Based on a history of vibrators and female masturbation techniques, Rachel Maines’ work shows how, in scholarly discourses and in commercial practices, female orgasm is an issue of struggle: it thus reveals an Androcentric conception of sexuality whose vibrator is an essential piece and denounces what it calls the mystical of penetration.
In a nineteenth century medicine treaty, the author advises healing the “ suffocation of the matrix ” Thus : “ In our opinion, it is necessary to require the assistance of a midwife who will massage the genitals with a finger pressed inside, using lily oil, root of musk, crocus, or other similar things. And in this way, the afflicted is brought to the paroxysm of excitement. This mode of digital stimulation is recommended, among others, by Galien and Avicenne, especially for widows, for the one who live in chastity and for nuns, as Gradus also offers it ; It is less often prescribed for very young women, public women or married women, for whom it is better than to unite with their husbands (P. 43).
From antiquity to the beginning of the twentieth century, the stimulation of female genitals by doctors is common: the work of Rachel Maines (translated in French ten years after its publication in 1999) explains the technical, therapeutic and erotic dimensions of this practice by relying on learned medicine treaties, correspondence sales catalogs, investigations in museums executives North America and Europe. The strength of the work is to demonstrate the interweaving of these three dimensions and to explain the points of view they suppose: what we would see today as an erotic technique is presented in the treaty cited above as a therapeutic act ; The stimulation of a patient by a doctor could be denounced today as an abuse of power or even rape, while she was then presented as a medical technique. Explain this gesture therefore supposes a history of techniques, sexuality and medicine, but also of the look at female orgasm: the question is where this look comes from, and what animates it.
The learned production of orgasm is first of all the stimulation of women by doctors. Rachel Maines shows how excitation is part of a therapeutic arsenal whose objective is to take care of female diseases, and in particular hysteria. It is the point of view of doctors who is explored here: learned discourse is indeed a discourse on female sexuality, it being conceived as essentially pathological-hysteria does not distinguish a group of women from another, but is constitutive from female sexuality, as these doctors conceive of it. But this learned speech is not necessarily an erotic practice: Rachel Maines notes on several occasions that nothing says that doctors took pleasure in exploring the vaginas, on the contrary-as the treaty cited above, it is in midwives and above all, from the end of the nineteenth century, to vibrators, that will be delegated to be delegated this “ dirty job ». It is necessary that an external person must bring the suspicion to this practice to reveal and constitute its erotic potential: this is what happens at the beginning of the nineteenth century to Mesmer, because the relationship with the sexual body changes, but especially because Mesmer does not belong to the world of medicine (p. 89). If the use of the vibrator and other electrical and hydrolical techniques spread at the end of the nineteenth century, it is in a medical context which defines the uses: touching, hydrotherapy then mechanical vibrators are the milestones of a history of orgasm as a remedy.
However Rachel Maines argues that the learned production of orgasm is not only the stimulation of women by doctors, but the definition of female sexuality by men: under the medical gaze it reads the point of view of the group of men on women, showing how this practice must be related to female pathologies, but also with the “ Androcentric model of sexuality »(P. 45): The promotion of vaginal penetration, the valorization of shared enjoyment, the pathologization of female sexuality which would not find pleasure in this context. From this point of view, the stake is not so much female sexuality as heterosexuality: if women find themselves in the doctor’s office, it is not only that they are sick, it is that their spouses struggle to give them complete satisfaction. The work clearly shows that the therapeutic dimension and the emergence of hysteria signs the determination of a pathology, but also the failure of a heterosexual erotic: the gesture of doctors is indeed an erotic practice which does not say its name, at the risk of making its true function appear – supplementing conjugal sexuality. The history of orgasm technologies is that of a denial, which can be read in the treaty cited above: that of what Rachel Maines calls “ Mystique of penetration ». The vibrator is an object which veils and which reveals the contradictions of the Androcentric model of sexuality by coming to make up implicitly to the male impotence, by the management in a medical framework of the failures of the conjugal framework: the pathologization of female sexuality leaves it above all suspicion.
The learned production of orgasm can therefore only be revealed from a third point of view, a female point of view which denounces the Androcentric model. It is the position of Rachel Maines herself, as it is presented in the introduction. She recalls that her interest in the vibrator was born in the margins of a work on a sexual history of textiles ; But also by observing the differences in male and female reactions in front of its research: laughter of the name, discomfort or even misunderstanding of others. While denouncing the mysticism of the penetration on which the learned production of orgasm is based, Rachel Maines establishes another mapping of the female sex body: if the vibrator is effective, it is that it is not a substitute for the penis but that it is a clitoral excitement. The book shows how it was taken care of by the market. The vibrator, from the XXe A century, leaves the medical world to enter another network, that of the mail order catalogs where it rubs shoulders with other small household appliances: therapeutic technique controlled by men, it becomes a more or less explicit, more or less claimed female technique. The book is part of this historical evolution, and can be read as a counter-discourse to what is said of female sexuality by doctors and men, counter-discours which originates in the valuation of clitoral orgasm: this is the objective point of view which makes it possible to qualify the medical discourses of “ conceptual tote (P. 72).
It is therefore the definition of female orgasm which is an issue of struggle: orgasm aroused by doctors for whom this stimulation was not orgasmic ; orgasm failed by incapable men, however, to think something other than a vaginal female orgasm ; clitoral orgasm claimed by women. Rachel Maines describes as “ social camouflage “(P. 89) Medical practices that could not affirm this production of orgasm without jeopardizing the Androcentric model of sexuality, but it is the whole history of orgasm which seems to be a matter of camouflage: camouflage of vibromasseurs as instruments of pleasure in magazines who refuse to explain the real function, as shown by Baptiste Coulmont ; Camouflage of the inadequacy of male penetration by men by a set of strategies aimed at making female sexuality coincide with the Androcentric model, as shown by R. Maines (p. 114-115).
Two remarks to conclude. By focusing on learned speeches on female orgasm, and deploying a long chronology, the book gives little information on popular uses, less legitimate practices and speeches which probably carry other issues and which would make it possible to question the limits and resistance to the Androcentric model-it is true, as Rachel Maines notes, that the traces left by the female orgasms in history “” The androcentrism of sources (P. 51), which leaves female experiences largely in the shadows.
Above all, by valuing clitoral orgasm as an erotic technique adequate to female sexuality, the book promotes a technical and physiological conception of female sexuality, which it tends to naturalize – paradoxical effect for a book dealing with vibrators. Thus, Rachel Maines distinguishes the “ simple vibrators ” of the “ Vibrant dildo “As they appear in pornographic films, and call them” penis substitute (s) (P. 212). There is no doubt that it is their function in heterosexual pornography. But if the valuation of the non -figurative aspect of the vibrator takes place in a strategy of denunciation of vaginal orgasm as a heterosexual norm and makes it possible to promote another female sexuality, it naturalizes in return the clitoral orgasm and the clitoris as an adequate erogenous zone. Now what is left out in this reading is the dildo as a fantasy, and more broadly the fantasy dimension of sexuality, largely absent from the book. The dildo is not necessarily a substitute for the penis and the instrument of the Androcentric model, as we see in the context of a gay conjugality (where we can assume that it does not replace penis already present, and where penetration is rather anal), or in the context of a lesbian sexuality (this not defined by a lack of penis). One can therefore wonder if the objective of countering the Androcentric model by calling on other sexual techniques that the latter represses does not share with him a naturalist conception of sexuality. The valuation of the vibrator as a adequate sexual technique does not exhaust the meanings that can be given to a dildo, even in heterosexual context ; Insistance on sexuality as a technique tends to reduce fantasies as a component of erotic life. From this point of view, Rachel Maines’ work opens without exhausting a joint history of the medicalization of sexuality, erotic techniques and sexual meanings of these.