Once only whispered about in clandestine corners, vibrators have become just another accessory for the suburban soccer mom, showing up in all manner of pop culture, from sitcoms to talk shows to the pages of glossy women’s magazines. But how did these once-taboo toys become so socially acceptable? The journey of the devices to the cultural mainstream is a surprisingly stimulating one.
In Buzz, Hallie Lieberman—who holds the world’s first PhD in the history of sex toys—starts at the beginning, tracing the tale from lubricant in Ancient Greece to the very first condom in 1560 to advertisements touting devices as medical equipment in 19th-century magazines. She looks in particular from the period of major change from the 1950s through the present, when sex toys evolved from symbols of female emancipation to tools in the fight against HIV/AIDS to consumerist marital aids to today’s mainstays of pop culture. The story is populated with a cast of vivid and fascinating characters including Dell Williams, founder of the first feminist sex toy store, Eve’s Garden; Betty Dodson, who pioneered “Bodysex” workshops in the 1960s to help women discover vibrators and ran Good Vibrations, a sex toy store and vibrator museum; and Gosnell Duncan, a paraplegic engineer who invented the silicone dildo and lobbied Dodson and Williams to sell them in their stores. And these personal dramas are all set against a backdrop of changing American attitudes toward sexuality, feminism, LGBTQ issues, and more.
Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy is a bit of a miss direction regarding the title. It you are wanting to learn about the history of the sex toy across the world, this isn’t going to be the book for you. However if you are wanting to learn about the sex toy and how it relates to mobs, feminism, LGBTQ+ community and the disabled community within the US? This could be a rather enlightening book to read.
Can’t lie about this, I was excited to read this book, it’s a book that – when I heard about it from a YouTuber – I had to get it, I wanted to learn more about sex, I wanted to learn about people sexual fantasies, why would I not learn about sex toys? Of course i had begun to read this book thinking it was about the history of sex toys, how phallic object had been found in placed like Egypt and the like, but the issue with that is – as our author explains – there is so much to take into consideration regarding the phallic objects that to just slap a label of ‘it’s a dildo’ wouldn’t be correct or honouring the history. For this historians just have to say ‘sadly we don’t know, but this is what is could be used for’.
The book is insightful, learning about the states in America having banned sex toy’s, even erotica – some still have a band over sex toys – how sex toys originally came to be – that whole ‘male doctors in the Victorian age needed to have a break from masturbating hysterical women’ this can get in the bin – the fact that the silicon dildo was originally created by a black disabled man called Gosnell Duncan, which hasn’t been shouted about at all which seems a bit weird to me – although at the same time, not really – of course he did it with his connections, but still he was part of the sexual revolution!
Of course the book does follow a timeline, of two men who created vibrators, one doing it more for the money and the other doing it because he felt it could help people intimately. Then you go into the feminist movement, which at the time wasn’t too focused on the sexual nature they wanted equal rights, but that didn’t equal in the bedroom and some women were vocal about it, were more than powerful enough to stand up and say ‘no I want to have orgasms too!’
The book is interesting, you can probably tell that I loved it and I hope there will be more books similar to this somewhere. It’s just such a good book to read about and see how so many connections are linked together and brought so much good into the world, yet at the same time kind of ruined some people too. If you are interested in learning more about sex, sex education, or your curious about things because… reasons, then go have a look at this book, it’s a delight.
The Pen and the Book 