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