stuff. But when you actually look at it a bit closer, it's no, no, like the Victorians weren't okay with masturbation, or at least the doctors weren't. They pretty much thought that it caused hysteria. They -
Hannah Witton
Not cured it.
Kate Lister
Not cured it. You can find anti-masturbation devices. Like the Wellcome Trust has got loads, like these awful rings with spikes on the inside that you put on penises. And there were doctors recommending clitorectomies for women that masturbated too much. So this isn't a group of people who are going to prescribe masturbation. But that doesn't mean they weren't doing weird stuff.
Hannah Witton
They were definitely doing weird stuff.
Kate Lister
They would definitely do weird stuff.
Hannah Witton
Those diagrams of those stick men. What?
Kate Lister
Right, so the vibrator was invented in the 19th century, but it does not look like any vibrator that you would have seen.
Hannah Witton
It was like a massager, almost like erm -
Kate Lister
Like a neck and shoulder massager.
Hannah Witton
Like if you wanted your back pounded, basically.
Kate Lister
Yeah, and the very first ones, they don't even, don't even resemble a vibrator or a massager. They're effectively just like, like a lead weight on a string that banged against your body. That's not gonna induce orgasm. I mean, you could give it a whirl, I suppose. But -
Hannah Witton
It depends.
Kate Lister
Yeah, you know, different strokes, obviously. But that's not its primary design.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
But they were supposed to cure all manner of ills and all kinds of but they weren't supposed to be used internally. They weren't supposed to masturbate women to orgasm.
Hannah Witton
But doctors were doing some weird stuff to women.
Kate Lister
Yeah. So the, in the mid to late 19th century, this craze arose for what was called pelvic massage. Right? So it's kind of as mad as it sounds, basically. It was, it, now, all the doctors writing about this keep putting in these really strong caveats about, this is not a sexual treatment, and anyone who thinks it's a sexual treatment is absolutely perverted and deranged, it absolutely isn't. And then you read through all the instructions for how to do it, you'd say it's so is.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
It just so is. So there's detailed instructions on how a male doctor would massage the pelvis of his female patient. And it's all, a lot of it's like pushing down on the abdomen, externally, through clothes. But then there is internal stuff, like pushing the fingers in, pushing down the abdomen, and kind of wiggling everything around.
Hannah Witton
Sounds like a great way to get to the g spot.
Kate Lister
It does, but that they tell you emphatically that this is not a sexual treatment. Okay!
Hannah Witton
Not for her, but -
Kate Lister
It's very weird, but they were definitely doing that. Yeah, there's evidence of that, so they were doing weird stuff. And I know everybody really likes the myth that they invented vibrators and all the rest of it, but it's just that bit that's not quite true. They were still doing weird shit to their parents, their parents? Their patients! Oh, God, that's a Freudian slip.
Hannah Witton
You never know!
Kate Lister
No, you never know.
Hannah Witton
That was a Freudian slip
Kate Lister
It was, wasn't it.
Hannah Witton
What are your thoughts on Freud then? I feel like everyone needs to have some.
Kate Lister
I think I think it's really easy to kind of pull him to pieces now. It's been like, however many hundred odd years.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
But I'm always impressed by the fact that he was one of the first to kind of work out there was a subconscious, and we are guided by these childhood influences and all the rest of it. And yeah, there was loads of stuff that now you look back at it, and you go, what are you talking about, you lunatic?
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
But I'm always impressed at sort of like his bigger picture ideas.
Hannah Witton
The book has like, lots of different, like big topics that you cover, and I'm really curious as to like, why you chose some of them. Because obviously, you're saying that there's so many different histories of sex, and you'd go like anatomical like vulva, penis, and then food.
Kate Lister
I know.
Hannah Witton
Why?
Kate Lister
Why, where did that come from?
Hannah Witton
I love it though!
Kate Lister
I don't think that I have a sensible answer for that. I think that I was just, it interested me.
Hannah Witton
Yeah
Kate Lister
I was, I wanted to, like you said I could I could have just gone on forever and ever and ever and it was already over the word count that it was supposed to be and as, you know, you could do encyclopaedias on this so I suppose it was, it was things that interested me
Hannah Witton
Are any sex encyclopaedias? Other than the like the really old old ones?
Kate Lister
I'm sure there are.
Hannah Witton
Like one published in this millennium.
Kate Lister
Michel Foucault's, The History of Sexuality, but that was last millenium.
Hannah Witton
It's also not an encyclopaedia.
Kate Lister
No, it's not it's not. Maybe, maybe we need to write one.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
Yeah, why did I choose food? I think I was just interested in just this, yeah, this this connection between eating and sex, because they seem, maybe it's just me, but they seem very closely linked.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
In our psyche that it seemed worth exploring.
Hannah Witton
A lot of people have this thought process of, in terms of like, why we don't really talk about sex from a young age, why we don't really have a really great comprehensive, like sex education is because we think of it as like this natural thing that humans do. And so when it comes to the right time, we'll just like instinctively know what to do.
Kate Lister
We'll just work it out
Hannah Witton
Because it's in our DNA. You know, that's a thing. I think it was Meg-John Barker -
Kate Lister
Yeah
Hannah Witton
They said, well, yes, but also food, eating, hunger, that is meant to be like a natural process as well. And yet we have all sorts of fucked up messaging and ideas around food.
Kate Lister
Yeah. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
And sin, like good foods, bad food -
Kate Lister
And shame.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and the same goes for sex.
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense if you think about them in that.
Kate Lister
Yeah, absolutely. And I, yeah, I very much do. I think that there's, yeah, we talk about them in the same way, and like the, the language that we use to describe them even crosses over. Like you talk about a lover as you know, being tasty, or wanting to eat them, devour them, and all of that kind of stuff.
Hannah Witton
Yes, there's so much language.
Kate Lister
A huge crossover between them. It's pleasure, I suppose, isn't it?
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
It's, you know, I know we all need to eat to live. But it's also a pleasurable activity,
Hannah Witton
Pleasureable activity that also, in some circumstances, brings about a huge amount of guilt for people.
Kate Lister
Yes. Like, there's lots of social scripts about what kind of food you should and shouldn't be eating.
Hannah Witton
What kind of sex you should and shouldn't be having.
Kate Lister
Right, that you can't have too much food, that you can't have too much a certain kind of food, that you should -
Hannah Witton
But there's always like this healthy medium that everyone should like, aim for.
Kate Lister
Absolutely. Absolutely. So I suppose just to me it was kind of an obvious thing to talk about
Hannah Witton
Maybe we can, like unpick all of our, like dangerous thoughts and feelings around sex at the same time as doing that around food.
Kate Lister
That would be good.
Hannah Witton
Do them at the same time. Just be like, right.
Kate Lister
Yes. Let's just unpick all of this.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
Yeah. You can have good sex and sausage rolls.
Hannah Witton
Exactly. That's all fine. In terms of food, actually, Kellogg's -
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
Because there's that whole bit about, like, I think a lot of people know, in the same way that we know that doctors invented vibrators. There's just a story that gets told about Mr. Kellogg's being very anti masturbation.
Kate Lister
Yeah, he was. So John Harvey Kellogg was, and he often gets kind of held up as like the poster boy of just this anti masturbation lunacy. But he was one among many. He really was he -
Hannah Witton
It's just had a big company, and a lot of money.
Kate Lister
He did. Yes. So he wrote a number of books and medical things about why you shouldn't masturbate, why it's really bad to masturbate, definitely shouldn't masturbate, don't do it, don't do it. I don't think he ever actually had sex with his wife, they adopted children. And he was, he just firmly believed, as did many people, that it would kind of, like, deplete life and energy resources. And he invented cornflakes because he also had this belief, as did other people, that plain food would suppress your libido. And that rich, spicy, food would would fire it all up again.
Hannah Witton
Wow. So it's just like, give them some really boring food.
Kate Lister
Yeah, so the conflict was invented because it was so bland, that it would stop you wanting a wank.
Hannah Witton
And so that's why nowadays people are like, put sugar in it!
Kate Lister
Put sugar in it! We're going to make rice crispie cakes.
Hannah Witton
Put some sugar and nuts and honey in it.
Kate Lister
Yes, but that was its original function.
Hannah Witton
Has, like, present day Kellogg's ever acknowledged or, do you know what I mean?
Kate Lister
So, I don't know.
Hannah Witton
It's not, it's not like it's actually tainted the company's reputation these days, like -
Kate Lister
No, no, I mean I can understand why they probably wouldn't include it on a tour of the factories.
Hannah Witton
Just don't bring it up.
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Is there any sound research, or any research at all, because obviously, there's, you know, aphrodisiacs and stuff. So do plain foods make you less horny?
Kate Lister
No.
Hannah Witton
No, it's not a thing.
Kate Lister
No, it's not. I think I mean, there's obviously the placebo effect is well studied, and a genuine thing. So if you eat something that you think is going to give you the horn, it probably will, but it'll be a placebo.
Hannah Witton
So like oysters?
Kate Lister
Oysters, yeah. But again, there's no evidence whatsoever to suggest they actually do boost your libido, other than the fact that we think that they're sexy.
Hannah Witton
Because they look like a vulva.
Kate Lister
They kind of do. They kind of do. And yes, so we think that they're sexy so -
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
Eating them makes us feel sexy, you know. But there's nothing in them, they're not like a marine Viagra, or anything like that.
Hannah Witton
Or I guess any like phallic vegetable.
Kate Lister
Yeah, right. I mean, if you eat food that's really bad for you, really high fat, and you have a terrible diet, that will definitely impact on your libido, because it will impact on your health. But it's not like I could give you something right now that if you ate that, you'd be like -
Hannah Witton
Like half an hour later, I'm like -
Kate Lister
Raging or like have no libido whatsoever.
Hannah Witton
Imagine, there would have been no need for Viagra to be invented if we could control it that easily.
Kate Lister
It hasn't stopped people throughout history thinking that foods made them horny.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You talk a lot about machines.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
I love talking about technology and sex, it is fascinating.
Kate Lister
Isn't it.
Hannah Witton
The kink blink?
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
What is the kink blink?
Kate Lister
So the kink, that's what I tried to define as the insanely short amount of time between the launch of a new technology, and its appropriation for sexual purposes.
Hannah Witton
It's so true though!
Kate Lister
It's such just like how long does it take, I think the first pornographic film was out within a year of the first film technology being made available. We're just so, I mean, you know, does the sex industry respond to technology? Or does it actually drive it? You're kind of chicken and egg thing. But as soon as something, a new technology comes out, somebody, somewhere, has thought, right -
Hannah Witton
How do I use this for sex?
Kate Lister
How do I use this for sex. And it's really quick. And I define that as a kink blink.
Hannah Witton
I love that, but it makes so much sense to me. It's like even in, like I guess the online content creator like circles that I run in online, like a lot of people that I follow on YouTube use like Patreon. And then also a lot of sex workers use Patreon and like other kind of like crowdfunding stuff. And I'm like, this makes so much sense, like of course, like, we're all like, using the same technology.
Kate Lister
Absolutely, and it's, yeah. And it's the I mean, the internet has been so amazing things and it's revolutionised sex, and the sex industry, as much as anything else. Everything so much, I mean, you know, like, when I was growing up, it was hedge porn now
Hannah Witton
Hedge porn! And now it's free porn
Kate Lister
And it's not just free. It's like the most extreme porn that you can find is available, at the click of a finger. And that is an interesting thing that is impacting young people as they're growing up. Because if we're not getting the sex education in there as well, or porn education, and people are now learning about sex from porn. I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with porn, I like porn as long as you pay for it, ethical porn.
Hannah Witton
Pay for the porn you want to see.
Kate Lister
Pay for the people who are making it. But I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with it. But the problem is, is that we're not telling kids especially that this isn't real sex.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
This isn't even the people in that scene aren't actually having sex like that. There's a guy with a boom mic behind there, eating their sandwiches, and people shouting and cut and edit but we're not educating people around that. But yeah, the proliferation of the internet and free porn has been an absolute earthquake in cultural change.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and I guess this like kink blink is also why that back massager, and then suddenly you then get vibrators a hundred years later.
Kate Lister
This is quite a nice thing, actually.
Hannah Witton
Hang on, if I just put this here instead, what would happen?
Kate Lister
Absolutely, we're sexual beings, aren't we, so we use technology -
Hannah Witton
It's curiosity.
Kate Lister
Yeah, definitely.
Hannah Witton
It's just like, what if I did this with this thing -
Kate Lister
Yes. And I've made it better, hurrah.
Hannah Witton
Exactly! That makes tonnes of sense to me. What do you think about sex robots and stuff then? Like, because obviously, like, with AI, people have obviously gone, well, gonna make a sex human.
Kate Lister
Yeah, that's where we're heading, right. And there are sex robots available. And there are sex robot brothels. And there are companies, a few in the world right now, who are working towards getting the most realistic sex bot that they can find, and it causes all kinds of controversy and people get quite weirded out by it. And there was a protest, I think last year or the year before, in Amsterdam by sex workers who were protesting the opening of another sex robot brothel.
Hannah Witton
Competition!
Kate Lister
Competition, because it's a loss of business, right?
Hannah Witton
Yeah, it's it that's interesting to me that are like supermarket workers protesting like, check - like those checkout machines
Kate Lister
The self scanning areas.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, the self checkout thing.
Kate Lister
I've just got an image now of a sex robot just going unexpected item in bagging area!
Hannah Witton
Yeah!
Kate Lister
Getting that red light that goes off and someone has to come in and scan it to get it going again.
Hannah Witton
Oh my God. Yeah, that's 100% what a sex robot brothel is like.
Kate Lister
See, it doesn't seem as scary now, do they, they just seem ludicrous! People get freaked out by it, because we get freaked out by robots quite a lot, actually. They're slightly uncomfortable weird things because they look like humans, but they're not humans, but they're kind of dead but they're kind of -
Hannah Witton
Yeah, makes me feel weird.
Kate Lister
Yeah, feel it makes me feel a bit weird. And then of course, it's you've got this whole big thing about, why would somebody want to have sex with a sex robot. I've heard that saying, been said quite a few times, this idea that if you want to have sex with what is effectively emotionless female doll that you must be enacting some kind of hideous violence on women. And I do, like I hear all of these arguments, and I kind of listen to them, and I think I see what you're saying, but I don't think that that's right. To be honest, is I, wedon't know why people want to have sex with robots. We don't know.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, from from a lot of what I've seen and read about it. Like, or at least the examples that have been presented to me is like the loneliness element.
Kate Lister
Yeah. I mean, it's like when sex robots they freak us out. I'm not - I'm not going to pretend that I have, -I'm not like slightly weirded by that glassy eyed -
Hannah Witton
Yeah,.
Kate Lister
- stare and all the rest of it. But like, what's a dildo, or a vibrator, if not just a disembodied dick with batteries, you know.
Hannah Witton
That's purple.
Kate Lister
But when we build a body around it, we get really uncomfortable. And I think -
Hannah Witton
It's, it's precisely because it is looks more human. Although we don't get necessarily weirded out by like fleshlights that actually look like vulva's or penises.
Kate Lister
They've been around for a long time.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And also dildos that do look like dick.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
So when it's separate from a human.
Kate Lister
Hmm, yeah, it's something about like the doll perhaps? But it kind of, it's made people worry that this is like the ultimate objectification of women, just these huge, great big, big titted, rubber, tiny things.
Hannah Witton
The only thing that like, makes me think that is maybe partially like true that might be a part of it, is that there isn't the same level of male sex dolls aimed at like straight women.
Kate Lister
That's true.
Hannah Witton
Like it very much is, at least for the most part, female sex dolls for straight men.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
That is what the market is.
Kate Lister
It's true. There are male sex dolls for straight women. And as you said, they've not been very popular. Until you can programme him to like, you know, listen to how your day was, and open jars and stuff, I mean, who cares?
Hannah Witton
Feminism!
Kate Lister
Faminism, woohoo! I'm in trouble now. Yah, I don't know why men wants to, some men who want to have sex with robots. But they have, there have been a lot of men who wanted to have sex with dolls all throughout history. This behaviour, isn't that new.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
It's again, it's the technology that made it new, and quite scary.
Hannah Witton
The other strange, like, one thing I was thinking about was that women using sex toys is seen as like a sign of sexual empowerment. And like, it's very, like I think it's seen as quite normalised. Yeah, it's kind of normalised in our society. You know, you've got like, Anne Summers shops like on the high street.
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
But then, like, male sex toys, or toys like -
Kate Lister
Shame.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. It's like, oh, why would you use that? But then it's the it's flipped the entirely the other way when it comes to, like dolls and robots.
Kate Lister
That's absolutely true, isn't it.
Hannah Witton
How has that happened?
Kate Lister
I think that it is to do with, like, all this kind of sense of masculinity being tied up with the fact of like, can you get a woman to have sex with you, I think. For some, like heterosexual men that is kind of tied up with this, like, being a womaniser, being having lots of sex, being very successful, the kind of James Bond type of a thing.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, but men wanking is like, way more normalised. At least, like when I was growing up, than female masturbation.
Kate Lister
Yes, that's also very true.
Hannah Witton
But then having a masturbatory aid, it's like, the opposite way around. And why is this happened?
Kate Lister
I think that like, perhaps the sex doll is like, it's almost like saying that you can't have sex with a real person. I have no idea why a dildo wouldn't say that, as well.
Hannah Witton
The dildo just says like, you go girl, it doesn't say, oh, she can't get laid.
Kate Lister
I think, well I've heard some jokes around that, about, you know, like, like, you're just going to be left on your own with your vibrator.
Hannah Witton
And your cats.
Kate Lister
And your cats, which sounds fucking fabulous to me. But I've heard some things around that. But you're right, they're caught up in completely different social scripts, aren't they. I think that it's about embarrassment and sexual impotence for men that they must want to they can only fuck a doll because no one else wants to have sex to them. I think that's how it's been marketed. I mean, I'm I have no desire to have sex with a robot myself, so I can't speak about what the actual thing is that makes you think, yeah, this is this is the one for me. I can only think that it's like a novelty thing. And then maybe they'd have somewhere where you can charge your phone as well.
Hannah Witton
Wait, hold on, can it be instead of a human face, can it be a screen that shows porn?
Kate Lister
Oh, no! I suppose it could be, couldn't it, oh dear. I sort of envision them having like somewhere you could put your iPhone in and like get Spotify up.
Hannah Witton
Oh, wait it's like the gym. Like on a treadmill where you can like you have your little screen so you just like riding your sex bike.
Kate Lister
Absolutely. But you know, to your best tunes.
Hannah Witton
Whilsy catching up on whatever it is.
Kate Lister
Absolutely this that's what I think of a sex doll brothel. Of course it's not like that.
Hannah Witton
I want to make this though. My interest has been piqued
Kate Lister
I think we could do this. But no, I don't know what the appeal is, but it's not a new appeal. That's what I'd say, it's as old as sex itself. It's just we've got a new technology now to play with.
Hannah Witton
What are some other things have like come up in your research then that is kind of like people think is this really new thing but actually, it's been happening for days and days beginning of time? Or just your favourite like, history sex, myth, busted.
Kate Lister
The Victorians and the vibrators, that was good fun.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
I see the one about men not masturbating because it saps their energies interesting moment because of this no nut November thing that was going round. I don't know if anybody saw that, um -
Hannah Witton
A little bit, and there's also like, huge like, no fap communities.
Kate Lister
Yes. Yeah, this idea that you shouldn't orgasm or spill semen because it will deplete your energy. And as a mediaeval historian called Eleanor Janega who's done some fabulous work around this. So do look up her work on this, but she properly takes it to town. But that is interesting to me because that idea has been kicking around for thousands and thousands of years, that if a man orgasms, he somehow weakens himself. And it's utter horseshit. But it's like it's just strange how the way these things gather traction again, as if it's a new idea. And it's not.
Hannah Witton
It's like fashion
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Vintage is like 80s clothes now, or 90s clothes even.
Kate Lister
Vintage wanking.
Hannah Witton
It's vintage wanking. Same ideas.
Kate Lister
Or not wanking.
Hannah Witton
These same ideas just getting recycled every like few 100 years.
Kate Lister
Yep, absolutely. And that is all like, rooted in the idea that, like, where does that come from? I suppose we were saying earlier when we like in the French call the orgasm, the little death.
Hannah Witton
Une petite mort.
Kate Lister
Une petite mort. Something very real does happen in the brain chemistry for men when they orgasm, which is there is a crash of dopamine and serotonin and they get sleepy. We all know this.
Hannah Witton
Okay, I get hugely sleepy after orgasm. And I've never felt more, you like cited some research that was like, I think there was a group of like women were surveyed, and a huge chunk of them said that they use masturbation to help them fall asleep, and I was like, oh my God, it me! I feel so seen!
Kate Lister
Yes, it does. You know, it does make you sleepy.
Hannah Witton
If I can't get to sleep, I used to use just like those, like guided meditation things to fall asleep.
Kate Lister
Oh, no, have a wank.
Hannah Witton
But now I just have a wank, and then I'm like out. Brilliant.
Kate Lister
Yes, it's because there is a lot of neurobiology and stuff that goes on. And everybody's experiences this, is when when you've come, suddenly the world looks a very different place. You may have experienced that when you've looked at your partner and going oh, shit. That - that makes me sound like a horrible person. But in men, it's more pronounced, and they have something called the male refractory period to be all scientific about it. And that's basically the length of time it takes between him orgasming and being able to get hard again.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
Because you get sleepy, but you could have sex again.
Hannah Witton
I could, but I don't want to at that point,
Kate Lister
That's fine. Don't you have sex. No, you shouldn't have sex if you don't want to. Theoretically, you could.
Hannah Witton
In theory.
Kate Lister
If you wanted to. He can't.
Hannah Witton
Nope.
Kate Lister
So it's, I suppose that that maybe this idea that when you shoot your load, you lose your energy is rooted in that is because it makes you sleepy and tired.
Hannah Witton
Is it also may be rooted in like, almost like, biblical like it's wasting the seed.
Kate Lister
Wasting the seed. The precious seed, it is in the Bible, isn't it? So it's very much there. But we also see this in ancient Taoist practice, and it's still practised in Neo Tantra groups around the world today, this idea that it saves up your energy, and it makes you more masculine and manly. I think as well that it's probably a hefty dose of misogyny in there as well. Is that you know if this woman makes you come, she's sucked out your lifeforce.
Hannah Witton
Oh wow, so we're like sex vampires now.
Kate Lister
So that is quite a pronounced part of this. Obviously the Victorian journals in the towers thing do not say women are sex vampires, don't give it to them. But they do, they do have this idea that to be in really in control and be really manly, you should be able to have sex and not orgasm and that's a control thing.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. One of the other things that I found fascinating was about people trying to restore their virginity.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
And this is also still happening. Yeah, this is another one that we kind of, yeah, it's -
Kate Lister
There was that idiot recently -
Hannah Witton
Er, TI.
Kate Lister
TI had his daughters virginity checked, you lunatic.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, that was gross.
Kate Lister
That's just child abuse and just don't do that.
Hannah Witton
No and also completely, like unfounded.
Kate Lister
Complete gibberish.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
Absolute again complete and utter gibberish.
Hannah Witton
But people had like advice, like this is how you can restore your virginity. And, and one What are some of those techniques that they used? Like how did people go about or specifically people with vulvas. How did they go about trying to restore their virginity? But then my other question is, did they, when they were doing this, did the people advising these things and then doing it themselves, did they genuinely believe that it was restoring their virginity or or were they believing this is going to help me hide this and so I can get a better husband?
Kate Lister
So the virginity has always pretty much been loaded towards people with vulva's because that's where the hymen is. No one's really, throughout history as far as I can tell, I'm sure the example somewhere, given much of a stuff about you know, lads, lads, lads. That's much more acceptable. But virginity and being able to prove it, has been absolutely of a premium to women throughout history, and it's affected their deal on the marriage market. And it's all tied up with really awful misogynistic narratives. But that's exactly what it was. So it was up this obsession was loaded towards women with their virginity, right? So if you can lose your virginity and you can't, by the way, you can't lose it.
Hannah Witton
Where did it go?
Kate Lister
Yeah, you can't hand it in lost and found. Even like that, the lexical field around it, you've lost something, you are now without something's, it's horseshit. So the virginity test, basically comes down to examining the hymen, and something called a two finger test, which was to test for tightness. Now both of these are just -
Hannah Witton
Wow.
Kate Lister
Just nonsense because the hymen can be broken in all kinds of ways that don't involve penetration. And it can also can survive penile penetration.
Hannah Witton
And it's a stretchy membrane.
Kate Lister
It's a stretchy membranes. There's no way, there's no way that you can look at someone's genitals and tell if they're a virgin. Absolutely not. Not unless you've got a post it note stapled to it saying I'm definitely not a virgin. Dave was here.
Hannah Witton
Dave was here, 2004.
Kate Lister
But even then it's speculative. But anyway, so this huge emphasis is on women's virginity as a really important commodification. So that immediately creates a situation of like, well, if you've lost your virginity, what you're going to do about it. So you get a lot of textbooks from the Middle Ages onwards that first of all say how you should test just for the virginity and if it's not the looking for the hymen, then it's insane things like look at a jar of piss and see if it sparkles, that was one.
Hannah Witton
Woah!
Kate Lister
That was one mediaeval Italian test, but you also get -
Hannah Witton
Wait, does it sparkle if you're a virgin?
Kate Lister
Apparently so.
Hannah Witton
Because then you're like, pure and magical and -
Kate Lister
You've got it. Yeah, and you've got carbonated wizz, that's how special you are.
Hannah Witton
Wow.
Kate Lister
But it's also the alum water tends to play quite a heavy feature in this and it's like an astringent, and it was supposed to tighten the vagina back up. But you can still buy it, you know, so -
Hannah Witton
Yeah, this is like the history of like, products for your foof that do nothing.
Kate Lister
Yep, that do nothing.
Hannah Witton
And actually maybe do more harm.
Kate Lister
Yes. But if you wanted to fake your virginity, there are a lot of texts that have got sort of, you know, little subtle hints like fanny hill, for example, 18th century pornographic book. She describes selling her virginity several times over. And she does it by keeping a little sponge that soaked with blood in the bedside cabinet and then inserting that and then kind of you know, then there's blood and you know, making the appropriate noise. So that that's a tip.
Hannah Witton
But even that, like people sell a virginity today.
Kate Lister
Yes, they do.
Hannah Witton
We know that there's no way to prove it. And yet it's still like still worth a lot. Even the idea of it -
Kate Lister
It's a complete social construct. It means nothing. And we don't even know what it means is that if you say to somebody, what does losing your virginity mean? They'll straightaway say the first time I had sex. And you'll go, what do you mean by that? Like, is it the first time penis and vagina sex, or does oral sex count? Or anal sex? Or what what, two women together, or two boys together. Can you lose it yourself? It doesn't mean anything.
Hannah Witton
Or to a tampon?
Kate Lister
Or a tampon? Do you know what I mean? It's but yeah, we're obsessed with it, still.
Hannah Witton
So like, in Fanny Hill is very clear that it was like this is how to fake virginity.
Kate Lister
Yes.
Hannah Witton
But we I guess we don't know if any of them like but truly believed that like, if you did x, y and z, then like, you would be a pure virgin again.
Kate Lister
There are some like medical mediaeval journals will say things like eat marshmallow leaves and you know, do all this kind of crazy stuff sit over a pot steam and all this stuff. I suppose if you've read it -
Hannah Witton
Oh my God, sit over a pot of steam, like literally steaming your vagina.
Kate Lister
There is, there is, yeah.
Hannah Witton
It's been around for -
Kate Lister
Hasn't it, hasn't, and always been insane. I suppose that the people were doing it, if you'd read it in a medical book, and you genuinely had no reason to doubt that this was the truth, and you come from a culture where the scripts say absolutely, you can lose your virginity, people can tell if you've lost your virginity, then you probably would believe that it was all gonna be okay again.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Kate Lister
Why, it's only with, like hindsight that we can go that's just absolute nonsense. You know, think about how many cultural myths still persist around sex. Like, especially when you're coming up through school, I think I believed that I could get pregnant by sitting on the toilet.
Hannah Witton
Yep.
Kate Lister
I believed that, that just absolute madness and stuff that you think, and that people still do that today. So I have no doubt that they genuinely believed that they were sorting their virginity out by sitting over a pot of steam.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And I think, also, that's one of the important things that I remember, like learning doing my degree, is about it's not just like what they were doing, but like really trying to figure out like, how they, how people felt about what they were doing.
Kate Lister
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
And like what they believed, which is just so difficult to find out.
Kate Lister
That's the difficult thing about well, all history, but sex history, especially, is because it's a it's a hidden history. We know people were having sex, we're here, we're the living proof. Yeah. But people just don't tend to document their sex lives -
Hannah Witton
Unless you're being prosecuted for it.
Kate Lister
If you're being prosecuted, that's a brilliant source. But it also skews it. Because if we've got lots of evidence being prosecuted for sodomy, or all kinds of things, but that doesn't tell us what that person actually felt about it, or what the truth was. And also, do you mean, if somebody's standing in front of a court accused of sodomy, then yeah, we know a lot about the legal system and social attitudes, but that person going it definitely wasn't me, that might not be completely accurate. You know, so it's unbiased firsthand testimony is very rare throughout history.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And yet we still do it.
Kate Lister
Still do it. Yeah, absolutely.
Hannah Witton
Oh, thank you so much.
Kate Lister
It was my pleasure.
Hannah Witton
It's been so fun to chat with you. And keep doing it.
Kate Lister
Thank you so much
Hannah Witton
Where can people, where can people find you online?
Kate Lister
So you can find me through the Twitter account @WhoresofYore. There's also the website, and my regular human Twitter is @literaturepeep.
Hannah Witton
Nice!
Kate Lister
I think, yes. But just give me a Google. I'll be there.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
Kate Lister
Thank you!
Hannah Witton
I'm so excited for your book to come out. Thank you so much for listening to Doing It. If you enjoyed it, I would really appreciate it if you left a rating and a review. You can find show notes at DoingItPodcast.co.uk and do go follow us on social media and I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye.
Hannah Witton
This was a Global original podcast.