Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I have come to realise that, above all, the vibrator story reflects men's changing attitudes towards women.

It starts hysterically with “womb furie”. Hippocrates thought the womb wasn't a fixed item but wandered about the body looking for trouble... From earliest times there was a recognised women's complaint characterised by nervousness, fluid retention, insomnia and lack of appetite. Hippocrates thought that a blockage in the womb was the cause of it, hence it was called hysteria from the Greek for womb (hysteros). Galen, a Greek physician, claimed it was caused by sexual deprivation, particularly in passionate women, and was noted in nuns, virgins, widows and occasionally in married women whose husbands were not up to the job.

Massage to “paroxysm” was the ticket. And masturbation (by either sex) was regarded as wrong. It was not only a moral affront but something that was thought of as constitutionally dangerous, enfeebling mind and body. “Women [with hysteria] should not resort to rubbing,” said Avicenna, the Muslim scholar and founder of early modern medicine. It was, he advised, “a man's job, suitable only for husbands and doctors”...

These devices were operated by doctors, which medicalised the process and made it entirely proper. But more importantly, the medical paradigm for millennia had been that women's sexual pleasure involves penetration. A bit of rubbing by a doctor was perfectly acceptable because it didn't involve putting anything in the vagina. In fact, there was far fiercer controversy when the speculum (a metal device that is put into the vagina to allow a clear view of the neck of the womb) was introduced. The other point that is often raised is why, if paroxysm was the sovereign cure for hysteria, women were not taught how to masturbate and cure themselves.

In the early 20th century, everything in the garden was rosy until electrification made vibrators available in the home. They were, incidentally, electrified ten years before either the washing machine or Hoover. The first home machines were awesomely large, with a big box attached to the mains. One imagines that they were also awesomely noisy. But then they were miniaturised (relatively speaking). Hand-cranked versions became available, which presumably must have been distressingly prone to running out of power long before satisfaction had been achieved...

The product leaflets of these machines claimed they cured not just hysteria but also deafness, polio and impotence... Good Housekeeping ran a “tried and tested” on vibrators in 1909, claiming they brought a glow to the face.