How To Fake Virginity

Why, just why, would one put a leech up their .. you know where? It's all in the name of virginity, or the faking of it. Kate is joined by Dr Julia Martins to find out why virginity was so necessary to Early Modern people, and how they went about faking it. Julia can be found at juliamartins.co.uk https://juliamartins.co.uk This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 0:37Speaker 01

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• 1:19Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You're you, I am me, and this is Betwixt the Sheet. So I think you know what's coming your way. That's right, it is the fair dudes' warning. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults about adulty things and an adulty way, covering various adult subjects and used to be an adult too. We do that so everyone just feels a little bit safer, a little bit more prepared for what might be about to go into their lug holes. Right, on with the show.

• 1:52Kate Lister?

  So you're thinking about getting married, are you? Hmm. And this woman that you have in mind, wow, what are we to make of her? Does she dress properly in public? Is her dress not a little bit short? Is her top not a little bit low? Is she a little bit too friendly? A little bit too flirty? And are her nostrils not a little bit too big? I think they might be, and you should be careful, because she might not be pure. Oh, if there's one thing big nostrils will signify, it's that a woman has loose morals. Apparently. I wonder when she lies in bed next year, will she snuggle up or will she be repelled across the room by some invisible force like the unchaste woman she is? Honestly, that happens to me all the time. You should probably check her purity, her chastity,

• 2:37Kate Lister?

  her virginity, but how are you gonna do that? What are the tests that you could use? And more importantly for this episode, how do you go about faking it in the first place? Right, on with the show.

• 3:13Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex, Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. Virginity has, for some reason or another, been so important throughout most of history. But what is it really? I mean, what do you lose? The idea you lose something. Where, oh, the thing's gone, where's it gone? I can't get it back now. It's all bollocks. It's just a social construct. But it has been very important throughout most of our history and is still important around the world to this very day, unfortunately. So there have always been ways to fake it. And today I'm joined by Dr Julia Martins from Living History to find out more about the early modern people and how they would fake their virginity, whether for their wedding night or to please a paying customer. Bloomers

• 3:57Kate Lister?

  off, Betwixters, let's do it.

• 4:06Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Julia Martins. How are you doing?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I'm great, thank you, Kate. How are you? I'm so excited to be here with you.

• 4:16Kate Lister?

  Oh, well, I'm thrilled that you are here. In fact, I'm surprised that we haven't had you on earlier, quite frankly, because you are a historian of, well, primarily of the body in early modern history. Would that be right?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm interested in all things to do with gender and sex and medicine. So I've been listening to the podcast for a long time and it's been so incredible. So I'm so excited to be a part of it.

• 4:39Kate Lister?

  Thank you. What brought you to this area of study? It's a fascinating area and we're gonna get on with it and we're gonna be talking specifically about virginity and the body today. But how did you end up studying the body in the modern period?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  I was interested in translation at first. So for my my masters at first, I was doing this program um in France and Italy. And seeing how medical recipes were translated from one language to another and what changed in the process of translation. So recipes for remedies, abortion formulas, all kinds of things. And then from there, I started noticing that even more than all chemical recipes, the recipes that I was really interested in. Were to do with the body, the female body, reproduction and all of that. So I gradually started gravitating towards how those recipes were translated and how they were censored or corrected, quote unquote.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  And how sort of the knowledge about the body was reshaped as it was translated and spread. So I came, yeah, through book history and and translation.

• 5:41Kate Lister?

  It's fascinating because you wouldn't think that that the idea of the body would change all that much because bodies have remained. Pretty constant. It's the same for me being a sex historian, just like the idea, like what goes in where and who does what to who's kind of. Constant, but it's amazing how much actually changes.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the way how we understand body parts and functions and and sex and all things is so culturally constructed that is constantly. Changing, even virginity, which we're talking about today, it's it's not, it can be an elusive concept. It seems straightforward when you think about it at first, but in reality, what is virginity? What even is it in terms of definition? It's not as easy as you might expect, right?

• 6:25Kate Lister?

  That was gonna be my first question, actually. That was my first, I've written it down here and everything, like Julia, what is? Virginity, which again, it's so deceptive, that question. When I taught sex history to students, I used to love throwing that one at them, like, what's virginity? And everyone would be dead confident and they'd start, I know what it is. And then we'd sort of pick it apart. And then in the end, you're like, I don't know what it is, actually. What do you define it as?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  I think it really depends on the the source material you're working with, the primary sources and how they understand virginity. Because for some of these um Italian texts about virginity, you can kind of lose your virginity to yourself. So you can quote unquote corrupt yourself.

• 7:07Kate Lister?

  How'd you do that?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Pleasuring yourself, right?

• 7:10Kate Lister?

  Ah.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  So that is something that can happen, but that can vary a lot, a lot through time. And I actually came across a passage by Saint Augustine. And so he's writing in the fifth century C E, so a long time ago. And he's writing about theology and about virginity, which as we know, has been very important in Christianity. And he actually wrote that a midwife could destroy a girl's virginity while trying to ascertain it. So it's a very, it's tricky, right? Because by trying to see whether someone was still a virgin, you could kind of corrupt them, quote unquote, in the process, right?

• 7:48Kate Lister?

  That's not good.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so what counts, right? Like homosexual sex, does that count? Sex with yourself, does that count? Or with objects and props and things? And what about anal sex and all things to do, you know, with other practices, oral sex? You know, it does depend.

• 8:04Kate Lister?

  I mean, I suppose traditionally, we think of it as penis and vagina sex, don't we?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, true. It tends to get very patriarchal very quickly, I think. But even then, how do you ascertain it? How do you make sure someone is or isn't a virgin? I think that's the tricky question, right?

• 8:22Kate Lister?

  And it's very gendered, very binary gender thing. Because we don't seem to care that much about men's virginity. Or maybe I'm wrong in that. Has there been a point in your research where men's virginity has been as important as women's?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  No, not nearly.

• 8:39Kate Lister?

  No.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  No, I mean, not really. I mean, I think there are, in the medieval period, there are some religious men who become known as being virgins and all of that. But I don't think it's ever to the same level. It's never to the same extent of scrutiny that women have gone have gone through in history. And I I think it's mostly to do with having children, right? And the legitimacy of heirs and and inheritance and property. So I think very quickly it becomes about property and passing on. Your family wealth inheritance to the right people, quote unquote, and not so much about moral ideas. I think it's more practical concerns in a way. What do you think?

• 9:22Kate Lister?

  Oh, I mean, that's the question, isn't it? Anthropologists have been rowing about this one for a while is what is the obsession with virginity? And not just virginity, by extension, women's sexual behaviour. Why is it policed so much more heavily than men? So you just seem to get a free pass and it's like, help yourself. And then we get in this really weird situation where men are expected to have lots of sex, but women are expected not to have sex. And then we get mad at the women for having sex with the men who are supposed to have lots of sex. So what on earth are we doing?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Yes, it's a catch 22. There's no way you can win, basically.

• 9:52Kate Lister?

  You can't win. You absolutely cannot win. I mean, when you strip it all back, it's about control, really.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  It is, yes.

• 9:59Kate Lister?

  That's what's going on here.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  It is about control, yeah.

• 10:01Kate Lister?

  I think I do buy into the the theory that that you that you put forward there, that it's about ensuring legitimate issue and about money. Because money is ultimately power, isn't it? And this obsession with a woman being a virgin when she gets married is ultimately to ensure that the bun in the oven is her husband's.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. Though, having said that, I came across a book. It's a 17th century French book that has been translated into English as The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Revealed, which, great title. But there's a a passage that says, so very like lenient towards women in a way. It says, might it not be allowable for a woman who has passed some years of her life in unlawful pleasures to secure her husband's good opinion on the wedding night by taking up some blood, which she treasured up before, and putting it into the privates, end of quote. So it's kind of, I don't know, there's some leeway there, right? Uh, you know, well, maybe the woman is trying her best and the peace in the home and whatnot.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  I don't know. I thought it was surprisingly like understanding for a 17th century text to talk about the preservation of peace in the family.

• 11:12Kate Lister?

  That's talking about faking a virginity then.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 11:15Kate Lister?

  Okay. So we're into sort of like a theological discussion about what is virginity anyway? Like, what is it supposed to be proving? And when you start to pull it apart, it's actually, it doesn't really mean anything. And you get into loads of small, small, weird, small print with it about, well, fingering's okay. But like having sex isn't, and this kind of weird thing.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 11:35Kate Lister?

  But when we're talking about proving it, they have some very clear ideas. So what is it that they're trying to prove? And how do you prove it?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  So I think throughout history, there have been lots of different ways of kind of trying to test virginity. But it's never straightforward because even the hymen, this is something that I was really fascinated by when I started reading more about it. And Helen King is someone who, who I'm, I'm sure you've read her work. She's someone who writes a lot about that, about how the female body has been understood in different ways throughout time. And essentially, the hymen isn't really talked about before the 15th century, right?

• 12:12Kate Lister?

  No.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Though people do write about blood. So there's this idea that virgins are going to bleed and that's normal and expected. But there's not the idea that the bleeding comes from rupturing the hymen, which I found interesting. Because then it's about, well, it's about the friction and, you know, rough handling and all things unpleasant, things like that. But also ruptured vessels in that area. So there's this idea that you are going to bleed and that's normal and expected. But it's not necessarily because your hymen is being ruptured until the 15th century. And even then, there's no consensus because some doctors don't even think there is a hymen. So it's kind of, not everyone agrees, not even the doctors agree with each other.

• 12:55Kate Lister?

  What is a hymen? Just as a, a real start question for this stuff, like what exactly is that?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  So again, I think it depends on who you're asking. And it's, I, I think it can get very frustrating trying to define terms like that because people have understood them in different ways. So hymen, the word itself means membrane, right? In Greek, but before there was the hymen as like what we're talking about right now. The word hymen was used to talk about different membranes in the body. So you could have the eyes or the heart, all kinds of membranes, but not the one we're referring to. And this I learned from learning Helen King. I thought it was really interesting how, how there were hymens, just not the one we're talking about right now. And yeah, so theoretically, that's the idea that it's a membrane, but.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Some people don't have it, some people are born without, some people have thick hymens or flexible hymens, all kinds of things, all bodies are different and unique. And so I think that's the thing that Renaissance doctors realized was that if you do bleed on your wedding night and your hymen is ruptured, then yes, you're a virgin. But if you don't bleed, it doesn't mean that you're not necessarily a virgin. Maybe maybe you were born without, maybe you did something else that broke your hymen, you know, Nicholas Calpepper, who was a medical popularizer in the seventeenth century, he was writing all kinds of popular medical books, right? And he said that bad humors could essentially kind of break away your hymen. So, you know,

• 14:23Speaker 02

  maybe you're not to blame, maybe you are a virgin, you're just not bleeding. But having said that, some people would be expecting the blood, so you might resort to kind of faking it.

• 14:33Kate Lister?

  Because that's a tall order, isn't it? I mean, we

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:35Kate Lister?

  The hymen myths are still with us. Like, was it the World Health Organization that within the past few years has had to like put out notices about virginity tests around the world today to remind people that it's nonsense?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  It is, it is awful. It's a human rights violation, really, like virginity testing. And having said that, if you Google like fake hymens, artificial hymens, you can get them. So it's capitalism at its worst, right? So I think that's the thing is, and in many cultures, there are concerns with virginity testing, and we know it's awful. And what are you even testing for? Because how reliable can that be? Like, are there any clinical uses for that?

• 15:13Kate Lister?

  No.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  I doubt that, right?

• 15:14Kate Lister?

  No. There's this idea, and this is the myth, this is the nonsense, that the hymen is is almost like a Tupperware lid that goes over a pot that that's completely like intact until until the point of penetration and then they'll be on, that's just, it's just nonsense. It's just absolute cobblers, that.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. When you think about it for longer than five minutes, I think it all becomes very silly very quickly. And of course, I don't want to make light of, because it causes real harm, this concern with virginity and hymens. But it all, it is a bit silly. Like I said, it's like a Tupperware lid and the names that hymens have had through this, throughout the centuries, like seal or they give this idea Idea of like lock and key and

• 15:53Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Or a lid or something that is closed. But yeah.

• 15:57Kate Lister?

  Because you hear a lot about virginity tests all throughout history, about women having their virginity checked, like Joan of Arc had hers checked and like various regal people before they got married had it checked. And I always think, what exactly are they looking for when they do that? Because they're very sparse, the sources. It just says that, oh, they were found to be intact. And so, well, what, what were they looking for? They're just going to open their legs and then like music by Enya would play or something. Or it's just, it's like, like there's a best before date stamped on it. Like, what is it that, and I've no idea. Do you know what, what it was that they were looking for?

• 16:33Speaker 02

  I think before the hymen became a thing, I think it was mostly tightness that people were looking for.

• 16:39Kate Lister?

  Well, that's scientific. Brilliant.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Usually it was the kind of two finger test, which sounds horrific and it was horrific, of course. But it's this idea of, you know, how narrow, how tight is the passage?

• 16:52Kate Lister?

  Brilliant.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It is ridiculous. But that explains why so many of the ways of restoring or faking quote unquote virginity have to do with tightness in making things narrow for the men so that they feel that they are the first ones there.

• 17:12Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Julia after this short break.

• 17:22Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 18:04Kate Lister?

  We've sort of covered a little bit like why this was so important, but there's clearly an enormous amount of pressure on women to show up. Even if they were virgins, they must have been panicking that they would somehow not be able to be proven to be so. So you do get people faking it, don't you?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. I think so. And I think that's to be expected. Yeah, the stakes are high. And I think there are basically two groups of people who could fake it potentially. You have wives or women getting married, girls getting married, who are not virgins anymore, or who are virgins but are afraid that they won't perform their virginity the way that they're supposed to. So this is one group and they might resort to lots of different methods and recipes and things. And then you have the other group, especially in Italy and then later in Britain. And that's something I know you've written about quite a bit, about sex workers and about how they would perform virginity for their clients.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And so both these groups would kind of use these recipes and these formulas in different ways, right? Because if you're a wife and you're going to essentially perform your virginity once, then you could potentially use more theatrical methods or something that might cause a little bit of injury to your body, because it's just going to be the once, not justifying it, obviously, it's horrific, but it's something that you would do once. Whereas if you're a sex worker who would be doing something like that more often, then you want to be careful, right, of how you're going about it so that you're not injuring yourself, hopefully, right? So I think those are kind of the two groups that would fake virginity in a way.

• 19:42Kate Lister?

  How would you do this? And what do the sources tell us?

• 19:47Speaker 02

  So I think in the medieval period, in the the Trottula texts, which are very interesting, and if people haven't read them or taken a look, like, I really suggest Googling them. And Monica Green is a historian who has worked a lot with this, and they're really fascinating texts about the female body. And so in these texts, there are, I think, ten, nine? Recipes about how to fake it, essentially. Some of them are milder, using like berry juice. Doesn't sound great having berry juice inside you, but it's not, it doesn't sound as bad, I guess.

• 20:19Kate Lister?

  It's not the worst I've heard, no, okay.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  I mean, it could be worse, right? And some of the other recipes are worse. Because one of the methods would be using a leech. So, of course, we always come back to leeches in the history of medicine, don't we? It's like, it's, you try to stay away from the leeches, but if you're interested in the history of medicine and sex, you'll eventually come back to the leeches. But, yeah, so if you had a leech inside of you, which would cause a wound, essentially. Eventually, there would be a scab, right, over the wound. And then with friction afterwards, you would take the, the scab off, you would bleed, so there would be, you know, so it's just fake, because it's not, it's not blood from rupturing the hymen. But it is your blood, you are bleeding for your husband, so I think, honestly, I think it should count.

• 21:04Kate Lister?

  And you've put a leech up your hoo-ha, I mean, that's commitment.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Honestly, yeah, it's, it's horrific, it's awful. And all the formulas in these texts are about making things tight, right? So like, constrictive formulas, using like, plantain, like all different kinds of herbs, comfrey roots.

• 21:23Kate Lister?

  Alum turns up a lot, doesn't it?

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Yes, especially because it turns red as well.

• 21:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  So, yeah, there's lots of ways in the trotula, so medieval medicine. And then later in the Renaissance, and this is how I first came across this subject, was reading this Renaissance writer, Gian Battista de la Porta, so he was Italian, and he was writing about like the wonders of nature, secrets of nature, magical things. And by natural magic, what he meant was marvelous things that kind of went against what you would expect in nature. And ways of manipulating nature to create like marvelous, wonderful effects. And one of the things that he found incredible was restoring virginity. So he listed lots of different formulas, yeah. And, yeah, so these formulas became available to everyone, essentially, because the book was translated.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  It was written in La- in Latin first, same as the trotula, so you would only Have few people reading essentially because not everyone read Latin, right? But then as it starts getting translated, then it's available in Italian and in French, other languages. And then more and more people have access to this. And it was quite controversial because with more readers having access to this problematic material of faking virginity and potentially deceiving your husband. It becomes controversial very quickly and he also had lots of other recipes about flying witches and things like, so he faced the Inquisition twice, which was not surprising.

• 22:52Kate Lister?

  I didn't think you were gonna go there. Okay, wow.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, because he, he, he had this formula called the witch's ointment. It sounds like an aphrodisiac, but it had hallucinogenic properties as well. And so according to him, witches would use this to fly to their Sabbats and have orgies with the devil, all kinds of things.

• 23:10Kate Lister?

  How was he writing about this then? Because I can understand, like, he's gonna get in trouble for this kind of stuff. And he must have realised that this is quite, he can't have written in a book of going, hey, A woman, if you wanna fake it, here's how you do it. Cause he had to go, like, how does he write about it? Does he write about it and go, this is an awful thing that you definitely shouldn't do? And then gives you all the information. Like, how does he talk about it in his book?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in the first edition, I think he's not that careful. He doesn't really add too many caveats. He just says, like, the witch's formula, he says he learnt it from a witch. So, you know, not great, not a great start.

• 23:44Kate Lister?

  Oh dear, oh come on.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  It sounds made up really, but yeah. So he says that and then very quickly, as he starts getting lots of criticism with the new editions, the recipes start being censored heavily. Recipes for abortion, for flying witches, for faking virginity, for making a man impotent. All kinds of things that shouldn't be mainstream according to the church. And so in the following editions, translators censor heavily. And they add passages like, so that evil people can't do evil things, we have omitted this passage. And the author himself does that later on with new editions, saying like, no, this is not the good kind of knowledge that I want to share, so I'll just not say anything.

• 24:27Kate Lister?

  Someone's backtracking.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, wouldn't you after?

• 24:31Kate Lister?

  Yes, yes.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  I mean, after talking to the Inquisition people, I think I would reconsider what I was writing, honestly.

• 24:37Kate Lister?

  All right, okay, so he's got his mad ideas.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:41Kate Lister?

  There's lots of stuff about bathing in alum and

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:46Kate Lister?

  Kind of strange, like, like things to make it tight, things to fake blood. Like, sometimes you find descriptions of like giblets inside

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:54Kate Lister?

  The vagina, so blood will be produced. That sounds like, rather that than a leech, I think.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, though ideally neither, but yeah.

• 25:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  But you could have like, uh, like a fish bladder, because that was kind of small enough. And you would fill it with blood, pig's blood looks very similar to human blood, so pig's blood would be a good choice. And then you would have that inside you. And then with intercourse, it would explode, it would erupt, and then you would bleed out. It's all very unpleasant.

• 25:22Kate Lister?

  It's all deeply unpleasant and almost completely useless, but I suppose it could be a good deceiving trick, because is it true that that you would have to show blood on the sheets in order to prove virginity? Is that, is that, or is that something more like a a historical myth? Have there been cultures and times that did that?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  I think it's not a myth, but it's not as widespread as we tend to believe. I think in some areas, it it lasted quite a long time. I think in Britain, because of the Reformation, this became associated with Catholicism and with Catholic practices. So it wasn't Protestants frowned upon the sheets thing for a bit.

• 25:58Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  But that doesn't mean that people weren't interested in seeing the blood and and all of that. And I think afterwards with the Restoration and the Libertines and all of that, then it becomes all about seeing, about deflowering virgins and seeing the blood. It becomes kind of a cultural fever, really.

• 26:17Kate Lister?

  Really does. They get like, by the time you get into the eighteenth century, I mean, I don't know what it was like in the early modern period, but certainly in the eighteenth century, you get this fascination with virginity, with deflowering young girls. I mean, I don't know if it's just because pornography has been more widely produced at this time, so we can accurately trace it. But they have a real thing

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:35Kate Lister?

  about deflowering young girls. And you've kind of got to look at that, well, that's not really about protecting patriarchal inheritance rights. That's something else is going on here.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I think from the medical side of things, I think it's got to do with venereal diseases and especially syphilis, because as syphilis starts to spread, the only kind of safe sex you could have for the men, I mean, not for the woman, but the only kind of safe sex that the men could have would be with a virgin, right? Someone who probably doesn't have like gonorrhea or syphilis or anything like that. So that's bad enough, but there's also this idea that by having sex with a virgin, with someone who has not been corrupted, quote unquote, by sex and potentially by disease, you could, the disease could go from your body to hers. So you could kind of heal yourself through that. Isn't that awful?

• 27:29Speaker 02

  And I mean, there are some records in the Old Bailey Rape Cases in which several of the of the women or girls raped had been raped by men who had syphilis and they hadn't in an attempt to kind of heal themselves, which is absolutely horrific.

• 27:47Kate Lister?

  Fuck, man.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  But it was a belief that people had. So I think the kind of deflo- deflooration mania, if we can call it that, I think it had to do with that as well. I think it's pornography and cheap print, talking about all things to do with sex work. It becomes very popular to read about that and medical manuals, sex manuals become really popular, because you can buy them cheaply anywhere. But I think the syphilis thing plays a part in it sadly.

• 28:13Kate Lister?

  Definitely does, doesn't it? And yeah, you're right, you do see that account of the virgin being seduced into sex work and then repeatedly losing her virginity. You see that cropping up all the time. It's in Fanny Hill, it's in numerous erotica of the time. And there's descriptions there about like they use like a small knife to make a cut or they use, like I said, like pig's blood or something like that. I think a lot of this is about the male ego as well. I think a lot of it is about like, look, look how mighty my penis is, that it can produce blood, that it can literally change somebody from being a virgin to now not being a virgin, that you've ruined someone, you've corrupt, that it's that important.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  I also think that there are parallels to be made with imperialism as well, because this is, you know, there's the idea of like virgin territory, virgin lands, conquering virgin areas, virgin women. In the United States, Virginia, right? Like after the Virgin Queen, after Elizabeth, of course. But there's this idea of men going into virgin land, territory and making their mark. So I think, I don't think it's a coincidence that this happens at the same time as the British Empire is quickly violently spreading and, you know, becoming more powerful. So I think there are lots of layers of symbolism there, to be sure. But I think it is, you're right, it's, it is about violence and dominance and power and male egos. And

• 29:39Speaker 02

  that's why I love reading the, the accounts in which the, the sex workers are essentially tricking men and, and laughing at them. I think they're brilliant because it's like the men wanting to be horrible. And then you have someone like Fanny Hill who, who's just so clever. She has this, I think it's a little drawer, right? In her bedpost or something? And she has, she has big swatch, she had, she has a sponge or something.

• 30:02Kate Lister?

  Yep, sponge soaked in blood. And it's just a quick slight hand.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's brilliant.

• 30:07Kate Lister?

  And obviously going, oh, ow, that hurts so much. You're so big.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. Oh my God, yeah. And that's the thing, because even going back to the medieval period with like signs of virginity. Because we, we spoke about like anatomical things that may or may not be there, or, or the way that the body can present itself. But there's like behaving like a virgin, right? So there's the modest like glance downwards. You have lots of, lots of things that are not really to do with the body that much, but they are more about how do you behave like a virgin? So if you are a sex worker and you're performing virginity, besides the props and the blood and all of that, you would of course be like, oh my God, you know.

• 30:48Kate Lister?

  Can't remember who said it, but they said that what's the most flattering thing that you can say to a man in bed? And the answer was ouch.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Oh my God, that's so sad. Oh, that is so depressing. There is a story called The London Jilt, uh, which is a sex worker or the politic high. Great title again. And there's this character, Cornelia. And she says, "For there is nothing more advantageous to a woman that drives this trade, so prostitution, than to appear to be a novice in it." And she keeps on going, "Though she has been a whore these ten years, yet she must still pretend to be young at it and seem as if she had scarce seen men before. For there are great many fools." So basically, it's part of your job to fool men and to pretend to be impressed and all of that. And I guess in that sense, I mean, when you think about sex work in other periods,

• 31:39Speaker 02

  including today, there is still a lot of that, right, performance?

• 31:43Kate Lister?

  There was a madam in the 18th century called Charlotte Hayes who wrote her memoirs, and she said of virginity that it was as easy to make as a pudding. That you just created it, you just made it, you just faked it.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Well, she said she lost hers like hundreds of times, right?

• 31:56Kate Lister?

  She did, she did. She said it was sold hundreds and hundreds of times over.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  I'll be back with Julia after this short break.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 32:29Speaker 03

  I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

• 33:15Kate Lister?

  You know, and it's kind of when you find these accounts of like women kind of playing the game backwards and sort of making fools of men, like that's a kind of, almost like a nice, yeah, but sort of belying that is this awful system and idea of sexual purity and this idea that you had to, as you were saying, perform virginity, because it wasn't just like looking at vulvas or checking for tightness. Like there was weird tests that you could take as well. Well, in the modern period, like urine tests and things that they would look at.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, because your urine as a virgin was supposed to be really clear. Sometimes it's described as white or even sparkling, which I find a bit puzzling to imagine. Honestly, I imagine it like kind of, I don't know, like prosecco vibes, I guess. I don't know, it's very weird. I don't know. But I guess the idea behind it in terms of like the clarity of the urine is that if you had had sex, if you had semen inside you, it wouldn't be clear because there would be traces of it.

• 34:11Kate Lister?

  Hashtag science. There we go.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, not very scientific, as we know, obviously, but in the medieval period and early modern, it was all about the urine and urine tests for everything, right? So, and some of them made more sense than others, right? But there were also other silly things like the color of your nipples, the way they pointed, whether up or down, which, okay, lovely. Also, the, your nostrils.

• 34:34Kate Lister?

  What?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  There is this idea of a sympathy between the mouth and the nose and the vagina and the vulva and all of that. And that's why we have terms like the mouth of the womb, the neck of the womb, the cervix, we have the cervix, the neck cervix, right? And then we have cervix. So there is this kind of association between the upper body and down there as well, right? So there is this idea that if you had sex, your nostrils would be somewhat bigger afterwards?

• 35:05Kate Lister?

  I suppose it depends where you put it.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, yeah. But I mean, that was one of the signs that people would look for. And the same thing with your neck, it was supposed to get a bit wider. But then when you read accounts of, and this is written by doctors. It's not folklore, it's it's serious quote unquote doctors. And they are writing about that. And I always wondered, okay, so let's assume that your nostrils and your neck change after sex, fine. Like, where's the control? You have to check for them beforehand to measure before and then afterwards to see if there's a difference, right? But if you're if you're meeting her for the first time, how would you know? Like, what is a wide neck? I don't know. It all becomes about policing women's bodies, right, and control.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  And the more you read about it and you look into it, the more ridiculous it becomes. It's so silly, but it caused real harm to people, right? There's real consequences.

• 35:58Kate Lister?

  It did cause real harm, and particularly in, you know, rich people, because they're the records that we have left is we know that there were times when husbands, Henry the Eighth, doubted the virginity of some of his brides. And and the reason that he gave for not thinking Anne of Cleves was a virgin was because the skin on her belly was saggy. I think that's what he said, wasn't it?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I he just wanted to get rid of her, honestly. He would have said anything.

• 36:21Kate Lister?

  But I actually think that that in itself is a really important point, is that he was just trying to get rid of her, because all of this is just trying to control women. It's all just like, you're not walking like a virgin. You don't have nostrils like a virgin. You don't talk like a virgin, act like a virgin. Your vulva doesn't look like a virgin. It's just like, none of it really means anything, but all of it was used to so powerfully control people.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's awful. And and that's the thing, like, when you read accounts of the madams or the sex workers who were able to sort of not thrive, but sort of survive in this system. Good for them, but it's still a horrible system. And the way that they did well sometimes was by exploring other sex workers, right? When you had a sex worker who was becoming older, who became a madam, sometimes they had saved to open their own brothels. It's at the expense of other women. So even when they're getting sort of over men, women are still victimized in the process, right? There's the BBC show Charlotte's, right? I think Charlotte Hayes is a is a character in it. And you see that, right? Trying to survive in this patriarchal system that was very much built to keep women.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Down. So it's, I admire the creativity, but yeah.

• 37:31Kate Lister?

  But a nasty game to play all the same. But I guess don't hate the player, hate the game.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 37:36Kate Lister?

  It's interesting to talk about the concept of virginity in the past and the early modern period. And it's very easy to laugh a lot of this stuff because you just want to sit them down and go, did you really think that virgins urine sparkled like prosecco? Can we just behave ourselves? But the idea of virginity is still with us and it's still very powerful today. And it's still a nonsense. So the idea that you can test for it, which is still done all over the world, is still faulty science. And it still happens to this day.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Even reconstruct it because I mean, with the infamous lover's knot or husband's stitch, the idea that you could go back to your vaginal state after giving birth. It's horrendous, but it's again, going back to that idea of tightness and making it tight for the man to feel that he's the first one there. And that nothing else has happened before him. So yeah, it's very theatrical, but it's horrific.

• 38:31Kate Lister?

  Well, the thing is very theatrical. I mean, you get like groups in in America that have virginity pledges and they wear virginity bands around their arm to prove their virginity. And like, it's still with us. And you always like, think like, what do you count? Because wasn't it, it's a couple of years ago when it turned out that, I think I want to say that it was Mormons, but I might have got it wrong. Is that they'd worked out that if they had penetrative sex but didn't move, that that didn't count.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I read about that. Yeah.

• 38:57Kate Lister?

  What?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  But I mean, but that's the thing, like you can, depending on how you define things, you can always find a technicality, a way of getting around things.

• 39:04Kate Lister?

  As someone that's studied the history of this, where do you see us going in terms of virginity in the future?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a great question. I wish, I hope we're going towards a place where it doesn't matter. And it's not a part of your identity, doesn't define you or your worth ideally. And then if you want to think of yourself and your body in whichever terms you relate with or identify with, then that's great. But I think the idea of being labelled externally, one way or another, and having that assigned value to. To you, I think that's the problem. But having said that, I I try to be optimistic about the future always, but it's tricky because we do see so many surgeries about hymenoplasties and like

• 39:48Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  design of vaginas and things like that.

• 39:51Kate Lister?

  And they're all about the same thing, aren't they? They're all about neatness, tightness, remove any external proof that you might be a woman and not a Barbie doll.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:00Kate Lister?

  And it's all the same thing.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  And the same scrutiny never applies to male bodies. Well, I don't want to say never, I'm sure they're men, but like hardly ever. It's usually about female bodies. You don't see men worried about what they look like, most of them, I don't think, down there. I think they're all like, fine. You know, I know I'm generalizing. I'm I'm sure some men do worry about it, but it's something that it's gendered.

• 40:22Kate Lister?

  They worry about size, but then we're back to the same argument, aren't we, about how it has to be so big that it inflicts pain?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there's also the idea that has also gone on forever, that the more women a man has sex with, the more value, quote unquote, he has, and for women, it's the opposite. But if we are talking about like heterosexual sex, the men's are not men, like, how's that possible? It doesn't make sense. But I think that's the patriarchal world world we live in, and hopefully we are moving away from it.

• 40:50Kate Lister?

  Or you get this nonsense narrative that I've heard sometimes in the manosphere, that the more sex a woman has, the bigger her vagina gets until it's just this great big gaping pulsating triffid trying to eat men and it's just it doesn't make any sense, like this is complete.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  It doesn't make it, the men who say that have never seen a vagina, I don't think, or the wonderful things vaginas are capable of, honestly. I used to volunteer at the vagina museum, so I'm very much like, I find that so silly because vulvas and vaginas can are incredible and it doesn't happen like that, that things just go all saggy and it's so silly.

• 41:24Kate Lister?

  No, and the and the logic of it doesn't make sense because if by their logic, if one woman gets with one man and stays with her entire life but has sex every day, then her vagina will stay tight. But if another woman has sex with different men every day, then somehow that has an impact. It's just bullshit and it's the same stuff as getting women to piss in flasks to see if it's fizzy.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 41:46Kate Lister?

  Gibberish.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Sure. But what I find interesting about reading different stories about this in different time periods is that you can see that even though women tend to not get the best outcomes in terms of how how much power they have, there's never a consensus anyway. So even in periods where, because people sometimes talk about like the importance of the hymen for virginity, and they talk as though it's always been a thing, it's always been important, and it's not, it's not true. And then you have the ancients weren't talking about that. And it took a long time for the hymen to sort of become something that is important. And that's why I find so interesting studying the history of sex and medicine and gender, you see how some

• 42:29Speaker 02

  things that are talked about as though things have always been this way have actually been constructed fairly recently in time. And it's the same when people are talking about abortion being something that has always been unlawful. And that's just not true. We know that's not true. So I think that's, that's why it's important. You go back and you see there are so many examples of how things were understood differently, or the signs were others, like when you talk about virginity and nostrils or the fizzy wee, it sounds ridiculous, but you know, it was considered as serious as other signs that that have aged less in a less ridiculous way, shall we say. So yeah, so I like, I like to see that there's no consensus, and you get widely, completely

• 43:12Speaker 02

  different accounts depending on who's writing the text, if it's satire, if it's a doctor, if it's pornographer, you know.

• 43:19Kate Lister?

  Exactly. Oh, Juliet, you have been wonderful to talk to. I knew you would be. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 43:27Speaker 02

  So I have a YouTube channel called Living History by Dr. Julie Martins. And I have a blog with the same name. I have content in text format and video format for, because I know some people prefer reading, some people prefer watching or listening. So yeah, so people can follow me there and Instagram and all of that. But yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for having me because I've been a long time fan of the podcast.

• 43:50Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You've been an absolute treat.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Kate. I really appreciate it.

• 43:59Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Julia for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't try any of it at home, for goodness sake, but do like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Thomas Stalagi and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.