History of Orgasm: Part 3: Masturbation

For part 1 in this series: http://femgasmproject.blogspot.com/2014/11/history-of-technology-and-female-orgasm.html
For part 2 in this series: http://femgasmproject.blogspot.com/2014/11/history-of-orgasm-part-2-hysteria.html.

    I'm continuing my multi-part review and summary of Rachel P. Maines' oft-cited book, The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria", the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, published in 1998, by the John Hopkins University Press, this time turning the third section of her book, entitled, "My God, What Does She Want?". (A clear reference to Freud's infamous line.) As this section is relatively short, and quite repetitive, mostly going over what was already discussed or implied in previous sections, this will be a relatively short summary. There are some new (if disorganized) facts about the way doctors viewed sexuality, and I'll be listing them here, but the sub-section that does introduce new material in a coherent way, is focused on masturbation, and is very interesting! So I'll spend some time on that.

First, some quick  facts, before I turn to masturbation:

-She reminds us that doctors have historically confused women's reported satisfaction or enjoyment of sex- or even just their willingness to participate in heterosexual sexual relations- with experiencing orgasm, and thus often overestimated women's sexual enjoyment. (51). (This probably comes as no surprise to any woman anywhere.)

-Generally, doctors who did notice that few women orgasmed via intercourse,  believed that most women were incapable of true sexual feeling, and did not care to investigate further. William Hammond in 1887 wrote,  for example, that even 10% of all women orgasmed. Curiously, in ancient times, there was debate about whether women had to orgasm in order to conceive, which means they were aware women (and most women at that, if all mothers must have orgasmed, according to that logic), were capable of orgasm. Perhaps they, like the doctors mentioned in the above fact, equated reported satisfaction with orgasm? In the contemporary period, it was clearly believed that orgasm was unnecessary and even impossible or unlikely in women, and that was largely used as an excuse to not try at all.  (51, 61)

-In Tudor and Stuart England, many works do discuss the clitoris as being very important, which shows that history is not just a single forward progression. Apparently, the clitoris was already discovered, and then buried again. By the late nineteenth century, doctors were giving dire warnings about anyone, male or female, who dared to touch a clitoris. (52, 55)

- In the 1980s, some interesting observations were made about a study of women's orgasms, where masturbation was shown to be overwhelmingly a women's best bet at orgasm.  Women seemed defensive about their ability to orgasm during intercourse and their ability to be pleased in heterosexual intercourse. 80% were not disappointed if they didn't orgasm during sex, 75% felt that their partner's pleasure was more important. 54% said that they happy with sex, with our without orgasm. (64).

Now, about masturbation:

   Masturbation was generally discouraged not only for women, but for men as well (54).

In both sexes it was believed to cause all kinds of diseases and disorders, and it was far from encouraged, but most of the literature and ire and punishment was directed at masturbation in women (56). It was believed that masturbation caused "marital aversion" in women, especially by doctors who were deeply uncomfortable because they thought that women masturbated because they couldn't be properly satisfied through traditional intercourse (56). They tended to diagnose any woman suffering from physical or mental illness with either hysteria, or with a sort of karmic punishment for not only drinking alcohol or caffeine, wearing corsets, or reading "French novels", but especially for masturbation or sexual thought (57). Generally, it was believed (and discussed with panic) that anything that seemed to point into the vagina, from speculums to bikes, which demonstrated not only male doctors' fear and revulsion towards women masturbating, but also their belief, by the nineteenth century, that normal woman really were supposed to get pleasure from things going inside the vagina, not clitoral stimulation (58-59). Maines makes an interesting note here about the present day (or, the late 90s, when this was published): 97% of men and 76% of women reported that they masturbated in a 90s study, but less than 20% of that 76% said that they often used dildos, or any other masturbatory tool that went inside the vagina (59). This is especially interesting, because I observe that now, on the rare occasions in which we ever do talk publically about women masturbating, it's always with dildos, or dildo-like devices. We don't talk about women rubbing their vulvas, or anything like that, which at least in the 90s, was the more common form of masturbation. I don't think this is unrelated to the long-standing belief that women were satisfied with traditional intercourse, and the shaming of clitoral simulation.