The story you may have heard about the invention of the vibrator in the 1880s (keywords: hysteria, doctor-patient stimulation, tired wrists) is actually only that: a story. The real history is a little less titillating … but much more reflective of political and cultural attitudes towards sex.
Host Anita Rao unpacks the “vibrator myth” with sex historian Hallie Lieberman. Hallie is the author of “Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy.”
Anita also talks with Anna Lee, co-founder and head of engineering at Lioness, a sexual wellness company with a “smart” vibrator that uses biofeedback data to track arousal and orgasm. Anna describes how the Lioness vibrator contributes to sexual health data for people with vaginas.
Special thanks to the listeners who contributed their thoughts to this episode!
Three Types of Orgasm
(no, we don’t all climax the same!)
with descriptions from Anna Lee
1. The Ocean Wave
During orgasm, the pelvic floor muscles rhythmically contract and relax.
“The most common [orgasm type] and the one that's cited the most often in research … You'll see a squeeze, relax, squeeze, relax, that's the same height of force, and then the same drop in force.”
2. The Avalanche
In the lead-up to orgasm the pelvic floor muscles are very tense, then they steadily relax during orgasm.
“You're still having that rhythmic squeeze and relax, but it goes down in force over time. So you see the slope downwards.”
3. The Volcano
The pelvic floor muscles hold a lower tension and then more “explosively” tense and release during orgasm.
“We call it the classic movie-esque kind of orgasm, how it's usually portrayed in movies or shows … What we see 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, like a spike in the data.”
Please note: This episode originally aired March 17, 2023.
Updates: Lioness released Pleasure Wrapped, a 12-month compilation of pleasure data, in December of 2023, and D Hartmann researched "Are All Orgasms Created Equally Regardless of Age?", a journal article published in May of 2023. Lioness is also launching "sexperiments" in their app this month. Every month, users can come together and experiment with different variables to see how their orgasm data changes (i.e. edging, cannabis, caffeine and more).
Hallie Lieberman’s story on The Handcuff Man was just published at The Atavist.