Maintenance Phase - Vibrators

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that comes in discreet packaging

00:00:15.780 so your neighbors don't find out.

00:00:19.000 You really nailed it.

00:00:20.700 I'm Michael Hobbs.

00:00:21.500 I'm Aubrey Gordon.

00:00:22.560 If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance

00:00:26.240 phase. This month's bonus episode by popular request of nonprofit employees is Mike and I

00:00:34.040 talking about our experiences working at nonprofits. So if you couldn't get enough

00:00:37.240 of that Marianne Williamson episode, get ready. Nonprofit drama. So much drama. We're doing it.

00:00:41.600 And today, this is about so we're going to talk about the history of vibrators and particularly

00:00:46.180 like a heavily debated part of that history, which is who invented them and what were they

00:00:53.360 used for oh yeah we're gonna get into the ins and outs of primary sources and why they may not

00:00:58.860 always be the end-all be-all you cannot say ins and outs in an episode about vibrators

00:01:03.020 we can't go down cul-de-sacs like that tighten it up Aubrey come on I mean some of these were

00:01:11.940 designed to do that to tighten it up so the first thing to know is that sex toys have been around

00:01:19.920 since truly forever. So we have this whole narrative around the difference between humans

00:01:24.400 and animals is that humans know how to make and use tools. And actually, dildos were one of those

00:01:30.380 early tools. No way. Uh-huh. So the earliest dildo that we know of was discovered in a cave

00:01:35.300 in Germany and dates back to the Ice Age. Germans, typical. I'm familiar with their work. 1.00

00:01:42.940 So it's made out of siltstone, and it's believed to be about 28,000 years old.

00:01:48.440 amazing this has been happening for a long long long time and sort of our cultural responses to

00:01:54.680 dildos have changed quite a bit there are images from egypt and japan going way the hell back that

00:02:00.780 appear to be really like celebratory public sort of moments with dildos like people like wearing

00:02:06.480 dildos so there are some images of egyptian women way back wearing what appear to be essentially

00:02:12.280 like strap-ons as a sort of devotional to osiris the god osiris famous pegger one moment that i

00:02:19.200 wanted to lift up is that in the 17th century a poet named john wilmot who is the earl of rochester

00:02:27.060 wrote a poem about the popularity of dildos it has 23 stanzas oh my gosh so i'm gonna send you

00:02:34.940 one stanza it's four lines i'm so glad i get to read it poetry corner maintenance phase poetry

00:02:41.420 recorder wait does this does this kind of rhymes it's i think it's intended to rhyme but also he

00:02:49.340 ends every stanza with the word dildo so his rhymes get like slantier and slantier as the

00:02:56.720 poem goes on right where you're like oh you're running out of o words got it all right i'm

00:03:00.360 probably gonna mangle the pentameter but let's see how i do he says the pattern of virtue her

00:03:05.380 grace of cleveland has swallowed more pricks than the ocean has sand but by rubbing and scrubbing

00:03:11.080 so why does it grow it is fit for just nothing but senior dildo okay it ended strong you really

00:03:18.560 you really nailed the rhythm of that i don't think i did

00:03:21.760 the other sort of like little moment that i wanted to lift up there is a story that seems

00:03:29.900 absolutely utterly bananas to me that credits cleopatra with the invention of the first

00:03:36.920 vibrator okay that's no yeah right right right no would you like to know the technology that

00:03:43.160 is purportedly was part of that invention oh yeah tell me she kept agitated bees in a hollow

00:03:50.660 gourd what and then the bees created the vibration inside the gourd wait i couldn't even so like

00:03:58.520 normally when i do research for the show i like tend to believe things until i fact check them

00:04:03.900 and this one i was like i couldn't even get through the sentence without being like how do

00:04:07.300 you get the bees in the gourd wouldn't you need to seal off the gourd to keep the bees in there

00:04:11.120 and then wouldn't they die also wouldn't it just sound buzzy but not actually be like what i spent

00:04:16.580 an inordinate amount of time trying to fact check this this was one of the reasons we had this

00:04:21.240 scheduled before and i was like i'm so sorry i can't do this until we get this fact i can't

00:04:26.880 proceed until i know if this is true basically it traces back it appears to trace back to this

00:04:31.780 1992 book about historical sexual practices it's called the encyclopedia of unusual sex practices

00:04:38.260 and it's mentioned in a section about entomophilia which is sexual attraction to bugs okay and i'm

00:04:43.840 like but that's also not what's happening here there's no primary source cited like it really

00:04:47.540 appears to have just sort of appeared whole cloth in 1992 this reminds me of there's some cockamamie

00:04:53.180 theories on jack the ripper that he was actually queen victoria like in disguise yeah and it's like

00:04:59.860 no that's just the only person like we know existed from that time like we don't know very

00:05:05.340 much about that time period so it's like uh vibrators were there and cleopatra was there

00:05:09.560 we're just picking stuff out that we know and then the last little sort of nugget of um sex

00:05:13.720 toy history is from 1965 it's about the invention of the silicone dildo 65 sounds late we didn't

00:05:19.860 have silicone dildos until then not silicone no we had rubber prior to that so this person uh

00:05:25.360 Gosnell Duncan in adulthood became paralyzed just before he got married and was concerned that he

00:05:33.140 wouldn't be able to sustain an erection. So he started looking into dildos and he found out that

00:05:37.140 most of them were like real shitty. They would melt if they got too hot. You couldn't wash them 0.53

00:05:41.960 in hot water. So it's also not super hygienic, right? Like it's just like bad news all around.

00:05:46.860 And he decides to take matters into his own hands and he calls GE and gets a silicone contract and

00:05:53.580 starts the process of the industrial design of the first silicone dildo. So if you have a silicone

00:05:59.960 sex toy, you can thank this disabled activist for inventing it. It's weird that it was a guy who did 1.00

00:06:06.380 it. Totally, totally fascinating and flies in the face of like, there is this history is just

00:06:11.200 riddled with dudes being uncomfortable and not wanting to talk about this, which is part of the

00:06:15.860 reason why we have such shitty sources on so much of it. So it's like really lovely to have a dude

00:06:20.420 who's like no i'm into it let's go ladies i'm here to help yes do we have a sense of like how

00:06:28.600 women were using dildos for that time i mean i know how like women use dildos in general i don't

00:06:34.440 want to brag but i do know what they're literally like i know very little about this but i feel like

00:06:39.000 i have a general inkling of like how they are carried out in the world but were they like

00:06:43.620 hiding them from their husbands was this something that was like super stigmatized and super secret

00:06:47.460 it? Or like, were there sex shops? So this is actually one of the points of major, major debate

00:06:53.920 amongst historians. Oh, to what degree were these being used sexually? To what degree were they

00:06:59.260 being marketed sexually? And to what degree were they just seen as medical tools? When did they

00:07:05.040 start vibrating? Actually, I'm going to just situate this because that's like the next thing

00:07:09.280 after a little bit of context. Okay. Essentially, when they started vibrating is like the middle

00:07:13.720 of the 19th century oh how what steam powered oh my god were they fucking steam powered there was

00:07:20.000 a steam powered one get it away from my downstairs that's too much power too much power they also 0.92

00:07:26.820 have one that is a hand crank that looks so much like one of like your grandma's egg beaters do

00:07:34.080 you know what i'm talking about i was gonna say yeah those miserable it's so like every time i

00:07:39.680 look at them i just clench every muscle in my body and i'm like no no no no no no but then who's

00:07:45.260 who's turning how does that work who's turning the hand crank you put it inside and you turn

00:07:49.980 the hand crank i mean so this part is again unclear i need a diagram so there is quite a

00:07:56.940 bit of this history that's clear and undisputed and there's one part that is really really hotly

00:08:01.660 debated and that is again as we're talking about the invention of the electric vibrator in

00:08:05.840 particular because that's when it stops being like hot steam egg beater right it's basically

00:08:11.880 the board game mousetrap from many more kids there's like a little cage has to fall down a

00:08:16.700 ladder so essentially the electric vibrator first appeared either in england or france in the 1870s

00:08:24.240 but at the time vibrators are made available almost exclusively to doctors they cost like

00:08:29.880 $200 in the 1800s, which is so much money.

00:08:34.180 So it's like an MRI machine or something.

00:08:35.900 It's not something that people have in their homes.

00:08:37.580 Uh-huh, kind of.

00:08:38.420 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:38.900 Okay.

00:08:39.280 So to situate us in time and space, this is sort of the time that we were talking about

00:08:44.320 with the snake oil episode.

00:08:45.800 This is pre-germ theory.

00:08:48.040 So doctors don't believe that germs are really a thing or nobody's really talking about it

00:08:51.740 yet.

00:08:52.720 Medicine isn't really regulated and centralized medical schools, there are like a couple,

00:08:57.380 but they haven't really taken root yet.

00:08:59.880 All kinds of people are calling themselves doctors with all kinds of varying level of training, right?

00:09:04.540 It's the Goop website, yes.

00:09:06.000 It's the Goop website.

00:09:07.780 Every doctor is Goop at this point.

00:09:09.340 It's just people saying stuff.

00:09:10.800 Trust in doctors is really low at this point, generally speaking.

00:09:15.000 And the prevailing medical model at this point is the belief that people with vulvas do not experience sexual pleasure.

00:09:24.180 It just doesn't happen.

00:09:25.460 Like, you're not built for that.

00:09:26.920 You're built to be a receptacle for that, but you're not actually built to experience

00:09:30.740 pleasure.

00:09:31.560 And if you are experiencing pleasure, something is wrong.

00:09:34.340 On top of all of that, so against that background, there is this medical diagnosis that you

00:09:40.540 mentioned earlier called hysteria.

00:09:42.940 Hysteria had been a diagnosis for hundreds of years.

00:09:45.480 It had been around for a long, long time.

00:09:47.820 The symptoms for hysteria included anxiety, sleeplessness, breathlessness, expressing

00:09:54.440 anger or irritability being too sexually reserved also being too overtly sexual the presence of

00:10:02.080 vaginal lubrication oh my god and one of the symptoms no joke was just called a tendency

00:10:08.440 to cause trouble for others so it's basically like my wife annoys me disease yeah this is a

00:10:16.980 time when getting diagnosed with hysteria was like a really really difficult challenging thing

00:10:22.160 It could lead to all, like, loss of your freedom, loss of, you know, your control over your own body, all kinds of stuff, forced medical treatments at the discretion of your husband, right?

00:10:31.920 Right.

00:10:32.160 There are a few different explanations or sort of theories at this time about what caused hysteria.

00:10:37.780 The diagnosis of hysteria, one of the earlier sort of examples that we have of it is Hippocrates believed in hysteria and thought that it was caused by a wandering uterus.

00:10:48.280 We talked about this in Moon Juice.

00:10:50.540 Yeah.

00:10:50.800 The belief was that your uterus becomes detached and just starts floating around inside your body

00:10:57.040 and making you crazy. You know, science. The theories around this time in the 19th century

00:11:03.540 are that it might be a neurological disease, that it might be the result of a culture of

00:11:09.540 licentiousness amongst women. So like moral stuff, of course. Horniness. 1.00

00:11:15.160 And the last one, and this is where the vibrator comes in, there may be this belief that there is

00:11:19.860 an imbalance of bodily vibrations so there's this theory that your nervous system is powered by

00:11:27.020 vibration sure those sort of imbalance in vibrations is what causes lots of illnesses

00:11:32.800 including hysteria and that that could only be resolved by something called hysterical paroxysm

00:11:39.620 okay which was a phenomenon that was a result of a treatment the treatment was genital massage

00:11:45.640 okay until the point of full body convulsions oh what 0.96

00:11:50.940 so they were just like giving women orgasms and like calling it

00:11:55.920 calling it medicine is that what you're saying this is the story and this is one of the things

00:12:01.080 that's under like very intense debate um amongst historians is like did this happen or did this

00:12:08.520 not happen. So basically, the question is like, were people inducing orgasms in women to treat

00:12:15.960 hysteria in the 1800s or not? Were doctors scheduling appointments at their offices

00:12:23.040 for women to come in and get this treatment and achieve a hysterical paroxysm and then leave 0.51

00:12:31.520 feeling better? Okay. So we're going to talk about two. Well, actually, we're going to talk 1.00

00:12:35.600 about three different versions of this story. Two of them come from academics. And one of them

00:12:40.960 is sort of the like, pop culture version of the story. The last thing to know before we sort of

00:12:46.820 get into where these three different stories kind of branch off from one another is that there's a

00:12:52.060 central character here who is a physician. His name is Joseph Mortimer Granville. He's from

00:12:59.020 England. He's from Davenport. He is a prolific writer. He's written books about mental illness,

00:13:04.180 about sleep, about memory, about gout. He covers really a lot of territory. He wrote a book about

00:13:11.740 mental illness called Common Mind Troubles. And he writes one pretty formative book called Nerve

00:13:22.200 Vibration and Excitation. That's where he talks about vibrators. And that's where he sort of

00:13:27.120 advances this theory about, okay, your nervous system is powered by vibrations. Can other

00:13:34.360 vibrations correct an imbalance in the vibrations of your nervous system?

00:13:39.440 Yeah. So he's basically just making this up. The four humors, like all of the other paradigms of

00:13:44.280 medicine, he's a dude who's making up something, but he doesn't realize that he's making it up.

00:13:48.180 And he thinks that it's a process of discovery rather than invention.

00:13:52.220 Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. And I also think that's the headline about

00:13:54.820 medicine as a whole at this point is it's just a bunch of white dudes making shit up yeah and 0.99

00:13:59.940 like whichever whoever has like the most convincing narrative but not necessarily the most convincing 0.99

00:14:04.680 science of course that's exactly right so he's the first person who figures out how to use

00:14:10.420 electricity to power a vibrator and it's powered by a generator that is the size of a refrigerator

00:14:15.700 see i was thinking i was imagining him climbing up on the roof and attaching like a lightning rod

00:14:21.040 like doc and back to the future now we wait okay benjamin franklin is standing outside with a kite

00:14:27.180 and a key so this is where the story really branches off into a few different versions okay

00:14:36.040 if folks come into this episode being like i know this story the version of the story that they

00:14:40.060 probably know is a very pop culture version of the story okay the version of the story is basically

00:14:45.200 doctors invented vibrators to use on women to cure them of their hysteria doctors were using

00:14:50.940 their hands to massage vulvas, their hands were cramping up. So vibrators became a labor saving 0.70

00:14:58.880 sort of device to keep their hands from cramping. Right. It's like a cotton gin.

00:15:04.040 In some versions of the story, they take it further saying that like women understood what 0.75

00:15:07.900 was happening, but men didn't. So women were like seeking out treatment intentionally for

00:15:12.760 sexual pleasure. You can see why this story takes off, right? 0.99

00:15:16.700 Yeah, this has like nine to five style rom com written all over it. 1.00

00:15:22.200 These women kind of taking advantage of these clueless dudes and getting these dope orgasms in their offices and like, ha ha ha, they think it's all about medicine. 1.00

00:15:29.740 It's like extremely like salacious. It's like kind of fun and wacky. And it becomes fun and wacky enough that in 2011, a movie is made about Dr. Granville, the inventor of the vibrator. And it's called Hysteria! Exclamation point. 0.98

00:15:50.700 Oh, good. Hysteria at the downstairs. Yes. 0.93

00:15:54.320 Yeah, totally. This is, I think, probably the best and most concise version of the pop culture

00:16:00.220 story that sort of passes around about this. So I'm going to send you a link to a trailer.

00:16:04.720 Ooh, I'm ready.

00:16:10.680 What do you know of hysteria? Nothing, but half the women in London are affected. It's a plague 0.93

00:16:17.060 of our time i have just been offered a position by london's leading specialist in women's medicine 1.00

00:16:22.740 oh no i must find some way to attend to these women properly i believe the french have had 0.98

00:16:27.640 quite a bit of luck using their tongue no no i want you to meet my daughter emily dalrymple

00:16:33.220 servant i have no doubt that one day she would make a fine doctor's wife it's a very difficult

00:16:39.520 case that one must be difficult pleasuring half the women in the city pleasure has nothing to do

00:16:45.980 it i can assure you well i suppose that depends on whether you're over the table or on it 0.59

00:16:50.460 isn't she a chinese firecracker according to your diagnosis hysteria seems to cover

00:16:54.940 everything from insomnia to toothache my new generator my god now who shall we try it on

00:17:07.340 what do you call that little thing well i was calling it the feather duster 1.00

00:17:14.900 think of something quick so the girl knows what to ask for women will no longer be denied our 1.00

00:17:19.840 rightful place there's all you are a confounding woman and you are a good doctor and you should

00:17:25.660 remain one whether you seek it or not dr granville you are destined for fame

00:17:29.720 you're gonna need a bigger appointments book

00:17:34.040 that looks really annoying honestly it looks really annoying i watched this whole movie and

00:17:42.120 it was such an astonishing waste of my time

00:17:44.040 it didn't really offer anything more than you get from this trailer in terms of the research end

00:17:52.700 right well first of all tell me how it struck you and then i'll tell you how it struck me

00:17:55.720 i mean i think there's like a genre of entertainment and i can't i can't be too

00:18:02.360 mean about this because like on some level i had an entire podcast that did this 0.92

00:18:06.980 that was like dedicated to basically like laughing about how stupid people were in the past 0.98

00:18:12.400 lol like their medicine was so dumb and like lol they're look how impressed by the technology they 0.99

00:18:17.820 were but actually it's like really primitive technology it just looks really smug yeah which 0.94

00:18:23.200 i always sort of chafe at that stuff because i always feel like hey we're really wrong about a

00:18:27.840 lot of stuff now so maybe let's all get off our high horses here even though we're kind of doing

00:18:32.160 that in this episode i don't know i don't know there's like a way to yeah no we're totally doing

00:18:37.700 that in this episode we are also part of the problem there's no question i mean i think the

00:18:41.780 thing that i found really interesting about this is like it is a take on this sort of turn of the

00:18:47.240 century medicine that is from the perspective of a 21st century white woman and maggie gillenhall's

00:18:55.440 character really appears to be sort of the audience surrogate being like hysteria is dumb and i don't

00:19:00.260 think it's real and you guys are making it up which may or may not have been happening at the

00:19:04.660 time but the idea that that would happen in like a cute fun way is like almost certainly not right

00:19:12.140 based on everything we know about treatment of women at this time being like i think hysteria

00:19:16.760 is made up is a real quick way to get yourself diagnosed with hysteria surprise it always makes

00:19:21.580 me really uncomfortable when you're watching historical movies and they go out of their way

00:19:25.600 to have a character like give a big speech that indicates that they have the same values as like

00:19:30.840 we have racism is wrong you guys and it's like 1807 and you're like people didn't really say

00:19:38.580 that back then like that's not totally totally even the anti-racist people were like very racist

00:19:44.240 by like our standards. Yep, totally. This film, again, a number of these documentaries and sort

00:19:50.060 of this prevailing narrative about the invention of vibrators is like, women knew what was up and 0.92

00:19:55.220 were seeking out sexual pleasure, right by getting diagnosed with this thing that had no uniform

00:20:00.420 treatment. And some of the treatment options included being held in place and essentially

00:20:06.620 being imprisoned in your own home or whatever, right? Yeah, there's not really any acknowledgement

00:20:11.780 of the risk that that would present. Also, I'm assuming a lot of the women at the time also 0.98

00:20:16.980 would have bought into them. Yes! Just because like, that's how systems of oppression work. 1.00

00:20:21.580 I also just want to name that like, those doctors were overwhelmingly serving at the pleasure of the 1.00

00:20:26.580 husbands of these women. Right. So like, listen, maybe it is ladies figured out that they could

00:20:32.980 go to the doctor and have a vibrator applied and like experience sexual pleasure. Maybe it is also 1.00

00:20:38.700 those husbands were hiring those doctors to perform coerced sex acts it's like kim there's

00:20:44.700 people that are dying like there's actually some like serious things happening behind this yes

00:20:49.560 right so like hey this was like kind of a horror show of a time for women's autonomy and couldn't

00:20:56.200 vote or own things or like be independent actors in a real way right like it just seems very strange

00:21:01.960 to latch on to the sort of like sunny bright version of this story and not really grapple

00:21:07.320 with any of the potential darkness yeah i don't yeah it seems like in real life it probably wasn't

00:21:11.220 like wacky hijinks it wasn't an opera singer hitting a high note while rupert everett shoves

00:21:18.440 a vibrating feather duster yeah right like nobody's going to that film for the facts they're

00:21:24.560 going to that film because they couldn't get enough of the when harry met sally diner scene

00:21:28.920 yes so the question then becomes like where does this story come from yeah so in 2001

00:21:36.800 technology historian rachel mains released a book called the technology of orgasm hysteria

00:21:44.420 the vibrator and women's sexual satisfaction oh yeah this is the first one that i could find that

00:21:51.260 was a major history of vibrators in europe and the u.s main story here the sort of story that

00:21:59.460 she advances is sort of the source code for the more popular version but you can sort of see where

00:22:03.700 the embellishments come up, right? Where you're like, oh, a doctor invented a vibrator. It was

00:22:08.520 a medical treatment. And then you can see that somebody made the leap at some point being like,

00:22:12.040 wouldn't it be hilarious? But there's not really compelling historical evidence necessarily

00:22:17.200 for that. So she is very clear that Granville was actually specifically not using vibrators

00:22:26.340 as a treatment for hysteria. Mainz argues that Granville didn't use this as a treatment for

00:22:31.620 hysteria, but that other doctors did. This is where we get the story about doctors using their

00:22:36.740 hands for genital massage, their hands cramping up and vibrators becoming sort of like a labor

00:22:41.220 saving device. So this was happening. It's just the guy who invented the technology wasn't the 0.96

00:22:46.520 one using it on women, but other doctors were using it on women. That's Maine's argument. Yes.

00:22:51.300 Yeah. She argues that the primary treatment for hysteria was genital massage to the point of 0.83

00:22:58.800 quote unquote, hysterical paroxysm. And then she describes hysterical paroxysm. And it's

00:23:03.300 absolutely just like having an orgasm. Just, just, just wheezing and screaming. Yeah.

00:23:08.360 Just from the outside. It's just like muscle convulsions and heavy breathing and sighing.

00:23:14.200 And you're like, okay, yeah. Okay, got it. So she says this is like the main thing that they

00:23:18.140 were doing for hysteria at the time. Yes, this was a primary treatment for hysteria was to bring

00:23:23.480 about hysterical paroxysm, which again, it's really hard not to read the texts about this

00:23:29.520 and just replace like, oh, orgasm for hysterical paroxysm, right? And then her third argument

00:23:35.320 around vibrators is that vibrators were primarily understood as sexual in nature, but they were

00:23:41.320 marketed using this thing she calls social camouflage, which is essentially like euphemisms

00:23:47.800 and sort of like a list of alternative purposes for a vibrator that are specifically not sexual.

00:23:54.160 Right.

00:23:54.740 That were sort of designed to let a primarily sexual tool escape kind of social scrutiny.

00:24:00.220 Oh, right.

00:24:00.520 So you have to sell them as something else. 1.00

00:24:02.480 It's like selling fucking poppers as room deodorizers. 1.00

00:24:07.360 For any other gay men in the chat. 1.00

00:24:09.900 No. 0.95

00:24:10.800 Yeah.

00:24:11.460 So Mains releases this book in 2001, and it makes a huge splash.

00:24:16.540 We get this movie within about 10 years.

00:24:19.860 In that same span, we get a play by a playwright called Sarah Rule, who's incredible, who writes

00:24:24.120 this beautiful play based on this premise.

00:24:27.640 There's like a lot going on here, right?

00:24:30.020 And it gets sort of latched on to in the public imagination.

00:24:33.860 So you read the Mains book, right?

00:24:35.300 I read it in college.

00:24:36.140 I read it again this month.

00:24:37.740 Is it fun to read?

00:24:38.620 I mean, it's a history of technology written by a historian of technology.

00:24:43.040 Yeah, okay.

00:24:43.360 Like, it's written, like, then the development was this.

00:24:47.240 Right.

00:24:47.660 Right.

00:24:48.040 When you're like, no, but come on. 1.00

00:24:50.040 Also, the developments were around, like, fucking. 0.99

00:24:52.140 Yeah, I know. 1.00

00:24:52.480 Can you talk about the fucking part? 1.00

00:24:53.620 Come on. 0.99

00:24:54.620 I was hoping it would be full of a bunch of double entendres, like the main thrust of my book.

00:25:00.040 With, like, asterisks behind it.

00:25:01.860 Like, I see what I'm doing.

00:25:03.720 I just want you to know that I know.

00:25:05.260 You wanted her book to be the poem, Senor Dildo?

00:25:08.380 Yeah, exactly.

00:25:11.400 Every chapter ends with the same word.

00:25:13.200 Exactly. So I read it in college. I read it again this month. And this month when I read it,

00:25:19.200 it just didn't hold water the way that it did for me in college. It felt like there were a whole lot

00:25:25.000 more holes in it. It felt like there were a whole lot more things that didn't jive with my

00:25:29.100 understanding of that period. And frankly, there were things in it that didn't seem true to me.

00:25:35.260 And it turns out they might not be true. And it turns out that quite a bit of this book,

00:25:40.420 which created this very popular narrative that many folks know about the medical history of

00:25:45.180 vibrators isn't necessarily substantiated oh so now we're going to fast forward to 2017

00:25:50.620 and this is our first alternate version of events that comes debunking academic fight

00:25:58.260 so we're in 2017 our next character to sort of enter the story is a historian

00:26:05.980 Rachel Maines is a historian of technology.

00:26:08.620 Hallie Lieberman is a historian of sex and gender at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

00:26:14.220 In 2017, Lieberman publishes a book called Buzz, The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy.

00:26:22.140 And in 2018, the next year, she co-authors a paper that is straight up called

00:26:28.500 Failure of Academic Quality Control, The Technology of Orgasm.

00:26:33.640 Oh.

00:26:34.060 She writes a whole paper. It's published in the Journal of Positive Sexuality. And she goes back to all of the primary sources that Maines cites in her book and fact checks all of it and then writes a paper to be like, here's what I found.

00:26:51.100 This is like a diss track.

00:26:52.200 It is kind of like a diss track. The paper that Lieberman writes is pretty careful with its language and talks about this not as a problem with Rachel Maines, but as a systemic problem, wherein academics are not really fact checking each other.

00:27:08.240 Yeah. That they'll just read work from other academics, sort of absorb that narrative and be like, that must be what it is. Right. So she talks about the dozens, if not hundreds of citations that lead back to this work and all of this sort of stuff. And she's like, yeah, yeah, but nobody fact checked it. Yeah. It's a lot of work. There's a lot of this stuff comes from like archives. You have to spend the day. You can't take materials out. I mean, totally. Yeah, it's a huge problem because actually going back to all these sources would be like a months long project in a lot of cases.

00:27:34.740 So she says, and I quote, we found no evidence in these sources that physicians ever used

00:27:42.120 electromechanical vibrators to induce orgasms in female patients as medical treatment.

00:27:48.940 There is not evidence that doctors used it on people with vulvas at the time.

00:27:54.420 There is not evidence that hysterical paroxysm was a treatment for hysteria.

00:28:01.140 And there's actually not evidence of hysterical paroxysm outside of Maines' book.

00:28:07.500 Right.

00:28:08.040 So basically that whole thing of like stealth orgasms, like that didn't happen.

00:28:13.380 Lieberman is like, I fact checked it.

00:28:15.000 It didn't happen.

00:28:16.020 Huh.

00:28:16.480 So it gets a little bit worse.

00:28:17.660 I just sent you a little quote also from this Lieberman paper.

00:28:21.120 So it says, as we show below, Maines fails to cite a single source that openly describes

00:28:26.760 use of the vibrator to massage the clitoral area.

00:28:29.500 Furthermore, none of her English language sources even mentions production of paroxysms by massage or anything else that could remotely suggest an orgasm.

00:28:39.620 So basically, it's not there.

00:28:41.640 The sources that she's citing as evidence for a claim don't even include anything remotely resembling the claim.

00:28:47.200 Correct.

00:28:48.020 Lieberman also argues that they were used for a broad range of conditions.

00:28:53.120 Vibrators are being used at this point to induce labor.

00:28:56.520 Wow.

00:28:56.860 Granville himself used them to treat constipation, diabetes, aches, and pains, not for hysteria or on women's bodies. The genital use that she finds, that Lieberman finds, is that vibrators, as much as they were used sexually, were used and applied to men's perineums to restore sexual vigor.

00:29:18.740 So, like, not only were they not being used to provide pleasure to women, they were being used to, like, give dudes boners, basically.

00:29:31.380 Huge missed opportunity for there to be a follow-up to this movie about, like, a bunch of dudes going in. 0.91

00:29:37.360 And, like, yeah, I think there's something in my prostate.

00:29:39.480 I think you need to vibrate that a little bit. 0.80

00:29:41.560 Do it again, but with dudes.

00:29:43.440 Everything you said about power structures I'm now ignoring, and I'm going to start working on that screenplay.

00:29:48.740 So I mean, like, that's another one where it's like, totally take a 21st century lens and apply it here. And you're like, man, oh, man, one of those doctors somewhere was either gay or wanted to use a vibrator just for his own use.

00:30:01.540 Just went for it. 0.95

00:30:01.960 There's more to explore here than just like, hmm, a little saucy romp.

00:30:06.280 Also, because we're so used to it now, but at the time, like an object that vibrates would have seemed like kind of magical, right? I mean, the whole concept of electricity would have seemed kind of sci-fi.

00:30:17.960 And so if you have this object, like a little wand that vibrates, I feel like you would sort of use it for everything.

00:30:24.720 Absolutely.

00:30:25.560 So, like, the treatments that vibrators are used for at this point are utterly bananas.

00:30:31.720 It will cure your diabetes.

00:30:33.480 It will cure your laryngitis.

00:30:35.000 It will cure your aching muscles if you're a farm worker or if you work in a factory.

00:30:41.640 They use them on – they recommend using them on people's scalps to reverse hair loss.

00:30:46.520 it's a treatment for obesity sure sure so i couldn't really find anything that definitively

00:30:54.320 sold rachel main's sort of social camouflage model that like everybody knew and they were

00:31:00.260 just buying these right right lieberman argues sure there might have been some social camouflage

00:31:05.280 but there's no evidence that vibrators were being sold as a primarily sexual thing there's no

00:31:11.220 evidence of the everybody knew that it was mostly sexual right what there's evidence of is all of

00:31:17.840 the non-sexual uses oh so here you go i am going to send you oh there that's what we like to see 0.99

00:31:25.980 oh wait what the fuck okay okay so it's an old ad uh-huh the headline on the ad says here's health 0.99

00:31:38.240 and power vim and vigor and then what the fuck there's like a little suitcase yes there's a big 0.99

00:31:46.740 suitcase with like a bunch of tools in it that looks like a fucking time machine it has like 0.98

00:31:51.820 a bunch of little weird knobs and shit and like cranks and then there's a photo of a guy 0.98

00:31:58.600 shirtless holding something to his chest it looks like a maraca it's got like a little tiny handle

00:32:05.700 and a really really big bulbous head and it's metal and it has yeah like the top of it i guess

00:32:11.960 looks kind of like a birdhouse or something then there's a woman who's also holding one on her arm 0.99

00:32:18.300 what the fuck how are people even using this as a sex toy so this is the dispute was like 0.99

00:32:24.320 were these ads undercover ads for sex toys or were they really being marketed for all of these 0.99

00:32:32.780 purposes, like treatment of diabetes or gout or, you know, hair loss or whatever. And this is the

00:32:40.300 thing that where it's like hard to know how they were actually being used because we have all these

00:32:44.040 anti obscenity laws, right? You can't actually advertise them as actually like, let's start

00:32:50.200 there. And then we'll get into this, like how they were marketed business. So around this time is

00:32:55.740 when we have really, really the heyday of obscenity laws. And in the US, there was not anything bigger

00:33:01.420 than the Comstock Act. It sounds like you're familiar with the Comstock Act.

00:33:05.760 Wasn't this the thing that they kind of wanted to get around censorship laws? Like, you know,

00:33:09.960 it's hard to get through the First Amendment, etc. But they made it like a logistical law.

00:33:15.100 They're like, oh, you can publish obscene things. Oh, we're not going to make a law preventing you

00:33:19.060 from publishing obscene things. But we're just going to make a law saying that the post office,

00:33:22.640 which is a government agency, cannot distribute obscene things.

00:33:26.580 You can't send it through the mail, and you can't own it, and you can't give it away, and you can't sell it.

00:33:33.240 Oh, that's more strict than I thought it was.

00:33:36.480 Yeah, totally. So you can basically like you could make it and then destroy it, I guess.

00:33:41.820 Great.

00:33:42.260 So the Comstock Act was signed into law in 1873. It's named for this guy, Anthony Comstock, who was like an extremely staunch sort of Christian who dedicated his life to fighting vice, by which he primarily just meant porn.

00:33:55.000 The Comstock Act made it a criminal offense to send obscene, lewd, lascivious, immoral, or indecent publications in the mail.

00:34:04.860 Totally normal terms with fixed definitions.

00:34:07.480 We all know technically what immoral means.

00:34:10.120 Immoral.

00:34:10.480 We all agree on that.

00:34:12.160 What that means for the research here is that advertising of sex toys and acknowledging that they might be used for sexual pleasure would have been a criminal offense.

00:34:23.740 And this is the thing that because these are our primary sources, we don't really know.

00:34:30.780 What we do know is that these ads appeared in the Sears Roebuck catalog.

00:34:36.260 They appeared in the New York Times.

00:34:38.020 They appeared all over.

00:34:40.580 These were like big deal ads that were kind of everywhere.

00:34:44.320 And they were all making these big claims about the health benefits of using vibrators.

00:34:51.180 I'm not seeing any like coded language in here.

00:34:53.740 Yeah. Oftentimes when you're marketing a product as one thing and you're telling people to use it

00:34:57.500 as another, you'll have these sort of like double entendres or something. This just says vibration

00:35:03.380 is life. In vibration, there exists many of the secrets of life. It just seems like normal

00:35:08.380 wellness claptrap that we read for the show constantly.

00:35:12.240 All the time. Yeah.

00:35:13.080 Over time, we start to get other ads that start to be like more specifically targeting women.

00:35:19.800 So I just sent you one for the Venus Adonis electric normalizer.

00:35:24.860 Ooh, electric normalizer.

00:35:27.020 Oh, it looks like an iron.

00:35:29.020 Uh-huh. 0.87

00:35:29.540 Yeah, it's like a lady doing like fitness-y, like Jane Fonda fitness stuff. 0.99

00:35:33.400 But she's got this little vibrating, yeah, like thing the size of an iron that seems 1.00

00:35:37.460 to be attached to her with some sort of strap.

00:35:38.940 Yeah, so they're marketing it at this point as like pleasurable massage, like relax, have

00:35:44.680 a massage but also specifically quote an enjoyable helpful means to slim trim hips a small waist flat

00:35:52.140 abdomen shapely legs a streamlined figure and physical well-being see people think there's

00:35:57.520 something magical about vibrating this there's no there's no biological reason why an object

00:36:03.200 vibrating would reduce your body fat like it's just completely absurd no it's those big belts

00:36:08.940 that right like from like the 50s where people just get on this sort of like treadmill looking

00:36:13.240 platform and just had like a big rubber belt agitating their middle section. They're like,

00:36:17.180 I'm losing weight all day. Were you like, are you? I think people just think that if something

00:36:21.280 is like, quote unquote, technological, that it just does everything. They're like, oh,

00:36:25.260 it's technology, hips, acne, whatever. Yeah, totally. So vibrators were seen as such a magical

00:36:31.500 sort of thing that they were used in part to sell consumers on the idea of like signing on

00:36:39.420 for sort of like modern electrical appliances broadly.

00:36:43.180 So I'm going to send you a quote

00:36:45.540 from this piece in the conversation,

00:36:46.960 which is just great.

00:36:48.680 It says,

00:36:49.280 For American housewives in the 1930s,

00:36:51.480 the vibrator looked like any other household appliance,

00:36:54.360 a non-sexual new electronic technology

00:36:56.740 that could run on the same universal motor

00:36:58.940 as their kitchen mixers and vacuum cleaners.

00:37:01.420 Before small motors became cheap to produce,

00:37:03.580 manufacturers sold a single motor base

00:37:05.740 with separate attachments

00:37:06.880 for a range of household activities,

00:37:08.780 from sanding wood to drying hair or healing the body with electrical vibrations oh so they had

00:37:14.760 one like leaf blower engine set up and then they could like attach different things to it to like

00:37:21.180 make a meringue or yeah sand their deck whatever they needed it for so lieberman's argument here

00:37:26.360 is you can't really make the claim that these were widely understood to be sexual if there's

00:37:31.220 no evidence that they were widely understood to be sexual at the time right that's a very very

00:37:36.100 very 20th and 21st century lens to put on a 19th century thing.

00:37:42.560 So people were just, they were selling vibrators as just like a vibrating object.

00:37:46.380 It wasn't like wink, wink.

00:37:48.160 Totally.

00:37:48.700 And if there was a wink, wink happening at any point, we don't really have evidence of

00:37:53.500 the wink, wink.

00:37:54.220 Right.

00:37:54.620 One of the things that Lieberman brings up is that you could get things that were billed

00:37:59.440 as rectal attachments.

00:38:01.720 What?

00:38:02.740 Yes.

00:38:03.220 But they were like, it's for medical purposes.

00:38:06.100 Oh, I mean.

00:38:07.660 It's for a cure for X and such condition or for your digestion or for whatever, right?

00:38:12.600 Like for restoring sexual vigor to men.

00:38:15.540 I mean, in a way.

00:38:16.780 Right.

00:38:17.100 That is what it's doing.

00:38:18.040 It is kind of, yeah.

00:38:21.000 So in addition, around this time, part of those like rectal attachments and, you know,

00:38:27.780 essentially like penetrative attachments, right, are being sold for treatment of medical 0.85

00:38:33.300 conditions that were thought to be brought on by too much masturbation they were like you're 1.00

00:38:38.620 masturbating too much you need treatment with a vibrator wait what so put a vibrator up your butt 0.99

00:38:43.740 yeah so basically the belief at this point was that men who masturbated too much quote unquote 0.99

00:38:49.660 were thought to bring on impotence okay for women too much masturbation was believed to bring on

00:38:54.680 hysteria and this was where we get the like masturbation causes blindness stuff so people

00:39:00.980 are like well i gotta do the anti-masturbation thing of using a vibrator i need my sight so this

00:39:07.140 is like how this is being marketed but again it's not necessarily how it's being used right because 0.95

00:39:11.420 the women are surely getting the rectal ones and just like using them non-rectally i presume or

00:39:16.300 using them you know what i mean like yes totally whatever undoubtedly there were people who were

00:39:22.380 using these sexually the question is like how many people the question is when people saw these ads

00:39:27.840 Did they understand them to be coded in some way or to be right?

00:39:32.280 Like, was this like an open secret?

00:39:33.920 I guess is the question.

00:39:35.200 So what happens after Lieberman's article comes out and she's like debunked the heck

00:39:39.800 out of Rachel Maines?

00:39:41.480 Like what happens?

00:39:42.840 So this is where it gets really fun and fascinating to me, especially on the heels of like our

00:39:48.460 episode, I don't know, a month ago about Walter Willett and Catherine Flegel.

00:39:52.260 if we had a walter wellett in this situation what we would have is an astonishing blow up right

00:40:01.020 yeah and essentially what happens with this one is a reporter goes to rachel mainz

00:40:05.200 and is like hey this other historian says your work is not as factually sound as you think it

00:40:12.060 is and rachel mainz just responds with like yeah it's like totally appropriate and normal for other

00:40:17.720 scholars to look into scholars work and especially like younger scholars to question the work of

00:40:22.400 older scholars like that's good and we don't have to agree we love to see it we love to see it although

00:40:26.880 it's nice that they're nice to each other but also like there's a pretty large factual claim here

00:40:32.240 that i feel like needs to be addressed yep sure does because like for all we know lieberman is

00:40:36.820 lying all we have is the opinion about the contents of primary sources from two different people

00:40:42.340 that's exactly right so like does anybody go back and check not to my knowledge like not to my

00:40:47.080 knowledge have there been further checks on like okay what does it actually say okay Lieberman

00:40:52.540 writes this big paper that is like the big problem here is that nobody fact-checked it so I fact-checked

00:40:58.660 it and then it comes out and people are like good point and then nobody fact checks yeah I know and

00:41:02.820 then and then nobody seems to like do anything like it it doesn't seem like there's like then

00:41:07.600 an epilogue where like something happens as a result of that Lieberman gets some op-eds in

00:41:12.300 some high profile papers she gets an op-ed in the new york times talking about like this is

00:41:16.720 maybe a myth she gets some sort of popular media placed elsewhere so there are little ripples but 0.72

00:41:22.840 nothing makes it as far as the fucking maggie gyllenhaal movie right of course it's a tricky

00:41:28.000 thing i don't want to like cast aspersions on main's intentions or how she got to where she 0.74

00:41:33.240 was going or any of that kind of stuff but it is really really hard to figure out how

00:41:38.320 one historian could look at a primary source and go, aha, doctors invented vibrators to use

00:41:47.060 on women who were hysterical and have another historian look at the same primary source and go,

00:41:54.000 that's not there. It's really hard to get to how this happens other than I found a narrative

00:42:01.000 and then I figured out how to make that narrative true.

00:42:04.140 Right. Or you you look through these primary sources and you're like, oh, under this one reading, they could have meant this or something.

00:42:11.600 Right.

00:42:11.840 But you don't realize that you're looking for a story you're already telling yourself.

00:42:15.580 Yeah. It feels so clear to me that this comes from the like the blanks that are getting filled in here are getting filled in by a boomer white woman. 0.68

00:42:24.440 OK.

00:42:24.620 There's stuff about this that is sort of like a very generational view on sexuality, right?

00:42:30.880 Which was just sort of like, women knew, women's sexual pleasure transcends any sort of timeline.

00:42:36.940 It's like a very free love kind of argument, right?

00:42:39.840 And the Lieberman book then feels much more like a millennial take on it, which is like,

00:42:44.480 wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, it's more complicated than that.

00:42:46.520 I don't know what it is, but I don't think it's this.

00:42:48.840 Right.

00:42:49.120 Which also feels like a very millennial critique.

00:42:51.120 Wait, wait, wait, this doesn't feel right.

00:42:52.400 Yeah.

00:42:52.780 I don't know what the right thing is, but this isn't it.

00:42:55.340 Hang on.

00:42:55.560 Slow down, mom.

00:42:56.800 Yeah.

00:42:57.340 Absolutely.

00:42:58.560 It also feels to me like it's important that Lieberman is like a social researcher and

00:43:06.060 Mainz is a technology researcher.

00:43:08.960 Absolutely.

00:43:09.600 I've come across this as well, that when you're somebody who's looking at the technology

00:43:13.540 first, it creates these kind of blind spots where it's like you make the technology more

00:43:18.100 important potentially than it was at the time or more exotic than it was at the time.

00:43:21.820 and you strip away all the ways in which like technology always fits into existing social

00:43:26.960 structures and social understandings and just like normal, like people being people stuff.

00:43:32.300 Part of the story that we're talking about today is the problem with primary sources,

00:43:35.520 right? And the sort of shortcomings of primary sources. And it's worth noting that the overwhelming

00:43:40.740 plurality of primary sources that we do have are about really class privileged white women who are

00:43:46.720 ostensibly straight people and cis people, right? That's who would have had the income to hire a 1.00

00:43:51.500 doctor. That's who would have been able not to work and to have a husband sort of care for them 1.00

00:43:57.180 and not be expected to sort of do any other jobs, right? That's who we're talking about here,

00:44:01.980 because that's who we've got information on. Right. And that's, that's what gets saved

00:44:06.340 in history is rich ladies laudanum diaries. It's not, you know, random factory workers writing 1.00

00:44:13.160 down their thoughts at the end of a day, or I mean, it's also in a in a society that doesn't

00:44:17.980 also have like mass literacy either, right? Or literacy is something that only like

00:44:21.860 the wealthiest and most educated 10% of the population has. All of your primary sources,

00:44:27.120 by definition, are going to be coming from like a very unrepresentative part of the population.

00:44:30.960 Like this is just a problem with historical research writ large.

00:44:34.220 Yeah. Who has the resources to publish? Who has the resources to create and make ads,

00:44:40.600 right? And sort of publish ads. The sort of primary sources are marketing.

00:44:44.820 Right.

00:44:45.300 they're marketing to people with disposable incomes.

00:44:47.860 Yeah. I mean, of course, historians know all this, but it's easy to then look back in history

00:44:52.040 and say, oh, based on all these sources, this is what society was like. And it's actually like,

00:44:55.800 no, this is what like the people who were buying stuff, society was like.

00:44:59.540 This is what society was like for the people who we let write stuff down.

00:45:02.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:03.640 So here's the other thing that influences the research here. In addition to these obscenity

00:45:09.080 laws, both of these scholars have talked about the contemporary constraints on their work.

00:45:16.500 And Rachel Maines actually says very publicly that she struggled to get a publisher for her

00:45:22.840 book. She struggled to keep her job, that she was told by her university that they were afraid that

00:45:29.020 alumni would stop donating if they found out that this was a topic of scholarship. This is in 2001.

00:45:34.000 Oh, wow.

00:45:35.760 Uh-huh. And she is very straightforwardly like, those messages were delivered by men with more institutional power than me. And I believe that they experienced my work as an implied criticism.

00:45:48.020 There is such a deep discomfort, particularly amongst straight men, about talking about women's sexual pleasure or the sexual pleasure of like anybody who's not also a straight dude.

00:45:58.440 Everything is the controversy about WAP this summer. Everything is a version of that.

00:46:05.400 Of just like a woman is talking about how much he likes having sex. 0.95

00:46:08.300 All of these dudes are Ben Shapiro. Yes. 0.99

00:46:13.100 The last thing I would say on this topic, which is just like a little coda,

00:46:17.760 is the Comstock Act has been, you know, dismantled pretty much.

00:46:22.240 But all of those, that whole network of local obscenity laws still remains in place in lots of places, right?

00:46:30.680 Oh, yeah?

00:46:31.340 One of the big cases just after this Rachel Mayne's book was released in 2003 in Cleburne, Texas, a woman was arrested for selling sex toys to a couple looking for a marital aid.

00:46:44.760 That couple turned out to be undercover police officers.

00:46:48.620 The use of cops time.

00:46:51.280 it's astonishing no why it's astonishing they end up dropping the charges against her okay good

00:47:00.800 because if she was found innocent of these charges or she decided to appeal that could lead to the

00:47:06.420 repeal of the texas law oh so you wanted to keep the law so you keep threatening people with it

00:47:11.360 and get them to plea deal out yes great great work that's part of the reason why sex toys are

00:47:18.860 still marketed like if you go into a cvs or a walgreens you'll see all these things are like

00:47:23.200 massagers and like novelty items and like marital aids because there are still plenty of markets

00:47:29.940 where you actually can't sell something that is explicitly marketed as a sex toy i mean i guess

00:47:37.040 it's a lot it's similar to the comstock laws in that you're casting the law as broadly as possible

00:47:41.480 and then that gives you the discretion to basically arrest and harass anybody that you don't like

00:47:46.760 Yeah, I mean, I think like part of what I find so interesting about this story is that it really ties together a bunch of stuff that we talk about pretty frequently, right? Which is like, you decide on an outgroup, you reverse engineer a diagnosis to reinforce that outgroup status. You sort of put all these constraints on the treatments or access that that outgroup has to sort of rectifying the thing that you have decided is wrong with them. And normally, we're talking about bias in interpreting data.

00:48:15.020 in this case the way that bias shows up is straight up in the sources that we have access to

00:48:22.340 which is why i preemptively am jealous of the historians of the deep future which will have

00:48:26.700 tumblr to look back on the smartest thoughts i really want you to get in a time machine hg wells

00:48:33.660 style and go like 50 years into the future and be like i'm a historian of beauty youtubers

00:48:39.260 that's kind of what I'm doing at this point in my career

00:48:43.380 I'm the foremost historian on Tati Westbrook

00:48:46.420 ask me an AMA

00:49:09.260 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - November 30, 2021

Vibrators

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