History of Technology and the Female Orgasm: Part 1

           This week, I read the first section- entitled “A Job Nobody Wanted”, with the “job” being bringing women to orgasm- of technology historian Rachel Maines’ oft-cited monograph, The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria’, Vibrators, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. In this section, she discusses how ‘hysteria’ was defined, how doctors attempted to ‘treat’ it, and how these methods of ‘treatment’ were considered moral and acceptable in the nineteenth century, and how they fell out of favor.

          Though she begins with a discussion of treatment, in the interests of clarity and organization, I’ll first briefly summarize how she defined “hysteria”, which was estimated, at the time, to inflict approximately 75% of women in early modern England and America (5).  The symptoms were vague, and according to Maines, also general symptoms of “chronic arousal”: “anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness, erotic fantasy, sensation of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema, and vaginal lubrication”. (8). She is careful to emphasize that, with symptoms this vague, the women diagnosed with “hysteria”, were not necessarily sexually deprived, and could have been diagnosed as "hysterical" for any number of reasons, which I think is an important point, that I hope she will delve into in greater detail as the book goes on. (How many depressed, even suicidal, women, or women legitimately anguished over their political or social situation, or women with other medical or psychological problems, were simply called ‘hysterical’ and shoved out of the view?)  Maines asserts, despite this, that the high percentage of women who could be classified as ‘hysterical’ in the early modern period, is the result of the unsatisfying nature of sex for women, and the forbidding of masturbation (5). (Due to the many reasons a woman could be diagnosed with “hysteria”, given that women and women’s despair and anxiety were not taken seriously in general, I’m not sure this can actually be substantiated.)

         In the pre-Freudian era, doctors assumed this resulted, not because of despair or sexual desire, but because the apparently inflamed and disconnected uterus was literally suffocating the woman,  and needed to be brought back into its proper place (8). In contrast, psychologists the Freudian era actually projected sexual desires onto women, believing that the latent cause of their “hysteria” were childhood experiences, which caused an “arrested” or “juvenile” female sexuality (9). “Real” (truly mature, adult) women should, according to Freud, be able to achieve orgasm through penetration, despite the fact that we now know that only 50-70% percent of women can (5, 9).  She reminds us that, at least until the 1970s, doctors regularly promised men whose wives or girlfriends did not orgasm, that it was nothing they did, but that instead, it was the woman who was “flawed” or had something physically wrong, instead of suggesting that, perhaps, she just simply couldn’t be pleased via penetration alone (6).
  

                                                  Sigmund Freud, biography.com. 
 It was Freud’s understanding that “hysteria” and its treatments were sexual in nature  (perhaps accidental, since those of us who have read Freud, know that there was little he did not consider sexual),  that helped to end the traditional discussion and treatment of the “disease”, according to Maines. (10). Prior to that, doctors and psychologists did not understand “hysteria” as sexual, and they were able to insist that their treatments were similarly clinical.  Instead, they viewed it as women’s desperate need for child- a desire for a baby, not sexual release (8). This belief- the “androcentric model of sexuality” as Maines defines it- only recognized as sexual an act in which penetration was involved, and the man orgasmed (5). Anything else, was not considered sexual at all, which allowed doctors to get away with doing quite a lot to women, given that they didn’t even recognize that the orgasms that were produced as a result of their treatments were even orgasms.
 19th century "vibrator", from rendip.com. 

     Some of the treatments she discussed, prior to the invention of the vibrator, include “vaginal massage” with “one finger in the vagina” by midwives, or very reluctant doctors or husbands, who were desperate for any other treatment given the time (a full ten minutes!)  and skill “vaginal massage with one finger in the vagina” took, and turned to swings and vigorous horseback and carriage riding to try to give women “release”, and push her uterus back into place, so it would stop “suffocating” the woman (1, 8). Masturbation was not suggested (7).  Thus, as she argues, pleasuring women was a “job nobody wanted”. A “mechanical device”- what became the vibrator- was invented not because it was more helpful to woman, but because it allowed doctors to get the “job” done and send the women on their way quickly, and without needing to develop any skills (1, 11). For a great deal of money, women diagnosed with hysteria, up until the 1920s when erotic films depicting early vibrators appeared- making it undeniable that this was sexual-could go to a doctor to be subjected to vaginal hydrotherapy or a few minutes with a vibrator (10-13). Of course, she had to be observed as to not “over indulge” (15). 

       She ends this section with the note that after they were exposed as sexual, vibrators disappeared from view until the 1960s, when they began to be advertised as the masturbation aids for women that we see them as today (20). She suggests, then, that women inherited “the job that nobody wanted”. (20). It’s an interesting idea- that instead of men developing the skills to learn to please women, women instead sort of “gave up” and decided to do the job themselves, via vibrator, an object invented not because women enjoyed it more than manual masturbation, but because it took less time and effort. Most women I know who masturbate use a vibrator, and not their own hands.  Is it because we prefer the efficiency of the vibrator, or the feel of it, or because we don’t enough experience with our bodies (and don’t want, or are not able, to gain that experience) to successfully please ourselves without it?  These are questions that I think should be discussed- not in an academic work, necessarily, but with each other. 

            Vibrator advertisement, probably from the 1960s, from bytesdaily.blogspot.com. 

   Another question that I hope Maines discusses, is the extent to which orgasm should actually be viewed as the paramount of women’s sexual pleasure- is the orgasm actually the most important thing- the end-all-be-all of a sexual encounter- or do we just think it is, because that’s how men have historically treated it as? Is the emphasis on the orgasm at the exclusion of all else also an ‘androcentric model of sexuality”? I also hope that later chapters acknowledge the existence of women who are not straight or cis, because that has not happened so far. She does acknowledge that the unfortunate reality is that few lower class women, or women of color, could have afforded medical care for “hysteria” or kept records of their sexuality in general, so the information she has really only applies to wealthy white women in England and America, and she is careful not to generalize, or to assume that her findings reflect the experiences of all women everywhere (10). This is too bad (although very understandable, given the sources available), as I would be interested in knowing what the differences in sexual expectations and experiences were between the women of the bourgeoisie and the working classes.