![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5103798_5_articleinline_iStock-96778619.jpg\" "\\"An")
An ancient Babylonian figure dating from between 1792 and 1750 BC of Queen of the Night probably a goddess of sexual love or the ruler of the underworld<\/p>\nWhen a sex historian writes how \u201cI have scoured the historical records for cunnilingus-positive cultures, but they are few and far between\u201d, you know you\u2019re in for a cracking read.<\/p>\n
Kate Lister, who has dedicated her new history of female sexual pleasure to \u201call the men who didn\u2019t make me cum\u201d, does not disappoint.<\/p>\n
From the fierce goddesses of ancient Sumeria to 21st-century conservative moralising, she takes us on a fascinating, frequently infuriating, trip through female sexuality and the centuries of cultural nonsense that has been superimposed over it and presented back to us as \u201cnormal\u201d.<\/p>\n
Namely, that women aren\u2019t that bothered about sex. That we don\u2019t have that much desire. That we can take it or leave it. And worse, how we seem to have internalised that message.<\/p>\n
This lack of lady lust is two things: (a) A relatively modern idea; and (b) fake news.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor most of our history, women were thought of as much more highly sexed than men,\u201d says Lister, via Zoom.<\/p>\n
\u201cPre-18th century, it would have been strange for people to think that women didn\u2019t experience desire the same way as men \u2014 this is quite a recent twist in our history.\u201d<\/p>\n
We can thank the Victorians for pathologising sex, although they didn\u2019t start the trend for elevating female virgins, chastity, and modesty which still clings today. Men are not expected to be any of these things \u2014 as Lister points out, a comedy about a 40-year-old virgin only works if its punchline is male.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea that women don\u2019t experience as much desire as men has been incredibly damaging,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea that we are weak and fragile, that our desires are delicate and mood-dependent \u2014 it\u2019s always annoyed me that we\u2019ve stopped questioning it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is the dominant narrative that women go off sex, or don\u2019t want as much sex as men do? Why aren\u2019t we questioning the kind of sex that we\u2019re having?\u201d<\/p>\n
She says that a pivotal theme of the book is how \u201cthe script for most heterosexual sex is terrible\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s not me, it\u2019s you. Figures confirm this \u2014 lesbians orgasm 86% of the time, gay men 89%, bisexual men 88%, straight men 96% of the time. And straight women? 65% of the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur obsession with sex meaning penile penetration has been with us for a very long time, yet only about 18% of women orgasm through penetrative sex. We\u2019ve set up this system where the penis gets to start and end sex. And then we\u2019re surprised when women go off it,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen\u2019s passions, desires, and want of sex is equally as strong as men\u2019s \u2014 it\u2019s cultural issues which deny us the space to explore it, and the right to enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
An ancient Babylonian figure dating from between 1792 and 1750 BC of Queen of the Night probably a goddess of sexual love or the ruler of the underworld<\/p>\n
Before the Abrahamic religions \u2014 Christianity, Judaism, Islam \u2014 introduced ideas of sexual shame, lusty goddesses were worshipped. (The Babylonian goddess Ashtaroth took on every man in the ancient city of Uruk \u201cwithout tiring\u201d).<\/p>\n
\u201cFor thousands of years, worship of powerful goddesses of sex and pleasure was commonplace,\u201d writes Lister of Aphrodite, Venus, Ishtar, Inanna, Kali, Freyja. \u201cToday, religion and sexual freedom seem to be perpetually at odds with one another.\u201d <\/p>\n
In Ancient Greece and Rome, women were considered incomplete men \u201cprone to all manner of derangements\u201d, wayward, and lust-driven.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shaming of women\u2019s sexuality was frequently deployed in an attempt to malign them,\u201d notes Lester of a trend which ran and ran.<\/p>\n
![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5103801_5_articleinline_iStock-1352101606.jpg\" "\\"Portrait")
Portrait of Hindu Goddess Kali, heavily decorated with golden ornaments and zari (golden embroidery) works.<\/p>\n
In early Christianity, Adam\u2019s first wife Lilith was thrown out of Eden as a demon for demanding sexual equality with her husband (\u201cwe are both from the Earth\u201d) while early Church patriarchs declared all sexual pleasure a sin, even the kind when you were married and trying to make babies.<\/p>\n
The medieval Church divided women into virgins and whores, another idea which persisted like a stubborn stain: \u201cWomen were severely punished for the kind of sexual transgressions a man would call a slow Tuesday\u201d.<\/p>\n
(Although the first person to offer a written<\/p>\n
description of the female orgasm was a 12th century nun, the polymath Hildegard of Bingen.)<\/p>\n
By 1857, a Victorian doctor, William Acton, was declaring how \u201cthe majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lister attributes this plot twist to the earlier rise of two things \u2014 Protestantism and the middle classes.<\/p>\n
\n All across Europe, a zealous enthusiasm for policing and punishing sexual behaviour emerged\n <\/p>\n
As did the idea of nymphomania, where anything beyond \u201cmoderate desire for your husband was framed as a medical condition that required intervention\u201d.<\/p>\n
This condition, which in 1775 a French doctor suggested \u201crenders these wretched sufferers furious and ungovernable\u201d, was endemic in widows, virgins, and women who enjoyed \u201cluxurious novels\u201d, \u201cstrong wines\u201d, or \u201can excessive use of chocolate\u201d.<\/p>\n
The cure? Cold baths, vaginal douches, exercise, and plain diet. Oh, and female genital mutilation.<\/p>\n
Desire was pathologised as a mental illness \u2014 in 1899, another doctor, James Foster Scott, wrote how society depended on women\u2019s \u201cdocile sexuality\u201d.<\/p>\n
As for lesbians, \u201cVictorian lawmakers were so entrenched in their phallocentric culture that they could not conceive how \u2018real\u2019 sex could happen without a penis,\u201d recounts Lister.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why lesbianism was not outlawed alongside male homosexuality. A popular idea from the olden days was that in order to have sex, lesbians \u201cgrew\u201d a penis from their clitoris \u2014 a medical nonsense which persisted to 1969, when David Reuben wrote in Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex how \u201clesbians with this anatomical quirk are in great demand\u201d. Less than 60 years ago, people.<\/p>\n
But the doctor who perhaps did the most damage in terms of making stuff up about female sexuality was Sigmund Freud, who told us that clitoral orgasm \u2014 the normal one \u2014 was \u201cimmature\u201d, and unless you experienced vaginal orgasm \u2014 with a penis \u2014 you were \u201cfrigid\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lister recounts how Freud framed \u201cwomen\u2019s sexual pleasure as entirely passive and dependent on men\u201d. In 1917, sexologist William Robinson urged women not experiencing vaginal orgasm to fake it \u2014 \u201can innocent deception\u201d. We are still, says Lister, \u201cliving with the legacy of this today\u201d.<\/p>\n
In 1936, two other psychoanalysts, Edward Hitschmann and Edmund Bergler, published Frigidity In Women, in which they claimed \u201cthe sole criterion of frigidity is the absence of vaginal orgasm\u201d.<\/p>\n
As late as 1953, if a woman preferred clitoral stimulation \u2014 which unfailingly makes us orgasm \u2014 she can be, said noted psychiatrist Frank Caprio, \u201cregarded as suffering from frigidity and requires psychiatric assistance\u201d.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, sex researchers Masters and Johnson finally debunked this. Turns out there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm. And the G-spot is \u201cactually the clitoris being stimulated from within\u201d. Also, Lister gives us a satisfying factoid to deploy \u201cthe next time someone talks about \u2018big dick energy\u2019\u201d \u2014 the clitoris is bigger, at four inches in length, than the average penis, which is 3.5 inches. And unlike the penis, it exists for no other reason than to provide us with multiple, repeated orgasms.<\/p>\n
Hence, says Lister, the importance of masturbation as a tool for self-education and liberation, despite still being framed as second best, something a woman will do only if there isn\u2019t a man available: \u201cThat narrative is still very much with us. It\u2019s still a source of conflict in relationships, and still a source of shame for women. We don\u2019t acknowledge it even to each other. Yet it\u2019s so important to learn about your own body.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a reason women have been shamed for masturbation in a way men haven\u2019t \u2014 the idea was that women should be kept sexually ignorant until they got married. But it\u2019s how we learn about our bodies, what turns us on, what we like. Otherwise, we\u2019re just outsourcing our pleasure to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowhere is the importance of sex education more starkly highlighted than by the lived reality of past generations on the remote, formerly inaccessible, Aran Island of Inis Oirr. Its population of 350 were the subject of ethnographic research between 1958 and 1966 by anthropologists John Messenger and Betty Messenger, who wrote in their 1969 book, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland, how Inis Oirr was \u201cone of the most sexually na\u00efve of the world\u2019s societies\u201d.<\/p>\n
\n Sex education was non-existent, with women calling it a \u201cduty\u201d to \u201cbe endured\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea that women would enjoy sex at all was really confusing to the islanders,\u201d says Lister.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were surprised at the idea that women could orgasm. It just shows the direct correlation between sex education, what we know about our bodies, and wider social issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRepressing sex never makes it go away, it just makes people far more likely to experience shame, stigma, ignorance around their own bodies, and not wanting to speak up. It\u2019s not sexual innocence, it\u2019s sexual ignorance, and it perpetuates the myth that women aren\u2019t supposed to enjoy sex.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all down to your husband \u2014 he\u2019s going to sort it out for you, and don\u2019t worry, you\u2019re not meant to like it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, we inhabit a very different sexual landscape. Unless, as a woman, you make the mistake of getting old. Old lady sex gives society the ick \u2014 still.<\/p>\n
\u201cDown through the centuries, the sexuality of the older woman is framed as deviant, unnatural, and predatory,\u201d writes Lister. \u201cShe is beyond the male gaze \u2026 desexed, undesirable, and ignored.\u201d And prone, according to an 1857 treatise on menopause, to a range of symptoms from \u201capoplexy\u201d to \u201chysterical flatulence.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1966, keen to shame women into buying newly invented HRT products, American gynaecologist Robert Wilson, in his book Feminine Forever, described menopause as a \u201cgalloping catastrophe\u201d. Without HRT, ageing was \u201cthe death of womanhood\u201d, a \u201ccastration\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a nasty narrative reinforced, born out of the old idea that as soon as you are no longer fertile, you\u2019re redundant,\u201d says Lister.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you enjoy sex now, chances are you\u2019re going to enjoy it when you\u2019re an older person as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our cultural messaging around sex remains a work in progress. Even in contemporary sex education \u2014 which these days includes contraception, STIs, consent, same-sex attraction, as well as basic biology \u2014 there\u2019s still no mention of pleasure.<\/p>\n
\u201cPleasure is really important,\u201d Lister says, \u201cit\u2019s at the heart of bodily autonomy and being able to advocate for yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of women perform sex, rather than actively enjoying it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.\u201d<\/p>\n
We need, she says, to have a lot more conversations. Intimate, detailed, forthright conversations, and prioritise our pleasure. <\/p>\n
![\"Dr](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5103804_5_articleinline_9780857506436_20_4_.jpg\" "\\"Dr")
Dr Kate Lister: Flick A Brief History of Female Pleasure
\n Flick: A Brief History of Female Pleasure by Kate Lister, published by Transworld, is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a sex historian writes how \u201cI have scoured the historical records for cunnilingus-positive cultures, but they are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,19930],"class_list":["post-487697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-this-much-i-know-column-shape-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}