The compulsive Adherence to classical gender roles has a tremendous amount of excesses. The Vibrator is a glaring example.
in 1880 by a physician invented: Today there are vibrators in numerous variants, photo: imago images/area photo
BERLIN taz | I’m in the dm and am amazed. In one of the aisles of the drugstore market, the back links in section “health”, they are for sale between the condoms, lube and wundpfl vibrators in three different forms, colors, and price ranges between 25 and 70 Euro asters:. Sex shop in the Drugstore?!
Adieu, confidentiality and anonymity of the online purchase. Admittedly, I don’t feel a little uncomfortable, and unfortunately, not nearly as self-conscious as I would have expected of me. I must think of earlier than it even was embarrassing, to put toilet paper or Tampons on the conveyer belt and have to involuntarily smile.
With a furtive Look to the left and to the right, I reach for the model in turquoise, u-shaped bent. It promises to be “fun love life – colourful, natural and self-confident.” A sex Toy that is self-pleasure at the centre, is here for all to see on the shelf and refers the public to the (female) orgasm. Since 2017 dm has the vibrators on offer, what not so hit a few waves, that many of the clients will know it up to today.
While Beate Uhse had to go to the opening of its first sex shop in 1962, in Flensburg, Germany, on several occasions before the court to answer, is the sale of sex toys today seem so normal, that my shame is more embarrassing than to be with the things in the Store. The second Vibrator I use is pink, looks a bit like a small hockey stick and promises “at every Solo one point landing”.
I own myself for many years, and acknowledge gladly, (G)the point of landing or not, he has revolutionized my sex life. It is a so-called Rabbit Vibrator dark Purple. He is made from supple silicone, is pre-heating, and features a whopping ten different vibration programs.
Where I in my Research have to say that is almost ridiculously low: The latest parts even with thirty-vibration programs. And as I’m standing there and the colourful Designs consider, I wonder, what do I owe the actually to. Who, when and why invented the Vibrator? It was Beate Uhse itself? Or is it the Porn industry?
I start to research. The story I’m promoting this to light, is so absurd that I can’t believe – but true.
The Vibrator was invented in the 1880s by the British physician Joseph Mortimer Granville as a medical device. At the time, he has absolutely nothing to do with sexual satisfaction, but the treatment of the so-called hysteria.
Until the 1920s, genital massage for the treatment of hysteria were prescribed
The idea of hysteria as a disease dates back to the ancient times. Already Plato was of the assumption that hysteria was a serious, mainly female Suffering, in particular unmarried, childless women to home were sought.
among the symptoms of insomnia, anxiety, nervousness, feeling of fullness, but also of erotic fantasies and vaginal moisture. The word hysteria comes from hystera, Greek for uterus. The Uterus was seen as the source of this “disease” that broke out then – so the idea – if the uterus is not able to fulfill their purpose, which said: the seed of a man received and children unsubscribe. Until the 18th century. Century scientists were (and with high probability there were actually only a scientist) that this led to organic damage to the uterus. In the Victorian era, the assumption was that the cause of hysteria had to be psychological in nature, but also to sexual dysfunctions of the women in question was due.
Sexual dysfunction means in the case that a woman by coitus and Penetration experienced by the Penis of a man no satisfaction. It was not considered that Penetration alone could be perhaps the wrong way to satisfy women sexually. Instead, women were declared as a frigid, immature, and sick. Not a few of them went to therapeutic treatment. Until the 1920s, the genital massage have been prescribed for the treatment of hysteria. A “successful treatment” resulted in convulsions in eruptive abdomen and muscle spasm of the “suffering woman”.
as soon As the “patient” from the loss of control had recovered, had an immediate improvement in your mental state to determine – the women felt more balanced, calmer and at the same time euphoric. As we know today luckily, this is simply a sober description of a female orgasm, which has nothing Pathological in itself.
This is an example of what excesses had roles in the compulsive Adherence to classical gender and can have. It was especially diagnosed in women hysteria, which corresponded to the normalized, social conventions, either because they remained unmarried, because they put unruly behavior, or sexually self-determined to live.
so It is no coincidence that the end of the 19th century. Century, a time in which women began to rebel, and to rebel against their subordinate role, almost three-quarters of the female population was “hysterical” was.
There was talk of a pandemic. The genital massage was. of former Doctors, not as erotic, sexually stimulating experienced the end of the experience, but as a complicated, annoying, and tedious task A session could take several hours!
remedy the electro-mechanical device of the said Joseph Mortimer Granville, was able to trigger by means of vibrations, the described “spasms” in a few minutes he managed finally. From today’s perspective, this may sound absurd, and you might want to shake with a grin to the head. The Whole, however, was anything other than laughable: In “particularly serious cases of hysteria” was women removed the clitoris or even the uterus completely, which is none other than medically prescribed genital mutilation.
Whether body established or psychologically, hysteria is regarded as a predominantly female disease, as the oldest mental disorder, the circulated stubbornly over thousands of years in the medical discourse: First, in 1980, hysteria from the diagnostic manual for Mental disorders (DSM), the international standard for the classification of mental disorders, has been deleted.
lost in Thought I stroke the soft surface of my purple Vibrator, which is actually more than the currently most popular sex toys in Germany. He is in fact a cultural and historical artifact.
