Today’s episode is a conversation about the history of sex with Sex Historian Kate Lister. She’s the author of A Curious History of Sex and Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts. Of course we’ll be talking about sex and so much more – because, let’s face it, humans are sexual beings. We have a lot of fun in these two episodes: To Listen, start here with part one: A Curious History of Sex author: Meet Dr. Kate Lister.
BDSM, kink, sex work and some of the history of sex
Ms. Olivia: Welcome to the Weekly Hot Spot: kink conversation, BDSM advice and insight from the worlds of Distance Domination and phone sex. I’m Mistress Olivia here with Ms. Erika and we have a very special guest today. Kate Lister, Doctor of Literature and History, Senior Lecturer at Leeds Trinity University in the UK. Here to talk about the History of Sex!
Ms. Erika: Welcome Dr. Lister, we’re very excited and thrilled you were able to join us today. I often tweet about badass women and supporting other strong women and you are definitely one badass woman. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Kate Lister: I am so pleased to be here with you. Honestly, it’s going to be great. I’m so looking forward to talking to you both.
Ms. Olivia: We have so many questions, our own questions and then also questions from other people and listeners to the podcast. But first of all, how should we address you? That coming from two BDSM providers. Should we maybe just call you “She who must be obeyed”?
Kate Lister: No, you can just call me Kate, it’s fine.
Ms. Olivia: Well, I think we have to do some kind of an honorific. Can we call you Dr. Kate?
Kate Lister: You definitely can call me that. Yes.
Ms. Olivia: Yay. So I have done some PhD work, I’m ABD (all but dissertation) and never finished it. But I have to tell you, had I gotten my doctorate, every motherfucker in the world would be calling me Dr. Olivia.
Kate Lister: Yes, that’s, um, you get into a slightly weird area with that. There is like a whole debate going on about if you’re not a medical doctor, should you be calling yourself doctor in public spaces? And anyone that’s attempted to do a PhD will know, yes, yes, I fucking well should be able to call me that. It’s an awful process. It’s horrible.
It was one of those things that happened in a blur. I don’t think I could tell you anything that happened and it was an hour or so. And it was like, you prep for it. You’re like, right, I’m going to be really grilled on what I’ve written here for a good hour by experts.
I can’t remember anything that happened. I can’t remember anything I said, it must have been all right, because they passed me. But yeah, it was just just a blur. It’s trauma and PhD, similar to writing a book and completing it.
Praise for History of Sex
Ms. Olivia: I think a lot of people start books, but a fraction complete them. And you are the author of a number of books: including Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts. That’s the most recent one. And then right before that, A Curious History of Sex.
How did you end up as the sex historian?
Kate Lister: Oh, there’s a question. In academia, there’s always this idea that you’re supposed to have a plan that you’re supposed to have a really well thought out trajectory of where you’re going to go. And I’ve never done any of this. And that’s precisely how I’ve ended up where I am.
So my PhD was actually about Victorian women who use medieval sort of Arthurian stories to talk about other things like sex and stuff like that.
Then I did what a lot of people do when they’re doing their PhD, because it’s a long slog, it’s like three years minimum. They get about a year into it, and they find something else they’re much more interested in, but they can’t research it because they have to finish this other (original) thing. And I found that I was really interested in the history of sex and sex workers.
And that was kind of what I wanted to do. But I was already on this, now you have to finish this thing. So when I got to my postdoc, I was already very interested in medieval sex workers.
And then I just started a Twitter account, Whores of Yore. I was researching and it was, it was the name of a woman who’d been arrested in London in I think it was the 14th century. She’d given her name as Clarice Clatterbollocks. And I just thought that was so funny.
Like even hundreds of years later, that’s still a brilliant joke and a brilliant pseudonym. So I started the Twitter account, and I went, no, Whores of Yore, I’m so clever and funny, not thinking anything would ever happen with it, apart from I just wanted to share things like that.
The Twitter account suddenly just exploded, and it grew and it grew and it grew. And the more it grew, the more I realized that’s what people were interested in. And that’s all right, because that’s what I was interested in.
And then you start writing more about the history of sex and sexuality. And then suddenly, you are the sex historian and a bit bemused about how you got there.
Ms. Erika: That is fascinating. I love it. Speaking about BDSM and sex work; some of the oldest evidence of BDSM can be found in the Tomb of the Whipping.
That’s an Etruscan tomb in Lazo, did I pronounce that right? Lazo, Italy?
Kate Lister: I’m going to say yes. I’m not entirely sure myself.
Ms. Erika: So tell us a little bit about that. We find that very interesting.
Tomb of the Whipping: BDSM and ancient history
Kate Lister: As in with all historical things, it’s got a lot of debate surrounding it but I’ll tell you what it is first.
So it’s a tomb of the Etruscans somewhere in Italy. And it dates to, I think it’s either 580 BC or 480 BC. Basically, it’s a fresco on the wall. It’s a painting on this old tomb.
The Etruscans were an ancient civilization in Italy. And the painting itself is very badly damaged.
You can Google this, just Google Tomb of the Whippings, Italy, and clear your history afterwards. You can see that the image is very faded and there are sort of patchy bits missing. But what you’re looking at is two semi-nude men sort of facing each other and bent over in between them and making a kind of a table shape is a woman.
One of the men is holding up a whip and it looks like he’s whipping her. And then the other person seems to be holding up his hand with his palm open as if he’s going to spank her.
Now, the really crucial bits that would show us exactly what’s going on here have faded. So the bit around her head that would show her if she’s given a blowjob to one of these guys has faded. The bit around her buttocks and genitals has also faded. So it’s very frustrating.
But it does look, and I think most historians agree with this actually, that this is flagellation. They’d say it’s erotic flagellation or something along those grounds because they are having sex. This is clearly group sex and there’s whipping and spanking going on at the same time.
Is this BDSM or kink or what?
Kate Lister: I don’t think anyone’s looked at it and tried to argue that maybe this is a medical thing or anything. I think that everyone’s kind of like, no, it’s kinky.
The debate comes in as to, well, what is it? Is this showing ancient, what we now recognize as BDSM, that people got off on this? Or is it like a ritual thing? Because there’s lots of religions and religious devotions and acts all throughout the world in history that have involved whipping yourself. It’s like a devotion to this, that, and the other. So that’s what the debate is.
She’s clearly having sex with him, clearly being whipped, but why? That’s the debate.
That’s one of the oldest representations that we’ve got of kinky sex. Now, I’m biased for sure, but it looks like they’re double-teaming her.
Ms. Erika: It does. Yes.
Kate Lister: That would be my guess.One is either in her ass or a pussy and then it looks like she’s giving a blowjob. But it’s almost like they’ve fuzzed it out.
Ms. Olivia: Damn it, don’t you hate it when they blur out the best stuff and you just can’t quite make it out? LOL
Kate Lister: That’s the thing with many of these historical artifacts; you don’t have the context for it. We don’t have any Etruscans walking around at the moment to ask: “What is this? What’s going on here? So we don’t know. Was it a joke? Was it a satire?
If thousands of years from now, somebody found a doodle that somebody had done on a wall of two people double-teaming a woman and spanking her, it’s like, is that religious or was it just someone being rude or was it a joke? Was it a bet? What was it? We just don’t know.
Ms Olivia: Right. I was curious about that as well; when you were talking about it, what is the significance of it being in this tomb? Was it graffiti? Was it intentionally put there?
Ms. Erika: And, you did say something very interesting. We talk about the word kinky all the time. We know what the word kink references in our time. How did the kinkiness change? And what I mean specifically is I am an amateur kind of interested in history.I’ll listen to anybody so dynamic as yourself talking about history.
By the way, I saw a little video probably on YouTube about England and the “red light district” and all that. So it seemed that it was like a common secret because now it’s like, oh, prostitution, you have to go down here. It seemed to be more acceptable for that type of activity. Can you tell us about how kinkiness and prostitution has changed over the years?
Origin of the word KINK
Kate Lister: Wow. Big question. So the word kinky itself is a very modern phenomenon. I’m not sure exactly when that word came about, but the practice itself, I would assume that that has been with us for all time.
Finding evidence of these things is very difficult. This is something that sex historians, a lot of historians, deal with, but particularly sex historians, because for so much of history and even today, sex isn’t something that’s often spoken about very openly. And if it is, people don’t tend to leave records.
People don’t tend to write about it in a diary that they took away that they’re leaving there for the ages. So even though we’re pretty certain this behavior was there because that’s what humans are and that’s what humans do, finding the evidence for it is extremely tricky, especially when you’re dealing with the ancient world like this. So that’s why this tomb is so important.
Really what you need to be able to document this is literature. That’s what you need. You need people to be writing this stuff down and that doesn’t happen until much later.
Ms. Olivia: Was kinky sex something that was openly spoken about?
Kate Lister: Oh not in polite society. But if you look at something like Victorian pornography in the UK and in America, it’s very, very what we now call kink heavy, very BDSM heavy.
There’s lots of spanking. There’s lots of whipping. There’s lots of tying up and dominating submissive men.
You can also see it in the earliest visual pornography that we’ve got of photographs and videos that they are using whipping and spanking and all of these things. It’s clearly something that they were very into. In fact, flogging was known as the English vice because it would seem to me it was so popular in this country. And that was a name that got coined in brothels around Europe because Englishmen would turn up and ask for this particular service.
So whether it was like an open secret, I’m not entirely sure. People selling sex, prostitution, that is different. That does seem to have been maybe more public, although it’s always been something that’s attracted stigma, almost always, but it was something that was very known and spoken about pretty much always because people knew where the brothels were. People knew where you’d go to buy and sell sex.
Origin of the word CUNT
Ms. Olivia: Speaking of language, you have changed my view of a lot of things, but specifically the word cunt.
When I’m really, really mad, I used to call someone, if it’s a woman, I used to call her a cunt waffle. I have no idea why. I like waffles but I would say cuntwaffle when I’m mad.
Kate Lister: That’s a good one.
Ms. Olivia: In the waffles and pancakes debate, I’m often a waffle person. So I don’t know why I put cunt and waffle together. But reading A Curious History About Sex and your chapter on the word cunt, I have changed my language.
Kate Lister: Ooh, okay. What are you doing differently? Have you lost the waffle?
Ms. Olivia: I’ve put it in the category of descriptive. One of the things that you talk about is the language around sex, and specifically the language around body parts. For example, oh, the little man in the canoe, all of the various terms used to describe the vagina.
Ms. Erika: Oh, even something as simple as breasts, we’ve got hooters, tatas, boobs, titties, just the whole language of all of this.
Ms. Olivia: I was talking with Erika and she said, well, so-and-so is a cunt waffle.
And I said, you know what? We can’t say that anymore. And she goes, why? And I said, because Dr. Kate made a very convincing argument, and I’m not saying that anymore.
Kate Lister: Right.
Ms Olivia: Well, in your TED talk called The History of a “nasty” word, you said that in Scotland, the word cunt is a term of endearment, and in the US, it’s highly offensive. So can you explain the difference between Scotland and here? Why is it a term of endearment?
Kate Lister: As with all languages, it’s so context specific, isn’t it? There isn’t really one rule for this stuff. I mean, how it’s used in Scotland is fascinating, because it’s used between friends and acquaintances often.
And often, it just doesn’t mean anything at all. It just means that person. They’d be like: Did you see this cunt? What? No, that cunt. No, the other cunt.
And it’s like, it almost doesn’t mean anything, especially in Glasgow. It’s used so commonly like that in their vocabulary. But then again, it doesn’t mean that it would be all right to go in and say it to your boss at work. Or it doesn’t mean that it’s all right in a professional context or setting. But it’s certainly a word that you would hear a lot in Scotland.
Ms. Olivia: It reminds me of the word bitch, because we have reclaimed, at least I have reclaimed the words bitch and slut I use it, wield it, as a piece of power instead of being derogatory.
Ms. Erika: It’s common that women might say, oh, you’re my bitch.
Oh, I’m going to go out with the bitches today. And it’s a term of affection and camaraderie and community. It’s not necessarily putting them down.
And that’s exactly what I’ve done with various terms. Like the word slut. I told Olivia the other day that I use the word slut as a badge of honor..I see how it’s wielded. And it’s wielded by men to insult women who are sexually open and enjoy sex. And more or less, for lack of a better term, behave like men.
So if calling me a slut means I am an adventurous, outgoing, sexually dynamic woman, I’m a fucking slut.
Kate Lister: Yeah. It’s exactly how the use of the word cunt operates as well. You use it between your friends. My friends will often call me a daft cunt for many reasons. But if my employer said that to me, then there’d be a tribunal.
It’s the same as slut and slag, because you can reclaim those words.
And I think it’s important that we reclaim them and unpack them, like you’re saying there. How is that word being used or wielded?
They’re still used to attack women but, you can call your friends these words, and you can reclaim it. A guy in the street hollering at you doesn’t mean it as a term of reclamation.
And it’s really interesting that the terms used to attack women, just any woman, the ones that people go to, are always around sexual morality and worth.
It really doesn’t matter if that person’s sexual history is known or not. It’s just, you’re a slut, you’re a slag, you’re a whore, you’re a bitch, you’re all of these things. And it’s attacking somebody’s sexual worth.
We don’t do that with men in the same way. There aren’t those insults there. Like I’ve heard of people call, you know, a he whore, a man whore, a man slag, those things. But like there really isn’t the same type of insults available to attack a man the same way. And it doesn’t sound the same way. For example, there’s always been male escorts, rent bois, etc. But that doesn’t seem as bad as some of the derogatory terms about women and especially women who are sex workers.
Ms. Olivia: So I just got to say, you’re really a hero to me and us because we are sex workers. We are not in-person providers. So we don’t have to worry about all the legal issues in the US about being an in-person provider. That’s one of the reasons why neither of us have any interest in doing that. But you talk with and you support sex workers. You don’t talk “at” us or about us. So we really thank you for seeing us.
Kate Lister: Oh, thank you. That’s extremely lovely to hear. Thank you.
Ms. Erika: Yes, absolutely I agree with Olivia.
Ms. Olivia: We are speaking with historian Kate Lister, author of A Curious History of Sex and Harlots, Whores, and Hackabouts. Those are the books.
She’s also got tons of articles. As Erica mentioned, she has a TED talk about cunt. You’ve got to listen to that.
Kate Lister: That is my TED talk.
Ms. Olivia: Dr. Kate, you also have a website called Whores of Yore that I’ve been enjoying.
Whores of Yore
Ms. Erika: And I’ve been following your Whores of Yore Twitter account. Tell us about the Whores of Yore project.
Kate Lister: The project was born out of the Twitter account when I was just tweeting things that I research. And I do research the history of sex work. One of the things that’s really incredible about Twitter is it allows you to make connections with groups and communities.
Or at least it did before Elon Musk got hold of it. And we’re not quite sure what he’s going to do just yet. But sex work Twitter is a really strong community.
And I think it’s because Twitter allows a level of anonymity and people can come together and talk and have a voice in a way that perhaps they wouldn’t if they were forced out themselves by using it. Being able to talk to the sex work community and get feedback and sort of have your work critiqued by the people whose history you’re writing about was quite a profound shift in how I do research. Because it’s not something that historians… We often don’t think about stuff like that.
We tend to think about the history that we’re writing about as something that’s long dead. We can be guilty of not understanding how the history that we’re talking about has a very real legacy today.
And so I’ve always thought that it was extremely important to keep that dialogue going between current events and what’s happened in the past, in particular with sex work because where we’ve come from absolutely informs what we’re doing now, and where the debates are going.
When you look at the history of all areas of sexuality, it’s often a lot more complex than you think it’s going to be. So the goal of the project was about trying to sort of bring together a lot of contemporary arguments around sexuality and sex, in particular, sex worker rights by looking at the history of it.
So that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s funny though, a lot of people think that I’m a team. Like, I want to speak to someone from the whores of yore team. I’m like, well, it’s just one mad woman with an iPhone.
I should do more things with the website. But it’s just getting the time to do it. One day when I’m incredibly rich, I’ll hire a team.
Ms. Olivia: So are you still accepting submissions from sex workers? Because I’m thinking Erika and I should absolutely send something in about distance domination.
Kate Lister: Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t advertise it too widely, because I’m not in a position yet to pay contributors.I don’t like taking people’s time away for free, especially sex workers, because Lord knows there’s enough people trying to get sex workers time for free.
Ms. Erika: Preach!
Kate Lister: Yes. Like from journalists too and also well meaning students who are doing a project on sex work, and they’ve just decided to send out a mass group questionnaire. And it’s Oh, God no. But obviously, if anybody has got anything that they have written or would like to write, then please, I would be honored to post it and have it there.
Sex Work and Sex Workers
Ms Olivia: What surprised you when you started talking to sex workers?
Kate Lister: Well,I should probably say that I’ve been a sex worker myself.
So I’m not that surprised by speaking to them.
Ms. Olivia: Dr. Kate! How did I not know that after tll of the things that I’ve read about you? Well, fuck me running. Tell us about that.
Ms. Erika: Erotic confession time.
Kate Lister: It’s something I’ve spoken about quite openly in interviews, when people have asked me, like, you know, people flat out ask you sometimes, why are you writing about sex work? Well I say, I sugared my way through my PhD, the final year of it into my postdoc.
I didn’t do it for very long. So I’ve always been really cautious of claiming too much. I don’t want to be one of those people that, you know, does some sex work for a little bit, and then suddenly assumes that they are the voice of all sex workers for now and forever. I think you’ve got to be really careful with that. And the other reason is, I don’t know how it is in the States, but here, sex workers come together and fight for their rights.
One of the things about that community is the sentiment: there is nothing about us without us. There is a mistrust of academics who research sex work. Probably that’s quite fair, because it’s well-meaning academics who come along and say I’m going to research this group. And then they try to study sex workers, or they hand out loads of questionnaires, blah, blah, blah. And it has been quite a problematic relationship. But what comes out of that is an idea that I’ve heard many times that if you’re not a sex worker, you shouldn’t be writing about sex work.
Ms. Olivia: I’ve heard that a lot.
Kate Lister: I’m always slightly cautious about it, because I understand what that is and where that comes from, but I also think that it puts a lot of pressure on people to out themselves, when perhaps they are not comfortable doing that.
Like I know so many people in academia, and all kinds of professions, who have done sex work in the past but they can’t say that they can’t disclose it, because they’ll lose their job or the stigma and the repercussions will be horrendous.
I never want to lead with my own experience because I don’t want to fuel that. I don’t want it or my experience to become the story. Do you know what I mean? Like, especially in public spaces in the media, they will leap on that, and then make that the story.
But I’ve spoken about it quite openly. But yeah, so I sugared my way through the final year of my PhD, and into the postdoc, after realizing that having like six or seven jobs working in bars, and teaching bits was kind of shit, and I could do this instead.
Ms. Olivia: I can’t tell you how many women I have known, who have sugared their way through life, only it’s called marriage, right? Or dating. And they’ll say, he took me out to a fabulous dinner, or bought me these great pairs of shoes, or he bought me this purse, or something. I’m like, yo, get some cash, and buy your own fucking shoes.
Or put it down on a down payment on a house, or pay for whatever. Like, don’t settle for this bullshit stuff.
Kate Lister: I can’t remember who said it, but I thought, that’s it, that’s the one. They referred to sugaring as escorting on a payment plan. Like, yes, that’s it, that’s it. That’s the perfect description.
When I started doing my academic research, and, you know, got a full-time job, and didn’t have to do sugaring anymore. Still, my experience is one of the reasons that I really wanted to do more with sex worker rights.
This is gonna sound so stupid. But I didn’t realize I was a sex worker at the time, because, like, the whole thing is kind of wrapped up with this attitude of “Oh, yeah, it’s not sex work. It’s just an arrangement. It’s just this, that, and the other.”
And it’s actually, looking back on it, it’s that ambiguity around it, and that kind of unwillingness to say what it is, is quite dangerous, I think. Because, you know, like we said, get the cash, and yet there are no hard and fast rules with this. It’s like, you’re kind of left on your own to sort of, like, well, what is the price for this? Am I, like, will a handbag do? At least when you’re actually escorting, it’s like, this, this is the money.
This is what we’re doing. So, yeah.
Ms Erika: A quick excursion, Miss Olivia.
Kate just brought up something in the conversation that was wonderful. I do remember years ago, like, the first time I donated something for medicine and they gave me a questionnaire about my sexual history. And I asked the lady, I said, well, it says here, have I ever had sex for money? And I had a lover give me a beautiful ring, a very expensive ring.
So I said, well, does this ring count? And she just looked at me, I was like, what? I said, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. It was just a boyfriend that gave me a ring.
What is sex work?
Dr. Kate: Look at that blurring. And I think that’s why it’s really important to have people perceive sex work as well WORK.
People tend to think of it in very absolute terms. For example, you’re not a sex worker unless you are full time doing full service sex work out on the streets where people can see you. People just don’t appreciate the complexity of it. Like, well, when does it stop becoming sex work and be something else? Like you said, marriage, dating, if you’re having sex with somebody because he’s going to buy you a designer bag, is that escorting? It was that kind of gray area that I’ve always thought was quite dangerous, actually. You know, people aren’t safe in a gray area.
Ms Olivia: We’re speaking with historian Kate Lister, author of A Curious History of Sex and Harlots, Whores and Heckabouts. Dr. Kat is also a speaker, journalist, advocate, activist, so much more.
Next week, we are continuing the conversation with her and it’s a conversation you do not want to miss. Thanks for joining us. We will see you next time on the Weekly Hot Spot.
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