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The Technology of Orgasm
The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction | Rachel P. Maines
3 posts | 1 read | 6 to read
The author explores hysteria in Western medicine throughout the ages and examines the characterization of female sexuality as a disease requiring treatment. Medical authorities, she writes, were able to defend and justify the clinical production of orgasm in women as necessary to maintain the dominant view of sexuality, which defined sex as penetration to male orgasm - a practice that consistently fails to produce orgasm in a majority of the female population. This male-centered definition of satisfying and healthy coitus shaped not only the development of concepts of female sexual pathology but also the instrumentation designed to cope with them.
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MissCarrieLou
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Still just in the preface and already I want to pull out a highlighter! 🙌 #ReadHarder2017

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MissCarrieLou
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For the #ReadHarder2017 challenge to read a nonfiction book about technology. At first I was very 😴 about this task, but then I saw this on a list of options with a #feminist twist, and then I was more 🤗. Hehe.

RealLifeReading Sounds interesting! Stacked! 7y
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Hollie
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One of my fav #weirdbooks is The Technology of Orgasm. The author looks at 19th c vibrators as a medical treatment for hysteria because, as she says, manual stimulation was "the job nobody wanted." The illustrations alone are worth the read. I always bring this book to class when we discuss the subject so my students know I'm not making this stuff up! It is a ahem, stimulating topic! #somethingforseptember

Riveted_Reader_Melissa This reminds me of the Hysteria movie that was out awhile back, I'll have to look for this book! 8y
Hollie @Riveted_Reader_Melissa it is definitely like that movie, which I thought was hilarious. The Sears ads in the book from when they become marketed for home us are the best! 8y
Riveted_Reader_Melissa @Hollie I really enjoyed that movie too, Hysteria may not be a real diagnosis, at least not the way they meant it then, but the movie about that time in our medical history is hysterical. 8y
Kitta This sounds so interesting! 8y
Hollie @Kitta it's fascinating. I love history that is outside of the textbook norm! 8y
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