I have finally been able to finish this blog, which my loyal followers (two friends) have been patiently waiting for. Possibly one of the most obvious items we need to investigate, ladies and gentlemen; I present to you the history of the vibrator.
Although not as related as pop culture would have us believe, the history of the vibrator is directly related to the history of the female orgasm. Let’s put this aside. Cleopatra didn’t use a pumpkin full of bees as a vibrator. There is no archaeological or written evidence for this at all, and the first time anyone mentioned the topic was in 1992, in Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sexual Practices. Why Brenda thought it would be fun to include this, citing literally zero sources, is an absolute mystery to me. Cleo had enough rumors about her sex life during her lifetime because Rome couldn’t handle her like the bad-ass, multilingual political boss she was, so people began to conceive that she was a scandalously beautiful seductress to downplay her success as a leader. There were no pumpkins or an angry swarm of bees. (Just thinking about the logistics of how you could fill a pumpkin with live bees boggles my mind.)
The next most common theory is that the vibrator was made by doctors during the industrial revolution to treat “female hysteria.” This one is at least a little more believable than pumpkin, but not as common as popular culture would suggest. Female hysteria is a “disease” that doctors have been blaming on women’s behavior since at least the 4th or 5th century BC. Ancient Greek doctors and philosophers thought that the uterus was more or less its own creature inside the female body, and that it wandered around the rest of the body causing chaos whenever it failed in its duty to bear children. The word hysteria is literally derived from the ancient Greek word for womb for this very reason.
The actual details of hysteria changed greatly, as did the treatments. The best I can explain is that women were thought to retain unpleasant fluids that accumulated in the uterus and had to be removed through vigorous sexual intercourse, so poor women who were not married: such as nuns, widows or spinsters, were in a bind. They often suffered from melancholy, hysteria and general malaise due to lack of D. (unfortunately: mood).
The doctor Abraham Zacuto writes in his Praxis Medica Admiranda of 1637:**
‘Because of the retention of the sexual fluid, the heart and the surrounding areas become enveloped in a morbid and moist exudation: this is especially true in the case of the most lascivious women, inclined to venerity, passionate women and more eager to experience physical pleasure; if she is of this type, she can never be relieved by any help except that of her parents, who are advised to find her a husband. Once this was done, the man’s strong and vigorous intercourse relieved the frenzy.
Thus, centuries of the most educated Western minds came together, after much deliberation, to determine that women are happiest when they are sexually satisfied. Good job guys. But move on to artificial tools that achieve this satisfaction (possibly better than the average lifelong husband). Joseph Mortimer Granville is credited with being the inventor of the vibrator, as he patented the first electronic vibrator in the late 1880s. Popular culture likes to claim that they were intended to induce a “hysterical paroxysm” (orgasm) in women with hysteria. An entire movie was dedicated to this idea. Hysteria (2011) stars Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal (I have written a full review on this movie, check it out here.)
A screenshot from the film, of Hugh Dancy testing the new device with a lovely volunteer (that should be me).
Granville hammer, circa 1880
Like many, I was happy to accept this version of historical events, it is interesting and a little scandalous, it is a real hoot to mention it at parties. However, Granville wasn’t usually out there making women rack their brains for the sake of their health (at least not professionally, I have no idea what he did in his private life). Granville’s device, known colloquially as Granville’s Hammer, was designed for men and their muscle pain. It was remarkably similar to the modern sports massage gun. Over the next few decades, various personal massage devices began to appear in catalogs; for every function and for every member of the family. You could get a vibrating facial massager that claims to keep you young and beautiful. You could get a finger-shaped gum massager that was intended to be the next big thing in dentistry, or a multi-use vibrating massager shared as a family.
Vibra-finger. around 1950
American Vibrator Co., 1906
Now here’s where it gets a little complicated. You can still buy vibrating “face” massagers at places like Kmart, and I know plenty of people who have gone biblical with an electric toothbrush. Nowadays people are less shy than before when it comes to talking about pleasure, and people will admit that they do not use these items exactly according to the manufacturer’s instructions. So it’s not a stretch to imagine that people in the past also did this with their variety of buzzing devices and just didn’t talk about it or write about it. However, this leaves us in a bind when we try to think about history, as we have little to no actual evidence that people were using them for their own pleasure. Just because I would do itIt doesn’t mean that Ethel, the housewife, would do it when her husband was at work.
Oster Massage Instrument, LIFE, November 20, 1950. Let it be true, there is no SFW purpose for this.
We finally see vibrators used loudly and proudly for female pleasure in New York in the 1970s. As part of the Women’s Liberation Movement, certified ICON Betty Dodson, began teaching “BodySex” workshops, which taught women how to embrace their own sexuality and how to achieve orgasm. Betty provided the workshop participants with Hitachi Magic Wand body massagers (which at the time were marketed aimed at men and their sore muscles – where had we heard that before?) and showed them exactly where to place them and what to do to get to the finish line, which seriously changed the lives of these women, as up until that point the female orgasm was not something many believed was possible, let alone experienced.
Betty Dodson, left, at a 1973 sexuality lecture with a variety of sex toys SCHLESINGER LIBRARY/RADCLIFFE INSTITUTE/HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Sales of Hitachi massage wands, on a completely unrelated note, began to skyrocket after word spread about Ms. Dodson and her more creative way of using them. This scandalized the brand a bit, which led them to quickly remove the product from the shelves. A few years later they would re-release the wands without the Hitachi company name. The original magic wands They are still staples of adult toy collections and are much more versatile than they were in the ’70s. with mini and wireless versions available. I will also say that they work very well as a back and neck massager. I use our demo model on my back when I’m sitting in front of the computer researching these blogs too much. We love a tool with multiple uses.
Vibrating facial massage, McClure’s, April 1899.
Overall, it is difficult to define the history of vibrators used specifically for sexual gratification. The shame and mystery surrounding women’s pleasure have robbed modern scholars of useful sources, proving once again that this stigma is nonsense because, damn it, I want to know how our grandmothers and great-grandmothers fared!
Funtasia Sexpert and proud owner of the “vibrating facial massager”
Verin Sampson
Sources
**this is a translation found in Rachel Maines, (1999). The technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria’, the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. The original text is all in Latin.
https://magicwandoriginal.com/about/
James, EL (2023) Kinky History: The stories of our intimate lives, past and present. North Sydney, New South Wales: Pantera Press.