• 3 days ago
Female masturbation...
Fact: Can reduce stress.
Fiction: Can cure women from hysteria.

Sex historian Hallie Lieberman breaks down the stigma behind female pleasure.
Transcript
00:00A fear around women's masturbation throughout history has been the idea that women will
00:14be independent sexual creatures, that they will not need a man for sexual pleasure.
00:30In places like Liz Estrada, there are jokes about masturbation and there are women talking
00:56about having a sex strike if their men don't come home from war and how they will use dildos
01:04to masturbate.
01:22His main claims in the book about why you shouldn't masturbate and why masturbation
01:27was so bad was because it was addictive.
01:30So partner sex, you just can't do as often and so it's less dangerous and he also said
01:37it was harmful because it could injure the muscles and nerves.
02:04Rachel Maine's vibrator myth and the hysteria vibrator myth is that doctors were masturbating
02:11women's clitorises with vibrators in doctor's offices or were using vibrators on women's
02:18clitorises in doctor's office and no one knew it was sexual and no one realized it because
02:23the clitoris is misunderstood.
02:26That's the basis of the myth and that is just not accurate because if you look at medical
02:31literature in the late 19th century and early 20th century, not only did doctors know what
02:37the clitoris is, but they're also worried about women masturbating too much and touching
02:45their clitorises too much.
02:47They're so worried during this time period that there are the spate of clitoridectomies.
02:54Some unlucky women who masturbated too much or people believe they did, they got their
03:00clitoris removed.
03:16He was against using vibrators for women and he thought that they could be used for all
03:22sorts of things for men, for all sorts of nervous and muscle conditions, including and
03:31also impotence, that vibrating the perineum could cure impotence.
03:53The big vibrator revolution happened with Betty Dodson, the masturbation pioneer, second
04:00wave feminist, radical feminist, who basically what she did was she held these workshops
04:08where she would teach women how to masturbate together.
04:13Dodson argued that the only way women were going to get full freedom and liberate themselves
04:22from marriage and being stuck in these dependent relations, both economically and sexually
04:28with men, was through learning how to give themselves sexual pleasure, learning how to
04:35give themselves an orgasm, masturbating, and so the vibrator was a tool that could basically
04:41unlock your independence.
05:02In the episode, Charlotte, one of the main characters, gets addicted to this rabbit vibrator
05:09because it's so powerful and she doesn't want to leave her house, she doesn't want to go
05:13anywhere, she just wants to masturbate.
05:16Journals came out and said, this is so progressive.
05:18But then when I looked back on it, when I was researching it, I was like, wait, is it
05:22progressive?
05:23Because this woman gets addicted to her vibrator, she gets addicted to masturbation.
05:28At the end of the episode, her friends come over and have the rabbit intervention taken
05:32away from her so she could have a normal life and be in a relationship with a guy.
05:36So the message is that masturbation is dangerous, is addictive, vibrators are dangerous, addictive,
05:43and yeah, they can be fun, but in the end, you need to abandon them for a man.
05:47So if you look at the message, it's a little bit regressive.
06:06One of the most important things I think now is the rise of the sex tech industry and the
06:35women involved in sex tech who founded these companies that are all about normalizing women's
06:42masturbation, that are all about making sex toys in a way that aren't just giant dildos
06:50but are beautiful objects that women would not be afraid to have in their living room.
06:55So we have a bunch of women who've gone into this industry who are helping to change ideas
07:04around masturbation.