Anatomical Education

16/10/2026

BOOK REVIEW: A CURIOUS HISTORY OF S*X by Dr Kate Lister

If history teaches us anything, it is that human beings have always been fascinated by s*x.

We have also apparently been spectacularly confused about it.
In A Curious History of S*x, Dr Kate Lister rummages through centuries of s*xual beliefs, practices, myths and medical oddities — from ancient erotic art to medieval impotence tests, historical s*xual terminology and some truly extraordinary attempts to regulate human bodies.

It is funny.
It is fascinating.

And occasionally you will find yourself thinking: Surely people didn't actually believe that?

Oh yes. They did.

Lister's great contribution is to show that ideas about s*x are historically produced. What one society considers normal, shameful, desirable, dangerous or disgusting can look completely different in another time and place.

Which brings us neatly to the klitoris.

Because our current understanding of female s*xual anatomy did not simply arrive fully formed in a biology textbook. Anatomical knowledge has a history — and that history includes gaps, mistakes, cultural assumptions and long periods when female pleasure received considerably less attention than male s*xual function.

So a history of s*x is also, inevitably, a history of whose pleasure counted.
*xed *xhistory

14/10/2026

BOOK REVIEW: S*X MATTERS by Dr Alyson J. McGregor

Imagine designing a medical system around one body and then discovering — inconveniently — that roughly half the population has a different one.

That is the problem Dr Alyson J. McGregor tackles in S*x Matters: How Male-Centric Medicine Endangers Women's Health and What We Can Do About It.

McGregor examines how s*x differences have historically been overlooked in medical research, diagnosis and treatment, with consequences for women's health. Her focus includes cardiovascular disease, stroke, medication, pain, hormones and the ways symptoms can be interpreted differently in women.

The feminist lesson is deliciously straightforward:
If you don't study women's bodies, don't be surprised when you don't understand them.
And this connects directly with s*xual anatomy.

The klitoris is not a decorative anatomical footnote. It is a complex sensory organ whose primary known function is s*xual pleasure. Yet knowledge about female s*xual anatomy has historically been incomplete and unevenly represented in medical education and public understanding.

That matters because ignorance doesn't stay politely inside textbooks.
It influences healthcare. It influences research. It influences what gets measured, what gets taught and which questions researchers think are worth asking.
McGregor's broader argument is therefore highly relevant to anyone interested in anatomical education: women's bodies need to be studied as bodies in their own right — not simply as variations on a male template.
There is something wonderfully feminist about demanding better data.
Not because women's bodies are mysterious.
Quite the opposite.
They are bodies.
They can be mapped, studied, taught and understood.
Perhaps the real mystery is why we waited so long to bother.

12/10/2026

Cliteracy on TV

12/10/2026

BOOK REVIEW: MIDDLE RAGE by Myf Warhurst

Apparently women are allowed to be many things.
Young.
Pretty.
Helpful.
Pleasant.
S*xy.
But angry?
Now we're getting difficult.

Myf Warhurst's Middle Rage takes the experience of midlife and asks what happens when a woman finally gets tired of following the rules.
Part memoir, part manifesto and part wonderfully Australian dose of “actually, no”, the book explores Warhurst's experience of middle age, changing bodies, expectations, relationships and the accumulated frustrations of being a woman in a culture that has quite a lot of opinions about how women should behave.
And this is where Middle Rage becomes particularly interesting for conversations about female s*xual pleasure.
Because s*xuality doesn't stop at 40.

Yet popular culture has a curious habit of treating women's s*xual lives as though they have an expiry date somewhere between “young and desirable” and “please step away from the mirror”.
Women's bodies change. Hormones change. Desire can change. Relationships change. Our understanding of ourselves changes.
None of that makes pleasure irrelevant.
If anything, midlife can be an opportunity to become less interested in performing femininity for other people and more interested in inhabiting your own body and taking care of yourself first for a change!
That is a radical idea.

Middle Rage reminds us that anger can contain information. Sometimes it is the sound of a woman noticing just how many expectations she has been carrying around — and deciding she might like to put some of them down.
So perhaps the feminist question is:
“What would happen if I stopped apologising for getting older?”
And while we're at it:
Can we stop treating female pleasure as something that belongs exclusively to the young?
Absolutely.

09/10/2026

BOOK REVIEW: THE RIGHT TO S*X by Amia Srinivasan

S*x is supposed to be private.
Except when it isn't.

Who gets to have s*x? Who gets believed? Who gets desired? Who is expected to perform desire? Whose pleasure matters? And what happens when our supposedly personal s*xual choices are shaped by race, class, gender, economics, po*******hy and power?
These are the uncomfortable questions at the heart of Amia Srinivasan's The Right to S*x.

This is not a breezy “how to have better s*x” book. It is much more interesting — and considerably more challenging. Srinivasan asks us to think about s*x as a political and ethical phenomenon, where pleasure and power can coexist in complicated and sometimes uncomfortable ways.

For anyone interested in female s*xual pleasure, this matters enormously.

Because knowing the anatomy of pleasure is one thing. Having the freedom, safety, knowledge and social permission to pursue pleasure is another.

You can have a perfectly functional cl****is and still live inside a culture that teaches you to prioritise someone else's pleasure.

*xed

05/10/2026

BOOK REVIEW: EJ*****TE RESPONSIBLY by Gabrielle Blair

Let's talk about contraception.
Now let's talk about it from a slightly different angle.

Gabrielle Blair's Ej*****te Responsibly takes a deliberately provocative approach to pregnancy prevention: instead of placing almost all the attention on women's bodies, it asks us to examine men's role in preventing unwanted pregnancy.

The book develops 28 arguments around reproductive responsibility, fertility, contraception and the social assumptions that have traditionally placed much of the contraceptive burden on women.
It is short.
It is punchy.
It is funny.

And it has the slightly unnerving quality of making something familiar suddenly look rather strange.
Why are women so often expected to manage contraception, side effects, appointments, hormones, devices, procedures and the consequences of pregnancy — while discussions about male responsibility can become strangely quiet?

Blair's argument is deliberately provocative, but the underlying feminist question is serious:
Who is expected to take responsibility for what happens during s*x?
That question belongs in s*xual education alongside anatomy and pleasure.

Because good s*x education shouldn't teach women that their bodies are problems to be managed.
It should give everyone accurate information about bodies, fertility, contraception, consent, pleasure and responsibility.
*xed

30/09/2026

BOOK REVIEW: FLICK The Story of Female Pleasure by Dr Kate Lister

What if the history of female pleasure is not a history of women being uninterested in s*x — but a history of everyone else being extremely interested in controlling it?

Enter FLICK by Dr Kate Lister.

Lister takes us on a gloriously entertaining journey through the history of female s*xual pleasure, exposing the strange, hilarious and sometimes horrifying ways women’s s*xuality has been explained, regulated, medicalised and misunderstood. The result is part history lesson, part feminist intervention and part reminder that apparently humanity has spent an extraordinary amount of time arguing about what women should — and should not — enjoy.
****is *xualhealth

29/09/2026

Welcome to The House of Wellness Women’s Health Survey, designed to explore the health and wellness priorities and challenges of Australian women. Take the survey now for your chance to win $3k cash.

29/09/2026

29/09/2026

A TV interview on improving cliteracy. Thank you House of Wellness for inviting Anatomical Education on to the show.
Let me know if you learnt something...

*xEducation