The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction

Anyone who reads social histories, biographies of Victorian women or historical fiction must eventually ask this question, "What the heck is neurasthenia and how come nobody ever gets it anymore?" The plague of wealthy Victorian women simply disappeared without a trace in the 1920s. Why? Finally -- here's your answer.

This book is indeed a hoot. The idea that early 20th century medical doctors could not tell that they were stimulating their patients to orgasm is astonishing, until the reader progresses through more of the book. The book is not about conception--it's about female orgasm, which is not directly related to conception (and can be easily achieved with no penetration at all). The androcentric bias the author mentions pertains, for example, to the writers of sex manuals in past decades who counseled men not to bother bringing their partners to orgasm, and counseled women not to demand orgasm, because concentrating on "her pleasure" (as the condom boxes say) can be distracting for the male partner. THAT advice is androcentric, and a major point of this book.

There was an irony and sadness to the truth that in the face of immense male denial of women's actual sexual physical workings in intimate relationships and in male psychological advice, there was this actual historical presence of awareness by male physicians of how our bodies work, albeit at such an unintimate distance it almost can't count as awareness. It was as if our bodies were like machines.Great research. Essentail reading for everyone.

* *The dustjacket of Rachel P. Maines's new book, THE TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM: "HYSTERIA", THE VIBRATOR & SEXUAL SATISFACTION, reads as follows: -*-*- From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging "hysterical" female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians. Hysteria...was thought to be the consequence of sexual deprivation. Doctors performed the "routine chore" of relieving hysterical patients' symptoms with manual genital massage until the woman reached orgasm, or as it was known under clinical conditions, the "hysterical paroxysm". The vibrator first emerged as an electromechanical medical instrument in direct response to demand from physicians who, far from enjoying the implementation of pelvic massage, sought every opportunity to substitute the services of midwives and, later, the efficiency of mechanical devices... Invented in the late 1880s by a British physician, the vibrator was popular with turn-of-the-century doctors as a quick, efficient cure for hysteria which neither fatigued the therapist nor demanded skills which were difficult to acquire... Hysterical women presented a large and lucratve clientele for doctors, and vibrators reduced, from about one hour to ten minutes, the time required for a physician to produce results, significantly increasing the number of patients he could treat in the course of a single workday. These women were ideal patients in that they never recovered nor died from their condition but continued to require regular medical "treatment". -*-*--0-0-0-0-That male doctors were freely encouraged to perform sexual acts upon female patients is startling when compared to today's more regulated climate, and it inspires these observations:* The vibrator was not an amorous invention - no Cupid's dart - but a labour-saving clinical instrument to substitute for undesirable professional tedium the more desirable swellings of the wallet. Improved productivity is good for business.* Doctors were well-rewarded, respectable gigolos, weary as whores of the endless daily parade of hungry genitals and their distressed owners. Today, they would go to jail.* Activities that otherwise would be considered odd, transgressive, or exciting are permitted when they can be defined as, or safely packaged within, "medicine" or "science", controlled and validated by bourgeois professionals. This can be liberating as well as oppressive: clinical authority can licence the forbidden while defending the status quo, such as relations between the sexes. The clinic is where we pay strangers to intrude intimately into all our velvet cavities - wearing latex - bringing fresh meaning to the phrase, "the doctor is in". Quickly nurse, the proctoscope!* The doctor-patient relationship oppressed both parties yet remains charged with voyeurist

"The Technology of Orgasm" is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Maines' ostensible purpose is an examination of the history of vibrators and other mechanical means to induce female orgasms. This subject is covered in depth and apparent thoroughness, but her real focus is "androcentric" definitions of female sexuality and their cultural and technological repercussions.In witty and humorous language, demonstrating that Maines has mastered post-modernism and even found a use for it, she lampoons men's refusal to recognize that for most women, insertion of a male penis into the vagina followed by a male orgasm is not necessarily a complete sexual experience. In droll tones, Maines discusses the long-held male claim, supported by what was called science, that if a woman did not achieve an orgasm from sexual penetration by a male, she was not "normal," although some 80% or more of women were thus "abnormal." And never mind that 80% of a population cannot, by definition, be abnormal. Maines is a good historian, and she recounts the historical medicalization of female orgasm, terming its inducement "the job nobody wanted." For hundreds of years, physicians or midwives were paid to stimulate manually the clitoris of women suffering from "hysteria" and thereby to bring about a therapeutic paroxism. Since this was a time-consuming task, doctors turned to hydrotherapy and then to electric powered vibrators to shorten the time necessary to induce such relief on each patient. HMOs would be proud.This is a book on a serious topic in western cultural history that could have been androphobic or, worse, terribly dull. Instead,it charms and educates with wit and erudition. I hated to see it end.