Love, Lust and Laughter - 12.27.21

Intentional Pleasure with Masturbation & Vibrators

 

Masturbation is a touchy area! Dr. Carol Queen informs and entertains as she talks about masturbation and vibrators. She is Staff Sexologist at Good Vibrations, a nationwide chain of sex toy stores. Since 1990 Dr. Carol has enjoyed a unique platform to focus on sex education and women’s pleasure. She is also the historian and curator of GV’s Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco. Her sex education is published in The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone. This is the ultimate how-to, why-to, what-to book about sex!

 

Dr. Carol the Historian: Masturbation therapy for women is not altogether new. Genital massage was a common medical treatment for sexually frustrated women going all the way back to Hippocrates’ day. At the time, the doctors lacked batteries and so had to make do with fingers (or, often, those of a midwife). Electricity came along and by 1917 there were more electric vibrators than there were appliances! “Pelvic massage” for hysteria persisted all the way through the Victorian era and into the twentieth century. As a medical diagnosis, “hysteria” was removed from the DSM in 1980.

 

Dr. Carol and Dr. Diana discussed pleasure – our birthright – and how little focus there is on it in our sex education, in our culture, and among our medical practitioners. Because there is little attention to pleasure, arousal is not addressed. Sex toys can really assist with arousal! Excitement is higher partly because there is more blood flow to the genitals. The group of toys called the “clit suckers” are really HOT, and amp up the intensity! 

 

2022 is just around the corner. What are your sexual intentions? The Sex and Pleasure Book ends with this:  “Forty years ago Good Vibrations dreamed of a radical life where pleasure was your birthright.  …  (you) desperately want to experience their authentic sexual selves … What do you think the future of sex will be? How do you see your own sexual future?”