A Trip To The Sex Machines Museum

When I was in Prague recently, I went to the Sex Machines Museum. It was small and it could have used more in the way of historicizing information, but it was interesting. I was excited to get a professional discount for being a professor and I considered requesting reimbursement for my ticket as a research expense -- but honestly the price was so low it would have purely been symbolic and not worth the hassle.

I don't know what you think when you think "sex machines," but the first thing I think of is the vibrator and its amazing history. If you don't know anything about the history of the modern vibrator, you owe it to yourself to find out about it. We live in an era where we think that the way we see things is the only obvious way to see them, and this -- very recent! -- period in Anglo history can really shake up your complacency.

I learned about this years ago from Rachel Maines's amazing book, The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, but you can get a good quick overview here.

Basically, it was common in the Victorian era to think that women were not sexual beings -- that they tolerated sex for the sake of their husbands and to have children. Especially since women do not typically have orgasms from intercourse alone, women in this context would sometimes develop a nervous irritability accompanied by a feeling of heaviness in the abdomen, wetness between the legs, and erotic fantasies. We would call this sexual frustration, but because this wasn't a concept, it was understood as "hysteria," -- a medical ailment that needed treatment.

Medical treatment involved a physician rubbing the woman between the legs until "hysterical paroxysm" occurred. Again, we would call this an orgasm, but it wasn't understood as sexual, it was understood as medical. Though it brought in good money, the treatment was considered a pain: boring and time-consuming. It also gave the doctors achy cramped hands. Maines calls it "the job nobody wanted."

So the vibrator was introduced as a labor saving device for doctors, something they would use on women to treat them. Not long after, technology evolved to the point where vibrators could be designed for use inside the home; at the same time their connection to sexuality became more obvious and so they were marketed blandly as "massagers."

The sex machine museum did have vibrators from this period, and it had some other interesting things I thought I'd share. First, here are two characteristic vibrators:

 

An early vibrator.

A later vibrator.

One of the things that surprised me the most at the Sex Machines Museum was the number of machines using electricity -- I mean, not just powered machines but machines that would deliver current. Yikes! Here is a picture of some complicated contraptions where a "soaked ring" would be slipped onto the penis allowing electrical current stimulates erections:

"Portable electric device" for the penis.

Another thing I was surprised by was this enormous wooden contraption:

German "erotic device."

The information card for it reads "A faithful copy of the instruments used by a female prison in Germany to calm the 'restless minds' of some prisoners. The penis moved by stepping on the pedal."

So many questions. I don't know if you can see in the photo but the "penis" in this thing is huge, especially at the base. Is the implication that it was intentionally painful and abusive? If not, how did penetration from a wooden penis avoid the same problem the vibrator was meant to solve -- that women don't usually have orgasms from penetration?  Was "calm the restless minds" a euphemism? Or is the whole thing just fake? I have no idea.

Another thing I learned was about chastity belts. I always had the same cartoon thought that most moderns have about this concept, that it was a thing a jealous or possessive spouse or parent would put on a person to make sure they didn't have sex. In fact, they were often used by women to protect themselves from rape! Check out this amazing picture:

Chastity belt.

Most of the machines in the museum were for having a good time, but of course not all. The "anti-masturbation" belts for male adolescents were to prevent nocturnal masturbation; in the event of an erection, sharp spikes would dig into the penis.

To me the most disturbing of these devices was the one below, meant to alert parents to nocturnal erections: as the placard explains, "there was a ring on the boy's penis, and when an erection would occur, it rang a bell placed in the parents' bedroom."

Anti-masturbation device for boys.

OMG.