Anita Rao
I had never been inside a sex toy store until I walked into Babeland — a bright, beautifully-decorated space in the middle of Manhattan's busiest shopping district. As a kid who grew up in a university town surrounded by cornfields, the only sex toy stores I knew of were ones you saw on the side of the interstate that looked the opposite of inviting. This trip to Babeland was not for aimless wandering, but instead for a very precise purpose: to buy my very first vibrator. By my side was one of my oldest and closest friends, and by far the most sex positive person I knew. She stood by me while an extremely well-informed salesperson had me handle at least ten different vibrators to get a sense of just how many options there were. And when we got to the counter, she put down her credit card. Looking back now, with a decade of hindsight, I'm certain that the bright pink toy I took home that day set me on a path of discovery about my own sexuality and pleasure.
This is Embodied, I'm Anita Rao.
The vibrators I saw on the shelves in the early 2010's are part of a long and fascinating history that dates back centuries. The electric vibrator was patented by a British doctor in the early 1880's, but how its use evolved from then to now is a story that intersects with politics, medicine and culture. Sex historian Hallie Lieberman traces that evolution in her book, "Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy." And a fun fact about Hallie, she is the first person in the world — at least as far as she knows — to get a PhD in the history of sex toys.
Hallie Lieberman
Hearing your story, like, I can completely relate — except for I was the friend in your story being like, "Hey, let me buy you your first vibrator." But I came to it through selling sex toys in the Austin, Texas area in the early 2000s when sex toys were illegal there. And I worked for a home party company where we would go into people's houses, and we would give them a presentation, and try to, you know, educate them about sex toys. But all the presentations, everything we were supposed to do was, kind of, centered around the fact that what we were selling was illegal and talking about the actual uses of the sex toys were illegal. So we weren't supposed to use anatomical terms like clitoris. We were supposed to say, like, put this vibrator on your "man in the boat." And I know, and I was like, "man in the boat," man — like what? Like I'd never heard these terms before. So anyway, that's how it all started.
Anita Rao
So you realize there were all of these euphemisms that were necessary to use because of the illegality of sex toys at that moment, and there is a deep and long history to how vibrators have been talked about and created. And it's really interesting, because at the very beginning of the history, it's a very different story in terms of how people were talking about things. So let's go back to the origin of the vibrator and all of this mythology around the history. We see it perpetuated in everything from academic literature to popular media — this vibrator myth. So tell me about the vibrator myth for those who don't know about it.
Hallie Lieberman
Okay, this vibrator myth has haunted me and followed me. It is the myth that vibrators were invented to cure female hysteria. That, in hysteria, which is kind of this nebulous thing — and this is in the late 1800's — it's malaise, it's anxiety, it's tiredness, all these different things, and that women were feeling all this. What the idea was that was really, like, sexual dissatisfaction. So women went to the doctor's and the doctor said, "Oh, you've got hysteria. I know how to cure this." They took out a vibrator and gave them an orgasm, and said, "You were cured." And the reason vibrators were used for hysteria, according to this myth — let's be clear, this was a myth — the argument that the scholar made was that before the vibrator was invented, doctors were curing women's hysteria by rubbing their clitorises with their hands. And basically, giving women hand jobs, and that it hurt their wrists too much, and the vibrator was a labor-saving device that allowed doctors to see more patients, cure more hysteria through orgasms in the doctor's office and allow them to make more money. That was the myth of the origin of the vibrator. It's a great story. There's only one problem with it, it does not happen to be true.
Anita Rao
It's wild how much this myth is perpetuated. I'm gonna be honest that I still believed it until I came across your work and your writing debunking it. And you have done this both in popular locations like The New York Times, you've also written a 20 page scholarly article that really looks at what the woman's sources were who, who wrote the book about this that really started the myth off and started making it so widely circulated. So talk to me about why you think we've latched on to this version of the vibrator history, and why you really want people to stop talking about it.
Hallie Lieberman
Yeah so, we've latched on to this. My theory about why this history of the vibrator is so prevalent — two things. One, it's "dirty" and sexual — ilke, "dirty," I put in quotes. So it's, you know, titillating and exciting. It's like doctor-patient porn. It's like, ooh, this is — you know, so it's fun to talk about something like that. The bigger reason, I think, is that it presents women's sexuality as something that they were completely in the dark about, and that it had to be awakened by a man. That they had to get their orgasms from a man. Because part of the argument that I didn't mention was that doctors didn't know what they were doing was sexual, because they only thought women got sexual pleasure from penetration. And so doctors didn't realize it because they were clueless. And so it presents, like, us in the past as just being like, so you know, clueless and everything. And like, the argument is kind of like, oh, look at us in the 20th — she was writing this in the 20th century, 20th, 21st century — look how smart and clever we are, we understand what the clitoris is now. Those people back in the Victorian times didn't. Completely untrue, sources show people knew exactly what the clitoris was. They knew its pleasure capabilities, they even had vaginal devices that looked like dildos for the vibrator. So none of the argument, like, really makes sense.
Anita Rao
So let's talk about the real history, which is that the invention of the vibrator is credited to Joseph Mortimer Granville in the 1800s. Tell me about what it looked like, and what it was intended to be used for medically.
Hallie Lieberman
So it was invented by Joseph Mortimer Granville. It was this big, like, bulky device. It was basically something that was invented with a bunch of different attachments that you could screw on to it. But basically, it was invented to help out men, and Granville — and help them increase their nervous strength. You have to remember this was before antibiotics, we didn't have good medicine. And so it was kind of promoted as this cure-all to increase overall health, increase the flow of blood into the veins, like, that's what Granville was saying. He said, "You know, you could use it for impotence for men, you could use it for, you know, all sorts of cure-all disease things." Of course, it did work for impotence, but it didn't work for other diseases.
Anita Rao
So it was marketed, widespread marketed, as this health device. And the only sexual use was that one explicitly listed for people with penises to cure impotence. And this notion of it as a health device, you really see throughout the early 1900s. There were actually ads for vibrators everywhere. They were in Christian publications, they were in The New York Times, there were vibrators sold in department stores. So talk to me about the way that people continue to advertise uses for the vibrator and any memorable ads that you have seen.
Hallie Lieberman
Yeah so, what's crazy to me is, like, the medical establishment — the American Medical Association — said the vibrator business is a delusion and a snare. And basically, if you're a reputable doctor, don't use the vibrator. So that kind of killed the vibrator in, like, 1905. So what did vibrator companies do? They said, "Okay, if this isn't a real medical device, let's just market it straight to the consumer." We see the same stuff today with all sorts of quack medicine. So they basically sold it for any sort of medical use. It was sold as a cure for "caked breast" — whatever "caked breast" is — for obesity, for impotence, for treatments for malaria, for sciatica. Ads were in The New York Times, these full page ads. They were in Chicago Tribune, they were advertised more heavily than they are today. Some of my favorite ads, I mean, it would be like, "brings youth and vigor to the veins," and you'd see this drawing of a woman with a low cut dress on. You can see her cleavage, and she's holding the vibrator. One of them, she's holding it up to her stomach and, like, giving a "come hither" look, you know, out to the reader, and it says, "curing indigestion." So it would be things like that where it was like, huh, this is a little confusing why that's what they're promoting. So it was, like, the sexualization of, like, everyday disease, and that was, kind of, fascinating to me.
Anita Rao
Y'all, these ads that Hallie is referring to are seriously wild. We're going to link an article in our show notes that shows you some highlights, but the short summary is that vibrators were marketed to treat everything from asthma to baldness. Ads claimed vibrators could eliminate wrinkles, or even cure tuberculosis. And while they used suggestive language or hinted at masturbation, it was never explicit. But Hallie says it's fair to assume people knew about the sexual use. So when did it become explicit? Not until the 1970s.
Anonymous Listener 1
I've been using vibrators on and off for about 14 years at this point, but didn't have any kind of attachment to any one in particular. I never really got the point. That is until I met the Hitachi Magic Wand. It kind of changed everything. I like to call it an "orgasm in a box" because it consistently gives me an orgasm — regardless of whether I'm alone, whether there is one other person in the room, whether there's more than one person in the room. At the same time, it's kind of spoiled me in the sense that nothing else really compares to that, and I'm very attached to it.
Hallie Lieberman
So the Hitachi Magic Wand is still like, you know, 50 years later, one of the most popular and iconic sex toys and vibrators around. But when it came onto the market in the late 1960's, this device was not marketed as a sex toy. So I've seen ads for Hitachi Magic Wands that say, "Buy it for your mom for Mother's Day." But pretty soon this feminist, Betty Dodson, this radical feminist who was teaching, you know, women how to have orgasms in her New York City apartment, and teaching women about their vaginas, and clitorises and anatomy. She latched on to this device and said, "Oh my god, this is the best vibrator out there. I'm going to teach women how to give themselves orgasms, and I'm going to show them how to do it with this vibrator." And she was one of the first people to really declare the Hitachi Magic Wand a sex toy. But after Dodson declared these uses for it, the first feminist sex toy store, Eve's Garden in New York City in 1974, it was the first product they carried. Because — and they carried Betty Dodson's book, "Liberating Masturbation," alongside of it. So there were feminist underground comics at the time, and there's this one image that comes to mind. It's a woman holding the Hitachi in the air, and it's written, like, "We shall overcome" above it. So that's, kind of, how important it was at the time.
Anita Rao
Let's just say, thank God for Betty Dodson. I remember learning in one of my Women's Studies classes in college about a speech Betty gave in the early 1970s at a conference on women's sexuality. She stood up on stage and literally shouted out how much she loves her vibrator. You don't see a lot of people shouting from the rooftops about their vibrators today, and that's because in a lot of spaces, they can't. Sex toy ads are heavily restricted. On Facebook and Instagram, ads can't promote adult products or services unless they're talking about contraception or family planning. But they can promote erectile dysfunction drugs. Sounds like a double standard? It is. Hallie has talked with people at Meta, and she says they claim it's not sexist, but there isn't much more she's able to find out. There are, however, a number of sex toy companies trying to fight against this, and those working around these advertising rules with creative ads. A company in that latter group: Lioness. They've created the first ever smart vibrator. It connects with an app on your phone and charts your orgasm and arousal patterns. It was created by cofounders Liz Klinger and Anna Lee. Initially, they wanted to make an AI vibrator that got smarter the more you used it, but they ran into one problem. Here's Anna.
Anna Lee
As we started digging into the research of it — like female sexual function, orgasms, arousal — we couldn't find any information or research around it. So there's, like, a statistic where every seven papers there are about male sexual function, there's one paper on female sexual function. And most often that paper is something to do around fertility, which is an important topic. But it really does take away from everything to do with pleasure and function. And so we realized that we couldn't even build an AI vibrator — even if we wanted to — because there wasn't enough research out there. And one really notable research that's still cited to this day is from the 1980s, and had a sample size of 11 women. And it's a really great study, but at the same time, what does 11 people tell us, really, about sexual function and orgasms? And so, that's when we started pivoting into this idea of, well, one thing we can do is give people a tool to, even, understand something about their bodies that, maybe, we don't know out there in the world. Because the question we would get, and the question we ask ourselves all the time is, am I normal? Like is this — does this feel right? Like, you know, do other people experience this? Is there something wrong with me? And we want to give people the tool to say, like, "You're absolutely normal. This is just something that we don't know about ourselves." And we can give people the data to help them, just, find a place in their biofeedback.
Anita Rao
That is a very common question. One of our earliest Embodied conversations, a sex educator Emily Nagoski, said overwhelmingly, that's the question she always gets in her classes, which is, am I normal? And feeling like you're normal helps you so much on your own sexual journey. And I know that you all really wanted to help people, kind of, get that own sense of normality by understanding their own bodies. You've designed this vibrator with four different sensors, so tell me about these sensors and what each of them measures.
Anna Lee
Yes so, this goes back to that paper that I mentioned in 1980's. So one of the things we know that happens during an orgasm is involuntary pelvic floor contractions. It's one of the best ways to indicate an arousal and orgasms. So what we're measuring is basically how the vaginal muscles squeeze and relax during an orgasm. And so we have two force sensors that are measuring that data of — whether you insert it anally or vaginally — you'll get the same data because everyone has pelvic floor function and pelvic floor muscles. And so you'll get that squeeze and relax. And then, we have a temperature sensor, and that's really there as a way to trigger the data recording. So if you're just playing around with it with your hands, like, you're showing it to somebody — as I often do at conferences — it's not going to record any of that data so that you don't have junk data on your app. And then we have a accelerometer and gyroscope. So, to detect movement, how you're moving it over time, if you're moving in and out, and it just helps us cancel out the noise of, you know, movement versus pure pelvic floor contractions.
Anita Rao
So these four sensors turn into a visualization of your arousal and orgasm that, kind of, show graphically when you are connected to this app. And one of those measures that you all look at in particular, as you said, is about the pelvic floor activity. And this is measured whether or not this device is inserted into a vagina or an anus, and you can really learn about the orgasm through the pelvic floor movements, which is so cool. So I'd love to know about the types of orgasm you've identified among people with vaginas through looking at this data.
Anna Lee
Yeah so, one of the papers that was led by Dr. James Pfaus — it was published about three months ago now in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. And it was using our Lioness vibrator to, actually, collect data from people that were participants who wanted to be a part of the study. And so, what happened was basically they, quote unquote, "donated their data to science." And so, it was really cool to see some unique identifiers. And so, there's three types of patterns that we've indicated. So the most common one — and the one that cited the most often in research — we coined the term "ocean wave." And so it's a really rhythmic squeeze and relax. So you'll see a squeeze, relax, squeeze, relax, that's the same height of force and then the same drop in force. So it's really, like, looks just like a rhythmic pattern. And then, the two other ones that we've seen so far is, we call it an "avalanche type." Which is, you start at a much higher force, and you're still having that rhythmic squeeze and relax, but it goes down in force over time. And then, so you kind of see the slope downwards, but similar to the ocean wave — where you see the squeeze and relax. And then, we have your "volcano type," which is our — we call, the classic movie-esque kind of orgasm. How it's usually portrayed in movies or shows. And I think, even for me, very often when I was growing up, I would see them being like, huh, that's not what mine feel like. And then, I'm wondering if I'm really having an orgasm, am I having an identity crisis that I thought I was doing it correctly the whole time, but I wasn't? What we've seen is that there's less of a rhythmic contraction, but you see this huge explosion of force up and then a huge drop in force. And so, less of a rhythmic contraction, but like a spike in the data. The exciting thing is that the more that we are able to expand the research around this and, you know, have more researchers on board, and with the amount of data and a lot of people opting into research, we get to, kind of, keep uncovering all these different patterns. Because we've definitely had people being like, "You know, I promise, like, I've had all three," or, "I have one that's different from all of these." And we're definitely not saying that — you know, we don't want to negate anyone's experience. And so it's exciting to keep uncovering different things about female orgasms.
Anita Rao
In addition to understanding your particular orgasm patterns, you can also tag your session with markers about what's going on in your life in that moment — whether that's stress or a certain level of caffeine or alcohol intake. Anna and her team hopes that this database of information could help us better understand how a wide range of factors contribute to our sexual satisfaction. This data certainly sounds really cool, but in listening to Anna talk, I couldn't help but also flashback to our digital security show from last year. Is it safe to share your orgasm data with a company? And how do you know exactly what their intentions are with using it? I shared all of these concerns with Anna.
Anna Lee
When we create products that are for people like us, and we use our own product, we realize that one of the first things when we're building a biofeedback is how important security and privacy was going to be. And so that's always been in our forefront of making sure that every data that's coming through is anonymized, in aggregate and encrypted. And so we make sure that we're not able to see — for example, the first product that we ever built off the line, I actually took it from the line, and I flew back to LA and I gave it to my mom. And I always joke, like, I would never want to know when she's using it, how many times she's used it or anything like that. So those — that's not data that we're collecting. So for us, what we've done is every data is private to you, and what we're looking at is aggregate data. The only time we'll ever look at your data is if you opt in yourself to our research platform. So our mission has always been to destigmatize female sexual pleasure through research, and so we try to partner as with as many researchers and doctors as possible. And so we built a research platform where researchers can come on and say, like, "Hey, I want to do this research study on X, Y and Z." And our users are able to opt into that study and say, like, "Yes, I want to be a part of the study, I'm willing to share my data." And so that's the one time that these researchers are able to collect different demographic data about them, and then we'll connect your data to that researcher so they can do that study. So it's for the people that want to do it for science, and so I think the great thing is that it's an automatic opt out unless you explicitly opt in.
Anita Rao
So I know that you have heard from a wide variety of users about their experiences with the smart vibrator, and I want to talk with you about some of the conversations you've had with older users of the smart vibrator. But first, I want to share a story from an older vibrator user that we heard, so let's listen.
Anonymous Listener 2
Shortly after my 60th birthday, my husband — who I had been married to for over 41 years, my high school sweetheart — gave me my first vibrator. He was going to die that year, and he said to me, "If I can't give you pleasure, I still want you to have pleasure."
Anita Rao
So, I love that story. And I think it's, you know — it's a really special look at how, you know, our sexual needs can really evolve over the course of our life. And you have had some surprising conversations with users who are older than the demographic that you thought would initially be attracted to this product. So talk to me about that and what you've learned about the use of vibrators in various phases of folks lives.
Anna Lee
Yeah, I think, you know — a lot of people, when we first started, it was — when they're asking, like, who our target market is, and I think because there was so much integration to an app, and we were fairly young when we started the company, we knew that we — we would understand a demographic of our own age, of being in your late 20s to mid 30s. And those are going to be the people that understood and being like, "Oh, I'm gonna buy this vibrator and invest." But the really amazing thing we've seen is that our second biggest purchasing qroup are the 50+ community, and it's the people that are post-pregnancy, maybe their bodies have changed, going through menopause, like, all these different experiences. Or kids are leaving the house, and they're, you know, reclaiming, kind of, their sexuality, all of these different things. Or it's people that have been sexual their entire life, and they're like, "I've been waiting for something like this to come on the market." And those have been the biggest cheerleaders, who are the ones that are like, email us, and they're like, either it's people — we've gotten emails from anywhere from someone who was in their 70's who emailed us and was like, "I just had my first orgasm because of this vibrator." And I just remember that being a huge drive, and just how excited we were about what we built, how much, you know, we've been trying to make this happen for so many years. And then, just seeing people that are like, "Oh, me and my girls, like, all seven of us bought the Lioness together, and then we all go to brunch every week. And we show each other our data and talk about our experiences." And so it's been really exciting to see that, and just knowing that sexuality, sexual function, all of these things, last your entire life, and that sexual wellness is completely all overall wellness. And so it's really, it, I know — like for me too, as I get older, like, it's really exciting to see, and knowing that you don't have to ever lose that. And that we need to make sure that every product we put out there, every intention, every app that we build, that it's going to always cater to as many people as possible and take into consideration of all the different diverse experiences people have.
Anita Rao
Anna's DMs are full of people sharing their very specific vibrator stories, and there was one in particular that she loves to shout out: an artist who converted her Lioness data into music. What you're listening to right now, this is "Tiny Boy," a track from New York City-based music producer, Von. Von dragged her own Lioness data waves from her app, treated them like sound waves, and made them into music. She mapped this data on to various instrument sounds, and it just blows my mind. There's a whole Vice article explaining all of this in more detail that we'll link in the show notes. But for now, just enjoy.
Anita Rao
So you all are existing in so many different worlds, you're presenting your research at medical conferences and really adding to the existing data that we have about sexual pleasure. You are in the tech space, talking to founders and getting people to invest in a product that may be not necessarily in their niche market that they've been thinking about before. But you also have such a personal investment in this from your own perspective and your own sexual wellness journey, and I'd love to end by, kind of, circling back to that. I mean, the version of you that started this work, who was coming from a place of a lot of silence and discomfort in your body, what have you discovered that's been particularly meaningful that's been part of your own journey of sexual wellness?
Anna Lee
Yeah, I truly mean, when I say I was, like, scared to my mid 20s, it's so true. Like I had experienced so many things in my past as a child that it made me feel like I didn't deserve to own my own body or feel sexual in my own skin. And so when we first started the company — my cofounders will laugh about it to this day — is that, I was very much like, "Hey, I'm just here to be a really good engineer and really build this product out, but please don't make me do interviews, please don't make me have to talk about clitorises or say the word clitoris, or orgasms or vagina." And so it's really amazing to me to see, also, myself grow in the past six years. And I think what Lioness, for me, has done is giving, I think, the biofeedback and the data portion and the research really, just, helped me feel grounded in terms of knowing that your sexual wellness is overall wellness, and that it's all interconnected in terms of how you're feeling, your health. We love to say, like, orgasms are the canary in the coal mine for overall health implications. And so you know, even things from how you're feeling, if you're stressed. And we've had an athlete who's had a concussion and seeing that — her orgasm data flatline. And so I think really seeing those things and giving myself a tool to feel empowered in my own body, having ways to have conversations, even with partners being like, "Hey, I just know when I'm stressed that my orgasms are not there, or I'm just not feeling sexually aroused." And giving it — I think it's giving it this data point where it doesn't have to always feel like a taboo or stigma or things around, like, how it feels. It just gave me this moment of, like, being able to understand it from a physiological standpoint, and it just felt incredibly powerful. And I think the more we actually give ourselves to learn about our own bodies, you're able to feel this power, and to be curious about your own body, feel like you can explore. And so, for me, it's — it's really been, like, reigniting of curiosity, exploration and, just, feeling comfortable in my own body.
Anita Rao
Amen. Before I sign off, I want to share one more story with you from one of our listeners.
Anonymous Listener 3
I remember the first time we actually did anything with it, like, I was done — as you might say — in literally less than a minute, and that had never happened to me before. And I was so happy because I was like, "Oh my god, I did not know my body could feel like this, like, this is — this is an amazing feeling." I think what it's taught me about my body is, just, that I love the really high climax and then the come down from it. And it is really fun with a partner, it's really — makes pleasure a lot easier when you don't necessarily know everything your partner wants. And so it's fun to have toys, fun to have a little — a little helper. And for yourself too.
Anita Rao
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast and WUNC's other shows on demand, consider a contribution at wunc.org now.
This episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Elizabeth Friend also helped produce this podcast. Madison Speyer is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our sound engineer. Quilla wrote our theme music.
You can find out information about everyone we talked to in this podcast in the show notes. Thank you so much for your continuing support of Embodied, and if you listen and love it, please share the word in your own networks. Word of mouth recommendations are the best way to support our podcast, and we so appreciate your support.
I'm Anita Rao, taking on the taboo with you.