The Elusive Female Orgasm with Dan Snow

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Episode: The Elusive Female Orgasm with Dan Snow
Date: May 19, 2026
Host: Dr. Kate Lister
Guest/Co-host: Dan Snow

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Episode Overview

In this lively and insightful episode, sex historian Dr. Kate Lister is joined by historian Dan Snow for a deep dive into the history of the female orgasm. Together, they unpack centuries of taboo, scientific misunderstanding, myth, and cultural baggage shaping the experiences and perceptions of female pleasure, with a particular focus on the so-called "orgasm gap"—the persistent disparity between mens’ and womens’ sexual satisfaction. Kate draws on material from her new book, Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure, while Dan brings curiosity (and plenty of candid humor) as the two navigate ancient, medieval, and modern views on what counts as sex, who gets to enjoy it, and why we still struggle to talk openly and honestly about female pleasure.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Orgasm Gap: What Is It and Why Does It Exist?

• Gendered Disparities: Kate cites a 2019 Rutgers study showing heterosexual women orgasm about 65% of the time, versus 96% for men.
  “So one half of this coupling is getting off 65%, the other one 96.” (Kate, 04:32)

• “Penis-Centric” Sex and Cultural Scripts: The definition of sex in Western society is overwhelmingly focused on penetrative, heterosexual intercourse, inherently deprioritizing female pleasure and reinforcing the normative timeline of male arousal, climax, and completion.

  “We’ve created this weird situation where a man's orgasm is an absolute foregone conclusion... and a woman's is kind of nice if it shows up—it's a benefit if it does.” (Kate, 06:45)

• The Comedy of Faking It: The expectation for women to perform pleasure rather than experience it is a running thread from Victorian times to today.

  “There’s far too many men walking around out there thinking that they are amazing in bed... But everyone’s just been faking it the entire time.” (Kate, 32:02)

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Ancient Theories and the “Two Seed Theory”

• Early Medical Texts: Historical texts often describe reproduction as requiring simultaneous “release of seed” from men and women (the “two seed theory”), with ambiguous interpretations.

  “That turns up all the time. And that’s what's known as the two seed theory... Now we know about ovulation... But they didn’t know that. So what did they mean?” (Kate, 08:22)

• Ancient Greek Science: Women’s seed might have referred to menstrual blood, imaginary essence, or vaginal lubrication—but always described through a male-centric, unfamiliar lens.

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Women Writing About Pleasure: Nuns, Mystics & Ecstatic Visions (10:49–14:46)

• First Documented Female Orgasm:
  • 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen’s medical description is possibly the first written account of female orgasm:

    “...the heat of her brain, which has delectation in it, first announces the perception of delight in that joining and pouring forth of seed....” (Kate quoting Hildegard, 11:28)

• Christian Mysticism as Safe Space: For literate women, particularly in nunneries, ecstatic or orgasmic visions could be expressed metaphorically via religious ecstasy.
  • Example: St. Teresa describes a vision of being pierced by an angel:

    “The pain was so great that it made me moan, and yet so surpassing was sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it.” (Kate quoting St. Teresa, 13:35)

  • Agnes Blanbikin, Christian mystic, wrote of ecstatic visions involving Christ’s foreskin.

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Changing Ideas of Female Sexuality Across History (14:29–23:30)

• From Voracious to Sexless:

  • Ancient and medieval cultures viewed women as more sexually voracious but also as unstable and in need of control.
  • The belief that women needed to orgasm to conceive (from Hippocratic writings through the early modern era) persisted for centuries.
  • This theory later led to pernicious myths, such as the idea that pregnancy proved enjoyment and therefore consent—used to discredit rape victims in 18th-century legal cases.

• Medieval to Modern Shifts:

  “...for most of history, it was believed that women were far more sexually voracious than men were. They believed that in the ancient world. They believed that in the medieval period.... But it didn’t play out like that.” (Kate, 15:01)

• Physiological Theories: Ancient Greeks viewed gender differences as a matter of "heat and wetness," with women seen as "inverted men." (16:54)

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Global Perspectives: Taoism, “Sexual Vampirism”, and Health Myths (19:52–22:39)

• Eastern vs. Western Traditions:

  • In Taoist China, abstention from orgasm was believed to preserve a man’s energy (“jing”), while making a woman orgasm was thought to transfer her energy to the man.
  • This “sexual vampirism” was not about mutual pleasure but power and energy dynamics.

• Modern Parallels:

  • Similar ideas resurface today in both the “manosphere” and in sexual health movements (e.g., No Nut November).

• Health Benefits:

  • Orgasms are medically beneficial for men and women, including reduced prostate cancer risk (for men)—but the focus is rarely on women’s well-being.

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The Evolution of Sex Science: From Two Seed Theory to Freud and Beyond (26:09–31:32)

• Persistence of the Two Seed Theory:

  • Despite being disproven in the 17th century, the theory survived into Victorian times and was still debated in the 1840s.

• Victorian Medicalization & Freud’s Influence (27:06–31:10):

  • Victorians pathologized women unable to orgasm through intercourse, labelling them “impotent” or “frigid.”

  • Freud’s hierarchy:

    “A vaginal orgasm was sexually mature and that an orgasm derived through clitoral stimulation was psychologically immature. Which is… just nonsense.” (Kate, 28:05)

  • Lasting impact of the myth that only penetration-induced orgasms are “real,” leading to dangerous extremes (eg., Princess Marie Bonaparte’s attempts to surgically reposition her clitoris).

• The Myth of the G-spot:

  “There is no G spot. It’s the C spot. That’s the clitoris. It’s the clitoral root, and it has been the entire time.” (Kate, 31:10)

  • Only recently has medical science mapped the full clitoral structure, correcting centuries of anatomical neglect.

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Sexual Scripts, Faking It, and the Invisible Labor of Pleasure (31:34–34:27)

• Performing Orgasm and Social Pressure:

  • Women still fake orgasms (“about 58% of women have faked it”), largely due to ingrained cultural expectations and a focus on male pleasure.
  • Historical and 19th-century sources even advised women to fake it if they couldn't achieve orgasm through penetration, or risk being branded mentally unwell.

• Changing Conversations:

  • Kate argues for ending this script: women deserve genuine pleasure, open advocacy for what they want, and the recognition that true intimacy is better than performative sex.

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Where Did (and Do) Women Learn About Sex? (34:27–37:41)

• Past to Present:
  • Historically, mothers were expected to explain sex to their daughters, often missing out the details around pleasure.

  “If the Queen of France didn’t have all the information, where do people learn about it?” (Kate, 35:29)

  • Sex education today still focuses on risk and mechanics—not the right to pleasure or how to have mutually satisfying experiences.
  • The World Health Organization’s push for the “right to sexual pleasure” reflects new priorities in sexual health education.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We have a real issue with the orgasm gap today... heterosexual women are orgasming... about 65% of the time... straight men are getting their rocks off 96% of the time.”
  —Kate Lister (04:21)

• “We’ve created this weird situation where a man’s orgasm is an absolute foregone conclusion that’s definitely going to happen. And a woman’s is kind of nice if it shows up, it’s a benefit if it does.”
  —Kate Lister (06:45)

• Quoting St. Teresa:
  “The pain was so great that it made me moan, and yet so surpassing was sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it.”
  —St. Teresa (13:42)

• “It’s not like an egalitarian act... It’s an energy harvest.” (On Taoist “sexual vampirism”)
  —Kate Lister (22:09)

• “My favorite theory is that [the female orgasm is] actually... a byproduct when we were all in the womb. This is the same reason why men have nipples... women have retained the ability to orgasm even though it’s more ornamental than anything else. But I really like that theory because it means that the orgasm is just there for fun.”
  —Kate Lister (24:05)

• “There is no G spot. It’s the C spot. That’s the clitoris. It’s the clitoral root, and it has been the entire time.”
  —Kate Lister (31:10)

• “There’s far too many men walking around out there thinking that they are amazing in bed, but everyone’s just been faking it the entire time.”
  —Kate Lister (32:01)

• “Who talks to their child about actual pleasure, about sexual pleasure and that it can be nice, it can be great, guys. It’s one of the few things about this veil of tears that makes it worth living.”
  —Dan Snow (37:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:06 – Dan Snow joins as “guest host”
• 04:21 – Introduction of the orgasm gap statistics
• 06:45 – “Penis-centric” sex and finishing scripts
• 08:07 – The difficulty of finding historical sources on female orgasm
• 10:49 – Hildegard of Bingen: first documented female orgasm account
• 13:22 – St. Teresa’s ecstatic vision and the role of Christian mysticism
• 14:57 – Historic shifts: from voracious women to “sexless” Victorians
• 19:52 – Cross-cultural ideas: Taoism, sexual vampirism, and semen "energy"
• 26:09 – The two seed theory and its decline
• 27:06 – Victorian & Freudian medicalization of female pleasure
• 31:10 – The myth of the G-spot versus the true structure of the clitoris
• 32:01 – The enduring problem of faked orgasms
• 34:27 – Sex education, maternal transmission of sex knowledge, and lessons for today

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Episode Tone

Frank, witty, and research-driven—with plenty of historical detail, modern critique, and candid, humorous exchanges between Kate and Dan. Both hosts lean into the absurdities of sexual myths and the limits of past (and present) sexual education, calling for a more honest, pleasure-positive conversation about female sexuality.

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Further Reading

Kate Lister’s new book, Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure, explores these themes in depth. For more on the historical sources and the ongoing cultural negotiation around female pleasure, see also the podcast’s archives and related works on the history of sexuality.

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Transcript

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Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Listo. Welcome back once again to Betwixt the She. Hello. Thank you for dropping by once more. It's fab to have you here. But before we go any further, I do have to tell you once again, and we'll keep telling you from now until the time the podcast becomes unprofitable. This is an adult podcast book and by adults, other adults about adulty things and an adulty way covering a range little subject. Used to be an adult, too, right? Do you feel safer? Do you really? Do you feel okay to keep going? All right, then, let's do it. Finish. Climax. Peak. Le petit mort. The big O coming, Creaming, Hitting the jackpot. Or perhaps you just want to say it like it is and call it an orgasm. Whatever it is you call it, that is what we're talking about today. Foreign. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Cait Lister. We've spent a lot of time talking about female pleasure on this podcast. So much, in fact, that I took myself off to write an entire book about the history of female pleasure. So I think it's about time we got really focused on it today. And who better to get focused on female pleasure with than the lovely and dashing to Dan Snow? Well, I sat down to talk to Dan about the history of the female orgasm and asked the question, where did the orgasm gap come from? Because that is one of the many things that I've been researching for My new book that is out this month, which is called Flick the Story of Female Pleasure. Do you want to see how Dan handled it?

[C]

Yep.

[A]

So do I. Well, hello, Dan Snow.

[C]

Hey, Kate.

[A]

Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast.

[C]

Well, I'm on the podcast, but actually, I want to point out I feel I'm guest hosting.

[A]

Yeah, you kind of are. Yes, I am slightly here. Not under duress, but you're here.

[C]

No, I'm excited. This is one of my favorite podcasts. I've never guest hosted anything before. This is cool.

[A]

But you're guest hosting and asking me questions.

[C]

You damn right. Well, because I haven't got any answers on this one, let me tell you. Because what subject are we talking about today?

[A]

The history of women orgasming.

[C]

You're right. So it's very much. I'm very much in a questioning mode.

[A]

Well, let's maybe. Maybe you'll learn something.

[C]

Well, I certainly will. And I want to learn. The first thing I want to learn is we're sitting here in my flat now and we've got a wall of books. Find us. And I mean, I'm just looking up at these books. I mean, I can see probably in this wall alone, five books about the Battle of Waterloo.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. And that took place in one day, 200 years ago.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

How many history books have been written, scholarly history books have been written about female pleasure, female orgasms that you can.

[A]

Not that many, certainly. There's probably less than. There are books on the Battle of Waterloo in this apartment, which is.

[C]

I mean, that tells us something about history, the thing that we call history, doesn't it?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, this is something that. Well, hopefully not as many people as you'd like, but, like, this is something that is part of the lives of 50% of humans who have ever lived.

[A]

Yeah, it is. And we have a real issue with the orgasm gap today that. I mean, to give you some stats just today as we're walking around on Earth, a study came out, Rutgers University in 2019, and it showed that heterosexual women are orgasming in about 65% of the time that they're having sexual intercourse, whereas straight men are getting their rocks off 96% of the time. So one half of this coupling is getting off 65%, the other one 96.

[C]

And why is. I mean, are we straying into. Is this biology we're now going to talk about, or is this cultural history?

[A]

And biology is quite an important part of this. Why do we have orgasms? What biological function do they serve, especially women's orgasms. Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists are still raring about this. Men's orgasms is pretty straightforward. They need that for the semen to come out. Making babies. And then we all go, oh, that makes sense.

[C]

Well, that almost is how we've come to define the sexual act.

[A]

It is, but that, that's just what you said there. The bigger point of that, that is entirely how we look at sex, even on a subconscious level. Even the way that we talk about sex. If we talk about something like foreplay, by which we mean everything apart from penetrative sex, which we've immediately deprioritized a whole raft of sexual activities. And what we've said is the one that actually pleasures the penis most, that's the main event. Everything else is like a precursor.

[C]

Well, and the one that the sort of priests approve of, right, which is making babies. The one that leads to making babies.

[A]

The one that can potentially make babies. And if you speak to people on the street, don't do this, but if you wanted to, and you said like, what does losing your virginity mean? Almost everybody would say it's the first time you have sex. And then you say what do you mean by that? And they'd say penetrative sex. So immediately if you say that losing virginity, the only thing that counts as that is sticking a penis into something. Well, what about fingering or cunnilingus or same sex acts? We've just canceled a whole load of them because again, we're obsessed with this idea that what counts as sex is heterosexual sex. And it means sticking a willy into something.

[C]

Well, heterosex and on a timeline that mirrors that of the male experience. Right, yeah. The sex is over when the male comes.

[A]

That's the other thing about it. Looking again at biology, but also cultural and social conditioning, we've managed to get ourselves into a situation where not only is the only thing we actually count as proper sex, penetrative sex, but we've also allowed this situation to develop where the penis basically gets to dictate when it starts and when it finishes. So the penis gets to say, hello, I'm now erect. We will now have sex. And as soon as the man's come, that's it, it's all over. Doesn't matter if you've got your, he's snoring next to you. We've created this weird situation where a man's orgasm is an absolute full gone conclusion that's definitely going to happen. And a woman's is kind of nice if it shows up, it's a benefit if it does. We've got like a whole cultural comedic script around women not orgasming during sex and just not really enjoying it. In fact, this myth has arisen and this is the reason I wanted to write the book, that women somehow don't enjoy sex as much as men do. That's still with us today. You don't have to look very far to find that. But what if that is complete bollocks? And I believe that it is complete bollocks. What if it's just that the sex they're being offered is shit?

[C]

Well, that's interesting, and you and I have talked before about this, but there have been periods through history where women were said to have been the sort of voracious, horny, troublesome ones.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And it was. So therefore, I'm sure we'll explore that a little bit, the kind of historiography of that. What about. Is it quite hard to find source material here? Like, if you're writing about the female orgasms?

[A]

Yes, it's very, very difficult. You've got to try and understand the language being used that it's quite coded. If you're going back to, like, something like anc. Ancient Greece is the language that they're being is normally in medical text they're talking about sharing seed. That's not when a man pours forth his seed. And then they do this with thing where they talk about a woman's seed as well. That turns up all the time. And that's what's known as the two seed theory. And for a long time that was how they thought that babies were made. There was this man releases his seed and a woman releases her seed. Now, what they meant by women's seed is very much up for debate of, like, what is that? Because now we know about ovulation, things like that. But they didn't know that. So what did they mean? So there's a few theories they might have meant that woman's seed is menstrual blood that the Greeks thought was basically semen that hadn't been heated up to the right temperature to become male. Hashtag science. It made sense to them. It made sense to them. They thought that it might be like some kind of invisible seed inside the body. Or the one that I think that it probably is is vaginal lubrication during arousal, which again, you can see that's the patriarch in action. We don't even have a word for that. The French do. They call it supreme. I'll be back with Dan after the short break.

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[C]

But you have found the first documented orgasm.

[A]

Yeah. So the first woman that we know who wrote about women orgasming was a 12th century German nun called Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard der Bingen. She was actually. She was an abbess and she was the mother's superior. And she was very, very. She was a really impressive woman who had visions and she wrote them down and she advised popes and wrote music, and she was just a very impressive person. But she also wrote medical texts, and in this one, this is what she writes. This is her description of an orgasm. When a woman is joined to a man, the heat of her brain, which has delectation in it, first announces the perception of delight in that joining and pouring forth of seed. After the seed has fallen into place, the heat attracts and holds it. So in the woman's kidneys contract, all the organs prepared for opening at the menstrual period are now closed, like a strong man enclosing something in his hand.

[C]

Does that ring true?

[A]

I mean, what. This is a really medical description in a medical text. So you can see that pouring forth of seed. Again, this is the two seed theory. And she's talking about delight and she's talking about heat and she's talking about things contracting. That is an orgasm. It's a very medical description of an orgasm. We think she might be the first one to ever describe a woman orgasming. But there are some Greek writers who talk about woman's pleasure during intercourse and heat and contracting. And they might be describing an orgasm. Possibly.

[C]

But that's so amazing. And she's not the only nun. I mean, it feels like these nunneries could be a safe space for Women to think and write and exchange ideas and explore. Yeah, because there's some other nuns you talk about in your book who also are writing on these subjects.

[A]

They're kind of writing on these subjects. So Hildegard is writing a medical text and she's trying to understand how babies are made, basically because she is a good Catholic at the end of the day. But there are other writings by some nuns and some Christian mystics who are highly erotic in nature, and they're often talking about their visions of Christ when he comes to visit them.

[C]

Sure, sure, sure.

[A]

So one of them, Agnes Blanbikin, she wasn't a nun, she was a mystic. She was an Austrian Christian mystic in the 14th century, I think. And she writes. Well, she doesn't write. She couldn't write. It was written for her. But she writes about having ecstatic visions where she thought she had Christ's foreskin in her mouth.

[C]

Okay, well, it sounds to me like it's sort of legal. If you can put a Jesus stamp on it, then.

[A]

Then it's fine.

[C]

It's sort of fine.

[A]

Then it's fine because you've got another

[C]

amazing 16th century account of an orgasm, which I love. And that's also a nun.

[A]

Yeah, it's actually. That's not just any nun. That's St. Teresa. So she has an ecstatic vision about an angel coming to visit her, and the angel she dreams pierces her body with a spear. So it's all very metaphorical. And she writes, the pain was so great that it made me moan, and yet so surpassing was sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it.

[C]

That's such a great. I love that sentence.

[A]

That's a good line, right?

[C]

Amazing. Is it because these Christian women were literate and allowed to write these. Why do we think that so many of these sources, early sources, come from them?

[A]

There's a whole area of study about these erotic Christian visionaries and what's going on there. It's probably what's being conflated is their devotion to God, but it's being expressed physically. There's a lot of scholars that say that we shouldn't read this sexually, that what this is an ecstatic vision. And then there's other people going, no, it's definitely sexual. Who knows what's going on with this much times past. But these are women writing about pleasure. And I think the fact that they're writing about angels and Jesus, like you said, it maybe gives them a safe space to be able to explore it. After all, Nuns were supposed to be married to Christ.

[C]

Right, good point. I'm aware at the moment we're still talking about Europe and I know that you deal with lots of things going on outside Europe as well, so I'm going to come to that. But I just, I'm interested in this idea, something we talked about before. How the idea of female sexuality, enjoyment of sex, orgasming, how does that change over the centuries? Like, was there ever a time when you suspect the orgasm gap was narrower or possibly inverted? I mean, what's your sense of how things have developed over the centuries?

[A]

Well, now we have this kind of weird idea about women of the past being completely sexless, which wasn't true. And anyone who studies this stuff will run forward to tell you that that's absolutely not true. But a lot of that comes to us from the Victorians who had a really fucked up idea when it came to pleasure for everybody. But this idea emerges that women are weaker, that they have a weaker desire than men do. And we're kind of still untangling that now. For most of history, it was believed that women were far more sexually voracious than men were. They believed that in the ancient world. They believed that in the medieval period, coming through to the early modern period. And it sounds like a win. It's like, yay, we get to have loads of sex. But it didn't play out like that. The theory behind it was that because women were physically and mentally weaker than men, they couldn't control their urges, whereas men could. So men were like the stoic, sensible one and women were just these uncontrollable, raging sex banshees over here who needed to be controlled by men and marriage at all points. Now, was the orgasm gap less? You do have this belief and it starts in the ancient world. You can see it in the Hippocratic writings that a woman had to orgasm in order to get pregnant. Right. Now that sounds, again, sounds like a win. It's like, oh, so they should be orgasming then. But there is a really fucked up legacy that stayed with this because you can still see that being cited in rape cases in the 18th century. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's the idea that if she got pregnant, she couldn't possibly have been raped because she must have orgasm, therefore she must have enjoyed it and consented to it. So it's always. It's pretty nasty and pretty tangled. But there was a really strong belief throughout history that if a woman didn't orgasm, she wouldn't conceive. So again, we're Very phallacentric and we're very heterosexual. But they were certainly aware of pleasure and pleasure being important and that sort of.

[C]

Because from what you're saying, that sort of release of energy, you know, that almost biological change that comes over you, that it happens in a man. So surely it needs to be.

[A]

Surely it happens. Exactly. Because they, from the ancient world have believed that women were like men in beta form, basically like men in draft form, the men, the male. But this is what the Greeks taught. The male body and the female body were different because of temperature. Right. So a man's body heated up and became dry, whereas a woman's body was warm and it was wetter. And that's how they understood gender difference, largely. So if you were an effeminate boy, your constitution was too damp and too cold, and if you were a masculine woman, it was because you were too dry and too hot. Right. But they understood women as being like these pale, shadowy imitations of men. And you can see that in some drawings, like even going into the Renaissance period, when they're drawings of penises, but they look like vaginas and vice versa as well, because they understood a woman as just being an inverted man. So that idea. Well, if a man orgasms to get pregnant, a woman must orgasm to get pregnant as well. That's how they understood it.

[C]

Because what's so strange about that in our era, in terms of sex for pregnancy, which is in the minority of cases, but it's actually. There's a very different thing at play. Like, you get told the temperature's right, it's the right time of the month. Quickly now. And we have almost joke about the fact, you know, people are going through IVF or we're going through whatever, or the opposite is almost true. You're like, quickly, okay, that's fine, let's go, like do that. Now, according to. This is something that I have not experienced personally. But no, the. And isn't that interesting. So actually, the. There's a. We need to be alive to the possibility that in a thousand years ago, when you were trying to conceive actually, men were going to enormous lengths to make sure women orgasms.

[A]

We don't have that evidence. They were supposed to be. They were supposed to be. But unfortunately that didn't translate to women being able to cavort around the Parthenon getting their rugs.

[C]

Oh, sure. No, no, that's right. Only with husbands.

[A]

Only with husbands. Yeah, right. And whenever he wanted it, not too much, unless he wanted you to do that, but you're Absolutely right. Throughout history there was a real emphasis on the woman must enjoy sex as well.

[C]

So I was talking to our co host Susanna Lipscomb the other day about. Historians are only just looking into the menopause and it's something that has, you know, is just a defining life moment for 50% of people who've ever lived.

[A]

The French were the kind of the ones to discover the menopause. When you look throughout the ancient sources, none of them mention it. Even Hildegard doesn't mention it. And she loved to be in her 80s, so she definitely went through it.

[C]

Yeah. So we know you and I have made a program Pompeii. We know more about what people were eating in Pompeii snack bars than we do about how they were having sex with each other.

[A]

Yeah, we do. And especially when it comes to women's bodies and women's health, because it's just not there. The records just aren't there. What was it like to go through the menopause when you were a woman in Pompeii? You're already dealing with enough without the bloody volcano blowing up.

[C]

Well, exactly. Volcano's a useful metaphor there. Let's leave Europe behind a little bit. Cause I'm sure there must be some fascinating other traditions you may tap into. What sources do we have?

[A]

Yes. So when you're in Europe, you have this two seed theory. Men must orgasm, women must orgasm, and that's how we make babies. You also get a strange idea emerging that men become weakened, their bodies become weaker if they orgasm too much. Again, that's this idea of control. But you also interestingly see that playing out in Eastern cultures like China with early Taoist texts. And they have this idea about energy and about jing and they believe that semen is very important, should stay inside the body and that that will stoke up your energy. This is still something that's played out in tantric circles today. So when they say that tantric people can go forever and having sex, what they mean is they're not orgasming. That's the game that they're playing.

[C]

And that's found. It's. Now there's a strange part of the

[A]

manosphere that also emphasizes that, that also do that, right. That idea that you mustn't orgasm. That goes right back to this ancient stuff. And also the Victorians with their shaming around masturbation. But yeah, there's no November that goes right back to the ancient world.

[C]

I think medically orgasming is really good for you, right?

[A]

Very good for you.

[C]

Yeah, it's really good for you.

[A]

Really good for you. Especially if you happen to have a penis. There was research that came out of. It was one of the big American, I think it was Harvard actually. And they showed that regular orgasming, it reduces your rates of prostate cancer.

[C]

Yeah, it's just astonishing, isn't it?

[A]

Just don't do it in the supermarket. That's all that anybody asks.

[C]

Okay. You went a few skips ahead of where I was there, but yeah, okay, just do it.

[A]

Yeah, just do it. The privacy roadhouse. But no, that's absolutely right. From a health point of view, it's really important that you do it.

[C]

I think there are mental health consequences and all sorts of things as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Fascinating how interesting that at different ends of Eurasia we both came up with

[A]

sort of similar, similar ideas. But in China you have this idea that not only does a man store up his own energy reserves by not orgasming, but if a woman orgasms during sex with him, absorbs her energy. So you get this real emphasis on you must make a woman come. And you get these ancient Chinese manuals that are all about pleasuring women and trying to get them to orgasm and teaching men that they mustn't orgasm and that if they don't, they'll be able to live until they're 100. These practices that you're supposed to be able to have sex 50 times a day and not orgasm at all, but make all of these women come and it sounds brilliant. Again, it sounds like God, well done for.

[C]

Hang on, for whom?

[A]

Well, for the women who are orgasming. But this theory has also been called sexual vampirism by scholars because it's not like an egalitarian act. It's not like. Exactly. It's an energy harvest. So even like, you know, obviously we know that is crap and doesn't work. So they were still having a great time, but it wasn't being done because they were being really egalitarian about it. It was done to steal essence.

[C]

I mean, we humans are so messed up.

[A]

We're so fucked up.

[C]

I mean we've come up with all these theories. The one theory we haven't honest, just everyone have an orgasm just because it's quite nice. We over intellectualize it. Yeah, it's great because you get to steal their heat. Like what are you talking about? Birth, orgasm.

[A]

Just. Just have fun.

[C]

That's the end of it.

[A]

Yeah, it's fine to say we've overthought this is something. There's no other species on the planet who comes up with this kind of nonsense.

[C]

Just out of interest, what's your best theory about why the female orgasm exists?

[A]

Or you've opened up a can of worms there? There's so many different competing theories. And I know people listening will be going, because it's fun. It's just fun. But like, there has to be. Even if it's just fun, there has to be a reason for it that it's evolved. So there's so many different competing theories. Some of the madder ones that I've read is that it helps women to lie down. So like semen will say in their cervix for longer. It makes women sleepy. Was another one for pair bonding, that it bonds people together. I've heard various theories and red theories that it's an aid to conception somehow, but all of these kind of fall apart because it's like, well, then why do women orgasm so little during penetrative sex? About 18% of women can orgasm through penetrative sex alone. So if it is for making babies, that is a shit rate. That's a terrible system. My favorite theory is that it's actually. It's a byproduct when we were all in the womb. And when you're floating around for those first couple of weeks looking like a little jelly baby is. We're basically all the same. This is the same reason why men have nipples is because then eventually this little jelly baby gets flooded with all these hormones and sex differences arrive. But we do retain something. So men have still got nipples even though that we don't use them. And women have retained the ability to orgasm even though it's more ornamental than anything else. But I really like that theory because it means that the orgasm is just there for fun. Yeah, it's just there for fun.

[C]

A lucky accident.

[A]

It's a feature, not a bug. And that I really like that because it sort of goes to the heart, this idea that women are less sex than men. Well, we're not if our orgasm is just there for us to enjoy, it's built in. I'll be back with Dan after this short break.

[B]

And Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[A]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[B]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[A]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[B]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[A]

Let's talk groceries, specifically your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right? Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences up front, helping guide their choices. Instacart get groceries just how you like.

[C]

You've got so many examples of the two seed theory in your book and I can see why. In, say, England in the 17th century, scientific knowledge is pretty primitive. I can see why that makes sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Especially when all the authors, lots of the authors are men and the male orgasm is key to conception, so why shouldn't the female? You know, that makes sense. But then what did, when does that fall out of fashion? What does the Victorians think?

[A]

They were still ran about that by the 1840s. The lancet are still putting out discussions where people write in where they're going, look, a woman doesn't need to orgasm to get pregnant. They didn't say exactly like that. But the point is that it's still being debated at this time and it was disproven in the 17th century, but it still retained that. So the Victorians still have this idea that a woman has to orgasm in order to get pregnant, even though most of them are going, no, they don't.

[C]

How does it affect the female experience during sex? Once people start deciding that the orgasm isn't necessary for conception, they start to

[A]

do weird things with it. The Victorians, because they overly medicalized everything that was their whole thing, especially sex, everything becomes this medical issue. So orgasming also becomes a medical issue. Now Freud, a little bit after the Victorians is really the father of this. But it was in place place before this idea that if a woman couldn't orgasm during penetrative sex, she was medically frigid or impotent. That would have been the words that they would use. So we don't, we're not worrying about women orgasming to get pregnant anymore. But now we get this idea that she's not mentally sound unless she can orgasm during sex with her husband. You see that emerging. And the official name for that was impotence in the 19th century. So today we think of impotence as something that men have. But to the Victorians, it was also an impotent woman was one that couldn't orgasm through penetrative sex.

[C]

Yeah, you talk about Freud in your book and surprise, surprise, his views on female orgasm are pretty out there.

[A]

He gets. I always want to defend Freud, but I can't because I hate him. But I know he's a big deal. I know he's a big deal. He did loads of really important work but when it came to women's sexual pleasure it was just. He should just be hit in the face with a chair.

[C]

Hook him up on the old list of men who've done amazing things, brackets. As long as you don't pay no attention to their attitude, behaviour towards women.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He was really good on like the subconscious and you know, the Oedipal theory. And then he gets to women and it just all goes completely mental. So he had this idea and it wasn't him, it was in currency at the time, but it was really his work that popularized it, that a vaginal orgasm was sexually mature and that an orgasm derived through clitoral stimulation was psychologically immature. Which is. It's just nonsense. But that idea is actually still with us to this day. You still get people in various magazines or in corners of the Internet. You don't have to look very far to find this talking about how a vaginal orgasm is better than a clitoral orgasm.

[C]

Qualitatively better. Like a better.

[A]

Like a better that it is, that it's. Freud would have told you that it was more sexually mature, that that meant that you were a full woman and that you were fully developed. And that kicks off a new paranoia that we're all supposed to not only be orgasming all the time, but we're only allowed to orgasm through penetration alone. Because what does that do? It removes basically saying only sex with a penis is the only sexually mature orgasm that you can have. And this has really big repercussions. I mean, for example, Princess Marie Bonaparte, Napoleon's niece, she got herself into a right tangle thinking that she should be having vaginal orgasms and she couldn't. So she had an operation to three times to move her clitoris closer to her vaginal opening.

[C]

Okay,

[A]

sorry. And she never got it. She never got her vaginal orgasm.

[C]

I'm not surprised by that.

[A]

So that's what Freud did. This idea that a vaginal orgasm is the best and only way to go forward. And clitoral orgasms are terrible.

[C]

And is that even a distinction to other. Is there even. Is there a different.

[A]

Well, this theory that there are two different types of orgasm. The vaginal one, which was yay go. And a clitoral one which is boo horrible. That stays with Us for a really, really long time. And people still talk about it today. That's what the much mythologized G spot is. People talk about that there is supposed to be a G spot inside the vagina. And here's the thing is in recent research, I say recent because it's only within the last 20 years we've been able to prove it. There isn't a G spot. There is no area on the inside of the vagina wall. You can do dissections, you can do. You can do internal examinations. There's nothing there. What there is, now we know the full structure of the clitoris is it's the clitoral roots coming down outside the vaginal wall. So there is no G spot. It's the C spot. That's the clitoris. It's the clitoral root, and it has been the entire time. So if you orgasm through penetrative sex, hurrah. Good for you. But that's a clitoral orgasm.

[C]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

And we only discovered that when they got the entire structure of the clitoris, which I think was in like 2,010 or something like that. But I wonder.

[C]

We got the entire structure of the testicles.

[A]

Pretty early doors, I reckon. Early doors.

[C]

All right, we've done all the estimate. Let's just see if we can get down to eventually we arrive at the clitoris.

[A]

Eventually. Eventually, eventually.

[C]

Okay, so let's get to the idea of, like, women's female pleasure. There is discussion around women have to fake it. I don't know, to make their partner, to make their husband sort of feel good about themselves. Maybe then because of that narrative, there's discussion around, are women enjoying it less. So where are we with that sort of thing?

[A]

Well, we've still got a long way to go. There's a lot of work being done at the moment about the invisible labor of women, that they do emotional labor or they'll do domestic labor at home, that they're the ones picking up most of the slack. And I think that it'd be really good if we could focus the conversation on sex as well. Because the reason that women are faking orgasms, and it's estimated about 58% of women have faked it. Men fake them too, but women fake them far more. And they're doing it because they want their partner to feel better or they don't feel able to advocate for their own pleasure. But we need to stop doing it. There's far too many men walking around out there thinking that they are amazing in bed. But everyone's just been faking it the entire time. But that is. That's the product of centuries, thousands of years of conditioning that have taught us the only sex that counts is penetrative sex, that men get to have an orgasm, and if women do, then they're just lucky and men enjoy sex more than women anyway. So all of that comes together to create a situation. And of course, we're obsessed with penetration, and that isn't what's going to make women orgasm anyway. All of this comes together to mean that when we're having that kind of sex, women probably aren't going to orgasm, but they don't feel able to ask for what they would actually like. They would rather pretend.

[C]

You've got some insane quotes from people with the right letters before and after their name, you know, PhDs and doctors quite recently saying that if a woman can't orgasm through penetrative sex, then she's fake it. Otherwise everyone will think rightly that she's got a huge problem.

[A]

Yeah, she's got a mental problem, that she's mentally unwell. I should say that was. I think that one was late 19th century. It's not like someone was writing it, like last week, but it's alarming how often you actually see that narrative that if you're not going to be able to orgasm, then fake it. Pretend. And we've now got this situation where women, and there'll be many, many listening to this episode, they'll be thinking, I faked it. I guess just what I'd tell you to do is just sit with that for a minute and think, why? Why did you do that? Why didn't you feel able to just say, try something else, or it's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. Why would you rather put on a show? And that's what we need to kind of stop and we need to change what we understand about sex. And we need to change what women feel entitled to going into these encounters. Because I don't know any men that would want to be having sex with women faking it anyway. Like, it's not helping anybody. Do you know what I mean? It's like nobody wants to think that sex was amazing then actually they were just pretending the entire time. It's so much rather that someone went, could you just do that a little bit differently? So these are the cultural scripts, but they're really entrenched and they're really powerful and they've been thousands of years in the making, but we can change them.

[C]

When we talk about female pleasure, are you thinking foremost about orgasms?

[A]

Orgasms are a big part of it, but that's not the only thing. So I've got a chapter on the history of sex toys and about how they've been culturally understood, but also chapter on lesbianism and sex and the older woman, menopausal women on this idea that women were once more highly sexed than men. And where did that go? What changed? Why? And then the final chapter, I think probably the one that I like the most is where did women learn about sex in the past? How did they learn about it? I mean, we're recording this today and we've just got back from the Marie Antoinette exhibit at the va. And that was a woman who famously didn't consummate her marriage for seven years. And no one's entirely sure quite what was going on. But the best evidence we have is that they just didn't quite know what to do.

[C]

My grandpa apparently had to ask his father in law, that was a doctor.

[A]

It's like the idea that we just know that nature just takes its course is not right. So where did people learn about it in the past? I mean, if the Queen of France didn't have all the information, where do people learn about it?

[C]

Yeah, there's a great moment in a Stefan Zweig book that I read the other day about how the Second World War came about. And he's just musing about his childhood and he said it was really fascinating. He talks about the class structure in Austria, Hungary. And you've got all of these really unhappy, well bred, educated young men and women in the upper class who are just like sexually a complete shambles because they're not allowed to have sex. The men sometimes can have sex with sex workers. And then he used to go out through the countryside and see the farm boys and girls just having a lovely time, rosy cheeked, shagging away. And even then they were aware that it was quite weird. These strictures they built, these architecture, they built around sex. What it was for, what it wasn't for in elite society. It's so strange, isn't it?

[A]

And who's gonna tell you what you can do? And where on earth are you gonna learn about that? And we do have some evidence from the 19th century when sex surveys were first being done about where women were learning about sex. And almost universally it was ask your mother. So that's what they were expecting was that the mother would explain what sex was to her daughter, which is a tall order for anyone to do. Let alone in the 19th century. And obviously there's going to be some areas that you are going to miss out.

[C]

And I suppose that in those conversations with young people about sex, the pleasure bit is almost the hardest bit to talk about as well.

[A]

And we still don't talk about that.

[C]

So if it's mother daughter transmission, then you're probably gonna lean more, I suppose maybe you're gonna lean more into kind of the biomechanics.

[A]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's what they do in schools. And there's a whole initiative, I think it's. Is it by the World Health Organization. It's about the right to sexual pleasure and how important that is. And one of the key aspects that they bring out is that we still talk about sex as problematic behavior when we're educating people about it. It's still this kind of like, don't get pregnant. This is how you get pregnant. And don't get pregnant. And scary. Who talks to their child about actual pleasure, about sexual pleasure and that it

[C]

can be nice, it can be great, guys. It's one of the few things about this veil of tears that makes it worth living.

[A]

Right?

[C]

That's not what you tell your kids.

[A]

Too far, too far. Bring it back slightly. But the point is, a really sound one is that we don't talk about sexual pleasure. And who has a right to it, which we all do.

[C]

Kate, quick, tell us what the book's called.

[A]

The book is called A History of Female Pleasure.

[C]

It's out now folks.

[A]

And it's out now.

[C]

Kate Lister, thanks for coming on the podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode of Betwixt the Sheets, make sure you like, subscribe wherever you get your pods and you won't miss another episode.

[A]

Thank you very much, Dan. You've been loads of fun.

[C]

Come on anytime.

[A]

Thank you for listening and thank you to Dan for joining me. That wasn't easy. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is you get. Your podcasts coming up. We are going to see what got you cancelled throughout history and if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Hannah Feodorov and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets the history of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

[B]

And Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[A]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[B]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[A]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[B]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[A]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.