Over the past few days I’ve been linking to some short pieces I have written for The Conversation UK. I’m a fan of this platform, and not just because of the extraordinary number of ‘reads’ one gets – although those are impressive. Of course, these are really hits rather than reads, and many who click on the story won’t get beyond the first few words. Nevertheless it adds up: I was recently contacted to be told that my piece, “The clitoris – a brief history” (published in English and Spanish), was the most read piece of last year from The Open University academics, read 181,000 times across Portugal, South Africa, UK, US and Spain, and republished by Público (Portugal), News24, The Star, Kenya, El Economista (México) and IOL. And an earlier piece, on the ‘disease of virgins‘, is currently running at over 700,000 ‘reads’.
What those numbers prove is, of course, that sex sells, and that virginity sells even more.
But there’s more to it than that. I like writing for The Conversation because it’s an interesting way of doing some thinking about topics I am researching for other work. I enjoy working with the editors, who are always engaged with the questions I am addressing, and seeing how they help me present the material in an engaging way. The posts I’ve done in the last year relate to a book I am writing for the general public, provisionally entitled Her Body, which will be published by Profile Books; it is arranged by parts of the body and there is of course a long section on the clitoris on which I drew for the piece for The Conversation.
Now and then, there is further contact with the wider public which comes from these short pieces. This could just be a comment, and I do try to keep up with comments on the site. Sometimes a researcher gets in touch as a result of something I have published there. In July 2023 I had an enquiry from NHK, Japan’s largest television network and public broadcaster, whose output is not only broadcast within Japan but also internationally through NHK World, reaching a potential audience of approximately 160 million viewers. They found my piece ‘From rags to pads’ on The Conversation and from that they went off and read other pieces I had published. As a result I recorded an interview with them which is scheduled to be broadcast on 1 September.
The Conversation is also great because the editors care about history; they want to ensure there’s evidence behind what the writers say. That, of course, ideally means something online to which readers can click through, and that can be challenging with historical sources. But, in one of my most recent pieces, on pregnancy tests, I found the database “Physicians and Irregular Medical Practitioners in London 1550-640” which I had no idea was available, and which provided me with a test using rose water which I’d not encountered before. By providing a link in my piece, I was able to introduce this to keen readers who may also have been unaware of it.
Above all, though, writing for outlets like this one is about showing how interesting history can be for our current discussions. Offering other ways of thinking about what seems so fundamental to us – the body – can only be a good thing.
Mistaking histories 