FLICK THE STORY OF FEMALE PLEASURE

I LEARNED ABOUT KATE LISTER’S NEW BOOK FLICK THE STORY OF FEMALE PLEASURE in “Sexual Her-Story,” by Sarah Jones, History Extra Magazine, Vol. 27 No. 6, June 2026. Its subtitle describes “A witty, wide-ranging account of the myths and power structures behind female sexuality impresses Sarah Jones.” And Sarah’s writing style impresses me.

Lie Back and Think of England. Sarah recounts, “In her new book, his­tor­ian Kate Lister con­fronts the idea that women are nat­ur­ally less sexual and less entitled to pleas­ure than men. Tak­ing in sex god­desses, orgas­mic nuns, Vic­torian doc­tors chop­ping off the odd clit­oris, and DJ Khaled’s aver­sion to cun­ni­lin­gus—to name only a few high­lights—Lister seeks to unpick a power­ful fic­tion, show­ing that what has often been treated as an essen­tial truth is in fact a rather mod­ern inven­tion. Flick is a brisk, irrev­er­ent and often darkly funny his­tory of how we came to ima­gine that women should ‘lie back and think of Eng­land.’ ”

Ha. What’s more, Sarah L. Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Bristol. She says, “I’m a social and cultural historian of gender and sexuality, working mostly on histories of modern Britain and America. My current research explores the popular life of sexual science in print, specifically looking at how debates and ideas from sexual science played a role in early twentieth-century culture.”

Above, Dr. Sarah Jones. Below, University of Bristol, image from Wikipedia.

The Kate Lister Book. There’s an interesting backstory about Flick The Story of Female Pleasure, by Kate Lister, Transworld Publishers Ltd., May 2026. 

Yes,  that Shakespeare and Company. The bookstore cites, “FLICK is a rousing history of women enjoying sex: sex with themselves, sex with each other, and occasionally sex with men as well. Meet the women throughout history who, quite literally, came before us.”

A Puzzling Comment: Amazon (U.S.) notes, “This edition of this title [the Kindle Edition] is not available for purchase in your country. Choose an available edition from the options above.” The sole option listed is the hardcover for $29.00—with release date January 26, 2027!

For those in the U.K. and perhaps elsewhere, see penguin.co.uk.

Back to Sarah’s Review: “The book is huge in its scope and its ambi­tion,” she writes. “Lister opens her nar­rat­ive in the ancient world, when god­desses presided over sex and war without feel­ing the need to be coy about it. Female desire, she reminds us, was once more sac­red power than social prob­lem. She shows how the Madonna/whore divide took hold, cemen­ted by theo­lo­gians and mor­al­ists con­vinced that desire made women dan­ger­ous.”

Sarah continues, “She then guides us through the medi­eval and early mod­ern peri­ods, when women were char­ac­ter­ised as insa­ti­able and at the mercy of their wan­der­ing wombs, before high­light­ing how mod­ern sci­ence rewrote the script once again to rein­vent them as pas­sion­less and ‘pure.’ ”

If Blinded, How Do You View Pornhub? “Lister,” Sarah relates, “has enorm­ous fun expos­ing absurd pat­ri­archal sci­entific the­ory, such as fears that mas­turb­a­tion could cause blind­ness, hys­teria or—lord help the Pornhub gen­er­a­tion—the entire col­lapse of civil­isa­tion. Her explor­a­tion of medi­cine’s long cam­paign against women’s pleas­ure—includ­ing grot­esque ‘cures’ such as caut­er­isa­tion and clit­or­idec­tomy imposed in the name of vir­tue—com­prises some of the most power­ful mater­ial in the book.”

A Sustained Critique of Patriarchal Sexual Cultures. Sarah concludes her review with “What makes Flick more than a fun romp through sexual his­tory is the way it draws the line straight to the present. ‘His­tor­ical teach­ing around bod­ies, gender and desire is still with us,’ Lister writes, ‘shap­ing every sexual exper­i­ence you will ever have.’ Some read­ers may well bristle at Lister’s work here, espe­cially her sus­tained cri­tique of pat­ri­archal sexual cul­tures and the idea that women’s sexual lives do not need to revolve around the needs of men. But—just maybe—those are the very read­ers who most need to hear it.”

Hear! Hear! Thanks, Sarah. Thanks, Kate. And I plan to get my copy before January 26, 2027. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026