Vibrator: The Greatest Medical Discovery Ever

Passion & Flower, a documentary by Emiko Omori and Wendy Slick, chronicles the invention of the "greatest medical discovery ever": the vibrator!

The film chronicles the invention of the vibrator and its impact on sexual politics by tracing it from a labor saving device invented by doctors to cure women of "hysteria" to a household product manufactured and sold by mainstream companies such as Sears Roebuck, General Electric and Hamilton Beach. In the 1920s the vibrator goes underground and is re-discovered during the rise of feminism in the 1970s.

In 2004 the astonishing story continues in Texas when a housewife
is arrested for selling vibrators to two undercover cops posing as a dysfunctional couple. She had broken a state law. Texas and three other states have enacted these laws as a backlash to the feminist movement. In these states, however, it is legal to sell Viagra. This case has far-reaching contemporary implications for sexual freedom, civil liberties and the right to privacy.

Link - via The World's Fair


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To be regulated about what you do with your body, and how you feel by an authority is to be owned by that authority. Like a dog is owned.

I don't see why I want to be owned by any other than myself. It's high time the government/authority stopped their blundering attempt to intervene in personal matters other than their own individual personal issues.
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Didn't they tell you? Sex is only for making babies, not for fun. Enjoying it is wrong, wrong, wrong. Masturbation is a sin.

But since I live in a blue state, where's my Good Vibrations catalog?
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Comparing vibrators with Viagra is apples to oranges. Sure, they both start with "vi-", but that's where the similarity ends.

We shouldn't leap to conclusions about why the laws were put into place. The real reason is shoddy workmanship on the part of the original vibrator manufacturers, and the grisly results Several vibrator-related fatalities occurred in the 1950's. Men returned home from a hard day at the office, to find their wives sprawled on the floor of the kitchen, their faces contorted in a combination grimace of ecstasy and pain. Their suppers were unprepared, cold, or burnt.

A related law was passed restricting the use of the vacuum pump for men, due to a number of grisly mutilations in the 1970's.
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Apparently women who went to their doctor to receive the vibrator treatment, were very happy with the results. Rather than feeling exploited by pervy doctors, or violated or whatever, these were the first orgasms they had ever had and so it was a pretty big revelation. At the time men didn't really care too much about how women felt during sex, and many thought those that masturbated were crazy and had them locked up.
I was going to say thank goodness we live in enlightened times, except of course in the U.S. these laws were made and still exist for who knows what reason. America - the land of freedom. Yeah right.
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i like how this law was put into effect to combat the feminists. "You burn your bra (which actually never happened) we take your sex! no happy for you!"

i think we should take a moment of silence to remember those physicians who created the vibrator.
(zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...zzzzz)

thank you.
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