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Cover of The Technology of Orgasm

The Technology of Orgasm

“Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction

By Rachel P. Maines

5.00 (3 Ratings)
8 Want to read2 Currently reading2 Have read

Publish Date

1998

Publisher

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Language

eng

Pages

181

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.