Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Did Ancient People Have Sex Toys? About this episode Dating back some 30,000 years, sex toys have a long (no pun intended) and fascinating history.
What were the earliest sex toys like? How did technology change them? And did Victorian doctors really prescribing them for back pain?
In today's episode, we're revisiting an episode where Kate was joined by writer, sex and gender historian Hallie Lieberman to discuss the first dildo, the myth of the vibrator, and more.
Find out more about Hallie's book, Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, here https://archive.org/details/buzzstimulatingh0000lieb.
This episode was produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Seyi Adaobi.
All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:37 Speaker 01 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
1:14 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwixters. How the hell are you doing? It's me, Kate Lister. I am me, you are you, and this is Betwix the Sheets. And I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And if you can't tick every single one of those off your list, then you have no business being here at all. And for the rest of you, on with the show.
1:56 Speaker 02 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
1:59 Speaker 03 Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.
2:07 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. That post-Christmas period can be something of a slump. A little post-festive malaise, which is why it's great if you have some toys to play with. Even better if they're sex toys. To be honest, I don't know if Santa delivers sex toys down the chimney, but he brings joy, so why wouldn't he? For today's episode, we are revisiting an earlier conversation I had with the rather wonderful Hallie Lieberman, author of Buzz, the stimulating history of the sex toy, to find out more about the long history of sex toys. Batteries are ready, Betwixters. Let's do this.
2:50 Kate Lister? So, thank you so much for joining me, Betwixt the Sheets. I am absolutely buzzing. It's sex toy historian, Hallie Lieberman.
3:00 Speaker 04 And thank you, Kate, so much for having me on your podcast. I'm a big fan of your book, of your work, so I'm very excited to be here.
3:09 Kate Lister? Hallie, I want to know your expertise. I mean, as long as there've been people, we've been carving dicks and sticking stuff places that we probably shouldn't have been putting them, but what's like the oldest sex toy that has been found?
3:22 Speaker 04 Okay, so the oldest sex toy that has been found is like 30,000 years old. It's a stone phallus. There are debates found in like the whole Fels Cave in Germany. And there are debates whether like these stone phalluses were dildos, because there are no pictures of them like shoving them in orifices. So some people think that they were ceremonial, but it could be a sex toy. So that's all of this.
3:48 Kate Lister? Whenever they unearth what's clearly a dick, they're then in shoes, a big conversation about, yes, what is it? And you can't say it's a sex toy because we don't know. It could be a coat hook. It could be ceremonial, is what they usually say. It's like, what's the argument for this one at 28,000 years old is definitely a dildo? And what's the argument against?
4:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I don't think people are saying it's definitely a dildo. It's more like, this is something it could be. And then the argument against will be like, oh, it could be a spear sharpener. That's the other thing. And it's like, why?
4:25 Speaker 04 Why do we need to sharpen our spears on dick-like objects? Like, we don't do that today. Should, I would love that. But for me, like, when I was researching it, it's like, this kind of male fear of dildos and sex toys goes back so far. So even if we see something that's clearly a dick, sometimes other excuses are made for them, or they're dismissed in some way.
4:50 Kate Lister? So that's possibly the earliest sex toy that we've got. Let's, like, jump it on thousands of years, because we've got to talk about the vibrator in the room, don't we? That myth. You know the myth that I'm talking about, Hallie. Take it away.
5:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, so there's a myth that probably some of your listeners have heard of, which is that vibrators were used to treat hysteria in women in doctors' offices in the early 1900s. And so the idea was, women went into doctors' offices, they said, oh, complaining of hysteria? And what was hysteria? It could be anything. It could be just general malaise. It could be anxiety. It was this catch-all diagnosis. And so they would complain, and doctors would say, hey, I've got a great treatment for you. Take off your britches, or whatever they were calling them then, and I'll put this vibrator on your clitoris.
5:49 Speaker 04 I will give you paroxysm, as the story goes, and you will be cured. And a paroxysm is orgasm, but the cure will only last for a short time. You have to keep coming back. And the reason that vibrators were used, as part of the myth, is men's hands were getting tired, male doctors' hands were getting tired, giving hand jobs to women for hysteria. Now, this on a space of it sounds absurd and untrue, and it is. But this myth has lasted forever, and it won't die, and there are lots of reasons for that.
6:24 Kate Lister? And it's been the subject of two films as well, hasn't it?
6:27 Speaker 04 It has, one starring Maggie Gyllenhaal.
6:30 Kate Lister? So it definitely seeped into popular consciousness. So how do you go about dismantling that? How did you prove that that didn't happen?
6:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, it started a long time ago when I was in grad school and the assignment was check the citations of a book you're using for your research. And I did it, and so did the whole class. And I was the only one whose results were... At first, I thought, I was like, I'm misunderstanding this. I'm in grad school. None of these citations are adding up to what the book is saying. There's something I'm missing. And my professor said, "You're absolutely right. These don't add up." And then I actually went to the archives, Bocken Museum in Minnesota, and checked all their citations and found out none of them said this practice was happening.
7:20 Speaker 04 The problem wasn't that I found this out. The problem was getting anybody to believe me. No one wanted to publish it. They're like, "Oh, you're only a grad student, so you don't know what you're talking about." Like, I was trying to get it peer-reviewed and published, and they were like, "No, no, you're assaulting a scholar in the field." And it's like, I don't care anything about the scholar. I just want the truth out there. And that made me cynical. It took me almost seven, eight years to get it published. And finally, it was just like I gave up and just threw it to a new journal. I was like, "This journal just came out. They have nothing to lose," and it worked.
7:55 Kate Lister? Thank God. And the earliest ones are stone, but just speaking of how people made sex toys, Hallie, like, what were they making them of? Presumably, the stone model would have been replaced pretty quick. Like, if you were in, I don't know, medieval, what would you make a dildo out of in medieval period?
8:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, there were dildos made out of all sorts of things, like leather. There were dildos made of ivory. Those were like... The main things until like rubber came along. And when rubber came along in the mid eighteen hundreds, well, actually, rubber was before then, and that that was when it was vulcanized. So there were these rubber dildos, except that they would crack, because they were like this bad material, like before vulcanization. Ugh. And they couldn't be sanitized, and they had a strong smell. And so that's what, there were a lot of rubber dildos.
8:49 Kate Lister? I've seen like polished wooden ones, but these must have been quite pricey.
8:54 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention wood. Yes, dildos were something like for the upper classes. These were not something that, like, right now, anyone can afford a dildo. We can go to amazon.com, we could all order dildos. One second, it would be like five dollars, cheap. But, yeah, back then, they were expensive, they were handmade. You know, we didn't have an assembly line making them. And so it was upper classes owning them. And just from my research, it looks like they were marketed to men to buy for their wives. The men who weren't intimidated by them. I mean, but they weren't that widespread. They weren't like what we would think of today.
9:36 Speaker 04 In the nineteen fifty's, so sex toys were illegal in the US. And sex toys started being illegal in the US in the eighteen seventies, with Comstock, who was this anti-vice performer. And one of the ways to get around these sex toy laws was to sell things as marital aids, which these laws stayed on the books for like a hundred years. We still have anti-sex toy laws in Alabama in the US. But there were two ways to get around it. One was to say it was for use in like a marriage relationship, and it was for help with penetration during sex. So it was okay to sell a dildo that was a strap-on penis,
10:17 Speaker 04 that was designed as a marital aid for a man to wear during sex with his wife. And it would specifically say this. And this is even in the sixties and seventies, during the so-called sexual revolution. That's how dildos were sold, even though women were obviously, and men, using them to masturbate. If you sold them that way, you could get arrested. Even if you sold them this other way, I've looked at the records, and there are complaints saying it's obscene.
10:43 Kate Lister? When they were selling it like that, this is a marital aid that a husband can use. Was that like the way that herbal highs are sold as air fresheners? Like, everyone knows it's bollocks. Everyone knows what it's being used for, really? Or like, were they actually trying to sell it to men to strap on?
11:00 Speaker 04 It was a little bit of both, because when I talked to manufacturers, they said there were men who wrote in who were impotent. I mean, because this was before Viagra. This was before there were treatments. So it was a little bit of both. But I do think people knew, there were jokes about marital aids. Like, I think people knew that also this was their way of getting around the laws. I mean, vibrators were sold as marital aids too, even though mostly used during masturbation. And there were some sex devices. This is during second wave feminism in the 1970s and 1960s. Or vibrators, there's one called the Prelude. And it was called that because it was considered a prelude to sex. And it very clearly said it was penetrated.
11:42 Speaker 04 You're going to learn how to please yourself so that you can have sex with your husband better. And that was kind of the mentality, and that was a way to get around the laws and the stigma.
11:54 Kate Lister? Oh my, I've never heard of that. So it was almost like this is a dress rehearsal dildo.
12:01 Speaker 04 I love that term, exactly, yeah.
12:04 Kate Lister? Just to take you back, because I think that we need to just go back to the Victorians. Who invented them? Who invented the vibrator? Do we know who invented it?
12:13 Speaker 04 So Granville, who, Joseph Warren Granville, who mentions in her work, was inventor of the electromechanical vibrator from that era. So he invented the plug-in vibrator. But before then, there were vibrators, there were hand-cranked vibrators, one called the VD, super-populator in England and US.
12:35 Kate Lister? Wait a minute, the vibrator was called VD? Oh, that's a marketing error.
12:42 Speaker 04 It is.
12:44 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
12:45 Speaker 04 It's like V E E D E E. But the hand crank, it was like, so you'd crank, crank, crank, crank, crank. And then it would vibrate, but it was like, I mean, it would hurt your hand. It's like you might as well masturbate. And this kind of vibrator, actually a hand crank vibrator, came back on the market about 10 years ago as like earth friendly vibrator, like one that didn't require batteries. It was like this eco vibrator.
13:11 Kate Lister? An eco vibrator.
13:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:15 Kate Lister? Okay, okay.
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14:48 Speaker 05 In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr Eleanor Yanaga. Dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.
15:18 Speaker 01 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeist. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
16:04 Kate Lister? And Mr Granville, when he invented this, you can't see any here, but what it looks like is it looks like a lead weight on a piece of string that kind of, he called it percussing, didn't he? Like it kind of taps the body.
16:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:18 Kate Lister? Is that right? Like, it's not what you think of when you think of a vibrator, and it's certainly not anything that you'd want near your genitals. So what was it supposed to be used for?
16:29 Speaker 04 So there were like attachments that he discussed in his writings, but one of the earliest uses he mentioned was for impotence. So it was.
16:40 Kate Lister? Oh, wow. Okay.
16:41 Speaker 04 Male impotence. And so it was for vibrating the perineum was one of the earliest uses and sexual uses. He actually said, don't use it on women initially. And he was worried about that. But yeah, I mean, he tried it for all ailments. That's kind of like what vibratory massage was, like sciatica, you know, they were trying it for deafness at the time.
17:06 Kate Lister? Deafness? Oh, my God.
17:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, you can see old vibrator ads and they have like attachments that's, you know, go in your ear. So. He kinda threw it out there as a doctor, basically saying like, "We're gonna try out these different treatments. Here's what I have tried out. Here's a tool that people can use." And doctors took it and ran with it. And even cancer, like, they tried to treat cancer with it. I mean, we're talking about the 1800s. We don't have antibiotics. Medicine is so kind of archaic. I was just reading about leeches being used on the vagina last night. Anyway, so we have all sorts of bad treatments. And the vibrator, we saw like,
17:51 Speaker 04 "Hey, like, this isn't gonna hurt people. They feel good. Let's try it for indigestion." And it actually works for that. People do it for babies. But anyway, all these different things.
18:01 Kate Lister? Whoa, no, sorry, go back. Whoa. Vibrators on babies for stomach ache?
18:07 Speaker 04 Well, okay, so they marketed vibrators to babies back, I mean, obviously, babies don't
18:14 Kate Lister? No, they didn't. That's, okay.
18:17 Speaker 04 And can't purchase them. It was in the ads, like, it would have for all age groups. So this is ads we're talking about, 1910s, around then. I mean, they were trying to sell this product. It wasn't entirely sexual. It was marketed as this kind of cure. It's like CBD of today, or snake oil of them. So they're trying to get the biggest market that they could, and it would be babies, it would be grandparents, it would be all ages.
18:45 Kate Lister? Just to clarify, these weren't vibrators that you were supposed to use sexually. These were like, actual massaging things that you were supposed to use. Nobody in their right mind was actually suggesting that you use it sexually, on all ages?
18:58 Speaker 04 No. So basically, it was, and I'm just gonna, could I have it here? I'm gonna hold it up. But this is a vibrator from the era, and it was basically like, had this big, heavy motor, and lots of different attachments. And so, a flat attachment might be what, which is on here right now, which, of course, people can't see, but it's like this flat rubber disc. And they would say, you know, you could massage a baby with that. But you could also order in a catalog, where some came with a phallic attachment, which looked like a dildo. Or erectile attachment and those were usually one fifty or two dollars and more expensive than
19:39 Speaker 04 anything else. And that was for vaginal and uterine problems or for impotent erectile problems. That was not marketed for kids. So.
19:50 Kate Lister? So obviously no one can see the vibrator that you are holding up. But if I described that, I'd have to say it looks, you know, like the old fashioned whisks that you used to have with like the two attachment, like if you don't have the metal prongs in it, it looks like that. But with, like you said, a flat thing that kind of pats on the skin like.
20:10 Speaker 04 Yeah. And it's interesting that you mentioned that because that same motor that was used for the vibrator was used for a bunch of different things, including vacuums, including blenders, which is similar. This motor was used for small appliances, like, you know, they just try to sell for everything. Vibrator is one of a lot.
20:32 Kate Lister? See, think of that next time you're whisking your eggs, that that technology. When did they stop looking like a weird egg whisk? Because obviously the traditional shape, like the cock shape has been quite consistently popular, hasn't it? Like through, and do you know what one of the weirdest things that I've found reference to just jumping around now, but when they find like 18th century dildos, they have plungers in them to like simulate come. Like, well, surely one of the best things about a dildo is there's no come. Who designed that?
21:04 Speaker 04 Men, of course. Yeah, no, the plunger dildos are really interesting and they'll say like you can put warm milk in them. And it's like, gross. No, I don't want warm milk in my cooch. Ew.
21:19 Kate Lister? Oh, just the thought process there of like, well, they must want the grand finale.
21:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:24 Kate Lister? They can't possibly, they can't possibly want this. And like, what were these women doing? What they make their dildo come and then they go, oh, well, we better get to sleep now because it's all over. What?
21:36 Speaker 04 I know.
21:37 Kate Lister? Dildo's gone to sleep now.
21:39 Speaker 04 It's pretty ridiculous and that is like kind of the story of dildo design is hyper realism. Like the assumption when they're designed by men is that women want sex toys that look exactly like penises. I mean, some sex toys designers looked at their own dick and made a mold of it. But actually, one of my favorite sex toy designers did that, who worked with the feminist movement later, Gosnell Duncan. He was a paraplegic engineer who was designing a sex toy to allow himself to have sex with his wife because they got engaged before he got injured, so.
22:16 Kate Lister? Stick a pin in that, we're coming back to that one. But when did they start being marketed penis shaped on mass market and not like an egg with?
22:25 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I tried to find this, this was hard to find, but I believe the first one I have ever seen was the 1950s. That doesn't mean they didn't exist before then. And that was hard plastic, they would use the hard plastic outside. And I think it was in part because of battery technology, because these were battery.
22:46 Kate Lister? Of course, yeah.
22:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, but those actually, so I saw one from the 50s, but you really start to see those in the 60s. And again, even though they look like dicks, like, you know, abstract dicks. In ants from the 60s, you see women holding them up to their face going, ooh, personal massager. And it's like, uh, what?
23:07 Kate Lister? Has anyone in the history of sex toys used one of those neck massages to massage their neck, do you know?
23:15 Speaker 04 I would guess no, or maybe like.
23:18 Kate Lister? No, that never happened.
23:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, never.
23:21 Kate Lister? But tell me about this guy, the paraplegic guy who invented a sex toy, I had no idea.
23:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, so his name, like I said, was Gosnell Duncan, he was born in Grenada. He immigrated to the US and so he went to Brooklyn, met this woman. Well, he'd known her from his town, got engaged to her. But yeah, he was in this accident, international harvester company in Chicago where a truck bed fell on him. He became paralyzed from the waist down and he was devastated because he was a ladies man. He had four kids from four different women before this happened. And a skilled calypso dancer. This guy was amazing.
24:01 Kate Lister? Oh.
24:02 Speaker 04 But I know, it was really sad, but he was like a very positive person. And so he did months and months of rehab. He got married in the rehab facility, like to Angela, this woman he was in love with. But he said, as he was rehabbing, no one mentioned sex. And this was in the sixties. No one. And they didn't see, you know, disabled people as sexual beings. And he's like, well, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna have sex? And there were some sex toys on the market. They sucked. He was like an inventor, so he went to this conference in nineteen seventy-one in Indianapolis, a disabled conference. He said, would any of you buy a dildo or a, you know, device for handicapped people?
24:44 Speaker 04 A bunch of hands raised up. So he decided to design one. He actually ended up inventing the silicone dildo.
24:51 Kate Lister? No way.
24:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:52 Kate Lister? Oh my god. What was his name again?
24:54 Speaker 04 Gosnell Duncan.
24:56 Kate Lister? All hail. Oh my goodness. What an, that's an unsung hero.
25:02 Speaker 04 Oh my god, yes. And he was dark skinned and was annoyed that all the sex toys came in Caucasian. That was like flesh color was Caucasian flesh. And if you wanted anything else, it was like, I'm holding this up, thinking we're on video, but it was like just matte black color, not skin color. So he worked with GE to design the silicone and to get different pigments that showed black and brown sticking colors. So he was a real revolutionary.
25:30 Kate Lister? My god, that's incredible. And so when he pioneered the inclusive range of silicone dildos, was that not for his pleasure presumably, but so he could pleasure a partner?
25:43 Speaker 04 Yes.
25:44 Kate Lister? What a legend.
25:45 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. He's absolutely a legend. This is like a great immigrant story. But yeah, it was initially for Angela and for the disabled community. But he couldn't sell enough. He was making it in basement in Brooklyn. Literally like making molds, like pouring them in there, curing them and selling them. And people would send him these letters. So he'd advertise. And he would, you know, they'd say, this is my disability. And then he'd say, well, what are your penis measurements? And they would send him little pieces of string. To measure the circumference and he would make one to their specifications.
26:22 Kate Lister? I don't know how that's managed to be really hot and kind of cute at the same time. That's just like, oh, right, well, he deserves a plaque or some kind of national day. Don't let anyone tell you immigration doesn't reap positive benefits. My god, like I talk about him a lot, but you mentioned there about dildo, sex toys and the feminist movement. What did dildos, because like actually when I said that out loud is you could be forgiven that the feminist movement might be about going, we don't need dildos, like, you know, like any getting rid of the penis, you know, the more radical stuff. But so how does that fit together then?
27:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, so in the seventies and sixties, most feminists weren't talking about sex toys. Okay, let's just be honest here, but when they started talking about sex toys, they were against them for the reasons you say, like they were physical embodiments.
27:19 Kate Lister? Yeah.
27:20 Speaker 04 Physical embodiments of the patriarchy. So it was like, if you're, you know, fighting against the patriarchy at day and then, you know, masturbating with a giant dildo at night, you're a hypocrite. That was the view of a bunch of feminists. So there was that kind of thing, like you can't do it in lesbians. There was a stereotype at the time that all lesbians just really wanted penises. Like they actually like lesbian sex wasn't satisfying and what they wanted were dicks. And so a lot of lesbians kind of internalized that view. And I didn't mean to make a pun or wasn't even a pun, but anyway.
27:59 Speaker 04 And they said, we won't use a dildo because for, you know, these political or philosophical reasons, especially because everyone assumes we like them and penetration is male. And so a lot of lesbians and feminists who wanted to use dildos did it on the down low and they were in the closet about it.
28:19 Kate Lister? Cereptitious dildo use.
28:22 Speaker 04 Absolutely. And so then with vibrators, basically vibrators had a mixed reception as well. So Betty Dodson, this masturbation pioneer, so she was a second wave feminist pioneer, but she was like hated by a lot of other second wave feminists. So she was this artist who couldn't have an orgasm during sex with her husband. And she's like, what is this? What's going on? She ended up learning about the clitoris. She ended up learning about vibrators. Her lover was getting a haircut and they use a vibrator on a scalp because they didn't back then in the sixties. I confirmed it with my father. He's like, it felt good.
29:03 Kate Lister? Imagine today, if you're just going to the haircut and the hairdresser just whipped out a rampant rabbit, I'll just finish off here.
29:12 Speaker 04 Oh, my God. They would probably get arrested.
29:16 Kate Lister? Unrightly so.
29:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's right. Like if my hairdresser did that, I would be so terrified. I'd probably call the police. So anyway, that's how she got introduced to it. She started using Hitachi magic, well, the precursor to that. And she wanted to share this knowledge with other feminists. So she started these kind of groups where there were these liberating masturbation groups where she'd teach people about their genitals because a lot of women were insecure about their labia and still are. And the requirement was you had to get naked before you entered the group. And that was like the worst part for most women. And then you get naked and she'd basically say you were normal and, you know, you'd look at your vagina and labia.
30:02 Speaker 04 And then she taught women how to masturbate. And a lot of people in these groups had their first orgasms. So she was the real push to bring vibrators in the feminist movement. That doesn't mean they were accepted. She was criticized so much for doing this.
30:17 Kate Lister? And just to make, I mean, again, she can enter my sex pantheon Hall of Fame. But just to clarify, when you're talking about vibrators here, we're not necessarily talking about the fake dicks that vibrate. We're talking about like specifically for the clit, they're called wands?
30:32 Speaker 04 Yes.
30:33 Kate Lister? Is that right? Like the Hitachi wand? Or as I like to call it, that one?
30:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about. Things that were at the time sold as gifts for Mother's Day in the New York Times.
30:46 Kate Lister? No.
30:47 Speaker 04 Yes, and so we still have these two kind of uses in culture. We have Betty Dodson going, I have had a hundred orgasms from this and you should too. It's changed my life. You don't need a man anymore. And then you have, oh, buy this for your mom, like on May 8th. And so it was this weird, and we still kind of have that in our culture, but it was this weird kind of double life of the vibrator. And Hitachi wasn't admitting the uses. And she's like, Hitachi should have sponsored me.
31:16 Kate Lister? So these really were massaging devices to start with. They really were. And Hitachi just kind of just went, no, no, no, no, for a long time.
31:26 Speaker 04 Exactly. But they knew what was going on. So it was like a tacit acceptance. Like, they didn't tell her to stop, but they never said until, I think it was 2010 or something, 2015, then they, you know, admitted they were first.
31:40 Kate Lister? 2015?
31:41 Speaker 04 It was some, yeah.
31:42 Kate Lister? It was when they, they finally went, yeah, all right, we know what you're doing.
31:46 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
31:47 Kate Lister? That's wild.
31:48 Speaker 04 It took a long ass time. And yeah, so it's pretty crazy. But she introduced them and, you know, she made this larger philosophical argument, which I mentioned briefly, which was like, you shouldn't have to depend on a man for an orgasm, that women are having these like financial relationships with men where they're trading financial security with sex, but they're not even having orgasms for men. So don't worry about it, you know, make your own money. Your sex isn't tied up to a man. Use a vibrator, free yourself. And that was a very threatening message to men, even to other women, to gender roles and marital roles at the time.
32:33 Kate Lister? Wow. We've come a long way then, haven't we? Because talking about sex and pleasure, I mean, I would have said, that's a central part of the feminist conversation. Or maybe it's just a conversation that I'm having, but like, making sure that you get yours. Yeah.
32:48 Speaker 04 The third wave feminism has come a long way. Absolutely. I mean, so at the time, like Betty Friedan argued, like, a thousand vibrators can't make a difference in the status of women. And others were arguing like, get rid of this orgasm politics. But now I think, you know, I mean, you see on Instagram, people promoting vibrators, even though it's against policy, to market, openly market sex toys on Instagram or Facebook. But anyway, you see people posting things, talking about the orgasm gap and how women deserve to have as many orgasms as men. And so, yeah, it's shifted. But I still think that women are reticent about demanding orgasms in a relationship.
33:31 Speaker 04 I still think there's a lot of public facing stuff that says that, but I still think they're in the bedroom itself, some women are still uncomfortable about that. And by some women, I'm thinking of one of my friends in particular. Ooh, I won't name. I know.
33:56 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
34:26 Speaker 01 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
35:13 Kate Lister? So I think that that is true, we're better, but I think we're still on this script of like, when he has an orgasm, that's kind of it.
35:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:21 Kate Lister? You know, and that's, no, no, no, no, no, no. You get yours. But just while we're speaking about men, sex toys for men, what's their history? Because you think sex toys, you tend to think sex toys for women. I mean, what sex toys are there for men and what are their history?
35:38 Speaker 04 So, I mean, the biggest like is the artificial vagina or pocket pussy. Did you say of course?
35:46 Kate Lister? Yes.
35:47 Speaker 04 And you shake your head like very knowingly. That is very, very old. I mean, there are ones, I'm sure they're going back further than this, but I've seen like Japanese ones that are like 300 years old, that are gorgeous, actually. Fabric. But I mean, I don't know if they worked well. I'm not saying they were great like for use, but they looked pretty. And there were also sex dolls made of fabric and things like that. Yeah, so those have almost as long a history as dildos, but they've never been as written about as much. And I think, again, they aren't as threatening, so they don't have that kind of
36:29 Speaker 04 cachet, whatever. But in the 50s and 60s, they were sold as marital aids as well. And they're like these vaginas that look like deflated pool toys. That's the best I can, like the things people wear around their arms, little kids.
36:44 Kate Lister? Like armbands, yep.
36:45 Speaker 04 Yep. It looks like a deflated version of that in Caucasian flesh color. And it's sold as a way to, you know, have sex with your wife. So that's how that was sold in the US in the 60s. But what we have today, there's sex dolls, there's sex robots that are like so low tech, like they don't really work well. Like everyone's afraid of sex robots. And then you look at a video and it's like, the head can move, it can't walk, it can't do anything. Like the fear of sex robots outshines the actual reality. But I would say the biggest thing for men are the fleshlights.
37:19 Kate Lister? Wow. I mean, yeah, there's a whole big thing in there about sex robots, but like, you know, my phone won't even hold a charge. So like, what are we gonna do?
37:28 Kate Lister? With a sex robot, for God's sake. But speaking of that, like, what's the future of sex toys? Where's it gonna go? Like, you know, the design, I suppose, is it either goes in, or it's something to stick something in, and variations on that. But like futuristic sex toys, what are we talking? What's coming our way?
37:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, you know, as far as futuristic, I just spent like three days in a sex toy store, actually, for a story. And I was looking, and what struck me is how old fashioned the technology is. Like, the case looks different. The rabbit vibrator may be in a different color, or may be made of silicone, which was a big innovation in the 70s. But the actual, like, eccentric motor used to power it is the same that we've been using for 100 years. So, in a way, the change, I mean, the biggest thing in sex toys is like the Womanizer, the air,
38:29 Speaker 04 whatever they call it, the air suction vibrators. Do you know the Womanizer?
38:34 Kate Lister? I'm not familiar with this, but I'm gonna make some notes, so carry on.
38:37 Speaker 04 Okay. Yeah, it's a clitoral stimulator, and so it creates like a suction on the clitoris, and it's almost like you're vacuuming. This is terrible way to describe it, because it's not sexy, but it's almost like you're vacuuming your clitoris. But it-
38:52 Kate Lister? Nice.
38:56 Kate Lister? I like to keep a clean shop.
38:59 Speaker 04 These are really popular. So that's like the new technology. But the future is, you know, possibly in things like sex robots, but people have been saying that's the future of sex toys forever, and they haven't come to fruition. One of the things that bothers me is sex robots and sex dolls, they're, are designed for men, just like, and there are very few male dolls. So even male dolls designed for gay men are hard to find. And then you see in these sex doll forums, the female users are like, oh my God, this thing's too heavy. I can't move Ken, you know, I can't move Steve around, like, he weighs 80 pounds.
39:38 Speaker 04 Which is a lot. And so they can't move them around and they're like, I can't get off on my sex doll because he's just got like a regular dick and there's no clitoral stimulation. So that again, designed and have some of the same issues that like having sex with a human is. So there are any sex dolls designed for women, yet sex doll technology is really expanding, but women have been kind of left out of it. I mean, if it was designed for women of a clitoral stimulator on the mouth, on the genitals, on the anus, who knows? It would just be like a giant clitoral stimulator with hair or something.
40:19 Kate Lister? Do you think that that's really telling that like sex dolls for men, like a massive success? And when they just made a sex doll for a woman that was just a man, it was shit.
40:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think it says so much. And not only was it shit, there were all these articles, especially in the UK was like male sex dolls with bionic penises are taking over the world. It's like, no, they're not like.
40:42 Kate Lister? Jesus, no, they're not. What about something like virtual reality? Is that because presumably as soon as they've got that tech, that porn will play a part in that?
40:53 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, so porn is huge for VR right now. Huge industry. There's a lot of money.
40:59 Kate Lister? It's already here. Okay.
41:00 Speaker 04 And I've got a VR device. Actually, I don't look at porn on it because it's PlayStation. And so maybe I could, but anyway, I play Beat Saber. But that has become huge and I've interviewed people who make porn for virtual reality and do sort of like cam girl where like you hook up your sex device and this porn star is actually controlling it. And I said, well, have you tried, you know, doing cam boys for women? And that hasn't caught on. They haven't really made an effort and even like, I mean, a big problem with VR porn is it's male gaze on steroids. So that's what it is. I know like of a few videos created for women, but mostly it's like
41:43 Speaker 04 the man's view of what's sexy. And here are all these women you can have sex with and it's not designed for women. And I think there's a real miss opportunity because I think women could really get into VR porn.
41:55 Kate Lister? God, yeah. I mean, like, you don't want just like the VR where it's just somebody just getting you off. You want something like to be placed into that scene in Pride and Prejudice where Colin Firth was coming out of the pool. And then suddenly the virtual reality takes over and suddenly, yeah, you're doing him. That would sell, right?
42:11 Speaker 04 Oh, my God.
42:12 Kate Lister? Just have I given away too much of myself there?
42:15 Speaker 04 No, that would be totally amazing. Like, yes, everyone would love it. Or Bridgerton, or, yeah, I mean, it could be a big hit. But again, it's been ignored. And that's kind of like my pet peeve is like the leading edge of technology for sex products. Is again, you know, being directed towards men, even though like the great thing is that vibrators have been accepted on a level that they haven't been accepted since 1915, when we were pretending they were something else. Although, still, you could advertise them more widely back then in the States, which is terrible. But yeah, this leading edge, so there's good and bad. Also, the other thing is Teladonics, the communicating via apps.
42:59 Speaker 04 Thanks to the internet, like if you had a vibrator right now and I had this device, I could use my app and make it vibrate.
43:06 Kate Lister? Oh, that's quite clever. Hilarious, but clever. I mean, you'd just be buzzing your friends like when they were trying to do a presentation at work or something, wouldn't you? That's
43:17 Speaker 04 Yes, that is one of the downsides because it can be hacked. So when this first came out, people were Yeah.
43:24 Kate Lister? Oh, now there's an error. There's a glitch.
43:27 Speaker 04 It's a real glitch. Like, you do not want someone hacking into your bot plug. Like, that is a nightmare.
43:32 Kate Lister? No, you don't. Of all the things.
43:36 Kate Lister? And my bank details. Just don't do that.
43:39 Speaker 04 But I was just thinking, like, yeah, yeah, bank details would be preferable. But I mean, that could be a good, you know, way to destroy a world leader, like a Putin wore a bot plug and we hacked into it during like an important meeting. That would be great. But yeah, so there's issues with that that trying to fix or they have fixed. And then there's other ones that you and your partner are both wearing a device and you're both controlling it. And so that stuff's kind of cool.
44:10 Kate Lister? That is kind of cool. Do you know what, I would love to stay here chatting with you, but I've got to kind of wrap things up. But the last question that I'd like to ask you is, so we've spoken a lot about the history of sex toys and if anyone wants to know more, Hallie's book Buzz, The History of Sex Toys, have I got that right? Is that the title? Give me the full title, I don't want to get it wrong.
44:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, it works. I think it's right.
44:32 Kate Lister? Yeah. Do you think it's right? Go and read that because it's absolutely incredible. But we've looked at the history and we've spoken a bit about what's coming towards the future. But as someone who studies sex toys for a living, is what is the future that you would like to see for sex toys and women? Like, if you were in charge, what would you roll out?
44:51 Speaker 04 So if I were in charge, I think that I would roll out, A, a sex doll for women, like I described, that had all the clitoral stimulators. That would be one of the things I would do. I would also have more research on women's sexuality at universities, so that we can like, and research on sex tech at universities. And there's some millions of dollars are spent on military tech and technologies of death, as I call them. If we spent even a fraction of that on technologies of sex, we should come up with something new. So I feel like that would be the greatest thing to me, is if more research funds were put into this,
45:33 Speaker 04 studying women's sexuality and women's sexual devices. And men's as well.
45:39 Kate Lister? And men's, but they've been the star of this one for a long time now. I think that, yeah, that would be amazing, wouldn't it? More research, more money, more resources, and more learning around sexuality and pleasure, and women's sexuality in particular.
45:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:52 Kate Lister? Amazing. Oh, Hallie, thank you so much for joining me today. You are an absolute treat.
45:58 Speaker 04 Thank you. This was so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. Like, it was great. I love your book as well. I have it, I read it, I cherish it.
46:07 Kate Lister? Thank you. We should just get together and just talk dick somewhere over a cup of tea. But until then, thank you so much for joining me betwixt the sheets.
46:23 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Hallie for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . We've got episodes on everything from the history of the boob job to medieval sex myths all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Stuart Beckwith and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheen, for the history of sex scandal in society. A podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
47:06 Speaker 01 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeist. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
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