Archive-name: Miscell/gvibrat.txt

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Archive-title: Good Vibrations: The Complete Guide to vibrators





Excerpt from GOOD VIBRATIONS: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO vibratorS by

Joani Blank.  Copyright 1989 by Joani Blank.  Published by Down

There Press, P.O. Box 2086-BS, Burlingame CA 94011-2086.  Available

at your favorite bookstore or by sending $8.00 (includes postage

and handling) to the publisher.







Once Upon A Time...



I walked a few times past the department store salesclerk who was

eagerly demonstrating the big blue and white massager.	"On sale -

- only $19.50 today," she said.  Although I had heard about sexual

uses for electric vibrators, I couldn't justify spending twenty

dollars just to try the massager for masturbation.  So I turned my

back and asked her to hold the whirring machine to a chronically

tight spot on my right shoulder.  The massager was stronger than

any I'd ever felt.  The low speed produced a deep throbbing

sensation.  The high speed was so fast it either tickled or hurt,

depending on how it was touching me.  It hurt my shoulder so good

that I bought it without further hesitation.  At the time, and for

some weeks later, I didn't even try masturbating with it.



Up until then, the only way I had masturbated was with my hand,

occasionally using an object in my vagina at the same time.  I had

inserted the handle of my electric toothbrush into my vagina,

enjoying the gentle vibrations and warmth, but it had not

occurred to me to use it on or near my clitoris.  Within moments

after I held the new blue and white vibrator to my clitoris, I

experienced the most intense orgasm of my life.  Although it was

all over before I knew what was happening, I saw great potential

for pleasure in my new toy.



My partner and I, being yard sale and flea market fanatics,

started to collect "antique" and just plain old vibrators and

massagers at every opportunity.  After a couple of years, we had

acquired more than thirty treasures.  At first, I tried

masturbating with every one and found, to my delight, that all of

them, regardless of size, shape, or intensity of vibration, gave

me orgasms.  We kept them amid the jumble of their own cords and

loose attachments in a fabric suitcase under our bed.

Periodically we would haul out the suitcase, untangle a few, and

plug them in for our friends to giggle or marvel at.  Some went

out on loan and never returned.



During this time, I was being trained as a sex therapist and was

working with many women who had never experienced orgasm.  The

women in my groups who wanted to experiment with vibrators

expressed distress about how awkward they felt purchasing them.

Shortly thereafter, I decided to open Good Vibrations, a vibrator

store especially (though certainly not exclusively) for women,

with a vibrator museum (actually an antique oak showcase) for the

public display of our collection.  I also wrote and published the

first version of this book.



Since 1975, I have learned a great deal about vibrators.  In the

store, I have had the opportunity to talk with hundreds of women

and dozens of men about all aspects of vibrator use.  During this

time, people have talked more and more openly about vibrators.

Sales of vibrators in drug, department and discount stores have

mushroomed.  In these settings, of course, advertising and

promotion are still aimed at the consumers' sore muscles and

tired feet.  However, once many of these vibrators get home and

out of the box, they probably spend most of their turned-on

moments turning someone on.  People are not only using vibrators

more, they are also increasingly talking, writing, and reading

about them.



The "Hysterical" History of the vibrator



Did you ever wonder what mysterious ailment confined the

Victorian woman to her bed? Our prim and proper ancestor had the

doctor scurrying up the stairs with his little black bag and the

servants whispering about "female troubles."



Not infrequently, those "female troubles" were "hysteria,"

believed in ancient Egypt and Greece to be the revolt of the

uterus against sexual deprivation.  Webster's reminds us that

"hysteria" derives from "the former notion that hysteric women

were suffering from disturbances of the womb" (now you know why

men are almost never hysterical!) and defines it as a

"psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances

of the psychic, sensory, vasomotor and visceral functions."  It

wasn't until 1952 that the American Psychiatric Association

dismissed hysteria as a valid diagnosis.



Historian Rachel Maines has recently provided us with a wealth of

information about the standard medical treatment of "hysteria"

using vibrators.   Maines shows that "the electromechanical

vibrator, introduced as a medical appliance in the 1880s and as a

household appliance between 1900 and 1905, represented a de-

skilling and capital-labor substitution innovation designed to

improve the efficiency of medical massage, a task performed since

ancient times by physicians, midwives and their assistants."

Medical massage "from the time of Hippocrates to that of Freud

included the clinical production of orgasm in women and girls."



According to medical and midwifery texts of the 1600s, "the

treatment generally consisted of the insertion of one or more

fingers of one hand into the vagina and the application of

friction to the external genitalia with the other.  Fragrant oils

of various types were employed as lubricants in this procedure."

The objective was to induce "hysterical paroxysm," manifested by

"rapid respiration and pulse, reddening of the skin, vaginal

lubrication and abdominal contractions."  Sounds very familiar,

doesn't it, but at the time it was considered an activity more

appropriate to the doctor's office than the boudoir!



Maines writes that not all physicians recognized this "paroxysm"

as an orgasm, but some medical authors through the ages do

"comment on the morally ambiguous character of the treatment,

including [one physician] who observes that genital massage

should be reserved 'to those alone who have clean hands and a

pure heart'."  Later therapies included massage with a jet of

water, but "hydrotherapists warned that patients were inclined to

demand more treatment than was considered good for them."  A

seventeenth century doctor complained of the fatigue factor for

the physician in massage therapy and the long practice and

considerable dexterity required (not to mention the stress of

keeping those hands clean and those hearts pure).



Maines credits George Taylor, an American physician, with a

primary role in the development of the modern vibrator in this

country.  In 1869 and 1872 he patented a steam-powered massage and

vibratory apparatus for treatment of female disorders, intended

for supervised use "to prevent overindulgence."  By 1900, "a wide

range of vibratory apparatus was available to

physicians....Articles and textbooks on vibratory massage

technique at the turn of the century praised the machines'

versatility for treatment of nearly all diseases in both sexes,

and its [sic] efficiency of time and labor, especially in

gynecological massage....By [1909] convenient portable models

were available, permitting use on house calls...."  (So that's

what was inside the doctor's little black bag.)



Until the end of the 1920s, vibrators were advertised in many

respectable women's magazines as home appliances, primarily as an

aid to good health and relaxation, but with ambiguous overtones -

- "All the pleasures of youth will throb within you," reads a

typical ad.  Maines believes that the disappearance of vibrators

from doctors' offices and magazine advertisements "may have been

the result either of the adoption of psychotherapeutic treatments

[for hysteria] by physicians, or of the appearance of vibrators

in stag films in the Twenties, or both."



Most of the electric vibrators discussed in this book were

neither designed nor marketed (until very recently) with sexual

uses in mind.





In a 1981 Esquire article, author Mimi Swartz reviewed the

emergence of the vibrator as a big business venture, with sales

totaling about $13 million in 1980.  This is a remarkable story

when you consider that the manufacturers are marketing a product

without advertising its main benefit.  Imagine trying to sell a

toaster by saying that it is a metal box that gets very hot when

you plug it in -- and that's all.  Apparently, this non-existent

marketing approach failed, since several mainstream manufacturers

no longer make vibrators.





Electric vibrators/massagers have been manufactured in the United

States since around the turn of the century (the most elderly in

my collection was made by Hamilton Beach and carries a patent

date of 1902).	However, the first electric vibrator openly

advertised for sexual use was an American-made, multi-attachment

model, repackaged with a clitoral stimulator tip, and sold at

first almost exclusively through the mail in the early 1970s.

This particular brand is now sold primarily by discount stores

alongside the hair dryers and electric toothbrushes.  The package

insert is pretty tame; all sexual references have disappeared.	In

the late 1980s, a well-stocked department or discount store in

some parts of the country may carry as many as four or five

different brands of electric vibrators, and lest rural readers

despair, the Sears catalog has always included a full line of

good quality vibrators (manufactured for them by others).  Are you

surprised?





Interesting, isn't it, that vibrators which lost their

respectability once they were shunned by the medical profession

are now seen as an important tool for women taking control of and

enhancing their sexuality.





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