Mark Fennell
speaker
177 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 22 Jun
Mark Fennell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
So the popular idea that's kind of permeated culture is in sort of the 19th century, British women were going to these doctors who were like initially giving kind of pelvic finger massages and then eventually kind of creating mechanical devices.
Is any part of that true?
So that really breaks that whole idea apart, doesn't it?
So the hysteria myth just refuses to die.
And it's one of the most enduring misconceptions we have about women in the Victorian era, which raises a question.
If that's not true, like when do vibrators actually start being used for female pleasure?
Well, the best we can say is that if you fast forward to New York in the 1970s, you meet a woman named Betty Dodson.
In her masterclasses, Betty gave women a vibrator to use on themselves.
But the thing is, this vibrator was not sold as a sex toy.
It was actually a 1968 back massager called... The Hitachi Wand, which is, you know, globally iconic.
When you go back and you look at that incredible discovery that we started with, the second century Roman dildo, and you look at all of these different fragments of history over the years that you've spent so much time unearthing, understanding, what's the story that it tells us about women that history so often missed?
Kate Lister, you are a bloody delight.
This has been so much fun.
Dr Kate Lister is a sex historian, an author, a podcaster.
Her latest book is called Flick, The Story of Female Pleasure.
This episode was produced by Zoe Ferguson.
The sound engineer was Angie Grant.
And No One Saw It Coming is made on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia for ABC Radio National.
I'm Mark Finnell.
Thank you so much for listening.
Showing 61–80 of 177 · page 4 of 9
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