Hysterical Women and the History of Sex Toys

Liberating women one (or a couple) orgasms at a time– how feminist sex toys normalized sex-positivity in a world that made women out to be monsters.

Trigger Warning: themes and images of mental health disorders, suicide. 

Female orgasms have historically been neglected from the topic of sexual health and sexuality. This was based on the misinformed and misguided information around women's health that alienates women and perpetuates harmful stereotypes and taboos. 

However, historically the repercussions for women's sexuality were much more severe than they are today. Not only was sex was a more shameful act for women, but being a woman itself was a disgrace to society.

Prior to social movements to destigmatize female pleasure, female needs were often neglected in heterosexual culture. Sex toys and the sex toy market, however, were enriched by feminists in the 1970s, and focused on women empowerment through sexual liberation and womens’ orgasms. Catering to women's pleasure in the bedroom built healthy narratives around women's sexuality apart from the societal expectation to be mothers, and the moral responsibility to be decent and pure. 

But this was not always the case for women and the queer community, whom throughout history, were forbidden from experiencing and enjoying the freedom of sex-positivity and were rather demonized and stigmatized for their humanness. 

Under the misinformation of women, legend has it that women were made to orgasm by doctors in the Victorian Era using an early version of a vibrator in order to cure the rampant disease, Hysteria. 

Dating as far back as 3100 BCE, the adoption of female Hysteria as a legitimate disease into theology and medicine paved the way for post-dated misogyny and gender inequality through sexist diagnoses. 

The Racialized History of “Hysteria” // Photo via JSTOR Daily

Hysteria was described by the ancient Greeks as the melancholy of the female uterus. Characterized as the demonstration of the unstable, overly emotional nature of a woman, it was one of the oldest documented female mental disorders. Many early philosophers and physicians in Greece and Rome had unique ways of characterizing the condition, describing seizures of the body, the uterus moving abnormally, and even sensations of imminent death. 

Hippocrates who coined the term Hysteria believed it could be cured by an adequate sex life and herbal concoctions and holistic cures. Through this early science, women were prescribed to cleanse their body through intercourse with a male counterpart. While sex and procreation were said to rid the female of their illness, this further marginalized virgins, sterile, or single women who were fallaciously believed to produce toxic fumes from their body. Along with sex, the women were prescribed acrid, a distasteful perfume to fumigate their body and return the women back to their natural state. Greek physician Sonarus added that the female sexual organ and the natural condition for the female body to become fertilized was an inherent cause of the sickness. 

Early science and medicine from Ancient Greece pointed to the disease being a biological and physiological shortcoming of women. It was not considered a condition that affected women, but was rather caused by simply being a woman. 

Medieval Witch Trial // Photo via Brewminate

Throughout history, women have been described through science, philosophy, and theology as inferior to men. Religious dispositions by influential theologian and priest St. Thomas Aquinas described women as defective creatures. Pinning them as sinful, evil, and witches, contributing to the harmful and influential narratives that persisted throughout history, finding its origins in the Western churches by preachers during the middle ages. Because physicians had not come up with a clear cause and remedy for hysteria, women were considered delirious, and possessed. Women who faced hysteria were said to be possessed by a demon, and subject to exorcisms in the Christian church as a cure. 

Women, pinned as the devil for having such feeling, had committed suicide in the face of being rejected by society and the church with no cure or way to be saved. Carrying on through the Renaissance era, women were hysterical in society's eyes, as a feature of being a woman… Hysteria is what now defined women.

Photo via Medium

However, with greater scientific advancement and the rejection of exorcisms based in theology, “science” prevailed. These empirical discoveries however, all came from men, furthering the patriarchy by defining the roles of women in society through the misunderstanding of womens’ bodies. Disregarding women's health and biology, and alternatively constructing new categorical ways of oppressing women. 

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Hysteria began to target the social conditioning of women and their gender roles. Physicians argued that women who suffered the disease were led astray from their “natural” values and desires. They believed that women were biologically maternal beings, so by caring for a child and playing her “natural” biological role, her condition would be cured. Confiding to the singular identity of women constructed by men to procreate and child-bear women was believed to finally morally and purify her soul. However, regardless of how much she strived for moral redemption and a remedy to her malady, doctors argued that her body would remain sick for the rest of her life. 

 By the Enlightenment era, physicians believed Hysteria was a disease of the uterus. However, as men began to demonstrate similar symptoms of the disease, the possibilities began to open for the strange, incurable sickness to target both sexes. This of course would make all previous diagnoses targeted at female biology, incorrect.

But, regardless of the new hypothesis that Hysteria could be a neurological condition, not isolated to women, it prevailed as a threat to women and society. The secrecy and biased information continued to shape the role and image of women and women's health, all while the use of pseudoscientific remedies for the disease spread rampant throughout Europe.

In the Victorian era, women had held onto early treatments, storing acrid, salts with strong odor, in their handbags to suppress emotions whenever their symptoms would flare up. 

Popular culture has shaped the common conception that the earliest vibrators were medical tools that have translated into the modern sex toy. According to Rachel Maines, author of The Technological of Orgasms, vibrators were used in the Victorian Era by doctors to treat Hysteria. Depicted in films such as Hysteria (2011), television, documentaries, and viral misinformation on the internet, Victorian doctors were described using mobile vibrating technological devices as a medical treatment to make Hysterical women orgasm. 

However, the Victorian vibrator was in fact used to cure a variety of physical pains, medical conditions, and even baldness among both men and women. There are no historical records of the device being used to give pleasure.

Photo via The Nib

By the late 20th century, “Hysterical Neurosis” was revoked as a mental condition. By the late 1900s, the term was finally discarded as a medical diagnosis, with most of its symptoms now associated with mood related disorders such as anxiety, depression, and dissociative disorder. 

Women throughout history have been defined, and redefined through the patriarchy. Needless to say, their demonization and lack of power throughout history had damaging effects on the physical and mental well-being of women due to immobilization, reduction, and sexual repression in society. Women were not hysterical, they were suffering. 

The case of Hysteria as a misdiagnosis used to demonize and belittle women demonstrates how women's bodies were rejected and vilified through the medical gaze that oppresses.

Religious, political, and social contexts have historically neglected women's sexual needs, and disregarded women as sexual beings. Cultural, legal, and economic factors have further interjected in women's choice of sexual activity and pregnancy through politicizing sex, birth control and abortion.

But the development of sex toys in the 1970’s, however, placed emphasis on women's pleasure, normalizing women as sexual beings. Sex toys and the focus on women's self-exploration was a demonstration of reclaiming female identity, power, and sexuality—all centered around women's pleasure and identity.

Early 20th century electric vibrator advertisement // Photo via The Atlantic

In the early 1900s, sex toys were prohibited from advertising, so the devices that could be used for female pleasure were instead, discreetly marketed to housewives as home and kitchen utensils. They were also advertised as health devices, to soothe body aches and pain for both men and women, however, product instruction manuals insinuated more erotic uses of the technology. 

Photo via NSS G-Club

With the feminist and LGBT movements beginning in the 1970s, sexuality and sexual expression became a more pressing topic. During the sexual revolution in the 1960s the idea of casual sex, polygamy, and sex without marriage was popularized and considered forward thinking. However, some feminists felt the movement was anti-liberation and instead focused on self-pleasure and masturbation. Artist Betty Dodson was one of the first to create Western feminist artworks depicting couples making love and women masturbating, focusing her work on the power of the female orgasm in reclaiming their lives. 

Photo via REYKJAVÍK GRAPEVINE

Inspired by pleasure and masturbation workshops held by Dodson and the numerous women's marches held at the time, Dell Williams founded the company, Eve’s Garden, dedicated to women's health and sexuality, publishing books and selling sex toys. Being a woman designing sex toys for womens pleasure helped to reduce the stigma and shame. With quick success in the company, Williams opened the first boutique sex shop in Manhattan by 1979, which welcomed and encouraged women to seek pleasure and self exploration. Williams coined the classy sex boutique, paving the way for contemporary adult stores.   

An ABC news story from 2005 further describes women's participation in sex toy parties. Similar to the earlier Tupperware parties common in the States, sex toy parties in Ohio allowed adult women of all ages and economic standings to build community, come together in small group settings to create a comfortable place to discuss their sex lives, and discover new sex toys, promoting products that would be purchased by the end of the session. However, this practice and the use of sex toys was disapproved by Ohio churches when their male leaders deemed these parties unnecessary and disappointing. 

Photo via The Establishment

Till date, sex toys are still not entirely accepted in society. Sex stores and purchasing sex toys alone or with a partner is still taboo. Many of the fears around sex toys relate to male emasculation with worry of the devices being used to replace them, and womens’ shame around talking about sex and their desires. Adult stores still have many negative stereotypes around them. However, raising more social awareness about women's sexual health helps us understand the female body better. Understanding women’s needs puts an emphasis on consensual sex and pleasure, helping to build new standards for positive sexual relationships, and normalizing the use of sex toys, for all genders. 

Currently, most sex toys are catered towards women, especially from brands that are run by women, designing products for female pleasure. Because of branding and advertising designed to destigmatize women's pleasure, the notion around women using sex toys is often positive. But through the effects of the patriarchy, men are alternatively seen as gross and having unruly desires for wanting sex and sexual pleasure with a partner. The construction of female sexuality in relation to dignifying the female orgasms and pleasure have worked to reduce stigmas, however, can perpetuate gender divides with the social construction of female sexuality as classy and desirable while men are seen as “horndogs”. Creating sex toys for all genders can open a gateway for greater normalization of sexuality in general and promote increased sexual education, quality, and consensual sex.  

Sex can be a liberating activity when all parties are able to experience sexual pleasure and satisfaction. Understanding womens bodies through self exploration and sexual relations can be empowering for women. Sex toys are further a useful tool that help us to understand our areas of pleasure better, improve both our physical and mental health, and can lead to improvements for women's pleasure and orgasms in heterosex relationships. Sex toys can be an exciting addition to all kinds of relationships regardless of gender, increasing the overall pleasure, intimacy, satisfaction and happiness.