My last guest of Season 2 is the wonderful Sarah Chadwick author of The Sweetness of Venus. A History of the Clitoris.
Challenging today’s definition of female sexuality, The Sweetness of Venus is a provocative, straight-talking and rigorously researched history exposing the denial, misunderstanding and brutality endured by this taboo body part.
Sarah has a teaching background is currently a guest researcher at Chicago’s LOYOLA University, splitting her life between the US and UK. She has been described as “an articulate and compassionate spokeswoman for a new generation of women”
In her own words Sarah “Wanted her book to be pleasurable like good sex. For it to be friendly, funny, compassionate, inclusive of men and a bridge between academic research and knowledge. A book that people would pick up and have pleasure reading.” – I think she achieved it all.
Join us as we discuss:-
- The historic shame around women’s sexual pleasure
- The complicated and conflicting history of the clitoris
- The Victorians – the fear and threat around women having sexual agency
- 1844 – A breakthrough in Clitoral recognition!
- The tip of the Clitoral iceberg – do you really know what it looks like and just how big it is?
- Think you know the meaning of the world ‘frigid’, think again
- Freud and his part in defining that there is a difference between a vaginal and Clitoral orgasm.
- Historically Dr’s putting forward the idea that proper sexual function was through penetrative sex only and any other way was a treatable physiological disorder
- Why we need to broaden the definition of what quantifies as sex to become more inclusive and healthier for everybody
- Today’s teenagers having more oral and anal sex than ever before in the name of ‘not having sex’
- The difference in sex education in the UK and the US and why we are still not teaching it right.
- The narrative that women are wired for reproduction and men are wired for sex
- Shere Hite’s groundbreaking survey in the 70s about women’s sexual pleasure and desire.
- Sarah’s own frustrating experience with three gynaecologists trying to get her orgasm back post menopause
- The effect the dominant narrative that women’s sexual function is purely for reproduction has on Menopausal women stepping into their sexual power
- How the taboo around reproduction vs pleasure has been so incredibly damaging to women in their 50s and beyond
- Viagra – *eye roll * men haven’t had to fight for their continued sexual function.
- Bicycle design, train travel, sewing machines and their connection to the female orgasm and masturbation!
Sarah’s book choices
Invisible Women – Caroline Crado Perez
The World’s Wife – Carol Ann Duffy
You can find more of Sarah on Instagram @its.Personalgirls