Toys Vs Boys?

The Battle that Rages Only in the Mind of Heterosexual Men

Part one

Where do Vibrators come from ?

This may shock you but not to long ago I was one of the many women who did not masturbate, especially not with any kind of device or apparatus to assist me.  Sometimes it’s little hard for me to be so open about self-pleasure.   One of those moments came up recently when I was showing a dear friend my blog for the first time.

This young man is very sharp, liberal minded and open in most regards to sexuality. One of the few fellows that treated me just as well after he found out I was a dancer as he did before he knew.  I was showing him some of my writing on his Black Berry and the topic of sex toys came up.  He said very seriously “No girl of mine is going to be using a vibrator”

I was shocked, here is this handsome fellow with nothing to worry about in the cock department stating that the use of sex toys was a red flag, and something simply not to be done in a relationship.   So much for the sexual revolution.

What shocked me even more that in the weeks to follow as I investigated more into heterosexual male apprehension with female pleasure objects was just how many men agreed with my friend.

It seems easy to say this is the knee jerk reactions of men who lack confidence but it seemed a bit deeper than that.  Many of the men I spoke to seemed to have a lot of faith in their sexual prowess but felt like there was something other-worldly, deviant and just wrong with female sex toys.  Something she would get addicted to, rob her of her ability to enjoy a man, numb her.

This made a lot of sense to me, I mean look how the world views male sex toys.  The mere mention of a fleshlight  is a queue for a smirk.  While most women don’t think much of learning their friend owns a vibrator, those same women would shun a suitor that owned a RealTouch and especially a Real Doll.

One man I spoke with via twitter felt it was “unfair” because women did not have to feel ashamed of having a sex toy and when further to say that  “Why would a woman need a toy if they have a man that can and is pleasing them? Is it a replacement? Wheres mines?”

I think its pretty ironic that men are so vocally against women’s sex toys, if it weren’t for patriarchy insisting that women were just so gosh darn inferior sex toys as we know them would never have been invented.

While there are thousands of documented cases of phallus toys being found from ancient societies today’s most popular toy, the vibrator owes its creation to rampant sexism.

This is how they got down during the Wang Dynasty

Mara Hvistendahl writes in Scientific American in 2009 that, “Sex Toys started off as medical devices for treating hysteria in women, becoming a substitute for manual stimulation by physicians.”   Basically when a woman was reacting to being treated like a child well into adulthood, putting up with the general bullshit of men or just not acting chipper enough when she was barefoot and preggo doctors would diagnose her with Hysteria.  Taken from the Greek root work for uterus, Hysteria was a disorder that women would go to the doctor to treat. The cure for the Hysteria blues? A good ol’ nut. Seriously, clitoral orgasms were prescribed and administered by a medical professional or midwife.

“Akward….”

Of course this is pre Frued and Kinsey so what they actually prescribed was a “paroxysm” not an orgasm. The clitoris was surprisingly not linked to sexual activity in the ye olde medical community.

Since no one in the Victorian Era had their shit together once electronic massagers were invented doctors and spas started using them to get the job done. I guess Victorian doctors were to busy applying leaches to finger bang depressed housewives.  They went the electronic method around 1880 when Joseph Mortimer Granville introduced a patented popular model.

And Boy was it popular, Hvistendahl writes

“The number of health spas offering vibration therapy multiplied, and the service was so popular vibrator manufacturers warned doctors not to overdo it with the modern appliance: if they met relentless patient demand, even mechanical vibration could be tiring. By the turn of the century needlework catalogues advertised models for women who wanted to try the treatment at home, making the vibrator the fifth electric appliance to arrive in the home–after the sewing machine, the fan, the teakettle and the toaster.”

Is there anything Hamilton Beach DOESN’T make??

Interestingly enough when Freud “discovered” the clitoral orgasm in the 1920’s the medical use of vibrators waned and by 1952 the American Psychiatrics Association ceased to recognize Hysteria as a valid mental disorder.

So why did the male approval of female vibrators go the way of hysteria?

That could be tied to traditional views on male masturbation  which I’ll get into when I get part two of Toys vs Boys : Who’s Pussy is This?

Citation : VIBRATOR. By: Hvistendahl, Mara, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2009, Vol. 301, Issue 3