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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to STUFFMA never

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Speaker 1: told you. Some of you might have heard about a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a kerfuffle at this year's Consumer Electronics

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Speaker 1: Show in Las Vegas, CES. So what happened was the

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Speaker 1: Laura de Carlo team submitted this product called S to

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Speaker 1: the c e S Innovation Awards and Oh Say is

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Speaker 1: a hands free device that allows for the blended orgasm,

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Speaker 1: complete with micro robotic technology, and they won the CS

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Speaker 1: Innovation Awards Honore in the Robotics and Drones category and

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Speaker 1: to win, the product was vetted by the Consumer Technology

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Speaker 1: Association the c t A and the ct A is

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Speaker 1: c S his owner, and it was also vetted by

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Speaker 1: a panel of independent judges. A month after the announcement,

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Speaker 1: the team at de Carlo was notified by CS and

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Speaker 1: the c t A that their award had been presentded.

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Speaker 1: On top of that, they would not be permitted to

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Speaker 1: showcase or exhibit their product at CS. They have given

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Speaker 1: several inconsistent reasons for this award being rescinded. Quote entries

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Speaker 1: deemed by c ti A and their sole discretion to

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Speaker 1: be a moral obscene in decent profane are not in

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Speaker 1: keeping with ctias image will be disqualified. C TIA reserves

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Speaker 1: the right in its sole discretion to disqualify any entry

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Speaker 1: at any time which, in CTA's opinion, endangers the safety

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Speaker 1: or well being of any person or fails to comply

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Speaker 1: with these official rules. So women's sexual pleasure is either

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Speaker 1: according to this immoral, indecent, obscene, profane, or not in

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Speaker 1: keeping with ct AS image. Okay, decal I wanted to

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Speaker 1: know how they made it past all the judges and

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Speaker 1: staff if this is the case, and the team received

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Speaker 1: a letter from c t a s president and CEO

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Speaker 1: Gary Shapiro and the executive vice president Karen Tia, declaring

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Speaker 1: OSA didn't even qualify for the category. Never mind, it's

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Speaker 1: the subject of eight pending patents for robotics, biomimicry, and

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Speaker 1: engineering feats. Also, tech aimed at male pleasure is perfectly

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Speaker 1: acceptable and often lauded at c e S. From the

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Speaker 1: De Carlo company's founder, Laura how to quote, you cannot

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Speaker 1: pretend to be unbiased if you allow a sex robot

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Speaker 1: in the shape of an unrealistic female body, but not

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Speaker 1: a vagina focused robotic massager for blended orgasm. This whole

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Speaker 1: conversation touches on so much more than just ce s,

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Speaker 1: but problems in the tech industry at large and really

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Speaker 1: society as a whole. If you want to hear more

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Speaker 1: conversation around this, I'm going to be guesting on the

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Speaker 1: show Tech Stuff to dive into it. So go check

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Speaker 1: that out. And in the meantime, here an oldie but

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Speaker 1: a goodie looking at the history of the vibrator. Enjoy.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. This

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Speaker 1: is Molly and I'm Kristin. Kristen. Let's dive right in

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Speaker 1: to some statistics our favorite thing, all right, and it

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Speaker 1: will I think we'll ease us into the topic of

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Speaker 1: the day. Okay, So I want to talk about something

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Speaker 1: that was published in two thousand nine which revealed that

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Speaker 1: about half of American adults use a vibrator on a

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Speaker 1: regular basis, on a regular basis, and that is men,

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Speaker 1: that's women, that's gay, that's straight, always people using vibrators.

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Speaker 1: And what was interesting about this study in particular, not

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Speaker 1: just the number of people that use vibrators, but what

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Speaker 1: was really interesting was that the women who used them

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Speaker 1: had better sexual health because they're more likely to have

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Speaker 1: a gynecological exam during the past year, They're more likely

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Speaker 1: to do self examinations to make sure that the body

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Speaker 1: was still everything was looking the way it was supposed

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Speaker 1: to be, and men were more likely to do testicular

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Speaker 1: self exams too. So basically, the study was showing that

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Speaker 1: these people who use vibrators tend to take better care

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Speaker 1: of all their their special parts, and the women and

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Speaker 1: men also who were using the vibrators also tended to

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Speaker 1: rate a little bit higher on sexual satisfaction. So, with

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Speaker 1: no further ado, maybe we should back up hundred plus

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Speaker 1: years to figure out where where all the buzz came

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Speaker 1: from with vibrators, because these days we might associate vibrators

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Speaker 1: with sex toys and CD sex shops and things like that.

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Speaker 1: But their history is purely rooted in medicine. Medicine, very

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Speaker 1: um and very you know, no eyebrows raised. When the

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Speaker 1: greater started uh to appear in doctor's offices. It was

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Speaker 1: it was non controversial at all. Whereas you know, you

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Speaker 1: you read about a study like this two thousand nine one,

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Speaker 1: people like, oh my gosh, are likely people using vibrators.

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Speaker 1: But I think the link is that the better sexual

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Speaker 1: health and the better health overall kind of links the

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Speaker 1: modern statistics to this history. We're going to go back to, right,

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Speaker 1: because one thing I found really fascinating about the history

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Speaker 1: of vibrators is that it was actually considered far less

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Speaker 1: controversial than the gynecological speculum, right because the speculum was

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Speaker 1: inserted during an exam, whereas vibrators were purely external use.

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Speaker 1: But let's talk about why you might be using a

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Speaker 1: vibrator in the Victorian era in the first place, one

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Speaker 1: word hysteria. Hysteria gripped a nation, a nation, many nations.

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Speaker 1: The women just kept coming down with hysteria from from

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Speaker 1: early early times. Like you've got people like Hippocrates Galen

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Speaker 1: writing about these uh fits that women would have where

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Speaker 1: they just couldn't breathe, where they just weren't acting right.

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Speaker 1: Everything was, Oh, it's just crazy, like the stereotypical female craziness.

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Speaker 1: These these early doctors could not figure out and they

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Speaker 1: always blamed it on the womb and the uterus. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred BC, ancient Egyptians blamed hysteria, which we

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Speaker 1: will later find out is really just sexual frustration on

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Speaker 1: the uterus wandering from the womb into the throat and

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Speaker 1: making it hard for a woman to breathe. And a

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Speaker 1: little a little linguistic fun fact, hysteria comes from the

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Speaker 1: word uterus, and we talked a little bit about that

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Speaker 1: in the Celibacy podcast about how doctors of olden days

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Speaker 1: would would prescribe sex as this way to curb the

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Speaker 1: wandering womb. Well sex for married people, molly true. And

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Speaker 1: that's that's when we're going to get into why some

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Speaker 1: some ladies needed more help than others. Because in the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth century, if you weren't married, if you were say single,

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Speaker 1: or owed or a nun, the cure for your hysteria

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Speaker 1: would have been vigorous horseback exercise or movement of the

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Speaker 1: pelvis in a swing rocking chair or carriage. Or they

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Speaker 1: told once train started coming, when they had the industrial evolution,

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Speaker 1: they would tell theman just to hop a train and

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Speaker 1: to let the rocking of the train take care of it.

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Speaker 1: But let's say that there were no horses around, you

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Speaker 1: weren't married, or you were married, and your husband just

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Speaker 1: couldn't seem to solve this womb problem on his own.

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Speaker 1: He would go to the doctor. And what the doctor

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Speaker 1: would do is he would massage the volbular area until

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Speaker 1: he brought you to what was deemed a hysterical proxys

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Speaker 1: m a k A. An orgasm, and this would cure

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Speaker 1: the classic symptoms supposedly of hysteria, which would include anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness,

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Speaker 1: erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema,

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Speaker 1: and vaginal lubrication a k A. Sexual arousal. Yeah. I mean, really,

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Speaker 1: it's just curing your your libido. And so the thinking

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Speaker 1: is is that maybe you know, people just weren't that

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Speaker 1: knowledgeable about what might lead a woman to orgasm. It

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Speaker 1: really wasn't a topic for polite conversation, and so going

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Speaker 1: to the doctor to have this regular massage was not

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Speaker 1: seen as as anything deviant or or wrong. It was

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Speaker 1: purely curing medical symptoms. The doctors didn't seem to get

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Speaker 1: any pleasure out of it. It was just, you know,

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Speaker 1: another another day at the office. And because you know,

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Speaker 1: it was advocated by so many medical professionals, was like,

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Speaker 1: all right, this is something I'll have to do regularly.

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Speaker 1: Every two weeks or so, We'll head into the doctor's office.

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Speaker 1: Get my massage be cured form hysteria for a few weeks,

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Speaker 1: and doctors would use volvular massage for non orgasmic purposes

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Speaker 1: as well, including to treat constipation, arthritis, muscle fatigue, laryngitis,

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Speaker 1: and tumors. So bringing women to hysterical paroxysms and in

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Speaker 1: two sometimes had a wide range of applications. But one

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Speaker 1: thing about these massages sometimes they were just kind of

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Speaker 1: tiresome for the doctors. Sometimes their hands just got really

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Speaker 1: worn out. And I'm not trying to be crass there,

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Speaker 1: their medical records of doctors really take to like try

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Speaker 1: and cure this hysteria. And also if you were a

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Speaker 1: doctor in business, it was not very easy to see

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Speaker 1: a bunch of patients if you never knew how long

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Speaker 1: a hysterical patient was going to take uh to reach

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Speaker 1: her proxysm, and so it was, you know, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: a very good business model to have these indeterminate appointments

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Speaker 1: going on. And also for for a while, water treatments

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Speaker 1: became popular, and while they did work maybe a little

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Speaker 1: bit more little easier than than the manual treatment, they

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Speaker 1: weren't exactly clean and not exactly portable, So in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, doctor Joseph Mortimer Grandville comes along in patents

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Speaker 1: the first electro mechanical vibrator, and my goodness, were doctors

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Speaker 1: everywhere relieved. Oh my goodness. It just took off. And

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Speaker 1: there are all sorts of models that doctors could buy.

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Speaker 1: You can buy like hand cranked models. You could buy

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Speaker 1: models that you operated with the foot pedal. There were

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Speaker 1: some that were like forks and they vibrated that way,

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Speaker 1: and some hung from the ceiling. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: that works. And there were I mean, it just just

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Speaker 1: every single model of a vibrator that you could imagine.

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Speaker 1: Even some of the ceiling models attached the tables why

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Speaker 1: a coils called vibrate tiles, turbines, gas engines, and it

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Speaker 1: was just it was a revelation for doctors that they

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Speaker 1: could just, you know, turn this thing on and and

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Speaker 1: it was worked much faster than using your fingers. It

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Speaker 1: was a little bit cleaner, and again, as we said,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't like a speculum that you had to insert.

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Speaker 1: They were just doing this on the extra old genitalia.

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Speaker 1: So it was on the up and up according to society.

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Speaker 1: And get this, the vibrator was only the fifth household

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Speaker 1: device to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle,

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Speaker 1: and toaster. So before we have the electric vacuum cleaner

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Speaker 1: and iron, we had the we had the vibrator. And

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Speaker 1: by nineteen seventeen there were more vibrators in the home

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Speaker 1: than electric toasters. I know, that's insane, crazy, and so

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Speaker 1: there were. You would find them in all these catalogs.

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Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of the knowledge we have about

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Speaker 1: the vibrator today is thanks to researcher named Rachel Mains

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Speaker 1: who was actually doing a history of needlecraft in America.

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Speaker 1: So she took a spicy churn, very unexpected term because

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Speaker 1: she was paging through this old needlecraft catalog and started

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Speaker 1: finding these advertiser advertisements for home vibrators. And this wasn't

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Speaker 1: from nineteen o six. Imagine looking through all these old

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Speaker 1: needlecraft catalogs and finding these ads that you would normally

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Speaker 1: expect to find in saucy magazine. So that's when she

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Speaker 1: ditches the needle craft. Hannah starts investigating why vibrators are

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Speaker 1: being sold at that time and comes across this hysteria

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Speaker 1: thing and the fact that the women weren't being we're

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Speaker 1: really being treated quite right, but their partners, and she

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Speaker 1: ends up writing a book called The Technology of the Orgasm,

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Speaker 1: which is really, I guess, kind of the go to

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Speaker 1: book for the history of the vibrator. And just for fun,

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Speaker 1: here's here's an advertising tagline from one of those very

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Speaker 1: respectable magazine nights for vibrators. It says, all the pleasure

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Speaker 1: of youth will throb inside of you. That sound too bad,

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Speaker 1: And vibrators were in fact so popular that they were

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Speaker 1: a driving force behind the creation of the small electric motor.

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Speaker 1: So really, I mean, this is a huge technological innovation

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Speaker 1: that we have to thank, you know, the vibrator for

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Speaker 1: without Without vibrators, and this craze about women's hysteria, you know,

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Speaker 1: would we would we have a vacuum cleaner, vacuum cleaner

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Speaker 1: and you know, I mean maybe the women would have

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Speaker 1: never been able to get up to vacuum if they

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Speaker 1: kept having all these hysterical symptoms that they never figured

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Speaker 1: out how to cure. If we still had to go

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Speaker 1: get volbular massages every two weeks, My god, time to post.

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Speaker 1: How would we have a breakthrough the glass ceiling? And men,

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Speaker 1: don't think that you were absent from this revolution as well,

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Speaker 1: because just a few decades after the women's vibrator movement

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Speaker 1: really gets going, John Mure aka that legendary naturalists invent

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Speaker 1: patterns of vibrator for men as well. Some men are

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Speaker 1: also using vibrators at this time. Their ailments can be

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Speaker 1: cured by a vibrating massager. Probably probably not using them

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Speaker 1: as much as women, but you never know, you never know.

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Speaker 1: So we've got vibraries being sold directly to men and women,

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Speaker 1: and be a catalog. We've got doctors administering massages in

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Speaker 1: their doctor's offices. Now, unfortunately, along comes Freud. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: maybe not unfortunately, I guess, I don't know. You can

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Speaker 1: draw your own conclusions because old Freud comes along and

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Speaker 1: he's like, this is not going to work. We need

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Speaker 1: to stop treating women's hysteria with these massages with orgasms.

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Speaker 1: They need to talk it out. That is the only

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Speaker 1: thing that's going to work. You're not really solving their problems,

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Speaker 1: but just you know, putting a band aid on them.

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Speaker 1: Stop doing this, talk to them, so you know, you

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Speaker 1: can you know, Freud, you can make a ton of

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Speaker 1: jokes about Freud and women and sex, but he was

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Speaker 1: the one who brings an ind to this. He ends

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Speaker 1: all the fun. But right around that same time, vibrators

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Speaker 1: start showing up in stag films. That is true in

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Speaker 1: the nineties, uh As, as Slate puts it, stagg reels

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Speaker 1: blew the vibrator's cover because a lot of people, I

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Speaker 1: guess based on Main's research, just sort of pretended that

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Speaker 1: what was happening was not an organ something. It was

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Speaker 1: just you know, a brief hysterical paroxysm. And I think

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Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with the fact that

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Speaker 1: we've mentioned many times now that nothing was going inside

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Speaker 1: of a woman. It was all outside, you know, sexually

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Speaker 1: different than a back massage, because remember this time, you know,

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Speaker 1: Victorian couples did not have Cosmo magazine to help learn

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Speaker 1: how to please a partner, so intercourse might have been

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Speaker 1: very bland. Let's just say, and um, you know, at

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Speaker 1: this point, when you've got these stag films coming out,

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Speaker 1: they're showing, you know, they're making that explicit connection between

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Speaker 1: what the vibrator does and what happens in the bedroom.

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Speaker 1: So that's that's sort of when I think the first

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Speaker 1: explicit that we could find link between sex and the

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Speaker 1: vibrator comes into play. Yeah, and once it becomes tainted

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Speaker 1: by those stag films, the most famous of which was

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Speaker 1: called The Nun's Story, not the one with Audrey starring

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Speaker 1: Audrey Hepburn. But once it, once vibrators get the sixy

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Speaker 1: edge to it, they have to go under the rug

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Speaker 1: and it becomes something that scholars call camouflage technology. Vibrators

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Speaker 1: don't go away, they just become home massage, a backscratcher. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So um, that's how they were sold in catalogsies with

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Speaker 1: very you know, uh, euphemistic titles. You can't really say

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Speaker 1: what it's for. And in some states, like there's this

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Speaker 1: case in Alabama where you can't say it's a sex toy.

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Speaker 1: You have to show that it's used for medical purposes.

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Speaker 1: And going back sort of to that old Victorian era.

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Speaker 1: So um. But one interesting fact that I came across,

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Speaker 1: because I don't remember this was in the eighties when

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Speaker 1: Reagan was president, his surgeon General see Ewet mailed out

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Speaker 1: this list of safe sex options to every household. Um,

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Speaker 1: and vibrators were on the list. Yeah, And they did

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Speaker 1: this in response to the AIDS epidemic at the time.

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Speaker 1: So they were trying to educate people on on safe

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Speaker 1: sex and lo and behold. Vibrators kind of come back

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Speaker 1: into a little more public acceptance, come a little more

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Speaker 1: out in the open. You can stop using things like

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Speaker 1: backscratcher to get them into catalog. We all know why

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Speaker 1: you're getting the Hatachi magic wad, right. The jig is up.

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Speaker 1: So that was the history of vibrators, the buzz on

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Speaker 1: this this fascinating device that may have, you know, led

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Speaker 1: to the vacuum cleaner. So if you have anything that

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Speaker 1: you would like to add, bearing in mind that we

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Speaker 1: do have a spam filters. Do have a spam filters,

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Speaker 1: don't tell the email vibrators the g rated jokes. Our

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Speaker 1: email is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: And I have an email that was sent to that

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Speaker 1: very address. It was from Kristen, but not you, Kristen.

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Speaker 1: This is Christen with a cake and she writes, I'm

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Speaker 1: a librarian and I love my career very much. I

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Speaker 1: graduate from college with a teaching degree and wasn't particularly

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Speaker 1: happy in that profession. I realized that I didn't go

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Speaker 1: into teaching because I love teaching, but because I loved learning.

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Speaker 1: Big difference. I'm in back to graduate school from my

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Speaker 1: MLS and have been extremely happy in this profession ever since.

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Speaker 1: When you tell people you're a librarian, they always assume

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Speaker 1: that you work in a public library. I think it's

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Speaker 1: important for people to understand that there are many opportunities

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Speaker 1: outside of public libraries. Librarians are employed by hospitals, law firms, universities, museums,

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Speaker 1: art galleries, manuscript galleries, private corporations, government agencies, and publishing companies.

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Speaker 1: I've seen job postings over the years for companies like WebMD, ESPN,

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Speaker 1: and Pixar, just to name a few. If someone enjoys

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Speaker 1: learning on a daily basis and seeks variety and their occupation,

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Speaker 1: librarianship is an excellent career choice. Maybe I should become

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Speaker 1: a librarian. I really want to become a library and

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Speaker 1: I think, all right, Well, I've got another library related

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Speaker 1: email here from Lydia. Lydia writes, I am a professional

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Speaker 1: librarian and have been from his fifteen years, and I

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Speaker 1: guess I'm considered one of those cool or hip librarians.

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Speaker 1: I have some fellow cool librarian friends, and we're happy

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Speaker 1: to use our personal biases and interests to enhance our

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Speaker 1: libraries collections. And interesting and maybe subversive ways. But in general,

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Speaker 1: I think most librarians are really square. Just try going

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Speaker 1: to a library conference or large meeting. Hipsters will certainly

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Speaker 1: find a niche, but as a whole, groupings of librarians

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Speaker 1: are heavily weighted with the elderly female, grandma frontbe, can't dance,

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Speaker 1: doesn't get out too much type. Don't get me wrong,

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Speaker 1: some of them might be fascinating people too, but believe me,

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Speaker 1: it's not like working for MTV. But I wonder Molly

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Speaker 1: It's empty has a library. Oh I bet that a

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Speaker 1: little bit. I thought you're gonna ask whether MTV just

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Speaker 1: has old people working there Kurt loader Zing And on

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Speaker 1: that note, Uh, you guys can't write us at mom

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Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also

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Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at mom stuff podcast. And finally,

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Speaker 1: we would love for you to like us on Facebook.

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Speaker 1: And I said find, but I should have said second

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Speaker 1: to last, because really, finally, you can read our blog

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Speaker 1: stuff I've Never told you at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,

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Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner

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