Vibrators have come a long way from when the types of vibrating sex toys for women available were Classical Era contraptions involving carts driven over rough stone roads and crude planks swung back and forth to induce vibration and, hopefully, orgasm. The history of the vibrator reveals technology at work to reduce what was regarded as onerous manual labor. (You’ve got to use your hand to bring a woman to orgasm? Horrors.) Vibrators went from devices that were used for the “medically therapeutic” treatment for female hysteria, which became commonplace household items when late-19th century technology made electric vibrators and battery vibrators readily available, to demonized items of moral degradation through the mid-20th century, to the ubiquitous sex toys of our modern age. The history of the vibrator is a strange tale of changing mores and perceptions, and ultimately of the recognition of women as sexual beings.
Modern vibrators were created as labor-saving devices for the treatment of female hysteria. What were the symptoms? Pretty much anything you wanted them to be. To the Victorian-era male, women were frail, flighty creatures, subject to strange mental and emotional afflictions. The treatment was pelvic massage to induce orgasm, and many physicians found it strenuous and unnecessarily time-consuming.
Enterprising engineers came to the rescue with vibrators. Early types of vibrators were typically steam or muscle-powered, and far too large to be convenient for everyday use. The advent of widespread community electrification and the invention of the dry-cell battery changed all that. In the 1890s, electric vibrators and battery vibrators became consumer commodities, within the economic reach of every household. Vibrators didn’t have the social stigma they came to have after the 1920s. Major retailers like Sears & Roebuck proudly offered many types of vibrators within the pages of their catalogs. Advertisements for electric vibrators and battery vibrators were common within the pages of contemporary women’s magazines. Vibrators were marketed as therapeutic aids, and no mention of the sexually stimulating properties of the new electric vibrators and battery vibrators were mentioned in the advertising copy. Still, while many men still clung to beliefs that women were above sexual desires and feelings, women of the era eagerly used the many types of vibrators available to experience what they weren’t getting from their marriages.
Vibrators’ time in the sun came to a crashing halt with the widespread distribution of stag films in the 1920s. The frequent appearances of many types of vibrators in the explicit action stigmatized vibrators, which were now associated with loose morals. Electric vibrators and battery vibrators disappeared from mainstream America for around four decades.
Then came the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Vibrators made their way into adult bookstores, electric vibrators and battery vibrators were sold through mail-order outlets, and as time passed and sex toys became relatively mainstream, various and sundry types of vibrators became readily available and the sheer breadth and variety of their functions expanded dramatically. Sex toy consumers can choose from the traditional phallic vibrators, dual-action rabbit vibrators which concurrently stimulate the vagina and clitoris, g-spot vibrators to reach and stimulate the g-spot reliably, p-spot vibrators to perform the same function for the prostate, and discrete vibrators that look anything like a sex toy. Today’s vibrators can be set to any speed and intensity the user might desire, and almost all types of vibrators have remote control capability. Because Americans just love anything and everything remote controlled, especially if the remote has a zillion buttons. Vibrators have regained their day in the sun, and we seem to be a lot happier for it.
