The "surprising" history of the vibrator

[James]

http://www.erotic-toyz.com/shop/history_vibrator.asp

Vibrators are ilegal in alabama and its a year hard labor in prison to own one i think . . or maybe sell it.

History of The Vibrator

The first mechanical vibrator, according to Maines, was invented in the 1880s by a British physician as a way to more quickly and effectively perform a "therapeutic massage." Therapeutic massage was an age-old "remedy" for "hysteria" -- that dastardly catch-all disease that mysteriously plagued women throughout the centuries until both science and feminism proved it to be a myth and it ceased to exist. Starting in the first century A.D., Maines writes, doctors manually massaged women to orgasm in hopes of purging them of this mysterious illness. The vibrator was invented as a way to get the job done more quickly -- therefore allowing the doctor time to see more patients.

"The Technology of Orgasm" is an exhaustive history, not only of the invention of the vibrator in its various guisesurge image (which, judging from the included illustrations, were frighteningly inventive) but also of the rise of hysteria, sexual inequality between the sexes and the questionable medical practices that grew around it. She meticulously covers everything from the ancient Greek doctor Galen, who spoke of massaging a patient's genitals until "she emitted turbid and abundant sperm" and was "free of all the evil she felt," to the appearance of vibrators in erotic silent films of the early 1900s, and on through the vibrator habits of modern-day Cosmopolitan readers. Ever wonder why the baths were so popular with women in the 1800s? It might have something to do with the "douche treatments" that were offered there, during which fabulous contraptions would shoot warm jets of water at a women's nether regions until she begged for mercy.

Although the book does get bog

ged down by dry academic prose -- specifically, in a rather dense first chapter wherein Maines indulges theories about androcentric sexuality (i.e., sex centered around penetration and the male orgasm) -- and medical terminology, the subject matter is inherently fascinating. It's downright bizarre to imagine the bespectacled, mustachioed Victorian doctors in their white lab coats, grimly massaging the splayed women on their examining tables to paroxysms of pleasure.

What, for example, are we to think of the scene of this "cold water douche," applied to his female patients by 19th century doctor Henri Scoutetten: "The first impression produced by the jet of water is painful, but soon the effect of the pressure, the reaction of the organism to the cold, which causes the skin to flush, and the reestablishment of equilibrium all create for many persons so agreeable a sensation that it is necessary to take precautions that they do not go beyond the described time, which is usually four or five minutes. After the douche, the patient dries herself off, refastens her corset, and returns with a brisk step to her room."

Even though it was masked by medical minutiae, the root purpose of the vibrator hasn't really changed in 100 years. Although, then, women might not have been quite as conscious about why, exactly, they were heading to the doctor, it was the same reason that women use vibrators today: to release sexual tension. The "symptoms" of hysteria -- which included anxiety, sleeplessness, nervousness and any other kind of female behavior that the male of the species might find baffling -- could easily be symptoms of sexual frustration. Or, as Maines puts it, "when marital sex was unsatisfying and masturbation discouraged or forbidden, female sexuality, I suggest, asserted itself through one of the few acceptable outlets: the symptoms of the hysteroneurasthenic disorders."

Unfortunately, we can only guess these women were thinking about their treatments. While male doctors diligently and dryly recorded the medical usage of their vibrating machines, the historical record lacks any writing by women about their experiences with vibrating massage, Maines explains. Was the vibrator some kind of Victorian in-joke for liberated women who got their jollies by traipsing off to the doctor? Or did women really believe that they were sick, and that the "massage" was a cure? Did the women enjoy their orgasmic medicine or resent it as an intrusion on their privacy? Was it a kind of prostitution? Who was kidding whom? Or did everyone take it as seriously as the doctors seem to have done in their clinical frenzies?

From the doctor's viewpoint, at least, is seems that the notion of a woman actually enjoying the massage was baffling. Chalk it up to androcentric sexuality, writes Maines: "Since no penetration was involved, believers in the hypothesis that only penetration was sexually gratifying to women could argue that nothing sexual could be occurring when their patients experienced the hysterical paroxysms during treatment."

Of course, we've gotten past that notion. Which, it seems, is why the lawmakers in Alabama felt a need to pass their law.

Today, vibrators are status implements for most young educated women who consider themselves wise in the ways of the world. Many of my girlfriends -- whom, admittedly, are a rather urban and liberal bunch, though certainly not debauched libertines -- nonchalantly display their vibrators as totems to their sexual independence; scattered haphazardly around their rooms, peeking out from under their beds, winking up at accidental visitors in random drawers. Vibes are just a part of the urban landscape, and a good boyfriend is one who sensitively buys you one for Valentine's Day. (Read: He's attentive to your sexual needs.) I still remember the feeling of liberation when I finally summoned up the nerve and bought my first vibrator -- and, subsequently, the pleasant surprise of discovering just how effective it was.

The vibrator is quite possibly the most potent symbol there is of women's sexual agency. The possession of a vibrator tells the world (or, at the least, yourself) that not only are you comfortable with your own peculiarly female sexuality, but that you are able to give yourself sexual satisfaction -- that you aren't sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting for a man to decide to send you into paroxysms of ecstasy. Nope, you're using those thumbs in the way that the Goddess above (whoever she may be) probably intended them to be used -- to control the on-off switch on your vibrating tube of joy.

After all, Kinsey determined that 70 percent of all women don't come to orgasm by penetration alone, and according to a recent University of Chicago survey, roughly 25 percent of all women (compared to 8 percent of all men) fail to have orgasms during sex at all. No wonder women need vibrators -- to make up for such disappointments. (Or, perhaps, to add to the bedtime activities and ensure that those disappointments don't happen again.)

As Maines describes in "The Technology of Orgasm," the moment the vibrator became a personally controlled object, rather than a tool to be manipulated by the medical community, the jig was up. Although the early vibrators were enormous contraptions, steam-powered or controlled by foot pedals, the advent of electricity and batteries around the turn of the century meant that vibrators became increasingly cheap and portable. Patients began buying vibrators for themselves, thereby saving cash on all those visits to the doctor. Coinciding with the national fascination with electrotherapy and newfangled technologies and medicines, manufacturers began marketing these portable "massagers" in magazines using vaguely orgasmic terminology. "The device," writes Maines, "was marketed mainly to women as a health and relaxation aid, in ambiguous phrases such as 'all the pleasures of youth ... will throb within you.' When marketed to men, vibrators were recommended as gifts for women that would benefit the male givers by restoring bright eyes and pink cheeks to their female consorts."

Around the 1930s, vibrators disappeared from advertising altogether, only to reappear in the sexually liberated 1960s -- this time, in their full sexual glory. They've only grown more visible since that point, and, thanks to the sexual revolution and pro-sex feminism, we now have a whole industry that has spread from erotica shops in liberal urban centers to those Midwestern sex-toy Tupperware parties, selling vibrators to women and men without disguising their purpose: to quickly bring women to a mind-blowing orgasm. And this, apparently, is just not acceptable to those puritanical moralists in Alabama who seem to be living examples of Maines' androcentric theories. God forbid a teenage girl might see a vibrator in a window somewhere and suddenly understand that sexual satisfaction doesn't have to mean hoping that her boyfriend will figure out where her clitoris is.

Of course, vibrators are still often wrapped in ambiguous terminology -- you can still find ads featuring women gingerly holding pink plastic vibrators to their cheeks, apparently marketing some kind of dubious facial relaxation. The most popular vibrator among the women I know is the famous Hitachi Magic Wand, a plug-in model with a mind-boggling array of attachments, which for years has been unself-consciously marketed as a massage device. And, as the ACLU pointed out last week, vibrators are still used as medical devices, albeit in a different way than they historically were -- these days, they are prescribed by doctors who intend them as marital aids for troubled couples.

So, in all likelihood, you can still buy a vibrator in Alabama -- just put it in a box that says "massager" and sell it in a health shop. Although convincing the cops that the purple veined model is just a muscle relaxant might still be a challenge

[James]

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/headspace...or/default.htm

Cool interview with Author . . .


Time to take a hard look at the vibrator. The fifth household device to be transmogrified by electric power after the toaster, before the vacuum cleaner and the iron.

Radio National's Phillip Adams discusses the social history of the device and the modern day political debate which are prodding it off the sex shop shelves. Phillip is joined by Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction and Pepper Schwartz, Professor of Sociology from the Washington State University.



Phillip Adams

Rachel Maines you live in a country where there's a constitutional entitlement to bear arms but apparently it doesn't extend to the bearing of vibrators. But you're not surprised by the Alabama laws are you?

Rachel Maines

Yes, the only reason that they weren't illegal at the turn of the century when they were first invented is that they were mainly a tool that was in the hands of doctors and of course doctors have privileges t

he rest of us don't have. The other reason is that in order to outlaw them the legislature would have had to say what they thought they were for, and of course that would have been unthinkable. They had the social camouflage of the vibrator still intact. It was still something that you used for improving your circulation and relaxing your muscles. Of course most people that read the ad knew exactly what they were for.


[PA]: Like telling Queen Victoria about lesbians. Would you see the Alabama law as hinting at irrationality or perhaps deep fear of female sexuality?

[RM]: I heard a very interesting story that I think illuminates this issue. I got a call from a fellow named Woog. Dr Woog represents a vibrator manufacturer in Switzerland who manufactures the 'Erosilator' which is the vibrator endorsed by Ruth Westheimer (aka Dr. Ruth). He told me he's been having a terrible time buying advertising in the United States because they say it's bad for women to have these things so that they can have sex by themselves. He said [to publishers] that you advertise Viagra, and they say, 'Yes, but Viagra is so that men can have sex with women, and vibrators are so women can have sex by themselves, and that's immoral'. I think that there's a fear that if women have vibrators they won't be interested in men, which is absurd. Vibrators can't talk to you, they can't hug you, they can't snuggle up to you and they're not going to listen to your troubles at night. There is a joke in this country: When did God make man? When She found out that vibrators couldn't dance. Obviously men are not going to become technologically obsolete, but I think there's a fear of that in some people, including some women oddly enough.


[PA]: Rachel you write that the manual massage of the vulva as treatment for hysteria is continually tested in Western medicine from antiquity through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. How did you make this historical discovery?



[RM]: Oddly enough the original research was on the history of needlework in the United States which doesn't sound like a very promising way to start on the history of sexuality. But I kept seeing these vibrator ads in needlework magazines starting about 1899 in things like Modern Priscilla, and the Home Needlework Magazine. I thought this is awfully early to appear in a home, and decided I would trace it back into its origins, find out who invented it and why. The more I found out about it, the more I found out that this is something that doctors wanted originally. There had been a steam-powered vibrator invented in the United States in 1869 by a George Taylor called "The Manipulator" that was again a response to doctors wanting some way of mechanising a treatment that was already around.

[PA]: I don't want to be vulgar but how the hell did you have a steam-powered one? Was it a very small steam engine?

[RM]: No, you're picturing the steam engine as being in the vibrator, but actually it was in another room.

[PA]: I get your drift. I was just overwhelmed by this image suddenly.

[RM]: Most people are, including me. The doctors were shoveling coal into it and also they had to have somebody in the room with the steam engine, and then the power train had to go into another room where the patient was.

Phillip Adams: What was the medical theory? I understand that in the 19th century there was an hysteria pandemic amongst women?

Rachel Maines There had always been in Western medicine since the time of Hypocrites a belief in this disease called 'hysteria', which means womb disease, that was caused by the uterus complaining about neglect. Plato tells us that the uterus is an animal within an animal and that it gets out of control and you have to appease it supposedly. The way that you did this was that you would massage the vulva which was thought to be a part of the uterus - anatomy knowledge was a little thin in these days - and you would produce a crisis of the disease, like the birthing of a fever, it was called the 'hysterical paroxysm', and there would be contractions and lubrication and then the woman would feel better for a while. But hysteria was incurable and chronic so she would have to come back again and again, and it was a great way for a guy to make a living.

[PA]: But it was hard and lonely work.

[RM]: It was very hard work, and also quite a lot of skill.


[PA]: Sometimes it was done on a sort of almost an assembly line basis. There's a wonderful image in the book of lots of women being simultaneously stimulated.



[RM]: Yes, the popularity of the vibrator with doctors was related to its speed. It used to take up to an hour to do this massage by hand, and if you're working an eight hour day that's only eight patients. So if you have a vibrator you can get the job done in ten minutes, that's six times as many patients.

[PA]: Did doctors think in any sense that what they were doing was sexual?

[RM]: Some of them knew exactly what was going on. There's a reference in a 17th century-book by Nathaniel Hymore which basically says 'well folks this hysterical paroxysm is an orgasm, you can call it whatever you like but nevertheless it's our job to do this because the woman will get sick and feel terrible if we don't'. There's another reference in the 1880's by a French physician who says that it's important to provide this treatment even though we know it's sexual. But some doctors maintain it's an hysterical paroxysm. It was controversial. Even in the Middle Ages we see some controversy about this.

It began to be apparent in the 1920's that what was going on was sexual. It was apparent to everybody when the vibrator began to appear in stag films. Most doctors just sort of quietly dropped it from their repertoire. As the 20th century went on there was more and more understanding of women's sexuality and it was no longer possible to say it was something other than an orgasm.

[PA]: Pepper Schwartz do you have figures on the incidents of vibrator usage in the US?

Pepper Schwartz The only decent research is at the National Opinion Research Centre that came out of the University of Washington and it was widely published as Sex in America, and the figures there were lower actually than I think they probably are. It's the most widely used sex toy, but it was about 30 per cent.



[PA]: The American Civil Liberties Union is currently fighting a major privacy case in the New York District Court against the state of Alabama which has banned the sale of sex toys or other similar devices which are designed to stimulate human genitals since 1975. The punishment is one years hard labour in an Alabama jail. What is the thinking behind this?


[PS]: I think they're trying to get rid of sex shops, by getting rid of everything they sell, [targetting] several items advertised to stimulate human genitals. In other words they're letting firms that advertise theirs' as neck massagers or muscle relaxers go, so that they won't get caught in this net. They're trying to get rid of the sex industry, and also they're trying to get elected. Every now and then, just in the 19th century, someone would bust a brothel to show what kind of moral force you were, and in this case stand in front of the Alabama Legislature arguing for or against vibrators.

[PA]: Pepper would you be kind enough to tell us about the case in which you're an expert witness?

[PS]: In Alabama, and five or six other states here, the idea is to get rid of all items sold for and specifically designed for the stimulation of genitals. There is a proposal that was voted on in the Alabama Legislature that basically said these things were harmful in some way, shouldn't be used by the general population, that they shouldn't be advertised or sold. I was brought in to say that in fact vibrators have lots of wonderful uses, that they're used by physicians for inorgasmic women, that they're used by women who are lonely, who are divorced, who don't have the sexual lives that they might like, who will find it much more effective for their sexual release. These are garden variety household items that [others] have no business getting in between a woman or (whoever else wants to use them) and her private sexuality. The legislature didn't find these very convincing arguments and voted for the Statute however when it came up against the courts, they felt that this was a violation of privacy and threw the Statute out. In fact they have upheld the Statute in several states, and so the future vibrators is not entirely clear.

First broadcast on Radio National's Late Night Live on May 11, 1999.

[James]

Cool review of the same book . . but funnier and shorter for those of you attention span challenged folks..

GOOD MEDICINE
The Vibrator's Strange History
by Rachel Kessler


THE VIBRATOR, LADIES AND gentlemen, was introduced as a time-saving piece of medical equipment. Before its invention, hard-working doctors and midwives from antiquity into the last century labored for hours to manually produce the same results a vibrator could elicit in mere minutes. Why were these medical folk rubbing so much clit? To relieve the terrible "hysteria" suffered by one half to two thirds of the female population.

In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel P. Maines presents the history that led to the vibrator's invention, relying on medical texts from Hippocrates to the Freudian Revolution describing the symptoms of hysteria and its cure, genital massage. Physicians or midwives performed this procedure, as documented time and time again in lively accounts. In the 1400s, a midwife was instructed to use "sweet-smelling oil on her finger and move it well in a circle inside the vulva." Renaissance medical annals produced near-poetry. One doctor advises:

"Those who are free'd from the fit of the suffocation of the womb either by nature or by art, in a short time the color commeth to their faces by little and little, and the whole beginneth to wax strong, and the teeth that were set, and closed fast together, begin (the jaws being loosed) to open and unclose again, and lastly som moisture floweth from the secret parts with a certain tickling pleasure... and... the womb being before as it were rageing, is restored unto its own proper nature and place, and little by little all symptoms vanish away."

The result of genital massage, orgasm, was referred to as "hysterical paroxysm." Massage of the female genitals was okay because the clit was not considered part of the sexual intercourse package deal. Maines succinctly maps out how female sexuality was transformed into hysterical pathology, and how the female orgasm was medicalized and sterilized. For me, there is something erotic about the mechanization of women's orgasm, the remnants of my pubescent daydreams of conveyor-belt ecstasy. As I read the history outlined in the book's first two chapters, not only did I feel smart, I often felt like visiting the restroom.

In these pages Maines includes pictures of pre-electric vibrator devices. Some of my favorites were found in the spas or water cures of the last few centuries: the pelvic douche, the familiar bidet, and the steam-powered "Manipulator." Designed to "invite the juices downward," hydrotherapeutic methods enjoyed intense popularity. There are sweet, euphoric success stories of patients who, "as soon as they become sensible of decided improvement, they become enthusiastic--they think they can never have enough--the more they get, the faster they will get well."

How silly those old doctors were. Maines proceeds to reveal the ways in which, to this day, modern medicine subscribes to the phallocentric model of sexuality that those old-timey physicians were so fixated upon. I balked at this section of the book, prepared for a dry feminist lecture that would interfere with my repeated visits to the bathroom. But Maines is a superb and witty historian who makes a good point. We are still hung up on heterosexual "intercourse" as sex: penis inserted in vagina, thrusted repeatedly until male blows wad.

When my best friend lost her virginity in high school, she described it and asked, "Did we really have sex? 'Cause I didn't come." After referring to the Bible and our health class manual, we concluded that the deed was done. We proceeded to develop very dramatic fake orgasms, mostly to prove to whomever we were fucking that we were modern, liberated girls who knew about our bodies, sought pleasure, and used tampons, goddammit.

Much later a woman brought to my attention that the clit is located outside the vagina. Physically I knew this, having masturbated since age 11, but to be confronted with this reality intellectually truly revolutionized my sexuality. Maines brings this information to our attention effectively, matter-of-factly, and much more succinctly than my girlhood trial and error.

Maines' research on the social impact of the vibrator--over which she lost her job and was ridiculed in academic journals--began when she came across advertisements for vibrators in turn-of-the-century needlepoint magazines. Several thrilling reproductions of these ads, with orgasmic phrases like "Vibration is Life!" are included in her book.

Once the vibrator became available for domestic consumption, "it rendered unnecessary any medical intervention." The vibrator eventually removed the female orgasm from clinical medicine and placed it back in the hands of women (excuse the pun).

In the 1930s the vibrator began appearing in smut films. Now that it was obvious what the device was used for, it was no longer accepted as a medical tool. When it resurfaced into the mainstream in the 1960s it was marketed, plain and simple, as a sex toy. Maines concludes that "a persistent theme in... concerns about the vibrator is the classic male fear of sexual inadequacy, to which the new technology adds a threat once associated only with industrial artisans: technological obsolescence." Ouch.

This handsome and slender volume of social history arouses the intellect and the loins. Maines packs it into 123 pages: good pictures, readable and sound history, bracing medical texts, and lots of good stuff for naughty fantasies, written by a historian with a sense of humor.

[DGqueen17]

That is too freakin' long.

[UKDaisy]

WOW..... that's um... pretty interesting.

so thats why women fainted so much back in the day? they wanted to go to the doctor

[HBADPi]

wow James looks like someones excited about this book . jk haha. I enjoyed the history of the vibrator article in Playboy awhile back, nice little short history with pictures haha.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by LauGh A Lot
actually.. thousands of years ago, before the vibrator.. women used snakes b/c they would wiggle inside. i know it's gross but that's why you see so many pictures of egyptian women with snakes.

That gives a whole new meaning to "walk like an Egyptian."

[LauGh A Lot]

That gives a whole new meaning to "walk like an Egyptian."

hahahaha

[GMUBunny]

Okay, James. It only figures that I disappear for a while and come back to see something like this posted by you. Good job, babe