From medical utensil, to sex toy, the history of the vibrator has spanned many different sections, and this week, Georgia goes back in time to discover why it was created, and the purpose it used to serve.
Nowadays vibrators are pretty much accepted to have a solely recreational purpose of female sexual pleasure. This may seem like an obvious statement but that was not always the case. In fact, vibrators have a rather contentious history, and were initially used as medical tools. A widely spread anecdote is that during the Victorian era doctors actually used vibrators on women to induce orgasms for the purpose of treating so-called ‘hysteria’.
Hysteria was a broad term used to diagnose anything including headaches, loss of libido, nervous breakdowns, and depression. It’s famously depicted in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 novel The Yellow Wallpaper, which tells the story of a woman’s mental deterioration following a prescription of ‘rest cure’. This alleged mental condition, now pretty much debunked, was particularly ascribed to women, often those who displayed sexual confidence or even great intellect. While undoubtedly many of those diagnosed with such a condition did suffer from certain mental illnesses but, as the name suggests, it was not something people sympathised towards and was perceived more as a condition of supposed crazed behaviour. It has often been posed that, for some, it was essentially a label given to women whose behaviour made society uncomfortable.
This claim that doctors used vibrators to masturbate women with hysteria originated from the historian Rachel Maines and her book, The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. It was also popularised in a film called ‘Hysteria’, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, as well as many other forms of media. Maines wrote that doctors ascribed ‘pelvic massages’ in order to provide relief through inducing ‘paroxysms’, also known as orgasms. Doctors, however, did not perceive this as a sexual response, given their poor understanding of female sexuality. It was thought that society at that time did not correlate external genital stimulation with sexual practice.
This is certainly a scandalous story of history, undoubtedly the reason for its popularity.
However, could it be just that…a story?
Many historians have since challenged Maines’s claims, with the likes of Hallie Lieberman and Eric Schatzberg. Vibrators were initially marketed to physicians, with the first being invented by British physician Joseph Mortimer Granville. Vibrations were thought to be central to the workings of the human nervous system, they were also used to relieve symptoms of muscle fatigue and arthritis. However, Lieberman and Schatzberg claim that while vibrators were a part of medical history, there is no evidence that Victorian doctors used them for clitoral stimulation.
In fact, they believe that this argument simply follows a simplistic narrative of historical progression, that we progressively became more enlightened about sex and that women’s sexuality was then not understood. They claim that there was general awareness of the female orgasm. Moreover, the earliest source of a vibrator was, in fact, associated with sex but obscenity laws prevented advertising of such products for sexual pleasure. Even today, in places like Alabama, the Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act still prevents the sale and advertisement of sex toys. When doctors came to the conclusion that vibrators were not the be-all and end-all for medical treatment, there was a shift to marketing on a consumer basis and in 1915 the American Medial Association stated that the marketing of vibrators for medical purposes was ‘a delusion and a snare’, concluding that aspect of history.
Ultimately, this brief outline of such a debated history may not give us clearcut answers, but it certainly gives much to discuss. While it may be easy to dismiss much of the past as archaic in its approach to medicine and sexuality, Lieberman and Schatzberg remind us that it may not be that simple.
The diagnosis of hysteria was undoubtedly riddled in misogyny and ignorance, stemming from Ancient Greek theories of a moving womb causing medical conditions and ideas of possession in the Middle Ages, with the vagina thought to be an entrance for demons.
And yet, we should not treat female sexually as some newly discovered phenomenon whilst dismissing the beliefs of those in the past as simply ‘unenlightened’. Even today we see much misinformation on female sexuality and maybe we will look back on our current time with disbelief.