This is a wonderful history on the various parts of the female body, as constructed by various parties through the ages. What's clear is that a lot of men, many hailing from religious and (pseudo)scientific and (pseudo)medical backgrounds more or less made up what female (and other) bodies are and how how they work.

While king covers some biological matters (as we think we know it now and thought we knew it then), her focus is less about the inner workings of the female body and more about how it was perceived and demarcated by various societies and cultures and mythologies. Yes, there's a lot of sexism. The mysteries of the feminine just always seemed to be less than and/or derived from men ... hmm, funny how that is. I was hoping for more on how this still guides modern though, including in the medical and professional spheres. I also found that there was a preponderance of Western and Western-adjacent material. I was pleasantly surprised to have coverage of trans and intersex topics, although the former was clearly out of the author's depth. For instance, at one point, she comments on how there's no need to bind chests to be masculine, coupled alongside a discussion on how all people have breasts and men can even breastfeed under certain conditions. Okay.

The narration was superb. Frankly, I don't know if I would've gotten through this dense text in text form.