Good Vibrations

Valentines Day is the one day a year set aside to buy roses, eat assorted chocolates, reveal secret admirers, confess hidden affections, craft homemade valentines, and perform kind gestures to the ones you love because well, you love them! Now, it is time to give V-day a whole new meaning: turn the lights down low, put on some Al Green, and pick up some of those good vibrations for yourself. And yes, I’m talking about masturbation (*gasp*). Masturbation is a healthy, happy part of female sexuality, and using a vibrator is arguably one of the best ways to go about it. Unfortunately, female masturbation has been a taboo topic dating back to basically the beginning of time. Even today, discussing vibrators and female masturbation is deemed shameful, dirty, and usually only brought up over a few glasses on Wine Wednesdays. That being said, Sewanee women need to turn dil-don’ts into dil-dos, because women have overcome incredible obstacles in order to take ownership of their sexuality for the past two hundred years. After a trip down memory lane, ladies, you will see that we have earned the right to a little self-love.

Vibrators did not have an easy path into the hands of women. In fact, the hand-held, self-loving machines that we know today were never intended for sexual purposes. They were invented as the treatment for the first mental disorder attributed to women (and only women): hysteria. Hippocrates (father of medicine– you might have heard of him) coined the term hysteria, literally translating from the greek word for uterus–‘hystera’–way back in 4th century BCE, when there was an idea floating around that a woman’s uterus could detach from her body and roam around inside of her. Naturally, a wandering uterus could cause a wide array of strange symptoms in women such as faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, heaviness in the abdomen, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and, most horrifically, “a tendency to cause trouble.”

Thankfully, in 2nd century AD the early Greek physician Galen concluded that hysteria is caused by sexual deprivation and prescribed none other than marriage as the cure. All of the hysterical single ladies, widows, those who live “chaste lives” and religious females were out of luck until 1653 when the renowned Dutch doctor Pieter van Foreest wrote about his treatment for hysteria involving pelvic massage from a medical professional to bring a woman to “paroxysm,” otherwise known as a good old fashioned orgasm. Any sort of self-administration would simply not do, for fear of overindulgence. In 1681, hysteria was dubbed the most common malady besides fever. No one said it better than the English Physician Thomas Sydenham: “There is rarely one who is wholly free from [the symptoms].”

As one can imagine, hysterical women became the physician’s most faithful and lucrative patients. With a condition that women could never die of nor fully recover from, they had no choice but to keep coming back for more. Doctors came to resent these hand massage treatments, as it was a job that required both skill and attention, and inconveniently took a long time. Doctors were looking for anything to relieve their weary hands.

When all hope seemed lost for our fatigued physicians, one Joseph Mortimer Granville designed and patented the first battery-operated vibrator. Affectionately referred to as “Granville’s Hammer,” it was initially designed for the relief of muscular aches and pains, but was soon recruited for the treatment for the mystifying epidemic of hysteria. What took doctors an hour to accomplish, vibrators did in a couple of minutes. This invention was a true godsend for administering medicinal massage to the female organs and bringing women to paroxysm, for the socially acceptable clinical release of the nervous system, definitely not for sexual pleasure.

Vibrators excited the entire nation, and began to be marketed and camouflaged as an essential home appliance. In fact, it was the 5th home appliance to be electrified. In 1910, The American Vibrator advertised that “No modern home is complete without one.” Dozens of these portable health and relaxation aids were featured in a variety of women’s magazines such as Hearst’s and Women’s Home Companion, which regarded vibrators as the fountain of youth and general health and beauty cure-alls, promising women that “all the pleasures of youth . . .will throb within you.”

As all good things must come to an end, a growing public awareness about female sexuality in the 1920s (presumably thought to have been a good thing), made the medically purposed facade of vibrators a hard one to maintain. Not to mention, vibrators began appearing in porn films quite obviously serving a non-medical purpose. Needless to say, the pornstars of the 1920s exposed a lot more than what is underneath their clothes. During the Dark Ages, also known as the 1950s, vibrators all but disappeared from advertisements, doctors offices, and store shelves.

The vibrator made a comeback as a part of the 1970s Feminist movement. At the 1973 NOW Sexuality Conference, Betty Dodson reintroduced the vibrator as a symbol of sexual liberty for women. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. In 2007, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of state laws prohibiting the sexual use of vibrators in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.

Now, 1 in 3 U.S. women own vibrators, and 80% of those women use them with their sexual partners. Thanks to these self-loving women, vibrators grace the shelves of Walgreens, and even CVS in Monteagle. Therefore, Sewanee, vibrators should be celebrated not only for their valiant service, but for what they have come (pun intended) to represent in women’s history. Vibrators allowed women to turn a negative stigma and a discriminatory diagnosis into something positive and empowering! Not to mention, women are finally allowed to take their orgasm into their own hands (heh heh heh.) So let us be the generation to finally embrace those good vibrations and feel comfortable discussing what the Beach Boys were really singing about.

Believe that vibrators are sensational? Think that female hysteria is hysterical? Check out:

Hysteria, a hilarious British Romantic Comedy starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy that tells the story of the surprising birth of the electro-mechanical vibrator at the peak of Victorian Prudishness.

In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play), an electrifying play by Sarah Ruhl exploring the early history of the vibrator, Victorian ignorance of female sexuality, some sexually frustrated women, and jealousy. The play was nominated for three Tony awards in 2010.