The origins of this feminist work lie in the author's discovery of turn-of-the-century advertisements of vibrators as therapeutic appliances, designed to save doctors time and labor. What?!
Reclaiming the original definition of hysteria from Freudian reinterpretation, Maines shows that in the Western medical tradition, manually massaging female genitalia to orgasm was an accepted practice for treating 'womb disease.' This was accepted as a legitimate condition and treatment, the author argues, because of the prevailing androcentric model of sexuality which led women's sexual dissatisfaction to be perceived as a disease.
It's a somewhat familiar argument, but accentuated here by the early history of electromechanical vibrators and hydrotherapy as technological advances in treatment. Beyond effectively demonstrating how entrenched society is in the (heterosexual) norm of sex as penetration to male orgasm as the ultimate sexual thrill, there's no shortcut offered here for moving towards a model of orgasmic mutuality. But an interesting work in women's studies/history of science and medical thought nonetheless.
Reclaiming the original definition of hysteria from Freudian reinterpretation, Maines shows that in the Western medical tradition, manually massaging female genitalia to orgasm was an accepted practice for treating 'womb disease.' This was accepted as a legitimate condition and treatment, the author argues, because of the prevailing androcentric model of sexuality which led women's sexual dissatisfaction to be perceived as a disease.
It's a somewhat familiar argument, but accentuated here by the early history of electromechanical vibrators and hydrotherapy as technological advances in treatment. Beyond effectively demonstrating how entrenched society is in the (heterosexual) norm of sex as penetration to male orgasm as the ultimate sexual thrill, there's no shortcut offered here for moving towards a model of orgasmic mutuality. But an interesting work in women's studies/history of science and medical thought nonetheless.
