The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (32 page)

143
. “Neuralgia, Headache, Wrinkles. The Vibratile Electric Massage,” Hutches and Company (Chicago), advertisement in
McClure’s Magazine
, March 1899, 64e.

144
. “Your Hands Properly Used are all You Need to Earn $3000 to $5000 a Year,” American College of Mechano-therapy (Chicago), advertisement in Men
and Women
, April 1910, inside front cover.

145
. “This Marvelous Health Vibrator for Man, Woman and Child. Relieves All Suffering. Cures Disease,” Lambert Snyder Company (New York), advertisement in
Modern Women 11
, no. 5 (1907): 170.

146
. “
TO WOMEN
I address my message of health and beauty,” Bebout Vibrator Company (St. Louis, Mo.), advertisement in
National Home Journal
, April 1908, 17.

147
. “Hydro-Massage for the Complexion. For the Scalp. For the Nerves.” Warner Motor Company, Inc. (New York), advertisement in
Modern Women
11, no. 1 (1906): 190.

148
. “Corbin Vacuo-Masseur, for Facial Massage. A Flesh Builder. Removes Wrinkles and Other Blemishes,” Becton, Dickinson and Company (Rutherford, N.J.), advertisement in
Woman’s Home Companion
36 (May 1909): 57.

149
. “Agents! Drop Dead Ones! Awake! Grab this new invention! The 20th century wonder, Blackstone Water Power Vacuum Massage Machine,” Blackstone Manufacturing Company (Toledo, Ohio), advertisement in
Hearst’s
, April 1916, 327.

150
. “If Your Beauty is Marred by a serious or a slight blemish …,” Mahler Electrical Apparatus (Providence, R.I.), advertisement in
Bohemian
, December 1909, 817.

151
. “Electricity the Renewer of Youth,”
Review of Reviews
37 (June 1908): 732–33, and Mildred Maddocks, “Electricity Your Summer Servant,”
Good Housekeeping
63 (July 1916): 126.

152
. American Vibrator Company,
Vibratory Stimulation: The American Vibrator
(St. Louis, Mo.: American Vibrator, [ca. 1906]), 1, 8; and American Vibrator Company (St. Louis, Mo.), “Massage is as old as the hills—it’s
[sic]
value as an alleviating, curative, and beautifying agent is endorsed by all reputable physicians,” advertisement in
Woman’s Home Companion
, April 1906, 42.

153
. Swedish Vibrator Company (Chicago), “Wanted. Agents and salesmen. Sell the Swedish vibrator,” advertisement in
Modern Priscilla
, April 1913, 60.

154
. Monarch Vibrator Company (Jackson, Mich.), “Sent on approval … Monarch Electric Massage Vibrator,” advertisement in
Hearst’s Magazine
, February 1916, 159.

155
. William Lee Howard,
Sex Problems in Worry and Work
(New York: Edward J. Clode, 1915). Howard was also the author of
Plain Facts on Sex Hygiene
(1910) and
Facts for the Married
(1912), both also published by Edward J. Clode.

156
. “The Home Electrical,” in A
General Electric Scrapbook History with Commentary
([Schenectady, N.Y.?]: General Electric, 1953).

157
. J. J. Duck Company,
Anything Electrical
(Toledo, Ohio: J. J. Duck, 1912), 162, 278. Track was not included in the price of the train set.

158
. Sears, Roebuck and Company,
Electrical Goods: Everything Electrical for Home, Office, Factory and Shop
(Chicago: Sears, Roebuck, 1918), 4, 8, 9.

159
. Star Home Electric Massage Vibrators, “A Gift that Will
Keep
Her Young and Pretty,” advertisement in
Hearst’s International
, December 1921, 82, and “Such Delightful Companions!” advertisement, 1922, reproduced in
Those Were the Good Old Days
, ed. Edgar R. Jones (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 60.

160
. “Electra” [pseud.], “Useful Hints for the Homemaker,”
Electrical Age for
Women (Glasgow) 2, no. 7 (1932): 275. See also advertisement for “Pneumatic massage pulsator” inside front cover of the same issue.

161
. Lindstrom Smith Company (Chicago), “Vibration is Life!” advertisement in
Technical World
, ca. 1902, unpaged advertising section.

162
. David J. Pivar,
Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), 110–17.

163
. Lindstrom Smith Company (Chicago), “Send for our Free Book … White Cross Electric Vibrator,” advertisement in
Home Needlework Magazine
, October 1908, 479, and
National Home Journal
, April 1909, 24.

164
. Lindstrom Smith Company (Chicago), “Vibration is Life … White Cross Electric Vibrator,” advertisement in
Modern Prisciüa
, December 1910, 27. See also “Beauty is Yours,” advertisement in
Needlecraft
, September 1912, 23, and in the
American Magazine
75, no. 2 (1912): 118.

165
. Lindstrom Smith Company (Chicago), “Enjoy Life! Get all you can out of it,” advertisement for the White Cross Vibrator in the
American Magazine
75, no. 3 (1913): 118.

166
. Lindstrom Smith Company (Chicago), “Power for you,” advertisement for the White Cross Vibrator in
American Magazine
75, no. 7 (1913): 127; see also advertisements in
Hearst’s Magazine
, January 1916, 67; February 1916, 154; April 1916, 329; and June 1916, 473. In the April 1916 issue, an advertisement for William H. Walling’s
Sexology
(Philadelphia: Puritan, 1912) appears on the same page.

167
. Lindstrom and Company (Chicago), “Stop that Pain!” advertisement for the Elco Electric Health Generator, in
Popular Mechanics
, December 1928, unpaged advertising section.

168
. See, for example, Frederick’s of Hollywood,
Get It Now and Save!
catalog 74, vol. 31, no. 211 (1977). Robert J. Francoeur gives 1966 as the date when “Plastic, battery-power vibrators became popular in drugstores and supermarkets.” See Francoeur,
Becoming a Sexual Person
(New York: John Wiley, 1982), 37.

169
. Niresk Industries of Chicago seems to have been an important producer of massagers at this period, as was Spot Reducer of Newark, New Jersey. See advertisements in
Workbasket
16, no. 6 (1951): 23; 17, no. 3 (1951): 33; 18, no. 2 (1952): 70; 22, no. 11 (August 1957): 3; 23, no. 12 (September 1958): 91, 93; 24, no. 1 (October 1958): 95; and 24, no. 3 (December 1958): 47.

170
. Roger Blake,
Sex Gadgets
(Cleveland: Century Books, 1968), 33–34, 46.

171
. Albert Ellis,
If This Be Sexual Heresy
(New York: Lyle Stuart, 1963), 136.

172
. Paul Tabori,
The Humor and Technology of Sex
(New York: Julian Press, 1969), 444.

173
. Blake,
Sex Gadgets
, 121; Mimi Swartz, “For the Woman Who Has Almost Everything,”
Esquire
, July 1980, 56–63; and Helen Singer Kaplan, “The Vibrator: A Misunderstood Machine,”
Redbook
, May 1984, 34.

174
. Helen Singer Kaplan,
The New Sex Therapy
(New York: Brunner-Mazel, 1974), 388–89.

175
. See, for examples, Kaplan,
New Sex Therapy
, 361–90, esp. 388–89, and Edward Dengrove, “The Mechanotherapy of Sexual Disorders,”
Journal of Sex Research
7, no. 1 (1971): 5–9. Dengrove also reported that some of his patients achieved satisfactory results with a soft-bristle electric toothbrush.

176
. Dengrove, “Mechanotherapy of Sexual Disorders,” 7–8.

177
. Susan Strasser,
Never Done: A History of American Housework
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 306.

CHAPTER 5 REVISING THE ANDROCENTRIC MODEL

1
. Alexander Lowen,
Love and Orgasm
(New York: Macmillan, 1965), 216.

2
. Sophie Lazarsfeld,
Woman’s Experience of the Male
(London: Encyclopedic Press, 1967), 105.

3
. A summary and overview of this subject appear in Anne McClintock’s special section on the sex trade in
Social Text
, no. 37 (winter 1993). See especially McClintock’s introduction, 1–10.

4
. Mills says that “in Briquet’s often-quoted 1000 cases of hysteria, 50 only occurred in men.” See Charles K. Mills, “Hysteria,” in A
System of Practical
Medicine, vol. 5,
Diseases of the Nervous System
, ed. William Pepper and Louis Starr (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, 1886), 215.

5
. Helen Singer Kaplan and Erica Sucher, “Women’s Sexual Response,” in
Women’s Sexual Experience: Explorations of the Dark Continent
, ed. Martha Kirkpatrick (New York: Plenum Press, 1982), 9–12.

6
. Wilhelm Reich,
The Function of the Orgasm
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), 95–116.

7
. Feminist criticism of the androcentric model has appeared in the works of professionals such as Helen Kaplan and in popular publications such as
Our Bodies, Ourselves
. In Boston Women’s Health Book Collective,
The New Our Bodies, Ourselves
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), the authors observe that “most people define sex mainly in terms of intercourse, a form of lovemaking which is often well suited to men’s orgasm and pleasure but is not necessarily well suited to ours” (185).

8
. Carole S. Vance, “Gender Systems, Ideology and Sex Research,” in
Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality
, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 373–78.

9
. Seymour Fisher,
The Female Orgasm: Psychology, Physiology, Fantasy
(New York: Basic Books, 1973), 297, 410.

10
. Jeanne Warner, “Physical and Affective Dimensions of Peak of Female Sexual Response and the Relationship to Self-Reported Orgasm,” in
International Research in Sexology: Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress
, ed. Harold Lief and Zwi Hoch (New York: Praeger, 1984), 94.

11
. Frank S. Caprio,
The Adequate Male
(New York: Medical Research Press, 1952), 70.

12
. David Reuben, despite his penetrationist views on orgasm during coitus, takes a pro-woman stance on this issue. See
Any Woman Can! Love and Sexual Fulfillment for the Single, Widowed, Divorced … and Married
(New York: D. McKay, 1971), 25–56.

13
. Frank S. Caprio,
The Sexually Adequate Female
(New York: Medical Research Press, 1953), 77, 83–187. See esp. 94 on the “hysterical personality.”

14
. There are illustrations of this problem among the anecdotes reported in Linda Wolfe,
The Cosmo Report
(New York: Arbor House, 1981), 121–50.

15
. Auguste Debay,
Hygiène du mariage
(Paris: Moquet, 1848).

16
. Celia Roberts, Susan Kippax, Catherine Waldby, and June Crawford, “Faking It: The Story of ‘Ohh!’”
Women’s Studies International Forum
18, nos. 5–6 (1995): 523–25, 528. There is an amusing reference to this behavior in the restaurant scene of the movie
When Harry Met Sally
.

17
. Michael Segell, “Great Performances,”
Esquire
, January 1996, 30.

18
. Glen Freyer, “What Do Men Know, or Think They Know, about the Female Orgasm?”
Glamour
93, no. 4 (1995): 128.

19
. For a subjective account of the difficulty of speaking the truth in these situations, see Molly Peacock’s poem “Have You Ever Faked an Orgasm?”
Paris Review
36, no. 130 (1994): 255.

20
. Dolores Haze, “Faking It,”
Mademoiselle
100, no. 1 (1994): 125. Haze points out that “while women fake to save their mates’ feelings, men fake to save face.” Faking, of course, is much less common among men.

21
. Carol Tavris and Susan Sadd,
The Redbook Report on Female Sexuality
(New York: Delacorte, 1977), 79.

22
. Robert T. Francoeur,
Becoming a Sexual Person
(New York: John Wiley, 1982), 588.

23
. Stephanie Alexander, “Was It Good for You Too?”
Cosmopolitan
218, no. 5 (1995): 80.