Vulgar History - Author Interview： Helen King (Immaculate Forms： A History of the Female Body in Four Parts)

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is am

00:00:46.320 foster and today i'm going to be sharing with you a conversation i had with author helen king

00:00:51.020 about her new book immaculate forms a history of the female body in four parts so just to give you

00:00:57.840 an idea of what this book is like. It's a very readable book for just a general audience. It's

00:01:02.600 not an academic book at all. Dr. Jennifer Gunter, author of The Vagina Bible, says,

00:01:07.860 never has medical history been more entertaining. And I absolutely concur this book. It's really

00:01:14.020 readable. It's really interesting. And what Helen does in this book is that she goes through four

00:01:20.840 body parts. Each sort of chapter is about either breasts, clitoris, hymen, and womb, and just kind

00:01:28.600 of talks about through history, how they've been put, treated in artwork, how they've been treated

00:01:33.300 in medical knowledge. Do people believe in these body parts? It's really, it's such an interesting

00:01:40.620 approach to the whole topic. And we're going to go in this interview, we're going to go body part

00:01:44.300 by body part. And I do want to emphasize too, that in this book, so Helen King, she talks about

00:01:50.080 gender um the the gender binary a lot in this book because she's bringing up so many examples

00:01:56.400 of non-binary people um throughout history and how they're treated uh people so like breasts

00:02:04.020 clitters hymen and womb and what makes somebody a woman and what makes somebody not a woman and

00:02:09.520 it's in a really sort of open i think um very trans inclusive sort of way and i hope that

00:02:16.040 comes across in our discussion as well i do want to just let you know a bit about helen and where

00:02:20.540 she's coming from and who she is so she's a professor emerita of classical studies at the

00:02:25.420 open university she's an elected member of the general synod of the church of england where she

00:02:30.320 is vice chair of together which campaigns on a range of discrimination issues including

00:02:34.520 discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality she's published extensively on the

00:02:39.940 history of women's health and it's been talking to her too you'll hear this but in doing the

00:02:44.280 research she learned so many things that she hadn't known before just by going through these

00:02:49.060 body parts i think it's so interesting and actually one other thing i just want to mention

00:02:53.040 is i recently saw the new movie version of nosferatu and there's a part in that where

00:02:58.680 lily rose depp's character is she's suffering from possession by a vampire but the the sort of

00:03:06.860 dim-witted male doctors are just like oh i think there's a problem with her womb tighten up her 0.74

00:03:11.700 corset more, the womb, hold the womb in place and stuff. So I do want to say, we don't talk 0.94

00:03:16.480 about it in the podcast, but in the book, Helen absolutely gets into the whole concept of

00:03:20.100 the wandering womb and things like that. So anyway, without further ado, I hope you enjoyed

00:03:27.000 this conversation between myself and Helen King, author of Immaculate Forms, A History of the

00:03:31.760 female body in four parts. So today we are joined by Helen King, author of Immaculate Forms,

00:03:43.680 a history of the female body in four parts. Welcome, Helen. Thank you. Lovely to be here.

00:03:49.160 I'm really delighted to have you here. I think that this book is going to be of great interest

00:03:53.340 to my listeners. Can you explain initially just the premise of your book? Sure. So I was trying

00:04:00.960 to write a book which was a history of women's bodies, mostly in Western Europe, but going beyond

00:04:04.820 where necessary. And I was trying to think, how do you do that? Where do you start? What counts

00:04:09.480 as a woman's body? And of course, that's the big question. What is actually a woman? How much is

00:04:14.320 it our bodies? How much does that define us? And I thought the way to do this was to pick four body

00:04:19.820 parts. So the ones that sort of come up most in discussions of what a proper woman should look 1.00

00:04:25.000 like and be like so breasts clitoris hymen and womb and that also takes me from the outside of 0.74

00:04:31.020 the body from what is visible i mean even if you haven't got your breasts on display you know you 0.94

00:04:36.460 can enlarge you can show them with clothing you can sort of play them down you can play them up

00:04:41.000 you can actually see some shape there whereas when you get to clitoris hymen womb you don't

00:04:47.680 know what's going on there so from outside to inside from visible to invisible and that also

00:04:53.880 means going from sort of what you can find out about through experience to what you really can

00:05:00.580 only guess is going on inside the body like what is happening deep inside the body in the womb what

00:05:06.220 does it look like what does it do what's it all about so inside from outside to inside and from

00:05:12.100 visible to invisible and from sort of factual ish to imaginary and can you explain i mean you're

00:05:20.120 talking about, just the book is described, it's going from classical Greece to the modern age,

00:05:24.620 but the historical time periods and things you're talking about, it's everything. You're just

00:05:31.240 looking at all different history. Yeah. So my own background is in ancient Greek stuff,

00:05:35.980 classics. So Hippocratic medicine, the medicine of ancient Greece. But I've been studying a lot

00:05:41.040 more than that ever since I really started doing research academically. So the point is that

00:05:46.400 ancient Greek medicine is used up to pretty well the 19th century as a basis for what the body is

00:05:54.700 about. Modern modernity is quite recent, if that makes sense. The same sorts of beliefs that,

00:06:01.360 for example, a woman's body only has a finite amount of blood in it. And if you use up your

00:06:07.540 blood by thinking, using your brain, you haven't got enough left to make babies out of. That sort 0.91

00:06:14.160 of belief goes back to the ancient Greeks and it was still around in the 19th century. So it was

00:06:20.680 used as an argument against women having higher education. If you used your brain too much, the 1.00

00:06:25.140 race would die out. And this, what I was thinking of, just because there's so many things I want to

00:06:29.840 talk to you about your book, we can go body part by body part. And so starting with the breasts,

00:06:35.860 which I was just explaining to you before we recorded on this podcast, we talk about being 0.98

00:06:39.800 tits out as the ultimate compliment. And that's for any gender, you know, being tits out. It's 1.00

00:06:46.260 just a person who's just being audacious and doing their own thing. And so I was excited to

00:06:51.140 have a whole chapter just about tits. It was the first one I wrote because I'd never really done 0.69

00:06:56.980 anything on the history of breasts before. And I thought, you know, I'm going to start with

00:07:00.700 something I don't know too much about because that'll be interesting for me to write. And I

00:07:04.220 won't get sort of overwhelmed by knowing too much. And I was just in shock the whole way through the

00:07:09.180 chapter actually there was so much more historically than i'd ever imagined well and so and what i

00:07:14.920 appreciate about your book i appreciate a lot about your book is with all the body parts you're

00:07:18.740 talking about in one context there's a maternal thing like a procreative content but then there's

00:07:24.620 also sort of philosophical but breasts especially like there's you talk about the breastfeeding

00:07:30.420 versus just breasts as objects breasts as sexuality and so you're talking about both sides

00:07:36.620 Yeah, that whole sexual versus maternal thing. I think what really brought that out for me when I was researching the chapter was the very recent discussions of human breast milk ice cream and the sort of shock horror.

00:07:49.860 How could you possibly versus, well, actually, we've all either used breast milk as children or we've used substitutes for it. What's the big deal about breast milk? And yet it really freaks people out.

00:08:06.620 to think of breast milk ice cream. So that was a modern example, which I found quite illuminating.

00:08:13.160 Well, and in this chapter, and as well as in other chapters, but you, I appreciate it in your book,

00:08:17.520 you also, you're talking about like a trans person's experience or talking about top surgery,

00:08:23.840 the removal of the breast and how that can help, but also even people who aren't trans,

00:08:27.840 like a cis man who might have excessive breast tissue. And so just talking about the breast is

00:08:34.140 not just as a it's a very expansive discussion i thought that was also interesting as well

00:08:39.240 well thank you for saying that because it was something again which i found surprising i i

00:08:43.760 hadn't realized quite how much breast tissue is something found in people of any sex so yeah

00:08:51.380 you've got the situation where somebody a man who's identified as male from birth could end

00:08:59.440 up with breast cancer and men don't take that seriously they don't think about breast cancer

00:09:05.060 they think it's a woman's disease well actually breast tissue exists in anybody and then the thing

00:09:10.520 about accessory breasts which to me always sounds a lot like a handbag or something like taking your 0.65

00:09:16.820 purse out you know accessory accessory breasts where you can have a breast breast tissue that

00:09:22.300 grows even on your leg and that can happen in people whatever sex they identify as and it can 1.00

00:09:29.040 even produce milk. And finding examples of that from the past, but also examples in modern medical

00:09:35.580 literature, was one of those sort of shock horror moments in my breast chapter. I had no idea that

00:09:42.900 breasts are actually not that much of a girly thing. In terms of getting your tits out, I was 1.00

00:09:48.760 really in a state of overexcitement when I found people literally doing that, including a man. 0.99

00:09:53.380 there was a guy in the early modern period who was 1665 who we're told in medical texts

00:10:01.500 had so much milk in his breasts and this is someone assigned male at birth as far as we can

00:10:07.840 see but who had maybe some sort of condition where breast milk develops even in the breasts

00:10:14.460 of someone who's supposedly male and he would actually get drunk at parties and squirt milk

00:10:20.140 at people as a sort of party trick now again what does that do to our ideas of breasts as the thing

00:10:26.300 that's really really female clearly it's not as simple as that i'm hoping to be able to control

00:10:31.380 myself and go body part by body part but every single chapter has examples like that where it's

00:10:35.980 just like this book really illustrates how what is a man what is a woman like there's so much like

00:10:43.820 it's not like bodies are born people are born with a combination of parts or whatever like it's

00:10:50.140 It's not straightforward at all. I left this book being like, I don't even know what a woman is

00:10:55.180 anymore. I don't know. I have to say, I get to a similar stage myself. Yeah, exactly that. So 1.00

00:11:01.920 things like how do you name parts? We will come to that later on. But how do you name them? What

00:11:07.260 is female organ? What is a male organ? Do you have different words if it's in a man or in a woman? 1.00

00:11:13.200 So the breasts thing even, you know, do you talk about in English slang, you know, tits and boobs

00:11:18.520 are those words which suggest one more than the other.

00:11:23.220 You talk about men who have a lot of breast tissue, obvious breast tissue now, sometimes 0.94

00:11:28.080 described as having man boobs. 0.73

00:11:30.480 So man boobs, even there, is that actually saying that it's the same thing, which it 0.97

00:11:36.500 is tissue-wise, or is it something different? 0.70

00:11:39.500 Again, when you try to define what makes someone a man or a woman, we often go now to hormones

00:11:44.460 as something which people think is significant.

00:11:46.860 You think of the Olympic sports debates about what a man is, what a woman is.

00:11:51.680 So is it hormones?

00:11:52.660 But people can have conditions which send their hormones in a different direction.

00:11:58.220 So if a man has a tumour which is producing hormones, particular hormones, he can then

00:12:05.260 produce milk.

00:12:07.020 But then if a trans person wants to breastfeed, they can induce breastfeeding if they take

00:12:15.880 the right hormones. 0.81

00:12:16.860 So does it actually make you a man or a woman?

00:12:20.180 And I don't know about in the US, but in the UK, the National Health Service has got into

00:12:25.400 lots of trouble with some people for talking about chest feeding rather than breast feeding, 0.59

00:12:31.180 because breast is seen as too female a word.

00:12:35.000 But somebody who is not female can feed an infant if they take the hormones. 1.00

00:12:42.580 So that's chest feeding.

00:12:43.800 and that really gets people in a nervous state in the UK in terms of upsetting all the categories

00:12:49.460 well and that's the thing too and you I think this book could be required reading to anyone

00:12:54.580 who panics about stuff like that because you have so many examples where it's not binary where it's

00:12:59.880 just you can't actually define anyone as a man or woman really I wanted to bring up just for my

00:13:06.100 listeners as I was I was reading your book just in a e-book form and I just I took pictures of

00:13:11.020 pages when I thought, oh, I have to bring this up. So in your chapter about breasts, you have

00:13:15.800 this story about a woman, a ballad singer, Mary White in 1745, who during an attempt to arrest

00:13:24.280 her, she used her breasts, squirting milk as a form of self-defense to try and get her wet.

00:13:30.040 Yes. Yes. It's a shock horror moment. So women pulling out their breasts and demonstrating them 1.00

00:13:35.920 goes back to the ancient Greeks, of course, to Helen of Troy, who's supposed to get her breasts 0.84

00:13:39.980 out in order to get the sympathy of her husband when she's run away from him um so breasts out

00:13:48.380 for sympathy is a big thing but actually breasts out and spurting milk all over somebody is a

00:13:54.300 completely different message i was just like i have to say this on the podcast people need to 0.94

00:13:58.900 know because we talk about tits out um but yeah so the breasts like at first it's like okay well

00:14:05.140 there's like the as a maternal thing but then there's also this sexual thing but then there's 0.97

00:14:09.340 also it's this kind of shock horror other thing yes yes why not whoa breasts out of place right 0.99

00:14:16.100 breasts where you're not really expecting them to do something like that weaponized breasts

00:14:20.760 or like you said the the man at the dinner party who would just kind of have this party trick you

00:14:25.200 know it's yeah exactly all different things yeah yeah very different message um so the next body 0.69

00:14:31.140 part um is the clitoris which i've never read anything historically about that ever it's not

00:14:38.940 something that I've come across. Can you describe that chapter?

00:14:44.040 Sure. So I suppose one of the things I'm trying to say throughout the book is that history is

00:14:47.320 never linear. It's not just a steady process of discovery where we find out more and more and more

00:14:51.980 and we are really up to date. We know everything about bodies now. It's never that simple.

00:14:56.780 So with the clitoris, it's been discovered and rediscovered and lost again rather rapidly.

00:15:02.020 So there's a sort of key moment in that chapter where I talk about 1559, the big

00:15:06.260 watershed moment for the clitoris where an anatomist called Colombo announces he's discovered

00:15:12.480 this part of the body, which if you touch it, even with your little finger, I love that specific 1.00

00:15:17.100 detail, even with your little tiny, tiny pinky, women go wild and send seed in all directions 1.00

00:15:23.820 and just, you know, they're putty in your hands. And he presents this as a really amazing discovery.

00:15:29.060 So 1559, now come on, you know, they did know about the clitoris before 1559.

00:15:35.840 Ancient Greek literature talks about it in terms of the imagery of a little red apple

00:15:40.440 left at the top of the tree, which no one can quite reach, which is fascinating.

00:15:44.800 There are lots of terms for the clitoris as sort of pearl or rosebud or some sort of small,

00:15:50.820 always small, precious thing.

00:15:53.760 But 1559 is supposed to be the big moment.

00:15:56.000 And then it sort of goes quiet again. And then somewhere in the 19th century, you get a much bigger discussion of the clitoris in anatomical texts, saying it's not tiny at all. It's actually quite extensive. And the little tiny rosebuddy thing is not the whole of it.

00:16:14.120 and then that gets forgotten again and medical textbooks in the early 20th century

00:16:19.660 just leave it out it's not labeled it's not mentioned it's just not there and then it

00:16:25.700 comes back again big time in the 1990s when it was rediscovered you know it keeps being

00:16:31.860 rediscovered but this time by a female anatomist and at that point it starts to go into the sort

00:16:39.140 of consciousness of what we have now of what the clitoris looks like the sort of wishbone shape

00:16:43.920 the extending below the surface, not just a small dot on the body. So it sort of comes and goes in

00:16:52.060 a way that shows that, again, medical history is not linear. Discovery just doesn't go in one

00:16:57.200 direction. Well, and you mentioned, I think I just have this picture I took of the page,

00:17:02.780 but you're talking about Cleopatra, I think it's from this chapter. And just talking about how she

00:17:08.440 was, we've talked about this enough, I've done a whole Cleopatra episode about how she is, 1.00

00:17:12.740 people think oh she was this wildly sexual woman where it's like she was i mean she had these two

00:17:19.320 monogamous relationships but anyway but just sort of talking about you wrote here um ancient greek 0.88

00:17:27.140 and roman writers contrasted her behavior with that of a proper wife holding her up as a warning

00:17:31.040 to women of how not to behave the sexualization of cleopatra continues even today with the 0.66

00:17:35.860 marketing of clitoral jewelry yeah including the cleopatra clip it's absolutely extraordinary

00:17:42.120 isn't it? So yeah, there's all sorts of use of that, the name of Cleopatra, to sell sex products, 0.91

00:17:48.400 basically, because she's still seen as this sex-crazed woman. I mean, if you actually read 0.90

00:17:53.020 her in the ancient texts, they talk more about her ability to learn different foreign languages

00:17:57.520 as one of her main characteristics. It's not about her sexuality, it's about her brain. 0.64

00:18:02.520 But that's the sort of typical problem that women have always had, isn't it, really, 0.71

00:18:06.540 being defined like that. But the story is that she was just completely overwhelmed by her

00:18:11.260 clitoris, that she had to sleep with vast numbers of men in a brothel in order to try and get any 0.98

00:18:17.780 satisfaction at all. That's actually a modern-ish story, 17th century story, that has then been

00:18:25.200 used to argue that the historic, real Queen Cleopatra was somehow the discoverer of the

00:18:33.500 vibrator, and that she had this vibrator filled with bees. And the more you think about that,

00:18:39.840 the more disturbing it is uh right and also you know apart from the fact you would you want to 0.99

00:18:46.500 use a sex toy full of bees or you know what if the lid came off or something but actually 0.96

00:18:52.220 vibration wise that seems quite subtle to me yeah we'll stop going into detail your listeners can 0.99

00:18:59.840 work that one out but yeah so yeah cleopatra is used to to sell things now and she's always been

00:19:07.440 seen as this you know paragon of over sexuality yet originally in the earliest sources that's

00:19:15.480 really not what it's about as you say two monogamous relationships big deal yeah exactly

00:19:20.600 and then also in the clitoris chapter too you you again like talk about um trans uh surgeries and

00:19:28.720 how how the clitoris can be how that i don't know can you describe that i don't know how to describe

00:19:34.640 Well, partly it's that very interesting question about what do you think about the clitoris and 0.90

00:19:39.820 the penis? Is the clitoris a small penis? And some of the language used for it historically 1.00

00:19:45.960 has suggested that. It's the lady penis. What if you reverse that and say the penis is the 1.00

00:19:50.960 large clitoris? Whoa, the whole thing has just shifted, hasn't it? And because, yes, 0.99

00:19:57.020 there are clearly analogies between the two as organs that are capable of erection and so on,

00:20:02.960 and organs associated obviously with pleasure, then you can also say that some of the research

00:20:09.160 that's been done on surgery on trans people has actually helped us to understand how the

00:20:17.020 clitoris works. So if you think about the sorts of surgery you can do to make the clitoris bigger, 0.83

00:20:25.140 if you cut to release it from the hood slightly, it looks more like a penis. 0.97

00:20:31.360 But in the process of that, people have also discovered a lot more nerve endings that they didn't know that existed.

00:20:38.900 So it's quite an interesting thing that surgery for trans people, if that's what they choose to have, has actually affected the way we understand the tissue down there. 0.62

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00:23:07.960 You know, in the tits chapter, there's lots of shock horror, but this is just kind of like, oh, God, the genital mutilation that happens in some cultures.

00:23:17.560 Yeah, so that was something I knew a bit about before I started writing the book. But you find out so much more when you start researching it. I was really surprised at how much of this is being carried out now, particularly things like labiaplasty, as opposed to clitoridectomy, that these things are available in private medicine, people choose to have it.

00:23:37.660 But then you start to get very interesting questions about how we judge other people historically or now. So if someone is from a culture where, you know, you need to look like this in order to be accepted as a proper woman and they don't look like this, is it OK to say, well, yeah, have the surgery?

00:23:56.880 Once you start looking at that, as well as thinking about the dangers of playing with 0.96

00:24:02.440 different bits of your body and what could possibly go wrong, you also start to ask questions

00:24:07.560 about how we judge people from other cultures in the past or in the present who choose to do

00:24:13.300 things to their body. Because in a sense, we all modify our bodies anyway, whether that's in

00:24:18.900 clothing or hairstyles or plastic surgery, obviously. How far do you go and how far is it

00:24:26.160 legitimate to go and how far do you say well actually no that person shouldn't be doing that 1.00

00:24:31.240 they've been brainwashed into it by their culture and that's really complicated because the female

00:24:38.540 genital mutilation range you know includes full clitoridectomy if you're removing the clitoris

00:24:46.900 but we now know it goes on further in the body than just the bit that's visible

00:24:52.160 pleasure can still be possible after clitoridectomy but there are so many things that

00:24:58.860 can go wrong in clitoridectomy risks of infection and bleeding and so on it still seems to me to be

00:25:04.600 something we should be saying no don't do that but then that brings in all those cultural differences

00:25:10.960 I know in my own part of the world I mean Oxford there is a anti-clitoridectomy movement

00:25:17.800 which is basically trying to say to communities where it's normal,

00:25:22.760 don't do it because these are the risks to health on the women who have it done.

00:25:27.860 So rather than saying, we're not in your culture, 0.60

00:25:30.780 we don't think your culture is right,

00:25:33.080 to say, think about the implications of this thing you do

00:25:36.380 and fight it within your culture rather than because we say you should.

00:25:41.860 So very interesting ethical issues which these body modifications can bring up.

00:25:47.800 Well, that just makes me think too, I guess it's more of an external thing, but in terms of the way that I read your book, and I was just like, I don't even know what gender is anymore. But you, I've seen people who, who are explaining, like, you know, men getting a hair transplant, like that's gender confirmation, or a woman getting larger breast implants, that's gender confirmation, like people who, so the broad spectrum of like somebody who is like a non-binary person or a trans person getting gender confirmation surgery, versus like a

00:26:17.800 cis person who just wants to look more feminine or wants to look more masculine like it's just

00:26:22.380 like well then why is one frowned upon you know by some people and one is plotted it's just it's

00:26:28.280 odd yes it is odd and it's something which we really don't seem to have worked out in terms

00:26:33.760 of the the ethics of this the sorts of choices people have or don't have about their own bodies

00:26:39.160 and how they present their bodies and just what is a woman anyway listeners this book this book

00:26:46.260 will blow your minds um your next your next chapter is about the hymen and that was very

00:26:51.840 interesting so do we believe in the hymen big question um one of the reviews of my book has

00:26:58.260 said we're still not really clear if helen king believes in the hymen or not no that's because

00:27:01.520 helen king doesn't know if she believes in the hymen or not i mean i really don't know i don't

00:27:05.980 think i have one but who knows um if it's a stretchy sort of membrane and if some people

00:27:11.900 stretch more easily than others, then you might not necessarily know you have it. There is

00:27:17.220 something where the hymen is called imperforate hymen, where the hymen has no gaps in it and you

00:27:25.020 can't have a period because the blood just builds up behind it. So in some cases, there clearly is

00:27:30.080 some sort of membrane that's really powerful and actually blocks the exit. But does that mean every

00:27:36.400 woman has some sort of membrane. It's really not clear to me. But it's clearly something that's

00:27:42.220 been fetishised over history, that you've somehow got to have it, and you've got to be able to prove

00:27:48.200 you have it. Well, how do you prove you have it? So one of the moments for me in that chapter was

00:27:53.320 finding out that as far back as Augustine, so late Roman Empire, we had people saying,

00:27:59.640 well, the trouble is if you inspect to try and find the hymen, in the process of inspecting for

00:28:04.640 it you probably destroy it so that's crazy isn't it you know you destroy the thing while you're

00:28:10.720 looking for it well and i've come across just in my research for various podcast episodes you know

00:28:15.800 when these sort of appalling situations to imagine you know people who have to prove their virginity

00:28:21.340 in a court of law or something where it's just like oh my god but then even back then like you

00:28:25.980 hear about people who would switch places with a servant girl or they would try and fake it but

00:28:31.380 like shove something up inside of you to make it look like and people still do that now you were

00:28:35.400 talking in your book can you talk about people who have yeah sure i find it quite extraordinary

00:28:41.100 that this is still going on so again if you go online you can find all sorts of websites that

00:28:45.440 claim to restore your virginity uh this could be sort of jokey like they'll give you a certificate

00:28:50.060 that says i'm a virgin um right that's really going to help isn't it but also uh there's a

00:28:55.840 long history of people doing things to create the effect of bleeding, so inserting something 0.84

00:29:02.600 red, berries, juice, into the vagina before sex so something will come out, or more rather

00:29:10.440 more dramatic things like inserting something that will actually make you bleed so that 0.94

00:29:16.680 you produce the effect at first intercourse.

00:29:21.420 That's very scary too. 0.82

00:29:23.140 This is important stuff.

00:29:24.700 But then you've got cultures where they could insert a small piece of raw meat up there so that someone inspecting you will think, oh, yeah, there's some sort of barrier when there isn't. 0.74

00:29:34.600 But this whole sort of inspecting, why can't you just believe a woman when she tells you about her sexual history?

00:29:40.460 What sort of relationship is it if you don't believe her?

00:29:43.080 I find that quite amazing.

00:29:45.840 But the sorts of tests people have done historically for virginity, all sorts of things.

00:29:51.560 So even things like thinking about whether a particular strange musical sound comes out of a cave when a virgin enters it, really quite freaky things.

00:30:05.900 How do you prove it, particularly when there's this awareness that by trying to prove it, you may well destroy it?

00:30:14.380 What is it anyway?

00:30:15.540 If it's not a hymen, then what is virginity?

00:30:19.520 why do you need a physical marker of it? Why can't a woman just say, I've never done this before, 1.00

00:30:26.220 or I did do this before? Now, again, we get onto judging other cultures. So if you are from a 1.00

00:30:31.220 culture where virginity is critical and where you will be disgraced and your family disgraced

00:30:36.720 if you're not a virgin at marriage, then you can see why people have a strong motivation

00:30:40.740 to do something, even something so extreme as having some sort of surgery that will then

00:30:48.140 be broken at the point where the man enters the woman. You can see why people would do that in

00:30:53.280 order to preserve their reputation. And it's disturbing that that is still a cultural thing.

00:30:59.580 I have a friend who is an obstetrician and she treats a lot of newcomers, like people not from 0.97

00:31:06.760 North America, just in her practice. And she has been asked more than once to write a certificate

00:31:11.960 of virginity for one of her patients. And she said, that is not a thing I can do.

00:31:20.720 No, absolutely not. That's amazing. Some of the historical things are far less dramatic. So

00:31:28.200 there's all sorts of remedies for astringence, things that will tighten you in some way.

00:31:34.000 But then the problem with that is they're also associated with sex workers. So sex workers

00:31:39.540 trying to simulate it's the first time by using some sort of constrictive medicine on those parts

00:31:47.720 of the body. So that gets tricky, too, because it sort of equates virginity with sex work, and that's

00:31:55.220 rather odd. And just sort of putting a small amount of blood into you, animal blood, a small

00:32:03.440 pouch of animal blood, which will then break, it's very bizarre that we're so obsessed with

00:32:08.840 that historically and yes the fact we're still worrying about it is even more bizarre yeah of

00:32:14.820 all the the chapters in your book like this is this is a thing that we don't even know if it

00:32:19.100 exists you know the breast exists clitoris exists womb exists but this whole chapter is just kind

00:32:24.740 of it's all cultural like it's all cultural yeah i think that's right i mean don't of course don't

00:32:29.600 forget that sometimes people said the clitoris didn't exist so there was yeah there was a 16th

00:32:34.660 century line that said it's not real it's just a sort of freak of nature if you have one don't

00:32:40.480 worry about it you know it's just weird but just that most women don't so to say it's not even a

00:32:46.220 normal part of the body but then with the clitoris it's not but with the hymen supposedly it is but

00:32:51.580 actually it clearly isn't so yeah that the there's an interesting link there between the two parts

00:32:57.780 and then the final part that you look at in your book is the womb yeah so wombs is what i knew

00:33:04.600 most about before I started writing the book. But I still found out things I didn't know when

00:33:09.400 I was reading about this. There's a theme throughout the book on religion and how

00:33:14.420 religion works with medicine. By religion, I'm mostly meaning Christianity here, though not

00:33:18.880 exclusively. Medicine and religion have worked together through Western culture to argue for

00:33:24.120 what a woman's body should and shouldn't be like. So some of the Virgin Mary stuff in the womb 1.00

00:33:29.440 chapter I found very surprising. So is Mary just a container? Is her womb just a sort of bag

00:33:37.940 into which Jesus is placed? Because she doesn't have sex, there are representations of her 0.94

00:33:45.420 conceiving through the ear, so literally through the ear, or is that just a metaphor for hearing

00:33:51.980 the word of God and obeying it? Very unclear. And there are even things where she sort of,

00:33:57.400 she looks, she sees, and she somehow conceives through the eyes. Completely weird to us.

00:34:04.760 But then when she's got Jesus in her womb, does he then somehow transmit his holy qualities to

00:34:13.220 her body? Or is she chosen because she's specially holy? And then somehow, even though her body isn't

00:34:20.380 contributing because he's being put in her womb, she's somehow contributing morally? But then I

00:34:27.120 gets worse and worse. So the big thing here for me is because Mary's blood makes milk,

00:34:33.320 that sort of basic ancient Greek how bodies work that went on for many, many centuries,

00:34:38.360 your menstrual blood becomes your breast milk. It gets diverted and it's the same fluid. It just

00:34:43.960 moves to a different place. So Mary's body, her menstrual blood somehow is becoming milk.

00:34:51.760 lots of representations historically of Jesus being fed with her milk

00:34:56.040 so the milk jutting out at him, it's back to the breast chapter

00:34:59.300 milk actually coming out of her breasts into his mouth

00:35:02.580 and then Jesus' death, Jesus' shedding of blood 0.94

00:35:07.940 is what is supposed to put us right with God

00:35:10.480 and we take that blood in the Eucharist, in the Holy Communion

00:35:16.040 the bread and the wine, the wine somehow becomes his blood

00:35:20.460 So that's Mary's blood, isn't it? It's Mary's blood that became milk, that went into Jesus, that came out of Jesus' blood, that the believer then takes.

00:35:31.160 Now, that to me was a mind-blowing moment, and I'm still having my mind blown by it.

00:35:37.760 It's saying something very different about Mary and making her very, very important, not just a container. 0.99

00:35:45.660 But it's the typical problem with looking at female bodies, isn't it?

00:35:50.460 At what point do you say, do you value them and say, this is really important, this fluid, this body part is critical?

00:35:56.400 At what point do you say, well, actually, it doesn't really matter. 0.65

00:35:59.020 It's all about men. 1.00

00:36:00.240 Women's bodies are just weird, very weird. 1.00

00:36:02.900 And wombs. 1.00

00:36:03.460 Just a container, yeah. 0.99

00:36:04.320 And wombs in particular, are they like a sewer that's just getting rid of extra waste material?

00:36:10.180 or are they, as Galen said, the most special organ of all,

00:36:14.860 the organ that has powers to retain and transform and expel

00:36:20.320 in a way no other body part can.

00:36:22.660 So they're really special in that way.

00:36:25.540 Well, and in your womb chapter as well,

00:36:27.100 just to tie it back to the what is gender, what is a woman, 0.90

00:36:31.080 you talk about a woman who had a health condition 0.63

00:36:35.480 where she didn't have a womb and then one was transplanted into her

00:36:38.960 and then she was able to carry a child. 0.97

00:36:41.000 Yes. I mean, now we are doing alternatives to wombs 1.00

00:36:44.600 in a way that we haven't really been able to do before.

00:36:48.200 But in the past, having a womb has been one of those things

00:36:53.080 that proves you really, really are a woman,

00:36:55.620 or indeed that you aren't.

00:36:57.520 Because there are people, again, this is back to what you were saying

00:36:59.920 about the binary and how the binary just doesn't work.

00:37:03.400 In the binary, you argue that women have wombs, men don't.

00:37:07.300 But if you find real bodies, and this was something that became apparent really in the 19th century when post-mortems were carried out more, you will sometimes find someone who appears to be female on the outside, breasts, female bone structure and so on.

00:37:25.120 When you go inside, there is no womb.

00:37:27.520 Now, what do you do about that? 0.98

00:37:28.580 Do you say, well, that wasn't a woman at all?

00:37:30.780 Or do you say, well, actually, it's how you present?

00:37:34.400 That's how she lived, so she's a woman.

00:37:36.120 what do you do and the womb used to be the big thing that made it absolutely definitive

00:37:42.180 that you were a woman now not only um are alternatives to wombs happening so um the idea

00:37:52.080 of actually having a system whereby women can produce a baby and then it's brought up outside 0.77

00:37:59.980 the baby outside the body even when they're really really tiny that is another possibility 0.95

00:38:04.800 but also if you don't have a womb and you have everything else that we think of as female

00:38:12.540 you can still be a woman and if that's the case with people in terms of how they're born they're

00:38:18.440 born without a womb why can't we say you can be defined as female if you were assigned male at

00:38:25.700 birth why not well i think that's that's what i finished reading your book and i was just like

00:38:30.640 well, I don't know what anything means anymore. What is, what is fact? What is truth? It's such

00:38:35.980 an eyeopening book. Um, and I think just you, the number of examples you have exactly like that of

00:38:41.360 just, does anatomy equate to sex or to gender? And it can't because there's so much differentiation

00:38:49.060 and often you don't know until someone dies and you do a post-mortem and you're like, oh,

00:38:52.240 that's what was inside them. Okay. Like how do people, I think it's such an important book,

00:38:57.460 especially with all these conversations going on right now in the UK and in the US

00:39:01.360 about gender and the binary like you bring countless examples of why it can't be a binary

00:39:09.780 it's not it never has been exactly it's that point it never has been that this is not new

00:39:16.020 we tend to think the discussions we have at the moment about gender and sex are somehow a dreadful

00:39:21.000 new thing that's just come and before everything was really simple people knew what they were

00:39:25.140 They didn't. Not only do we know that people lived as the sex they weren't born as, so they chose to dress and to live in a sex other than the one they were assigned at birth, but also we know that bodies didn't match and they didn't match the outside to the inside.

00:39:42.400 And so for my book, which is going from the outside to the inside, it's kind of relevant to say, well, actually, outsides and insides can simply not match.

00:39:52.640 Fact. You know, this is fact. This is not some gender critical, weird thing that's happening now.

00:39:58.800 This is actually how bodies are. They don't fit. 0.77

00:40:02.260 These things like when I talk about the size that a penis has to be at birth in order to 0.99

00:40:08.660 be defined as a penis and to make you into a boy, I find that quite extraordinary that 0.97

00:40:13.020 1.7 centimetres is the current number that makes you one side or the other of the binary. 0.98

00:40:20.500 That's so arbitrary.

00:40:22.400 The same thing with hormone levels, which can vary through the day and through the year.

00:40:27.040 at one point, this is definitely your hormones make you a man. Or actually, maybe they don't.

00:40:34.420 It's not simple. And there is no way that we can do it. Historically, we've done it mostly by doing,

00:40:41.100 oh, looks like a man to me. And we still do that now. You still get that discussion with the

00:40:46.000 Olympics. With Califf, you still had that discussion of, well, it looks like a man,

00:40:51.840 so it must be a man. So it didn't actually matter how she identifies, what she was assigned at birth,

00:40:59.580 what her legal sex is, how she presents herself. It was just, oh, no, it doesn't look like one to

00:41:04.780 me. And again, what does that say if you are a woman who was assigned female at birth, you live 0.86

00:41:09.460 as a woman, you consider yourself a woman, and someone says, no, actually, you look too butch. 0.99

00:41:15.220 You can't possibly be a woman. You can't come into these ladies' restrooms because you're 1.00

00:41:19.680 obviously a man. Come on. There are plenty of examples of that where we don't have to all look 1.00

00:41:26.420 the same within our gender. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Helen. I think like, again,

00:41:33.380 this book, I think it could not be more timely. I don't know if you knew it would be when you

00:41:36.820 were writing it. I didn't. It was something which developed as I wrote it because it took me,

00:41:40.960 I started writing in 2017. And then I kind of stopped during the pandemic. I was one of these

00:41:45.640 people who couldn't write during the pandemic. Some people wrote nonstop. I just couldn't cope.

00:41:50.720 And it became obvious to me that this was really important, that the history needed to be told.

00:41:56.940 Well, thank you so much for writing this book. And thank you so much for joining me today.

00:42:00.120 Well, thank you, Anne. It's been a real pleasure.

00:42:06.400 So again, Helen's book, Immaculate Forms, a history of the female body in four parts. It

00:42:11.440 is available everywhere. Sometimes we have books on this podcast that aren't available in North

00:42:16.260 America, but this one is UK, North America, all over the place. And like I said, in the podcast,

00:42:21.000 it could not be more timely or interesting. I mean, basically this book just proves

00:42:27.300 with beyond a short of a doubt that gender is not binary. There's, there's not,

00:42:33.460 there's not only male and female. There's so many, there's so many other things. And how do you,

00:42:38.160 like i kept saying in the interview like what even what even is a woman um it's such an interesting

00:42:43.240 book i think that uh a lot of you are gonna enjoy reading this very much and actually something else

00:42:49.800 i was thinking about just in talking to her now was i did the episode a few years ago about the

00:42:54.720 chevalier day on the trans woman spy fencing person in the french revolution era and how

00:43:03.020 how the Chevalier Dayan live sort of as a man for a time as a woman for a time and then

00:43:09.380 people weren't really sure is this a man is this a woman um and listen to that episode to get into

00:43:14.440 kind of how and why those discussions are happening around them but um sort of disappointingly at the

00:43:21.260 end of their life the Chevalier Dayan there was they did uncover the the nude body to see like

00:43:27.620 is this a man or a woman um but as Helen was saying it's like just based on what you see

00:43:31.860 on a nude body or even that could not match what's on the inside like you don't you don't know

00:43:38.320 looking at a body whether it's an in an autopsy or whether it's a person wearing clothes like

00:43:44.380 what is the gender of a person it's just it's also interesting i do want to mention also in

00:43:48.720 her chapter about the womb she does talk about another vulgar history character um real life

00:43:54.800 person mary toft who the people who've listened to that episode might still have emotional scars

00:43:59.840 from the whole thing about how she claimed that she was giving birth to rabbits and she was not.

00:44:05.340 Anyway, it's such an interesting book. I think you'll all enjoy it. And next week,

00:44:09.800 we're actually going to be talking some more about medical history with another special guest. So

00:44:15.400 I'm looking forward to sharing that episode with you as well. And so how can you keep up with me

00:44:22.540 and with this podcast and what we're all doing? The number one thing I want to mention slash

00:44:26.780 advise slash recommend is that you sign up to get my monthly mailing list newsletter so that's every

00:44:34.580 month and we just send out uh just a nice non-spam like uh newsletter to anybody who signs up right

00:44:42.460 where i'll just kind of give like delve a bit deeper into some of the podcast episodes we did

00:44:48.220 um share some news about me and my book and live events i'm going to be doing i'm going to recommend

00:44:54.400 books to read and stuff. And so it's just a way that if you're not perpetually on social media

00:45:00.160 and you're afraid that you're worried you're going to miss one of my announcements or something,

00:45:04.780 this is a way that you can just get it, read it at your leisure. And if you want to get that

00:45:08.200 newsletter, what you do is you go to vulgarhistory.com slash news, N-E-W-S, and let me know

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00:45:19.020 way to keep up with this podcast and me and everything that's happening. Because honestly,

00:45:22.760 2025 is going to be quite a year for me and this podcast and everything you can also keep up with

00:45:30.460 me i'm on patreon if you go to patreon.com and foster writer you can sign up as a free member

00:45:35.920 or you can also become a paid member there but basically like for the free people what you get

00:45:41.920 there is more frequent updates from me about what i'm doing writing my book sharing interesting

00:45:48.060 articles and links and stuff and that's the way that you i just feel like people who want my

00:45:52.700 updates can get them from there without having to be beholden to any sort of rotted billionaires

00:45:58.700 growth social media website that's where you can just like get the stuff right from me when you

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00:46:07.920 sign up for free membership or you could become a paid member so that's where for one dollar a month

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00:46:20.860 dollar like you know inflation you know should that maybe that price could go up and i'm always

00:46:25.540 like no no because i want i want to make this attainable to as many people as possible so it's

00:46:30.920 always going to be one dollar to get the early ad free access to all episodes um and then if people

00:46:36.360 want you can pledge five dollars or more a month to get bonus episodes on there as well so that's

00:46:41.960 like vulgar piece theater where we talk about uh different historical costume dramas and by we i

00:46:47.780 I mean, myself, Alison Epstein, and Lando at Johnson.

00:46:50.340 There's also other bonus episodes on there

00:46:51.980 you get at the $5 a month level. 0.99

00:46:55.260 So this asshole, where we talk about gross men from mystery, 0.99

00:46:57.580 the after show, where I just like kiki with some guests 1.00

00:47:00.140 where we have stuff to talk about.

00:47:01.860 And also if you join the Patreon at that $5 a month level,

00:47:05.540 you get to join our Discord,

00:47:07.320 which is just like a big group chat

00:47:09.080 for the Tits Out Brigade,

00:47:10.220 where we recommend books to each other.

00:47:12.220 We talk about the Traitors TV show, Survivor,

00:47:15.880 but we also share pictures of our cats, offer emotional support to each other during these

00:47:20.420 ongoing unprecedented times. And also just talk about the podcast. Um, some people in the group

00:47:26.140 are, you know, taking university classes and they're like, this professor I think would be

00:47:29.780 a good guest. And I love that. I love hearing these connections, um, suggestions of topics,

00:47:34.420 things like that. We also work with our wonderful brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which is a

00:47:39.500 small business. It's a woman owned business run by my friend Tori. Um, and she makes beautiful

00:47:45.300 jewelry that is inspired by women and also the classical classical history so some of the jewelry

00:47:51.620 has like design story is made she is an artist um showing women from history so you know what

00:47:58.440 i'm gonna say women and other people because Hatshepsut is there and like what was Hatshepsut's

00:48:02.500 gender unclear frankly um but we also got Cleopatra like we talked about is featured on the jewelry

00:48:08.860 agrippina is there and boleyn and then also people from mythology um like aphrodite and medusa

00:48:16.200 and yeah and then also some other jewelry just looks like kind of recreations of jewelry that

00:48:22.000 was worn by the ancient greek and roman people including she has a it's sort of like a talisman

00:48:27.460 that's inspired by her own tori the owner of common era her own fertility journey and it's

00:48:33.040 like a fertility talisman which i think sort of ties in with what we're talking about with helen

00:48:36.780 today. Anyway, these pieces are available in solid gold as well as a more affordable gold

00:48:41.660 vermeil vulgar history. Listeners can always get 15% off your order from Common Era by going to

00:48:47.100 commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout. If you want to get vulgar history

00:48:52.900 merchandise, Americans can go to vulgarhistory.com slash store, or if you're outside the US, go to 0.58

00:48:58.620 vulgarhistory.redbubble.com because the shipping is a lot better there for non-American people.

00:49:03.840 i am on social media um you can find me on instagram threads and blue sky at vulgar history

00:49:10.480 pod i think i might be at vulgar history on blue sky but like just look at vulgar history you'll

00:49:14.960 find me wherever i also have a substat um where i post essays about women from history and they

00:49:21.740 also have like a social media thing it's called notes anyway just look up vulgar history that

00:49:26.340 substat.com and i'm there as well and finally if you want to get in touch with me you can just go

00:49:31.800 to vulgarhistory.com there's a little form little button that says like contact me and then it sends

00:49:37.000 me a message and let me know what you want me to know I guess basically yeah we'll be back next 0.98

00:49:43.460 week with another new episode and until then I mean tits out squirt your milk at people like 0.99

00:49:49.100 whatever you want to do um hands on tits out and I'll talk to you all next time vulgar history is 1.00

00:49:56.640 researched, written, and hosted by 1.00

00:49:58.420 Anne Foster. That's me!

00:50:00.440 The editor is Christina Lumagi.

00:50:02.720 Theme music is by The Severn Duo.

00:50:05.420 The Vulgar History Show

00:50:06.380 image is by Debra Wong.

00:50:08.360 Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek.

00:50:10.420 Find transcripts of recent episodes

00:50:12.140 at vulgarhistory.com

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00:51:42.400 from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries.

00:51:47.360 Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new way,

00:51:51.720 and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics?

00:51:54.640 New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday

00:51:57.400 with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon.

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00:52:04.640 where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week.

00:52:08.240 So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:52:13.300 Hi, listeners.

00:52:14.640 We want to tell you about a podcast we love.

00:52:17.520 It's called Rebel Girls,

00:52:19.060 formerly known as Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls.

00:52:21.720 It's about real-life women who are changing the world with their courage, creativity, and big, bold ideas.

00:52:29.280 Want to know how Taylor Swift became a superstar?

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00:52:36.760 From immersive stories, to heartfelt interviews, to super smart advice,

00:52:41.940 Rebel Girls brings you stories that will get you fired up to become your best self.

00:52:46.540 There are over 400 episodes for you to explore, with new episodes every week.

00:52:50.680 So, check it out.

00:52:52.460 Listen to Rebel Girls wherever you get your podcasts.

00:52:55.300 And find us on YouTube.com slash Rebel Girls.

00:52:58.900 And whatever you do, stay Rebel.

Vulgar History - January 22, 2025

Author Interview： Helen King (Immaculate Forms： A History of the Female Body in Four Parts)

Episode Stats

Transcript