The discussion on Maines, The Technology of Orgasm, summer 1999 on the old Histsex list

Back to Victorian Sex Factoids

From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>

Subject: Re: Maines' Martyrdom and Vibratory Censorship

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 17:39:28 +0100

Damn! I've been away for most of this, in which I'm extremely interested

since I've been asked several times to comment on Maines's work (or at

least, the media representations of same) and have only just got hold of the

book itself to read (though I've not yet done so). I concur that it sounds

to be generalising from a tiny and probably fringe phenomenon (do the words

Isaac Baker Brown raise a resonant echo???), and (as far as I can tell)

ignores the rise of what in the UK we call physiotherapy, which became an

organised profession in the 1890s as the Chartered Society of Medical

Masseuses following the great Massage Parlour Scandal (clandestine brothels

pretending to be therapeutic, plus ca change), initially told in the columns

of the British Medical Journal. This indicates that a) if doctors

recommended hands-on physical treatment they were delegating it to trained

masseuses/masseurs, who were anxious to indicate their respectability and b)

even non-executive relief type massage was regarded with not a little

dubeity. Plus, c) by the early C20th physios were using a wide variety of

electrically driven devices, going by ads in their journal.

So there may be a whole other story about medicine and touch and

electrical devices going on which is missing from Maines' book.

The 'censorship' line does sound a little dubious (was the contentious

nature of her research the whole story?) even if it does fit into Brit

perceptions of US institutions.

I'll try and post further when I've read the book, but I have GOT to

finish vol one of Trumbach's magnum opus on sex and gender in C18th London

for a review first.

Lesley

Lesley Hall

lesleyah@primex.co.uk

-----Original Message-----

From: Kazetnik@aol.com <Kazetnik@aol.com>

To: histsex@listbot.com <histsex@listbot.com>

Date: 27 July 1999 12:45

Subject: Maines' Martyrdom



>Histsex:For historians of sexuality -

http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

>

>I am sorry for Maines that she lost her teaching position because of her

>research, but my guess is such consequences are rare for those of us

working

>in this field. I do indeed find the assertions of her work dubious (though

>not necessarily incredible since I can still be surprised by some of the

>'oddities' of belief and practice in the 19th century), but it is

interesting

>that her work is seen as frivolous. I wonder why that should be? Are

>vibrators funny per se? Or only 19th century ones?

>

>Chris White

>

>

>__________________________________________________________________

From: Kazetnik@aol.com

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 07:45:24 EDT

Subject: Maines' Martyrdom

I am sorry for Maines that she lost her teaching position because of her

research, but my guess is such consequences are rare for those of us working

in this field. I do indeed find the assertions of her work dubious (though

not necessarily incredible since I can still be surprised by some of the

'oddities' of belief and practice in the 19th century), but it is interesting

that her work is seen as frivolous. I wonder why that should be? Are

vibrators funny per se? Or only 19th century ones?

Chris White



___________________________________________________________________

From: "Chris Willis" <chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Re: Vibratory Censorship

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 14:42:39 +0100

Hi!

Here's an article on Maine's book, from the Guardian last year (hope I'm not

contravening copyright by sending it to the list!). It all sounds a bit

dubious to me (the description of the Chattanooga Vibrator sounds

particularly unlikely) but I presume she knows what she's talking about -

and no, the article wasn't published on 1 April!

All the best

Chris

Movers and shakers

Laurel Ives sheds light on the secret history of vibrators

Thursday January 28, 1999



Rachel Maines was flicking through some turn-of-the-century women's

magazines in search of material for her PhD thesis on needlework. Tucked

between pages of crochet patterns, she noticed a peculiar advertisement: a

picture of a woman massaging her back with a strange-looking tool and a

slogan that promised a 'thrilling and invigorating effect so that all the

penetrating pleasures of youth will throb in you again'.

Could it be that this tool was an early vibrator? Surely 1906 was far too

early for such an appliance to exist? Maines, a teacher at Clarkson

Engineering University in New York State, recalls: 'I was between

relationships at the time and decided I must have a dirty mind.'

Nevertheless, she was curious enough to investigate further. The USA's

largest museum, the Smithsonian, was unable to help but at the small,

obscure Bakken museum of medical instruments in Minneapolis, she hit the

jackpot: 11 perfectly preserved vibrators dating from the early 20th

century.

These instruments, it turned out, were used not by women but by doctors to

bring female patients to orgasm. Only they didn't call it orgasm; they

called it 'hysterical paroxysm'. 'Doctors didn't consider this had anything

to do with sex,' Maines explains. 'A sexual act was penetration - nothing

else counted.' The hysterical paroxysm was supposed to help treat hysteria,

or 'disease of the womb'.

Labouring under the belief that women became hysterical because, unlike men,

they did not release fluids during sex, physicians set about finding ways to

release these pent-up juices. At first they used their hands to administer

the 'treatment' - a practice they apparently found time-consuming and

tricky. One Victorian physician likened it to trying to rub your stomach

with one hand and pat your head with the other. But the 'treatment' was

lucrative - patients never got better and required regular visits - and the

first vibrator, created by British doctor Joseph Mortimer Granville in 1883,

was invented with the sole purpose of making the doctor's job easier.

Maines was so excited by her findings that she wrote an article for the

Bakken museum newsletter and began to present papers on the vibrator at

universities. 'Women-only audiences laughed and asked questions,' she

recalls. 'But women in mixed groups said little; they were aware that it's a

major breach of etiquette to mention the relative inefficiency of

penetration as a means of producing female orgasm. Men looked terrified or

glazed over.' In June 1986, after her first article was published, Maines

encountered a more extreme reaction: she was fired by Clarkson University.

'They said my research would deter alumni from giving money. It's a rather

conservative school.'

Rachel Maines has finally completed her book, The Technology Of Orgasm. In

it, she documents more than 50 kinds of vibrator invented between 1880 and

1900. Most are rangy contraptions powered by steam, water or batteries. But

with the development of electricity, vibrators like the one made by

Lindstrom Smith of Chicago in 1910 (which came with the tempting offer of a

free vibrating chair) began to make it into the home.

Not surprisingly, doctors were not happy about home vibrators. To make sure

patients believed their machines were superior, they bought large,

impressive models, such as the Chattanooga Vibrator, which stood four feet

tall, and the steam-powered vibrator used in spas, which had an engine

attached to a vibrating arm and required a crew in another room to supply it

with coal.

After three decades of popularity, vibrators suddenly disappeared from

public view. Maines believes the reason lay in their appearance in 1920s

porn flicks: a starring role in films such as the imaginatively titled

Widow's Delight made the fiction that they were simply a medical tool

impossible to sustain.

Recognised for the sex aid it had become, the vibrator went underground

until its triumphant re-emergence in the permissive 1960s. Maines says: 'The

women's movement completed what had begun with the early home vibrators: the

job no one wanted to do was put into the hands of women themselves.'

The Technology Of Orgasm is published by Johns Hopkins University Press on

February 15.



___________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 09:22:25 -0400

From: Carol Thomas <carol.thomas@nist.gov>

>From Chris White:

>To offer some response to Hera Cook:

>

>1. While my acquaintanceship with scientific material on heterosexuality

>is patchy, what I can say is that in pornographic treatments of the

>doctor/patient relationship (male/female) or in the 'domestic' scenario

where

>the male is seeking to 'cure' 'frigidity', reluctance etc, I have never come

>across a dildo, let alone a vibrator, which, if Maines were correct, I would

>certainly expect to find, since pornography/erotica has a strong tendency to

>adopt the norms of its contemporary culture and transform the taboo and the

>norms into the erotic. If doctors were using vibrators in such a way, I

would

>have expected to find some trace of this in 'underground' material (not

least

>because the doctor/patient relationship itself *is* eroticized). It is,

instead,

>the all-powerful penis which provides the answer to these women's

>problems, health and otherwise.

I don't have my copy of Maines' book at hand so can't quote specifics. She

claims that even Freud resorted to manipulatory therapy of female genitalia

(with or without mechanical aids, I don't recall) in his practice early on,

but as he wasn't much of a hand (pun intended) at the technique, he gave it

up in favor of other forms of treatment.

>2. I have spent my entire academic career researching the history of

>sexuality, and I have never experienced any form of martyrdom for it.

In a lengthy preface to her book, Maines relates the story of her

martyrdom, which included losing her teaching position. The real problem

seemed not so much the broader field of sexual research, but her focus on

the vibrator in clinical practice. Reaction to her project ranged from

frivolous to some sort of bad joke, perhaps because the topic is, as you

yourself point out, so extremely incredible. No one wants to believe that

any of this could really have taken place. I'm still not sure I believe it

myself, despite Maines' evident scholarship.

carol.thomas@nist.gov



___________________________________________________________________

From: Kazetnik@aol.com

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 03:44:37 EDT

Subject: Vibratory Censorship (& Introduction)

Dear fellow sex historians

This is by way of introduction and response to Hera Cook's very interesting

questions.

My name is Chris White and I teach on degree programmes in Literature and

Gender and Women's Studies at Bolton Institute in the UK. To date my research

has focussed on writings about male and female homosexuality in Britain in

the nineteenth century, including study of straighforwardly literary texts,

legal cases and law-makers' debates, scientific, religious and psycho-sexual

discussions of same-sex desire and activity, and pornographic material. This

has produced a number of articles, chapters and more recently an annotated

anthology of this kind of material. My research has recently changed

direction slightly, and, building on the work I have done on male eroticism

of young and adolescent boys, I am beginning a new project on

nineteenth-century 'paedophilia' (this is such embryonic reseach that my

terminology is only capable of being put in quotation marks).

To offer some response to Hera Cook:

1. While my acquaintanceship with scientific material on heterosexuality is

patchy, what I can say is that in pornographic treatments of the

doctor/patient relationship (male/female) or in the 'domestic' scenario where

the male is seeking to 'cure' 'frigidity', reluctance etc, I have never come

across a dildo, let alone a vibrator, which, if Maines were correct, I would

certainly expect to find, since pornography/erotica has a strong tendency to

adopt the norms of its contemporary culture and transform the taboo and the

norms into the erotic. If doctors were using vibrators in such a way, I would

have expected to find some trace of this in 'underground' material (not least

because the doctor/patient relationship itself *is* eroticized). It is,

instead, the all-powerful penis which provides the answer to these women's

problems, health and otherwise.

2. I have spent my entire academic career researching the history of

sexuality, and I have never experienced any form of martyrdom for it. (The

price paid for being an out lesbian is another story altogether.) In fact, it

tends to work in my favour, since (a) people remember what I work on, and (b)

everyone is interested because they feel they have some expertise to

contribute!

Chris White



___________________________________________________________________

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 17:06:14 +1000

From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>

Subject: [Fwd: vibrators and publicity]

> Re: _The Technology of Orgasm_ by Rachel Maine

>

> (This is a long and slightly rambling query - hoping if possible to

> raise some debate)

>

> Have other list members read this book? To give a very brief, and

> obviously as such inadequate summary, Maines contends that doctors in

> late 19th century Western societies used vibrators to give hysterical

> women relief i.e. orgasms. Even given that she specifies middle class

> women, I find her argument implausible for a number of reasons (use of

> evidence, unexplored assumptions etc) and feel that the approach she

> describes was probably the province of a few 'radical' practitioners

> with a limited patient base.

>

> However, I would be interested to hear what other list members think of

> the book.

>

> My interest arises in part because I have now read lengthy interviews

> with Rachel

> Maines published in major newspapers in three countries - This is a

> phenomenon in itself, and while I admire her publicist, it seems to me

> to be a further indication that researchers on heterosexual women and

> sexuality can, if they have the right angle, receive attention

> otherwise granted only to those digging up sexual dirt on the famous. I

> would argue the reader's response is one of voyeuristic pleasure - an

> enjoyment

> which stretches from Andrea Dworkin and her celebration of the all

> powerful phallus (my description, please feel free to contest it) through

> to the current book. Does anybody have comments on research into

> heterosexual women's sexuality

> which was not attention grabbing? That is to say, what produces a response

> now in this culture?

>

> On an a very different tack, specifically on Maine - she also validates

> herself by describing an incident of attempted academic

> censorship/denial of her research. To what extent is this a reality

> today for academics researching sexuality - even if only at the level of

> failed funding applications? How do those of us researching sexuality

> today feel about donning the mantle of martyr to the cause which was

> worn so well and for so long by sex reformers and sexologists from

> H.Ellis to William Masters?

>

> Hera





___________________________________________________________________

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 12:37:58 +1000

From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>

Subject: vibrators and publicity

Re: _The Technology of Orgasm_ by Rachel Maine

(This is a long and slightly rambling query - hoping if possible to

raise some debate)

Have other list members read this book? To give a very brief, and

obviously as such inadequate summary, Maines contends that doctors in

late 19th century Western societies used vibrators to give hysterical

women relief i.e. orgasms. Even given that she specifies middle class

women, I find her argument implausible for a number of reasons (use of

evidence, unexplored assumptions etc) and feel that the approach she

describes was probably the province of a few 'radical' practitioners

with a limited patient base.

However, I would be interested to hear what other list members think of

the book.

This is in part because I have now read lengthy interviews with Rachel

Maines published in major newspapers in three countries - This is a

phenomenon in itself, and while I admire her publicist, this seems to me

to be a further indication that researchers on heterosexual women and

sexuality can, if they have the right angle, receive attention

otherwise granted only to those digging up sexual dirt on the famous. I

would argue the response is one of voyeuristic pleasure - an enjoyment

which stretches from Andrea Dworkin and her celebration of the all

powerful phallus (my description) through to the current book. Does

anybody have comments on research into heterosexual women's sexuality

which was not attention grabbing?

On an a very different tack, specifically on Maine - she also validates

herself by describing an incident of attempted academic

censorship/denial of her research. To what extent is this a reality

today for academics researching sexuality - even if only at the level of

failed funding applications? How do those of us researching sexuality

today feel about donning the mantle of martyr to the cause which was

worn so well and for so long by sex reformers and sexologists from

H.Ellis to William Masters?

Hera

Date: Sun, 01 Aug 1999 13:59:05 +1000

From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>

Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: Maines' Martyrdom and Vibratory Censorship]]

Hi,

I think lesley's comments about physiotherapists are probably spot on. Here

are some more

thoughts I had - unfortunately I don't have the book to hand and these more

specific

questions would be better being checked against the actual text -

Carol Thomas comments on 'Maine's evident scholarship'. I think her use of

sources raises useful questions for historians of sexual behaviours.

Ultimately it was not clear to me what claims Maine was making about the

prevalance of this practice. She appeared to be claiming that this behaviour was

relatively frequent, based primarily upon the level of advertising of the

machines. Is this a valid basis for such claims?

Maine shifts from analysis of texts - discourse - at an international level to

specific material culture. These different types of evidence provide varying

levels and types of proof - indeed they bear different relationships to the

notion of proof.

It is proved to the reader that the objects, vibrators, existed and were

advertised. The proof of the behaviour, that is that these machines were used as

Maine claims, is from other sources but she doesn't distinguish between the nature

of her proofs.

This issue is absolutely central to the credibility of the book as far as I am

concerned. Maine appears to claim that use of vibrators by doctors to give

hysterical middle-class women clitoral orgasms was common practice in the late

19th and early 20th century. She failed to convince me that this was correct, but

she

did convince me that some - a few doctors - did this. So, if that is all she is

claiming

then that is fine and it is an interesting small addition to the history of 19th

century sexuality.

Next point, Maine writes about hysteria but in many of the arenas/sites she

describes the

patients often would not have been seriously disturbed if at all.

Middle class women were reluctant to allow doctors to examine them when they were

pregnant - I believe that this applied to removing clothes and not just to

internal examinations - however I have done very little work on the 19th century

and perhaps

someone else might like to comment on this. If this is correct would women who

were not seriously disturbed have been likely to agree to genital contact in

Maine's circumstances?

On this note, unless this is acknowledged to be the practice of a tiny radical

minority of doctors - my belief - then I would disregard Freud's experience as he

was hardly typical of his era in his approach to sex....

Last point, hands up all those women who think vibrators and orgasms go together

like a horse and carriage? This is the great unexamined assumption of Maine's book.

Do vibrators provide women with orgasms in the clockwork fashion assumed?

All the best,

Hera



Lesley Hall wrote:

> Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

>> Damn! I've been away for most of this, in which I'm extremely interested

> since I've been asked several times to comment on Maines's work (or at

> least, the media representations of same) and have only just got hold of the

> book itself to read (though I've not yet done so). I concur that it sounds

> to be generalising from a tiny and probably fringe phenomenon (do the words

> Isaac Baker Brown raise a resonant echo???), and (as far as I can tell)

> ignores the rise of what in the UK we call physiotherapy, which became an

> organised profession in the 1890s as the Chartered Society of Medical

> Masseuses following the great Massage Parlour Scandal (clandestine brothels

> pretending to be therapeutic, plus ca change), initially told in the columns

> of the British Medical Journal. This indicates that a) if doctors

> recommended hands-on physical treatment they were delegating it to trained

> masseuses/masseurs, who were anxious to indicate their respectability and b)

> even non-executive relief type massage was regarded with not a little

> dubeity. Plus, c) by the early C20th physios were using a wide variety of

> electrically driven devices, going by ads in their journal.

> So there may be a whole other story about medicine and touch and

> electrical devices going on which is missing from Maines' book.

> The 'censorship' line does sound a little dubious (was the contentious

> nature of her research the whole story?) even if it does fit into Brit

> perceptions of US institutions.

> I'll try and post further when I've read the book, but I have GOT to

> finish vol one of Trumbach's magnum opus on sex and gender in C18th London

> for a review first.

> Lesley

> Lesley Hall

> lesleyah@primex.co.uk

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Kazetnik@aol.com <Kazetnik@aol.com>

> To: histsex@listbot.com <histsex@listbot.com>

> Date: 27 July 1999 12:45

> Subject: Maines' Martyrdom

>> >Histsex:For historians of sexuality -

> http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

> >> >I am sorry for Maines that she lost her teaching position because of her

> >research, but my guess is such consequences are rare for those of us

> working

> >in this field. I do indeed find the assertions of her work dubious (though

> >not necessarily incredible since I can still be surprised by some of the

> >'oddities' of belief and practice in the 19th century), but it is

> interesting

> >that her work is seen as frivolous. I wonder why that should be? Are

> >vibrators funny per se? Or only 19th century ones?

> >> >Chris White

__________________________________________________________________

From: Kazetnik@aol.com

Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 05:18:36 EDT

Subject: Gynaecological exams & orgasms

Hi

To pursue Hera Cook's point about middle-class women's reluctance to be

examined by doctors, Havelock Ellis provides a slightly peculiar insight

based on his own clinical practice with working-class women in 'The Evolution

of Modesty':

'Long ago, when a hospital student on midwifery duty in London slums, I had

occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially in

those that had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in

the fear of being disgusting....As soon as the woman realized that I found

nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary to be done under the

circumstances, it almost invariably happened that every sign of modesty at

once disappeared.'

He seems to regard working class women's modesty as superficial, easily

discarded, and by implication, middle class women's modesty a much more

developed element of their identities, evidently playing on notions of

greater or lesser 'civilization'. It is less clear what he means by

'disgusting', but there is possibly some shadow of the sense of the vagina

being an 'unhealed wound' that must not be displayed, in which case it seems

unlikely that women would have joyfully allowed genital contact of an

explicitly sexual nature, as opposed to one reminiscent of sexual contact.

'Hands up all those women who think vibrators and orgasms go together like a

horse and carriage.' <hand firmly lowered> Such a bizarre notion, a conveyor

belt idea of turning out a whole series of identical products. Maine seems

not to have thought about this *at all*, yet surely it would be fundamental

to her cultural analysis to think through the competing meanings of

'pleasure' mechanically applied and DIY pleasure. Do we really think our

predecessors were so stupid and/or literal minded that because masturbation

was taboo, they would not have done it? One of the principal assumptions of

pornographic material from the period is that women were (a) in constant need

of sexual pleasure and (b) very capable of providing their own once

introduced to the concept. Fantasy obviously, but some story about female

sexual pleasure in the 'real' is being narrated here.

Regards

Chris White



___________________________________________________________________

From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>

Subject: Re: Maines' Martyrdom and Vibratory Censorship

Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 12:48:37 +0100

I've now had at least a superficial glance at the book.

I suspect, from the authorities Maines cites on the history of hysteria,

that all she says about this will be shot down in flames by Helen King's

recent, highly praised, _Hippocrates' Women_. Unlike most people who have

written on this subject, King is is a highly competent classical scholar who

has gone back to the Greek and Latin texts and has deconstructed the

accepted historiographical analysis of the alleged Hippocratic origins of

what was defined in the C19th as hysteria. While King's book only came out

this year, articles by her in this area have been available for some time.

I also feel that although Maines mentions other aspects of

electrotherapy (galvanic belts and corsets etc) she has paid insufficient

attention to the claims that were being made for these devices in

advertisements, which were very similar to those she cites for vibrators -

e.g. restoring joy of life, purifying blood etc - and similar claims were

made for a variety of 'quack' remedies and devices. As galvanic belts, etc,

did nothing at all (except via suggestion and belief in the almost magical

powers of 'electricity'), I think it may be over-interpreting the claims

made for vibrators to assume a mutually understood sexual subtext to the

ways they were being promoted.

On women and masturbation: presumably some women did discover this and

as it was such an unnamed and taboo topic (unlike male 'self-abuse') there

was little condemnatory discourse they might have encountered - they might

not even have defined it as 'sexual' in an era when 'the sexual' for women

revolved around penetrative intercourse with men. I was struck, when going

through the 1000s of letters to Marie Stopes, how little masturbation was an

issue for women, whereas it recurred frequently as a source of concern in

letters from men (cf my article 'Forbidden by God, despised by men', in Jnl

Hist Sexuality, reprinted in Fout, _Forbidden History_). Stopes even

suggested (though only in private correspondence, not in print!) that for

the mature unmarried woman it was ('in moderation') a permissible form of

relief (particularly in conjunction with the glandular remedies Stopes was

also keen on).

Stella Browne certainly believed that masturbation in women was more

common than might be supposed (views put forward in _The Freewoman_ chastity

debates, 1912), though she did not pathologise the practice (in fact was pro

it).

Even modern surveys (for what they're worth) indicate that while nearly

100% of men have masturbated at one time or another (if not habitually), far

fewer women have, and they tend to start the practice later in life than men

(who normally begin in adolescence) - possibly after their sexual desires

have been aroused by external factors, rather than coming as a spontaneous

response to adolescent erections. So whether women would automatically think

of vibratory massagers as aids to masturbation is questionable, especially

in an era when the desirability of orgasms for all was not being thrust at

them from all sides.

As for the vibrator being the 'magic wand' for all women, I'm dubious of

any statement which contains the words 'all women' (as Stella B commented,

'I have never met the normal woman'). Some women, after all, do have orgasms

from penetrative sex, even if this is far from universal. Some women have

nocturnal orgasms without any stimulation. Some women start masturbating to

orgasm from early childhood and others don't have any orgasms until their

fourth or fifth decade.

Maines largely appears to ignore the Stopes and after tradition of

female authored sex manuals critiquing the phallocentric model of

intercourse - while this was perhaps a more UK than US phenomenon (Stopes,

Hutton, Wright, Malleson, etc were all British) these books did appear in US

editions and are mentioned in Brecher's book on the sex researchers.

Thanks, Hera, for opening this discussion.

Lesley

Lesley Hall

lesleyah@primex.co.uk

___________________________________________________________________

From: "Chris Willis" <chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Maines' martyrdom

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 12:32:20 +0100

Hi!

Thre's an article about Rachel Maines in today's "Independent on Sunday"

which explains a lot about why her research was considered dodgy. It

includes illustrations of some of the things she insists are vibrators -

some of which quite clearly aren't! She seems to think that any appliance

which has the word "vibrate" or "massage" in its name or instructions must

be a vibrator, even if it's something like a neck and scalp massager. One

of the devices illustrated looks like a 1940s equivalent of the "Tens"

machine which is used to treat people with incurable back and neck

problems - in other words, exactly what the advertisements say it is.

It's a shame that she's insistent on pushing her arguemnts too far. Her

basic argument may well be correct, but it looks as if she's determined to

twist facts in order to produce as much extra "evidence" as possible to back

up her thesis. I find this mildly offensive to all the disabled people who

need the kind of devices she insists are purely sexual (eg RSI sufferers

whose symptoms can be alleviated by neck massage). A deaf friend of mine,

who obviously can't hear a conventional alarm clock, has a device with

vibrates under his pillow instead - I dread to think what Maines would make

of that! :-)

All the best

Chris

=========================================

Chris Willis

English Dept

Birkbeck College

Malet Street

London WC1E 7HX

Chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk

http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/

=========================================



___________________________________________________________________

From: "Chris Willis" <chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Maines - PS

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 12:39:05 +0100

Hi!

Forgot to say in my last msg - the Independent on Sunday is on-line at

http://www.independent.co.uk/

ATB

Chris

=========================================

Chris Willis

English Dept

Birkbeck College

Malet Street

London WC1E 7HX

Chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk

http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/

=========================================

From: Kazetnik@aol.com

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 18:01:13 EDT

Subject: Re: Maines - PS

Hi

Thanks to Chris Willis for the note re the Maines review. But it's

frustrating when only part of a paper is on-line....! The more I hear about

this 'project' of hers, the more disquieted I become. Why has she produced

such shoddy scholarship? Is it the publish-or-be-unemployed scenario? Or is

it somehow related to a caricature of the work of historians of sexuality, a

kind of post-Freud, everything is about sex if you only look properly? It is

tiresome that the objects of our study are regarded by some as trivial,

inappropriate, not serious. It is hopeless if the specificity of the field of

study is annihilated by 'scholars' who insist on producing arguments of such

dubious veracity in the name of writing the history of sexuality. Am I just

being paranoid, or is she doing all of us a disservice?

Chris White



___________________________________________________________________

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 23:25:46 +0100

To: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex@listbot.com>

From: Ianthe <ianthe@duende.demon.co.uk>

In message <5a98a727.24e892a9@aol.com>, Kazetnik@aol.com writes

>Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

>>Hi

>>Thanks to Chris Willis for the note re the Maines review. But it's

>frustrating when only part of a paper is on-line....! The more I hear about

>this 'project' of hers, the more disquieted I become. Why has she produced

>such shoddy scholarship?

'Allegedly' ;-) There was an interesting long illustrated

article in Wired on this (her work, not the unsubstantiated

notion that her work might be sub-standard). As most

old Wired articles are online, go check www.wired.com

--

Ianthe Duende



___________________________________________________________________

From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>

Subject: Re: Maines - PS

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 19:50:21 +0100

> Why has she produced

>such shoddy scholarship? Is it the publish-or-be-unemployed scenario?

I think this may relate to the demand, even by some academic presses, that

new monographs should be marketable to a wide and non-specialist audience.

Obviously to do that it's no good saying you have an interesting small

sidelight on some marginal eccentricities of Victorian sexual culture, you

have to have a startling new thesis which will overturn accepted etc etc

etc.

I note that there is a website 'Good Vibrations' (which I don't offhand

have the URL for which includes a 'Virtual Museum of the History of the

Vibrator' - which seems rather reminiscent of Maines's book though I

couldn't find it cited anywhere. (GV started as a women-friendly business

selling vibrators in I think the 1970s).

Lesley Hall

lesleyah@primex.co.uk



___________________________________________________________________

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 21:48:26 +0100

From: Ianthe <ianthe@duende.demon.co.uk>

Subject: Maines - PS

In message <00d701bee818$58da1920$912f70c3@default>, Lesley Hall

<lesleyah@primex.co.uk> writes

>Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

>>> Why has she produced

>>such shoddy scholarship? Is it the publish-or-be-unemployed scenario?

>>I think this may relate to the demand, even by some academic presses, that

>new monographs should be marketable to a wide and non-specialist audience.

In her case it was publish and be _un_-employed. This

Carnegie-Mellon Phd spent 20 years researching and

writing _The Technology of the Orgasm_ (Dec 1998, John

Hopkins UP) and for her pains was apparently (according

to Wired) promptly sacked from the faculty of Clarkson

U, on publication. Luckily it seems she has a research

and curatorship business to fall back on.

_Web links_:

* Amazon.com, with comments:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801859417/o/qid=934835232/sr=

8-1/002-1370467-1434652 (place all on one line, press 'enter')

* John Hopkins University Press page for the book:

http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/books/titles/f98/f98mate.htm

* The full-text of Chapter 1 (uncorrected proof):

http://128.220.50.88/press/books/titles/sampler/maines.htm

_Some Web reviews_:

* Salon:

http://ww1.salonmagazine.com/urge/feature/1999/02/cov_25feature.html

* CyberSociology:

http://www.socio.demon.co.uk/magazine/5/5orgasm.html

* New York Times:

http://bettydodson.com/org-tech.htm

* LA Weekly:

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/99/03/wls-mithers.shtml



--

Ianthe Duende



___________________________________________________________________

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 14:40:07 -0700

From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>

Subject: maines and intro

Fellow Subscribers,

An anecdote to the Maines discussion: The book, _The Road to Welville_

(1993), by novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle, includes a scenario in which a

doctor (of dubious reputation) manipulates the "wombs" of various women.

Boyle uses the scenario to poke fun at the distinctions made between the

serious science allegedly performed at John Harvey Kellog's sanitarium

(through which the reader has already seen people die) and that type of

science deemed quakery (through which the female characters' conditions

seem to be improving). Now, Boyle is a satirist and his intention is to

poke fun at both types of science but he may have a point. Surely, we can

learn from Maines (without accepting her whole thesis) that the distinction

between legitimate and illegitimate was a fuzzy business in the late

nineteenth century (on this, see Keith Walden's superb _Becoming Modern in

Toronto_ (1997))

I'm not sure of Boyle's historical sources but in this and his other works,

I have found him to evoke historical context better than (alas) many

historians. For example, his _Riven Rock_ is the perfect novel companion

to Gail Bederman's _Manliness and Civilization_.

An introduction: I am a doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University in

British Columbia. My dissertation is a cultural history of men and

violence in post-WWII Vancouver - looking at the cultural definitions and

responses to different types of violence. I have also done work on

masculine domesticity in the 1950s including an article on the origins of

men's suburban barbecuing in Canada.

chris dummitt



_______________________

Chris Dummitt

Doctoral Candidate

Department of History

Simon Fraser University

_______________________



___________________________________________________________________

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 12:42:05 +1000

From: Hera Cook <dcoo8738@mail.usyd.edu.au>

Subject: Re: Maines



Ianthe wrote,

In her case it was publish and be _un_-employed. This

Carnegie-Mellon Phd spent 20 years researching and

writing _The Technology of the Orgasm_ (Dec 1998, John

Hopkins UP) and for her pains was apparently (according

to Wired) promptly sacked from the faculty of Clarkson

U, on publication. Luckily it seems she has a research

and curatorship business to fall back on.

Hera replies

I am a bit lost here. I read that she had trouble in the 1980s. I would be

astonished if it was correct that she was sacked from Clarkson U for a book

published by John Hopkins U press in 1999.

As the person who introduced this topic and many of the criticisms of Maine's

work. I would like to comment that I wouldn't have used the word shoddy about her

research. It is evident from her introduction that Maine started her work with

certain preconceptions - but she is hardly alone in that. I am resistant to her

and her publicists' construction of her as matyred to the heroic cause of truth

about vibrators. However one of the problems with being attacked from outside in

an unreasonable basis, as it appears she was on one occasion in the 80s, is that

it tends to diminish people's capacity for re-analysis and skeptism towards their

own work.

So she probably never went back and examined her own fundamental assumptions nor

had the time to look at the medical context in which, as Leslie pointed out, the

vibrators were used quite differently. However she has done a great deal of

research in the areas she thought were relevant. It is not shoddy it is just wrong

and publicised in a way that emphasises that.

Hera

___________________________________________________________________

From: Kazetnik@aol.com

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 08:50:53 EDT

Subject: Maines: terms of critique

Hi

Given that I was responsible for calling Maines' work shoddy, I would like to

withdraw the insult and apologise -- it was an overstatement, but one born of

(personal) irritation not so much with Maines, but rather with the climate in

which we UK academics seem doomed to work, in which quantity takes precedence

over quality. Not an original gripe, of course, but with the next RAE

looming, planning for the one after that is beginning to take control. Ugh!

Chris White



___________________________________________________________________

From: "Chris Willis" <chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Maines again

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 12:53:37 +0100

Hi!

>> it's frustrating when only part of a paper is on-line....!

I agree! I'm also wondering whether the pictures the Independent used were

provided by Maines or added by the Independent themselves. (I used to be a

journalist and we quite often supplemented an article with whatever vaguely

relevant pics we could dig out of the library.) If the latter, they may not

be a fair reflection of her research.

I wonder if part of the reason for the hostility to her work is that some of

it could be construed as attacking the medical establishment? OK, so it was

a long time ago, but her allegations about male doctors sexually abusing

women under the pretence that it was medical treatment are very disturbing.

All the best

Chris

=========================================

Chris Willis

English Dept

Birkbeck College

Malet Street

London WC1E 7HX

Chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk

http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/

=========================================



___________________________________________________________________

From: along@crt.state.la.us (Alecia Long)

Subject: RE: The silly season? Sex and the ancient Greeks

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:17:43 -0500



I, for one, have a been a little bothered by the assumption that seems to

be be embedded in some of the recent list postings about Maines book and

now about Vrissimmtzs' book.

The assumption that these two books are somehow without value or don't pass

muster because the authors make mistakes and/or fail to take into account

the work of the history of sexuality cannon smacks of the very same kind of

academic derision and elitism that folks in the history of sexuality

community have been fighting against in order to have their work taken

seriously.

I don't think it does a lot of good for us to canibalize each other just

because we can. Criticism is essential, but far too often that criticism

devolves into smug and smirky commentary. God knows trying to write a

dissertation, let alone a book, is the hardest thing I've ever done, and I

always try to remember that when I'm reviewing or critiquing the work of

others. I also try to remember that the most important and bravest things

a writer or scholar can ever do is have the stamina to finish something and

then the nerve to put it out there for public scrutiny.

My own work is on New Orleans. While the existing secondary works on

sexuality in my subject city fall far short of what I consider minimum

standards of professional scholarly research, they have been invaluable to

me -- both in terms of helping me generate questions and providing

invaluable research leads. I would go so far as to say that popular/buff

literature on sexuality (and I would place Vrissimtz' work in this category

but not Maines) does an invaluable service to more "serious" scholars

because it generates interest among the larger reading public.

I think lots of the criticism of Maines' book has been right on-target and

I don't think she's a martyr, but I take exception to the assertion that

her book is an exemplar of "quantity over quality" publishing.

More than enough said I suspect.

Alecia P. Long, Historian

Louisiana State Museum

___________________________________________________________________

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 10:46:53 +1000

From: Hera Cook <dcoo8738@mail.usyd.edu.au>

Subject: Re: Masturbation in Ancient Greece and Maines

Hi,

As I remember the illustrations do come from the book. Also she is not

talking about doctors sexually abusing women.

She believes that these doctors and these women did not see clitoral sensations

as sexual - only vaginal penetration was sexual according to her. Therefore, she

argues, that both the doctors and the women saw doctors giving women clitoral

massage to orgasm as non-sexual relief of hysteria.

As I have said I seriously doubt that this practice was at all common, but where

(or if) it occurred in the ideological framework Maine presents, I would argue

very strongly that it is ahistorical to describe it as sexual abuse. The

experience of sexual abuse is culturally constructed and accordingly differs over

time and in different societies.

I think the reason for the hostility is that she has produced an argument which

is plausible and highly culturally acceptable right now - (read the articles

linked by Ianthe) so it is hard to dispute, even though it is not correct.

Does the Greek book come into the same category? It is obviously a culturally

acceptable idea in modern Greece but how is the evidence for very different

attitudes integrated into an argument for sexual conservatism?

I know little about sexuality in Ancient Greece. Is there anyone out there who

could comment on new scholarship on attitudes to masturbation, especially female

masturbation? And, of course, on attitudes to homosexuality.

(About 3-4 years ago I heard a radio 4 interview with a scholar fromWarwick

University talking about homosexuality in Ancient greece - it was so good I

remember it still - Are you out there by any chance?)

Hera

From: "Chris Willis" <chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Re: Maines and the silly season

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 20:13:52 +0100

Hi!

The point I was trying to make is that Maines' work can be interpreted as an

attack on the medical establishment in general and abusive doctors (or what

we would now term abusive doctors) in particular, which might account for

some of the hostility towards her work. Press coverage certainly hasn't

helped!

While I take your point about cultural constructs, I can't entirely agree

that such treatment was necessarily non-abusive. I appreciate that the

doctors may well have claimed it wasn't abuse but, to paraphrase Mandy

Rice-Jones, "Well they would, wouldn't they?" Does Maines give patients'

views of the treatment? I haven't been able to get hold of her book yet, so

I'm having to go on what she's been quoted as saying, which I do appreciate

may not be accurate. (Some of the accounts I've read give the impression

she is talking about abuse, amongst other things, but then, it is the silly

season!)

Does Maines give any examples of female doctors or male patients involved in

this treatment? There's some fascinating gender politics here. It's

interesting that a professionally-qualified man receiving payment for

stimulating a woman to orgasm was considered to be giving medical treatment,

whereas women who did the same for men were regarded as prostitutes.

All the best

Chris ________________________________________________________________

From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>

Subject: Technology of Orgasm

Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 12:28:46 +0100



Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

Well, I've now read this, and must say I find the case less than =

compelling. The case for hysteria as a historically continuous concept =

meaning the same thing over centuries has been convincingly =

deconstructed by Helen King, but one cannot blame Maines for relying on =

the works she did, long regarded as authoritative. A lot of the =

pre-C19th evidence is not contextualised by reference to the concept of =

drawing the womb, wandering round the body, back into its proper place =

(which, as far as I know, was the purpose of midwives massaging the =

female parts with aromatic oils) or to humoural theories of medicine and =

bodily balance. Thus in some cases (though I'm not an expert on the =

period) I think she's reading things that were meant to produce =

menstrual flow (stoppage of which was seen as dangerous damming up of =

bodily fluids) rather than any form of sexual discharge, as being about =

the latter.

The story also seems perhaps to be a particularly N. American one - =

I certainly don't think I've ever seen ads for similar vibratory =

massagers in UK women's periods of the turn of the century, although =

they do include ads for things like 'Widow Welch's Pills', an =

emmengogue/abortifacient, and Rendells Pessaries (contraceptives), and =

this would probably be comparable with other advertising of small =

consumer electrical items in the 2 countries. It might be interesting to =

look at when things like electric irons, vacuum cleaners, and =

whathaveyou were first advertised in the 2 countries, as a general =

exercise in the differential introduction of electrical technology into =

the household. (Though another factor here might be differences in =

availability of domestic servants?)

Hydropathy, massage, etc, were all supposed to have (and do have) =

benefits in toning up the system, relaxation, etc etc, distinct from =

producing orgasms: I have never seen any indication of the women in the =

whirlpool bath at the Sanctuary - Central London health spa - having =

orgasms, though another assumption of this book seems to be that women's =

orgasms are paroxysmal events, observable by bystanders - not =

necessarily!

The evidence for the sexualisation of the vibro-massager in the =

1920s seems thin - one stag film quoted from a source Maines herself =

regards as not entirely reliable. However, I suspect that there is =

another story about the technologisation of sex, which her gendered =

perspective leaves out. Somewhere in my own files I have xeroxes of =

various ads in 'The Pink 'Un' and similar raffish men's periodicals, =

1890s-1900s, for what I assume to be 'personal services' in the =

prostitution sense, but couched in terms of other bodily services such =

as massage and 'electrotherapy'. Were prostitutes using these devices =

_on men_? And would this be a reason for the growing perception of =

massagers as 'obscene objects' which could not be advertised in =

respectable periodicals.

There is interesting and suggestive material in this book but I =

don't think all the evidence adduced will bear the interpretation Maine =

wants it to. =20

Lesley Hall

lesleyah@primex.co.uk

website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah ________________________________________________________________

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 14:15:33 EST

From: markin@patriot.net

Subject: Re: Maines' martyrdom

> some of which quite clearly aren't! She seems to think that any appliance

> which has the word "vibrate" or "massage" in its name or instructions must

> be a vibrator, even if it's something like a neck and scalp massager. One

> of the devices illustrated looks like a 1940s equivalent of the "Tens"

> machine which is used to treat people with incurable back and neck

> problems - in other words, exactly what the advertisements say it is.

Ah, so that's the "legitimate" use of the Tens machine ... I'd wondered,

but didn't know whom to ask. The only context in I'd ever come across the

thing was CBT. And the only advert I've ever seen was on the web (not

sure I could find it again, though), on a sex "toy" site ... So, it all

depends on what advertisements one finds, although it's easier to find

explicitly sexual ones now than it was in Victorian times.

> All the best

> Chris

Mario Rups

markin@patriot.net



________________________________________________________________

From: "Chris Willis" <chris@chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Re: Maines' martyrdom

Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1999 18:07:03 +0100

Hi!

I'm astounded! The TENS machine is used by many hospitals to ease labour

pains, and is recognised by the medical professions as a pain reliever with

no side effects. It's one of the few things that can give some measure of

relief to RSI sufferers, and is a godsend to people with severe back pain.

What's CBT? Over here it means Compulsory Basic Training (ie the first part

of the test you do to get a motorcycling licence) but somehow I don't think

that's what you meant :-)

All the best

Chris

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