Throughout the ages, humankind has flourished through the tenets of all civilization: that of peaceful cohabitation, unified social groups, and intimate connections the likes of which can rarely be found in any other species. Cities have been built and burned on the backs of such intimacy, swelling in number through childbearing and families.
Of course, for every child conceived, there are ten unions to a different end: pleasure. The dopamine rush every human experiences from more intimate activities is not to be underestimated: some will chase such a rush without discretion, shaping their lives around it. We will follow their journey through history, and perhaps marvel at the future which lay ahead.
30,000 YEARS AGO A cave in Germany hid the broken remains of what may be one of the oldest sex toys on Earth. It is a stone phallus, polished smooth and painstakingly carved to be ribbed at the business end. It was found in fragments, presumably discarded once it had broken, disproving the possibility that it may have simply been a firestarting tool.
THE EPIPHANY Hysteria! It was sweeping across Victorian society like a dark plague, filling women with anxiety, fatigue, rebelliousness, depression....basically any behavior other than absolute submission to their husbands and family. The horror!
In such an age, the only cure to hysteria, however temporary, was for doctors to administer upon these women a “hysterical paroxysm”--an orgasm--by way of “pelvic massage”. A woman, avoiding a trip to the asylum, would instead visit her doctor in times of such hysteria and experience her “paroxysm”, at which point she would be cured until the next time she felt her womanly insanity rearing its ugly head.
Pelvic massage became the cure to nearly any stress a woman could experience, so long as her behaviours annoyed her husband enough for him to label her as unwell. As each procedure was difficult to learn, and achieving paroxysm could take up to an hour, doctors began wishing for an easier, more effective method. Enter: The Manipulator, invented by Doctor George Taylor!
The massive, steam-powered device came about in 1969, and while it wasn’t the first vibrator invented by a doctor, it was truly something to behold. The patient would sit atop a table-sized surface outfitted with a vibrating sphere, while in another room the doctor would shovel coal into the furnace which powered it.
Sadly, while the Manipulator was a marvel of engineering, it was unwieldy and expensive. Then came about more personal, household remedies for hysteria, such as the “Horse Action Saddle” pictured above. The vibrator became the fifth most popular electrical appliance in households, alongside toasters, sewing machines and fans. Truly, housewives controlled much of the shopping of the era.
Nowadays, vibrators are rather common, though occupy perhaps a more shameful, secret side of life, alongside most topics of sex and intimacy. In the future, and as is already taking place, sexual liberation and free expression is growing in popularity, as America sheds its Puritan roots and experiments with why, and how, our societal identity has perhaps stifled us.
While the vibrator seems a silly, shallow product, its history spans a near-perfect timeline of the stifling of female emotions throughout history, even to the point of considering their orgasms some mystical, medical phenomenon separate from the experiences of men. It paints a much deeper, more nuanced image of the “stuffy Victorian woman”, and perhaps changes what we’ve all assumed about the past.
Sources
- Amos, Jonathan. “Science/Nature | Ancient Phallus Unearthed in Cave.” BBC News, BBC, 25 July 2005, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4713323.stm.
- “World’s Oldest Sex Toy, a Stone Dildo, Also Used by a Jealous Caveman to Start Fires.” Creative Loafing: Tampa Bay, www.cltampa.com/news-views/sex-love/article/20734292/worlds-oldest-sex-toy-a-stone-dildo-also-used-by-a-jealous-caveman-to-start-fires.
- Stern, Marlow. “'Hysteria' and the Long, Strange History of the Vibrator.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 27 Apr. 2012, www.thedailybeast.com/hysteria-and-the-long-strange-history-of-the-vibrator.
