The phallic playthings dangle along the back wall of Lovers. Lined up on a shelf, their sparkly glitter insides shine through the thick layer of packaging, but something more sinister is also lurking in the sexy line up of jelly rubber dildos, vibrators and anal beads.

MissBonnie

You’re probably hearing or reading a lot lately about jelly-rubber sex toys and their health risks. While they are usually less expensive and many people like the silky feel and flesh-like responsiveness of these toys, you should be very aware of the down-side. Ongoing studies have shown that there are genuine concerns with using these items. Jelly-rubber contains phthalates. (Thall-ates), are porous, and extremely difficult to properly clean after use. Most experts recommend using condom or condom-like coverings over phthalate-based sex toys.

Without getting too technical, phthalates are chemical compounds used to increase flexibility. They’re used to turn hard plastic into what’s described as jelly-rubber. One of the first indications that this is an unstable combination came about when after repeated use, people noticed their sex toys made of this substance began to fragment and discolor after only a few months. Another problem is that jelly-rubber is porous. That means fluids and bacteria can be absorbed and transmitted through toy use. In other words, jelly-rubber sex toys can be “carriers” of STDs and other harmful diseases and health conditions. Still another issue is that jelly-rubber sex toys are mass produced — like “cheap novelties” — in countries which often have very lax manufacturing codes and inspection conditions.

Most sex toy manufacturers and retailers have responded to these serious concerns by emphasizing their non-phthalate based products and producing educational materials about the dangers inherent in jelly-rubber items. No official regulations, however, have been adopted to prevent the sale of phthalate-based toys, so it’s still a buyer beware situation. Other porous and phthalate-based materials used in sex toys include Cyberskin and soft vinyl. Elastomer, while phthalate-free, is semi-porous and cannot be adequately cleaned. Even silicone mix products may contain phthalates. All of these items should be covered by a condom when used.

Does this mean you should immediately throw out all your phthalate-based sex toys?

Not necessarily. It DOES mean that you should be aware of the risks involved and that your ’safe sex’ practices should include replacing them when they begin to show ‘use fatigue’ and always covering them with a condom when in use.

Smart shoppers are already showing a marked preference for non-phthalate-based and non-porous sex toys. There is a wider variety now available and manufacturers are aware of the demand. Pure silicone, such as VixSkin, Lucite, acrylic, glass, and metal toys can be cleaned and disinfected and will outlast their cheaper counterparts. Your health is worth it!

Article: MissBonnie and MissBitch for The Beginner’s Guide to Vibrators © CollarNcuffs.com

Many, many thank yous to Cle-Andria for her help with images, allowing us to destroy her shop shelves in the name of kink, and her wealth of information.

There is a lot of pressure to be sexual in the “right” way, and some people feel like they should use a vibrator. The fact is that you can have an incredible sex life without vibrators or sex toys at all. That said, using vibrators is a completely healthy (and potentially pleasure inducing) way to explore your sexuality.

There are as many reasons to use a vibrator as there are reasons to feel good.

Here are some of the most common reasons people play with vibrators:

• Curiosity:Sexual curiosity is healthy; wanting to try a vibrator is reason enough to try one.
• Self-discovery: Particularly for those of us who have never been given the opportunity or permission to explore being sexual, vibrators can be a great way to explore your body. When using a vibrator by yourself you can start exploring yourself, your sensations (both physical and emotional) and reactions in a relatively safe environment.
• To “spice up” a long term sexual relationship:Vibrators can shake things up (literally and figuratively) in a long term relationship if sex has become routine or exploration has fizzled out.
• To experience orgasm for the first time: For many people, especially women, who never or rarely experience orgasm, vibration can be the fastest and easiest way to discover their orgasmic potential.
• For extra stimulation that you can’t add on your own:Many people aren’t able to stimulate themselves the way they want to.
• Chronic ‘bad styled’ pain, disability, and fatigue don’t stop you from feeling pleasure, but vibrators can sometimes make it easier to get there.
• For fun:For the most part the reason we all use, or consider using, vibrators is the same: because it’s pleasurable. Pleasure, however you define it, is pretty close to a universal desire
• Pressure:This is NOT a good reason to use toys, but it’s why some people do.

»»Whether your partner is well meaning or not, if you’re being pressured to try using a vibrator it won’t work, and it shows a lack of respect of your boundaries. Vibrators are ultimately about feeling pleasure, and you can’t force someone to experience pleasure, because experiencing pleasure is in some ways an expression of free will. Everyone has the right to say no to using a vibrator, just as we all have the right to say no to any kind of sex play at any time.MissBonnie

The increasing visibility of vibrators in mainstream media, and in retail stores that don’t specialize in sex toys is bringing some people to my door asking the question, how many people really use vibrators?

Until recently there hasn’t been much reliable research on vibrator use. The people who collect most of the information about vibrator use tend to be, not surprisingly, the people who are trying to sell us more vibrators. These surveys are always tied to some form of marketing and methodologies are rarely described in detail.

In 2009 Michael Reece and Debra Herbenick, along with colleagues at Indiana University published to surveys of vibrator use which offered a much more reliable and detailed look into the hows and whys of vibrator use. Their findings are below. Beneath their findings I’ve included the numbers from earlier research some of which amounts to no more than marketing material but others represent serious study on vibrator use.

Overall Reece and Herbenick found that just under 50% of respondents reported using a vibrator at some point, with slightly more women (52%) than men (45%) reporting vibrator use.

When Do You Use Vibrators?

Women reported using vibrators most during masturbation (46%) and least during intercourse (37%). Men were most likely to use vibrators with a partner during “sex play or foreplay” (40%). Only 17% of men reported using a vibrator for masturbation. The paper on men reported on reasons for first using a vibrator, and the most common one men gave (67%) was “for fun”. 40% of men said they used one to help a partner with orgasms, and 7% said they used it to help themselves to have an orgasm.

Vibrator Use and Sexual Function

The researchers compared vibrator users and non-vibrator users on several measures of sexual functioning (asking questions about things like erectile function, intercourse satisfaction, pain, orgasm, lubrication, and sexual desire). Overall men and women who used vibrators reported fewer problems with sexual function. And people who used vibrators more recently (the past month) responded to surveys in a way that indicated fewer problems with sexual function.

Vibrator Use and Other Healthy Behaviors

Both men and women who use vibrators were more likely to do things that indicate a comfort with their bodies and an interest in taking care of themselves. Women who had ever used a vibrator were more likely than those who had never used a vibrator to have had a gynecologic exam in the past year and performed a genital self-examine in the past month. Men who reported performing testicular self-exams within the past moth were more likely to have used a vibrator.

Sex Toy Cleaning

The good news is that the majority of men and women do clean their vibrators. The bad news is that some don’t (20% of men and 14% of women report never cleaning their toys). Of those who do clean, habits could still improve. 60% of women and 53% of men report cleaning their toy before and after use, with the rest either cleaning before or after. It’s not clear if they asked this, but what I’d be most interested in knowing is whether or not they cleaned the toy before first use, something that I think a lot of people overlook but it important considering the serious lack of hygiene in most sex toy factories.

Side Effects of Vibrator Use

The researchers only reported on women’s responses to questions about negative side effects of vibrator use. They asked women about genital numbness, pain, irritation, swelling (the bad kind) and tears or cuts.
Here are the findings:

• 71.5% of women never experienced any side effects.
• 16% reported numbness
• 3% reported pain
• 10% reported irritation
• 8% reported swelling
• 1% reported tears or cuts

In all cases, those who reported negative side effects judged them to be relatively short lived and minor in severity.

How Common Is Vibrator Use

Previous to 2009 most statistics suggested between 20-27% of people had used a vibrator at some point in their lives. Some examples of survey research include:

• In Shere Hite’s famous survey (1976), only 1% of respondents said they had ever used a vibrator
• In a 2006 Elle/MSNBC.com survey 40% of respondents said they had used a vibrator.
• In a 1996 survey of Swedish women aged 18 to 74, 19% of respondents said they had used a sex toy by themselves, and 15% said they had used a sex toy with a partner.
• Younger repondents were more likely to have used a sex toy, with 30% of women 25 to 34 reporting having used a sex toy.

Age of First Vibrator Use

Two surveys that have asked this got very similar results:

• 15 to 17% were under 20 years old when they first tried a vibrator
• 50% were in their 20s
• 22 to 27% were in their 30s
• 8 to 10% were 40 and older

Vibrator Use by Gender

In the two surveys that compared vibrator use between men and women, women were more likely to use vibrators:

• One study found that 33% of female respondents versus 20% of male respondents used vibrators
• Another study found that the numbers were 24% for women and 21% for men.

What else about people who use vibrators?

Here are some random statistics from the surveys listed below:

• Most studies found that vibrator users were overwhelmingly white.
• Most studies found that vibrator users were predominantly in their thirties.
• According to Xandria Collection’s Toys in the Sheets survey, the most common vibrator user was a white Christian married woman, in her thirties, who votes Republican.
• According to the Durex global sex survey Australia has the highest vibrator use reported (46%) and India has the lowest (3%). The US is up there at 45%.
• Women in relationships are more likely to use a vibrator than women who are single.

Article: MissBonnie and MissBitch for The Beginner’s Guide to Vibrators © CollarNcuffs.com

Many, many thank yous to Cle-Andria for her help with images, allowing us to destroy her shop shelves in the name of kink, and her wealth of information. Sources:
1.Berman Center/Drugstore.com survey “The Health Benefits of Sexual Aids & Devices: A Comprehensive Study of their Relationship to Satisfaction and Quality of Life. Unpublished, 2004.
2.Castleman, M. & Lawrence Research Group. Toys in the Sheets. 1999. Accessed on Xandria.com September 12, 2006.
3.Davis, Clive M.; Blank, Joani; Lin, Hung-Yu. “Characteristics of Vibrator Use Among Women.” The Journal of Sex Research Vol. 33, No. 4 (1996).
4.Elle/MSNBC.com reader sex survey, 2006. Accessed on MSNBC.com, September 12, 2006.
5.Fugl-Meyer, K.S., Öberg, K., Lundberg,P.O., et al. “On Orgasm, Sexual Techniques, and Erotic Perceptions in 18- to 74-Year-Old Swedish Women” Journal of Sexual Medicine Volume 3, No. 1, (2006):56-68.
6.Herbenick, D., Reece, M., Sanders, S.A., et. al. “Prevalence and Characteristics of Vibrator Use by Women in the United States: Results from a Nationally Representative Study” Journal of Sexual Medicine Early View, Date: June 2009. Accessed June 1, 2009.
7.Hite, S. The Hite Report New York: Macmillan, 1976.
8.Levin, R. J., & Levin, A. Sexual Pleasure: The Surprising Preferences of 100,000 Women. Redbook Magazine, September, 1975.
9.Reece, M., Herbenick, D., Sanders, S.A., et. al. “Prevalence and Characteristics of Vibrator Use by Men in the United States” Journal of Sexual Medicine Early View, Date: May 2009. Accessed May 31, 2009.
10.Wolfe, L. The Cosmo Report. New York: Arbor House, 1981.

A condition called Female Hysteria and lazy doctors: is the short reply:

Until it was finally laid to rest the mid-20th century, female hysteria was a favored diagnosis for physicians for a litany of symptoms. As you’d guess from its vernacular, female hysteria was a condition which afflicted women exclusively. Symptoms of this dread disease included anxiety, crying fits, surliness, faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, irritability and a loss of appetite for food. and any behavior that a Victorian-era husband would find improper from his wife. In 1859, it was claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria. This number makes sense if you consider that there was a 75-page catalog with possible symptoms, and that this list was seen as incomplete.

Dating from Plato’s dialogs, female hysteria was assumed to be caused by the womb roving around within a woman’s body, mucking up the works. Galen, famed physician of the 2nd century, was the first to trip onto the notion that this might have something to do with female sexual satisfaction. He noted that deprivation of orgasm among healthy women brought on classic female hysteria symptoms, noting that pelvic massage often brought about beneficial results in the patient.

Not a big surprise; a good orgasm can do wonders for your day: MissBitch

Early treatments for female hysteria revolved around female hysteria massage; allowing the patient to achieve female sexual satisfaction was the goal of pelvic massage, but such blunt talk about orgasm wasn’t bandied about in a proper gentlemanly doctor’s office. By performing an effective female hysteria massage manually, the physician would bring his patient to orgasm, and the dreaded malady would be kept at bay—until it was time for the next treatment. Female hysteria was a gold mine. It wasn’t fatal, and early treatments for female hysteria such as pelvic massage had to be repeated frequently for the good of the patient. Still, achieving female sexual satisfaction through a pelvic massage performed by hand might be all fine and good for the patient, but it was a time-consuming process for doctors. A proper female hysteria massage required quite a bit of stamina as well. There had to be a better procedure to add to the early treatments for female hysteria—one that was effective in bringing the patient to orgasm and one that could do the job quickly and easily.

The solution? Vibrators

The earliest vibrators were a far cry from the sleek, streamlined sex toys commonplace in the bedroom today. These truly monstrous devices, they weren’t anything that women would be likely to turn to for female sexual satisfaction today. There were hydrotherapeutic models that dispensed huge jets of water aimed straight toward the clitoris at an alarming rate, but they were guaranteed by their manufacturers to offer all of the therapeutic benefits of a manual pelvic massage in a fraction of the time.

As long as the patient didn’t mind looking like a drowned rat following the treatment, all was good.

MissBonnie

plain and simple the modern vibrators were created as labor-saving devices for the treatment of female hysteria. To the Victorian-era male, women were frail, flighty creatures, subject to strange mental and emotional afflictions. The treatment was pelvic massage to induce orgasm, and many physicians found it strenuous and unnecessarily time-consuming. Surely there was a less strenuous way

You’ve got to use your hand to bring a woman to orgasm? Horrors. Oh you poor, poor boy!

MissBitch

Enterprising engineers came to the rescue with vibrators.

George Taylor’s steam powered vibrators were perhaps the first patented mechanical vibrating devices. The first electromechanical vibrator was designed in 1880 by a British physician, Joseph Mortimer Granville. Although his model more closely resembled what we think of as a vibrator, Granville did not support the use of vibrating devices for inducing female orgasm. He intended it to be used to massage male skeletal muscles.

However, the technology proved to be completely adaptable.

Then, in 1902, the American company Hamilton Beach patented the first electric vibrator available for retail sale, making the vibrator the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, and toaster, and about a decade before the vacuum cleaner and electric iron.

Advertisements for electric vibrators and battery vibrators were common within the pages of contemporary women’s magazines such as Needlecraft, Woman’s Home Companion, Modern Priscilla. Vibrators were marketed as therapeutic aids, and no mention of the sexually stimulating properties of the new electric vibrators and battery vibrators were mentioned in the advertising copy. Still, while many men still clung to beliefs that women were above sexual desires and feelings, women of the era eagerly used the many types of vibrators available to experience what they weren’t getting from their marriages.

Vibrators’ time in the sun came to a crashing halt with the widespread distribution of stag films in the 1920s. The frequent appearances of many types of vibrators in the explicit action stigmatized vibrators, which were now associated with loose morals. Electric vibrators and battery vibrators disappeared from mainstream America for around four decades.

Then came the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Vibrators made their way into adult bookstores, electric vibrators and battery vibrators were sold through mail-order outlets, and as time passed and sex toys became relatively mainstream, various and sundry types of vibrators became readily available and the sheer breadth and variety of their functions expanded dramatically. Sex toy consumers can choose from the traditional phallic vibrators, dual-action vibrators which concurrently stimulate the vagina and clitoris, g-spot vibrators to reach and stimulate the g-spot reliably, p-spot vibrators to perform the same function for the prostate, and discrete vibrators that look anything like a sex toy. Today’s vibrators can be set to any speed and intensity the user might desire, and almost all types of vibrators have remote control capability. Because we consumer giants just love anything and everything remote controlled, especially if the remote has a zillion buttons. Vibrators have regained their day in the sun, and we seem to be a lot happier for it

Where can I see or buy antique vibrators?

The Antique Vibrator and Quack Medical Museum is a private collection that can be viewed online. Antique vibrators are often on sale on eBay, and may be available through antique dealers who trade in small appliances.

Resource Article : MissBonnie and MissBitch for The Beginner’s Guide to Vibrators © CollarNcuffs.com

Reference Sources:
The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines
“Sex Toy History” by Michael Castleman
“The Technology of Orgasm and the Vibrator” by Natalie Angier. Maines, Rachel P. (1998).
The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria”, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6646-4.\\  Micale, Mark S. (1993). “On the “Disappearance” of Hysteria: A Study in the Clinical Deconstruction of a Diagnosis” Micale, Mark S. (July 2000).
“The Decline of Hysteria”. Harvard Mental Health Letter 17 (1): 4–6.


Article: MissBonnie and MissBitch for The Beginner’s Guide to Vibrators © CollarNcuffs.com

Many, many thank yous to Cle-Andria for her help with images, allowing us to destroy her shop shelves in the name of kink, and her wealth of information.