A History of Vibrators and Female Hysteria

The history of the vibrator is rooted in the puritanical ethics of the Victorian Era. In Victorian society, an androcentric model of sexuality was the accepted norm, meaning that "sex" consisted only of the act of penetration to male orgasm. Anything else wasn't considered sex. As practiced by most of society, it was robotic and pleasure-less, especially for women. You jumped in bed, the old man hid the salami, and with a couple of strokes the deed was done. The heavenly mandate was met. Sex was for procreation, not recreation.

Obviously not very satisfying for the woman. Of course, in Victorian Society it wasn't accepted that "proper" women had any sexual desire, much less that they were capable of orgasm. If they did have an orgasm, it was to be solely through heterosexual coitus. Given that we now know that less than 50% of women can reach orgasm through penile penetration alone, that left a lot of frustrated women out there (not even including the ones with 5-second willies for husbands). We can only imagine all of the pent up tension. As a female acquaintance once told me, "If I don't get laid pretty damn quick, somebody's gonna get hurt."

When a woman showed signs such as fainting, hyperemia, nervousness, insomnia, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, loss of appetite for food or for sex with the approved male partner, and sometimes a tendency to cause trouble for others (particularly members of the patient's immediate family), irritably, anxiety, sexual yearnings, excessive vaginal lubrication, or damn near anything else, she was taken to the local doc who would promptly diagnose her with Female Hysteria. Based on the ancient Greek idea of a wandering womb seeking its proper place, female hysteria was a very common catch-all diagnosis. Using the wandering womb analogy, doctors sometimes said it was caused by a woman's inability to find her proper place in the world. Women who were too smart, too athletic, too ambitious, or were not sufficiently condescending were commonly diagnosed with hysteria.

So the cure? In one of the most bizarre twists in history, women diagnosed with hysteria visited the local doctor, who induced hysterical paroxysm - what we call an orgasm. How was this feat accomplished? The good doc just reached down there and manually massaged the clitoris until he brought the women to orgasm - excuse me, hysterical paroxysm. Since this didn't involve penetration, the Victorians didn't consider it sex, so it was ok. In fact, the introduction of the speculum and the tampon created more controversy. Imagine legions of Victorian men taking their wives to the town doc to get a hand job, and paying the doc for it! The mind is an amazingly malleable thing.

It is reported that with some doctors, pelvic massage treatments comprised more than half their business. With this kind of demand it was only natural that with the beginning of the machine age, a device would be built to decrease their work and increase their profits. During the 1860s, health spas offered water jets and steam-powered vibrators. More modern vibrators appeared in the 1880s. By 1900, a wide selection of electro-mechanical vibrating devices was available, ranging from hand or foot powered models to those powered by air pressure, water turbines, gas engines, batteries, and street current (through lamp socket plugs). The first recognizable electric vibrators appeared in the late 19^th century. They were first positioned as medical devices and sold only to doctors, but they soon appeared in mainstream American commerce. In fact, the vibrator was the fifth household device to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, and toaster, and preceding by about a decade the vacuum cleaner and electric iron. Perhaps this reflected consumer priorities.

Soon many low-cost vibrators were being marketed in respectable women's magazines using language that seems clearly aimed at promoting sexual gratification, such as "...all the pleasures of youth will throb within you." The Swedish Vibrator Company of Chicago extolled its device as a machine that gives "30,000 thrilling, invigorating, penetrating, revitalizing penetrations per minute." In 1918, Sears Roebuck advertised vibrators in its catalog, "very satisfactory, an aid every woman appreciates."

The vibrator's social camouflage in mainstream publications lasted into the late 1920s, when use by physicians began to diminish. Some speculate that the diminished used was attributed to a greater understanding by the medical profession of female sexual functions; at the same time, the appearance of vibrators in stag films in the 1920s kind of removed the veil of respectability. By the 30s, vibrators had all but disappeared from respectable women's magazines. But hysteria, history's most frequently diagnosed female disorder, was not officially removed as a disease by the American Psychiatric Association until 1952.

Still, God bless the 60s when vibrators resurfaced again with a vengeance. This time, however, they emerged as unabashed sexual toys. Women's sexuality has been depressed (hell it wasn't even acknowledged) for almost 2,000 years. You've got a lot of catching up to do. If not for you, then for the generations of hysterical women who went before. We hope our products can help. (Sounds almost patriotic, doesn't it?)