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New Vibrator Documentary Has People Buzzing
BY SARA WHITFORD
NOVEMBER 2, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (TNA) -- When historian Rachel Maines, Ph.D., searched through 1920s-era women's magazines looking for changing needlework patterns, she unexpectedly found pages and pages of ads for items closely resembling the modern vibrator.
Rachel Maines was inspired to research the history of vibrators after researching needlework patterns from the 1920s.

Surprised by this undiscovered cultural phenomenon, she investigated further and found that Dr. Mortimer Granville invented the first electro-magnetic vibrator in the 1880s.

The discovery – and its accompanying buzz – inspired Maines to write the book "The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction," which was published in 1999 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

The good vibes didn’t stop there.

When San Francisco-based documentary filmmakers Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori came across the book, they were immediately inspired to bring the history of vibrators to the forefront with their documentary film "Passion and Power: Technology of Orgasm," which was recently released on DVD.

"We felt that this information needed to reach a general audience not just scholars. What better way than a documentary," Slick said.

The subject might rub some people the wrong way, but Slick said when she told friends and family that she was going to make a film about vibrators, "They would laugh and then laugh some more."

People in the film industry, however, weren't so turned on by the idea. In fact, PBS initially agreed to fund the film only to later nix the deal fearing the material might be too explicit.

As a result, the film was funded mostly by the directors themselves with a little help from a small grant from the Robeson Foundation and groups of women from Marin County, Calif., who fell in love with the idea.

"The only real hindrance was lack of funding, which can stop a project," Slick said. "But it turned out to be positive in a weird sort of way. We now own the film ourselves and we get to make our own decisions."

Although Slick and Omori had to make financial sacrifices to fund the project, they were able to make the film exactly as they envisioned.
Wendy Slick touches on the subject of vibrators in a new documentary, 'Passion And Power: The Technology Of Orgasm.'

“It hasn’t been censored by anyone and that’s quite a feat,” Slick said.

While searching for funding, Slick found that the topic made people uncomfortable, except for the executives at HBO, who thought the idea was not sexually explicit enough.

"The subject matter seems to be uncomfortable ground for some, but after the terrific response we're getting I think this is definitely changing," Slick said.

Slick is surprised that the information presented in the film has been a shock to most of the 20- to 30-year-old women who have viewed the film.

"They commented that they were comfortable buying and using vibrators but never knew the history or context," Slick said.

Male viewers, such as Matthew Selinger, 35, an appraiser in San Francisco, have also found the film eye-opening.

“The film allowed me to come to the realization that the vibrator is more of a friend to couples rather than a competitor,” he said.

When Maines first started researching the history of the vibrator, she wanted to know why turn-of-the-century doctors created massage technology to treat hysteria in the first place.

In the film, she comments that the female orgasm dates back 2,500 years to the time of the Greek doctor Hippocrates, who also had a hand in the treatment of hysteria, quite literally, by advising doctors to massage the vulva with the fingers in order to avoid uterus neglect, which he believed to be a serious side effect of the disorder.

Pieter van Foreest, a highly regarded medical practitioner back in the 1600s, also mentioned the “release of fluids” and “massaging the vulva with the fingers” in a 1653 medical journal, but he didn’t use the word orgasm.

Finally in 1883, Auguste Tripier referred to it as the “venereal orgasm,” and soon afterwards medical practitioners quickly realized the commercial potential of the situation.

For the next 40 years, vibrators were manufactured and marketed to help women who suffered from "hysteria."

Sears Roebuck and General Electric started advertising and selling vibrators in their catalogs circa 1918 and they appeared right next to the trousers and kettles – a surprising and little known fact stated in the film.

But Slick and Omori are quick to show that the history of the vibrator has sometimes been shaky, such as in 2004, when a Texas soccer mom was arrested for selling two vibrators to undercover cops.

As the film points out, in Texas, it is perfectly legal to advertise and sell Viagra and firearms, but it's illegal to sell vibrators.
Joanne Webb was arrested for trying to sell a vibrator in Texas.

Section 43.71 of the Texas Penal Code prohibits the sale or promotion of "obscene device(s) meaning a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."

According to Susie Painter, director of the Christian Life Commission of Texas, many arbitrary laws are made because of a certain incident.

"I don't know the history of this particular law, but maybe someone was selling them at schools and so they made a law that rarely gets enforced," Painter explained.

"Having a sex toy industry creates a lot of victims, which results in daunting consequences for society," Painter said. “The industry is exploitive, and anything that exploits people is a sin.”

In contrast, Slick believes that vibrators and the sex toy industry are empowering for women.

"When a woman takes charge of her most intimate pleasures, she can take charge of all other aspects of life," Slick said.

In the early part of the 20th century, vibrators were commonly sold at Sears-Roebuck as a way to treat 'hysteria.'
Still, Celeste Hirschman, M.A., a certified sex coach in San Francisco, points out some issues that can arise for women who use vibrators in the bedroom.

Some are afraid that it might hurt their partner's ego, or they fear that something is wrong with them if they need a vibrator to come," Hirschman said. "Some also feel that vibrators are not natural."

But Slick comes out in defense of the vibrator: "Performance is not the ultimate answer. The vibrator doesn't have to be seen as a competitor," she said.

Also in defense of the vibrator, Hirschman believes that most women need some focused clitoral stimulation to be able to climax.

"Using a vibrator during sex is as natural as eating with a fork or spoon," she said. "If we still did everything naturally we'd be living in caves eating raw meat and berries."

Most importantly, she points out that "some women simply cannot come without a vibrator and they also deserve the joy of coming with their partners by being able to bring the vibrator with them into bed."

Because of the controversy aroused by the touchy topic, Slick says the vibrator still has a long way to go before it achieves the same acceptance as other handy appliances such as the electric toothbrush or the curling iron.

"There still seems to be a stigma attached to vibrators and women taking charge of their own satisfaction as witnessed by the anti-vibrator laws that are still on the books in [Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama],” Slick said.

Still, she has reasons to be positive, since “… there are certainly more sex shops and Internet sites around than when we started working on the movie."

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