Vibrators, it seems, are everywhere. It started out with coy references on Sex in the City. Now there is an entire movie, Hysteria, devoted to their invention and yesterday my Tweet Deck exploded with links to articles about grocery stores carrying pleasure devices and a $1,600 vibrator set available on a sex toys website.
While I'm all for anyone expressing their sexuality and enjoying themselves, when perusing the pages of vibrators available, most, if not all, marketed towards women, I am left to wonder: Why all the hoopla? Why all the need for tools and batteries and life-like stimulation? Why can't women just touch themselves?
Hysteria, a medical diagnosis, was attributed to women as a disturbance of the uterus, an extreme emotional outpouring that required medical treatment. In the 19th century, this treatment came in the form of vibrators. Our foremothers needed medical permission to masturbate.
As the Twitterverse revealed yesterday, there is still quite the marketplace for vibrators -- even CVS thinks so. Yet hysteria is no longer a viable medical diagnosis, at least not one treated by a doctor making house calls with a vibrator. A 2011 article in The New Republic called female masturbation "the last sexual taboo" in a review of La Petite Mort, a photo book about women's masturbation practices. Even with the rise in sex toys, this taboo remains.
Good girls don't do that. There are no jokes about Rosie Fingers the way there are about Rosie Palm, a man's best girlfriend. With the rise in vibrators, women don't need to touch themselves to experience pleasure; they can use an intermediary device to put them one step back from the process, to remove themselves from the action.
I can't help but feeling women still need permission to pleasure themselves. We need the approval of a credit card swipe and a delicately labeled box with instructions to get in touch with one of our deepest, most natural urges. While I know this may not be true for every woman that rocks a vibrator, part of me worries that this is just another case where women's sexuality is subjugated to the marketplace instead of celebrated and explored.
I look forward to the day when women are teased about pleasuring themselves the same way men are. We don't need special pink magic wands to access this pleasure; all we need is the knowledge that it is okay, more than okay, a birthright, to experience and enjoy one of the gifts of being human.
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Its ok--don't be jealous--vibrator is not competing with the human mind and body.
By the way, I pleasure myself with different toys, vibrators, or by touching myself, and I've never once asked anyone's permission to do so or used a toy to remove myself from the process. It really just depends on my mood and the fact that I lack the ability to make anything on my body vibrate :)
I have friends that have confessed to me that they have never had an orgasm because they don't know how and I've recommended a vibrator so that they can explore and learn about their body. Sadly, some women are not very in touch with themselves sexually, but a vibrator is a great way to learn! :)
IMO women are more sexually powerful than men. Why? Because women are capable of having multiple orgasms.
Because women are capable of having different kinds of orgasms
Because it's women who are in charge of whether or not sex is to be had ("I have a headache').
So enjoy these capabilities, enough with the guilt already!
Permission granted!
If you're so concerned about women's empowerment, and think we shouldn't be enslaved to commercial interests, I'd suggest instead that we should all learn how to make our own vibrators. Simple electronics and silicone -- it's not exactly rocket science.