The Technology of Orgasm
Subtitle: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction
By: Rachel P. Maines.
Series: Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology ;
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Baltimore, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 181
ISBN-13: 9780801859410
Subjects: Women -- Sexual behavior -- History.; Female orgasm -- History.; Anorgasmy -- History.; Masturbation -- History.; Vibrators (Massage) -- History.
Description: The author explores hysteria in Western medicine throughout the ages and examines the characterization of female sexuality as a disease requiring treatment. Medical authorities, she writes, were able to defend and justify the clinical production of orgasm in women as necessary to maintain the dominant view of sexuality, which defined sex as penetration to male orgasm - a practice that consistently fails to produce orgasm in a majority of the female population.

This male-centered definition of satisfying and healthy coitus shaped not only the development of concepts of female sexual pathology but also the instrumentation designed to cope with them.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [125]-169) and index.