{{Title link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/vibrator-design-tech-product-orgasm }}

ellaenchanting:

sadydoyle:

This was a fun one! The concise history of vibrators; how they started as scary medical devices and shameful secrets, became a feminist statement, and are now a massively profitable industry that employs the same guys who used to design iPhones. 

I, for one, welcome our new tech overlords. Thank you, tech overlords, for helping me maintain my long distance relationship!

From a 1908 vibrator ad: “Bebout is ‘gentle, soothing, invigorating and refreshing. Invented by a woman who knows a woman’s needs. All nature pulsates and vibrates with life.’” It does indeed.

My reactions are torn between “ooh, knowledge! neat!” and “*fumes at normativity*”.

So, followers, here is some neat knowledge. Try to look past the bits like “women who used vibrators were actually more likely to take care of their sexual health by going to the gynecologist for regular exams”, as if there were no reasons other than “failure to take care of one’s sexual health” why one might avoid both vibrators and gynecologists.

(Hint: my GP told me that, as someone too young for disorders of age and too virginal for disorders of the sexually active (emphasis added), I should not have gynecological checkups because I wouldn’t get anything out of them.)

(Hint 2: some people just aren’t into genitals, sometimes including their own.)

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Tags:

#I am not *failing* to take care of my sexual health #I am *recognising* that my sexual health doesn’t look like that #sexuality and lack thereof #the more you know #don’t mind me #it’s pretty much impossible for me to read educational things about sexuality *without* fuming at normativity #one time I was listening to a podcast about How Sexuality Works #and the interviewee denied my existence three times in the first five minutes #I gave up in disgust #(I don’t remember now specifically which denials they used) #(just that I kept a running tally in my head and incremented it #each time they said something the implication of which was that my existence was impossible) #anyway neat knowledge #…it occurs to me that this post has a single-digit number of notes #and the OP is the person who wrote the article #which means she’s almost certainly going to see this #okay look true inclusivity is impossible #and even acknowledgement of one’s inevitable exclusivity is pretty difficult #I have very high standards and I don’t want you to feel too bad about failing to meet them #I just get bitter sometimes about navigating life with an extremely unusual sexuality

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