Subject: RE: BS: JFK, Affairs & Sex Toys???
From:
JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 01:06 PM
Stilly has posted the link to the shop, but you can go more directly to the museum at Good Vibrations Museum (or click the museum link on the page Stilly's link gets you).
"Good Vibrations" is also the title of a book that I believe was written by one of the owners/operators of the shop. The book is lightly "scholarly" and gives an excellent perspective on the history of "things that go bzzzz." I recommend that anyone with any (serious?) interest at all in early medical practice should at least skim through the book, since most of the earliest machines were developed specifically for use by members of the medical professions.
The vibrating tools used by physicians (in the US, up until perhaps the mid 1940s(?)) for the relief of "womens' hysteria" overlap with very similar devices intended for more general kinds of "muscle massage," and for a brief time in the late 40s and early 50s a number of barbers used something of the kind for a "neck massage" as a final extra benefit with a haircut. The muscle massage devices were also used around the same era by many chiropractic practitioners, although I don't know whether any in that line still make much use of them.
Sometime around 1954 or so, the "taint" of the "sexual therapy" uses attached to the more general massage devices, and ill-founded fear of "injury to delicate tissues" resulted in a reduction in the "aggressiveness" of all vibrating devices for non-professional use. For that reason, it is no longer possible to acquire a "massage vibrator" that actually vibrates although there are numerous devices that "slightly hum." Most of the ones available on open markets are also tricked out with appendages and accessories that make them less than useful for any purpose.
(I have a 1948 model Wahl "barbershop massage vibrator" that is incredibly effective for deep muscle cramps, and every one subject to night time leg cramps would benefit from having one of these handy - but you can't get one because the model was discontinued in 1949 and "lookalike" models produced since then are almost completely ineffective, except perhaps as a "hum drone" while you sing yourself to sleep(?). They don't VIBRATE!, they only hummmmm gently.)
Certain of the simpler "sex toys" can be used as very effective aids by people whose physical conditions prevent, or seriously limit, normal (ordinary is a better word?) sexually related activities. People with "normal" physical capabilities may also find them helpful for "adding a little extra" when, as it inevitably does, it gets a little boring doing the same old same old without some element of experimentation and variety.
It is unfortunate that prudery prevents the most elementary of these from being available in open markets, and for decades the only place to get appropriate ones has been at places considered "porn shops." It also is very difficult to find a medical practitioner willing (or able) to offer any useful advice on how to obtain, and more importantly how to use, any of them.
An additional unfortunate tendency, noted in my area in the last decade, is the migration of "toys" stocked and sold by "the usual dealers" to more and more bizarre - and useless - devices.
A majority of devices seen at website advertisers are appropriate - and intended - only for "display" a. la. porn movies, where their bizarre features can "pretend to do" something that's more akin to political advertising than to actual sexual activity. Many of them have no use, even in a porn movie, except within the "BDSM" cultures(?). They're stocked, and advertised aggressively, primarily because the ignorant and warped customers have more money that they're willing to spend than the more serious (conservative?) people who might just want "a little bit of help."
Lots of quite ordinary people probably could benefit from a little awareness, and perhaps even a little experimentation with the simple stuff. I don't know of any of my friends who routinely chain their mates to a wall (upside down?), but then I don't know - and don't much care - what they find pleasurable in their own relationships.
[Yeah, I know, more than you wanted to know.]
John
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sj
