“Unlocking Pleasure: The Surprising Truth Behind the Great Vibrator Myth That Everyone Gets Wrong!”
Hallie Lieberman further drives home the absurdity of Maines’s claim in a 2020 New York Times article, writing that:
“Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems; that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.”
On this note, in The Technology of Orgasm, Maines outlines her second major claim by stating:
“…the androcentric definition of sex as an activity recognizes three essential steps: preparation for penetration (‘foreplay’), penetration, and male orgasm. Sexual activity that does not involve at least the last two has not been popularly or medically (and for that matter legally) regarded as ‘the real thing’…since no penetration was involved, believers in the hypothesis that only penetration was sexually gratifying to women could argue that nothing sexual could be occurring when their patients experienced the hysterical paroxysm during treatment.”
In reality, as Lieberman and Schatzberg point out:
“…the historical evidence demonstrates that penetrative use of vibrators was actually a standard medical practice. Most vibrator companies produced penetrative vaginal attachments, and nearly every vibrator sold to physicians included these…ironically, when Maines argues that massage with vibrators only occurred on the vulva, her sources demonstrate the opposite point: they show that massage occurred inside the vagina…
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