Pathology full circle: a history of anti-vibrator legislation in the United States.

• Author: Lindemann, Danielle J.
• Position: Sexuality and the Law

In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines traces the electromechanical vibrator back to its inception in the late 1800s, when it was employed solely by medical professionals who sought to relieve symptoms of hysteria and various other ailments in their female patients. (1) For several decades, the vibrator remained largely uncontroversial, even when it began appearing outside the confines of the doctor's office and in private homes, because it was consistently marketed as a medical--and not overtly sexual--device. (2) After it began appearing as an instrument of sexual pleasure in pornographic films of the 1920s, the vibrator's primary function became impossible to deny, and it essentially disappeared from public (though not private) life until the 1960s, when it emerged in advertisements as an explicitly sexual commodity. (3) Maines, however, fails to explore extensively either contemporary attitudes towards the vibrator or its current status as a medical or pleasurable instrument.

This Article picks up where Maines leaves off, arguing that a modern-day legal emphasis on the vibrator's use as a treatment for female sexual dysfunction and the contemporary courts' repeated attestations that the device's worth lies in its therapeutic value bring us full-circle to an era when the device was legitimated only as a treatment. Part I describes the historical background of the vibrator up until the 1960s. Part II summarizes anti-vibrator legislation that has emerged in recent years in several states. Part III examines contemporary medical and therapeutic arguments advanced by plaintiffs who have been prosecuted for the sale of sex toys. Legislation to prohibit the distribution of the device in several states has been combated by arguments that have overwhelmingly emphasized the vibrator's efficacy as a therapeutic tool for anorgasmic women and women with other sexual "dysfunctions." This section posits that these defense strategies legally legitimate vibrators solely as medical tools. Part IV summarizes the main epidemiological arguments that plaintiffs at these trials have employed to legitimate the sale of vibrators--chiefly that, used in lieu of intercourse, vibrators and other sex toys aid in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. The final section analyzes the implications of these anti-sex toy cases, concluding that the vibrator has, in a sense, legally resumed the guise of a primarily medical instrument. By validating the vibrator as a remedy for the sexually dysfunctional, and de-emphasizing or outright denying the rights of sexually-healthy women to use the device, the courts succeed in both criminalizing and pathologizing female masturbation.

1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

   In the late nineteenth century, prevalent notions about female sexuality, chiefly the fallacy that all women could achieve orgasm through vaginal penetration alone, both led to the invention of the vibrator and eliminated any moral controversy that could have potentially surrounded the device. (4) Symptoms of the disease paradigm "hysteria," diagnosed in so many women of the Victorian era, were created, in part, by unreleased sexual tension. (5) Though this cause was not publicly acknowledged at the time, general practitioners essentially treated the malady by inducing orgasm. (6) Indeed,

    [m]ore than 100 years ago women who displayed symptoms of irritability, depression, confusion, heart palpitations, forgetfulness, insomnia, headaches, muscle spasms,

   ticklishness or weepiness were thought to suffer from hysteria

   and were packed off to the GP. The good doctor's treatment for such maladies often included an external pelvic massage with his fingers which induced 'local spasms'--what we know as the orgasm. (7)

   Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville's invention of the electromechanical vibrator as a purely medical device in 1880 made these spasms--dubbed, in the medical lexicon, "hysterical paroxysms"--easier for physicians to achieve. (8)

   Because practitioners used the vibrator externally to stimulate the pelvic area (essentially, the clitoris), Granville's invention became codified as a purely medical instrument in a society that held the belief that only penetration could prove sexually arousing for women. (9) General practitioners of the late 1800s and early 1900s

   did not lose status by providing sexual services, in part because

   the character of these services was camouflaged both by the disease paradigms constructed around female sexuality and by the comforting belief that only penetration was sexually stimulating to women. Thus the speculum and the tampon were originally more controversial in medical circles than was the vibrator. (10)

   The vibrator's codification as a medical implement did not change, even in the early 1900s, when manufacturers began producing and marketing vibrators for personal, at-home use. (11) Maines notes that, ironically, female sexual pleasure and the perceived function of the vibrator were so disconnected--at least overtly--in the Victorian mindset that, "[b]y far the most widely advertised home vibrator of the early twentieth century" was the "White Cross" variety, a brand-name "drawn from the name of an Episcopalian sexual purity organization that flourished in Britain in the late 1880s." (12) The mail-order vibrator business, hawking the "White Cross" and other brands, blossomed between 1900 and the late 1920s. (13) Vibrators were advertised in such publications as Modern Priscilla, Sears Roebuck, Women's Home Companion, McClure's, Good Housekeeping, and Popular Mechanics. (14)

   Despite the overwhelming public denial about the vibrator's sexual utility, however, it is important to note the historical evidence that at least some practitioners were acutely aware that its stimulation contained a sexual component.

    Some of [the early administrators of the hysteria treatment] knew exactly what was going on. There's a reference in a 17th century book by Nathaniel Hymore which basically says 'well folks this hysterical paroxysm is an orgasm, you can call it whatever you like but nevertheless it's our job to do this because the woman will get sick and feel terrible if we don't.' There's another reference in the 1880's by a French physician who says that it's important to provide this treatment even though we know it's sexual. But some doctors maintain it's an hysterical paroxysm. It was controversial. (15) 

   The vibrator became increasingly controversial as its increasingly overt role in the sex industry of the 1920s made it difficult to preserve the device's purely-medical veneer. (16) For instance, in the 1920s film, Widow's Delight, a woman places a vibrator against her genitals and clearly experiences sexual gratification. (17) Furthermore, increasing knowledge about human sexuality, specifically the notion that vaginal penetration may not serve as the source of all female sexual pleasure, made denial of the vibrator's sexual advantages impossible. (18) Among the factors that contributed to the disappearance of the vibrator from public life in the early 1930s was "the growing understanding by both men and women of female sexual function, making it difficult to disguise the use of vibrators by either physicians or consumers as a mere therapeutic measure." (19) Although "massager" ads continued to appear in ladies' magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s, the vibrator, specifically, disappeared from public view until several decades later. (20) In the 1960s, "when the vibrator reemerged in advertising from its mid-century eclipse, few efforts were made to camouflage its sexual benefits." (21) Manufacturers began marketing the device as "a frankly sexual toy." (22)

   The Technology of Orgasm leaves off in the 1960s, with the rise of the vibrator as an overtly sexual commodity, and Maines does not delve into contemporary attitudes towards the device. Maines' book has been criticized for this lack of a current perspective; for instance, in a review of Maines' book, Nathalie Muller argues that the historical account is weakened because it makes "no real mention about how vibrators are now marketed and represented in the media." (23) Maines additionally fails to address contemporary legal maneuvers to ban the device in several states.

2. CONTEMPORARY LEGISLATION

   While at this time no state explicitly prohibits the personal use of vibrators or other sex toys, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, several states put into effect legislation prohibiting the possession and distribution of these devices. (24) All states currently place at least one prohibition on the sale of vibrators and other sexual gadgets; in some states, individuals must be eighteen before they can "legally go into a sex shop and buy ... a vibrator or a sex toy." (25) In other states, individuals must be older. (26)

   The number of states that effectually prohibit all vibrator sales as a part of their anti-obscenity legislation is almost impossible to assess accurately at any one time, due to spotty enforcement and the fact that these laws are continually in flux. As the twenty-first century began, vibrators were illegal in two states, Georgia and Texas. (27) According to another source at that time, "At least eight states are currently considering passing laws that ban the sale and/or possession of vibrators, dildos, and other sex toys." (28) As of 1999, "[a]t least 14 states around the country have passed laws that prohibit the sale of sexual devices, according to adult toy sellers.... Some states have bans in only certain zip codes; others lackadaisically enforce their law." (29) More recently, another source observed that Texas law prohibits the possession of any device "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs," and there are "similar laws on the books in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas, Colorado, and Alabama." (30) In fact, partially due to factors such as sex-industry...