Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

This antique vibrator, advertised in early women's magazines, looks like it packs a punch. [Click to enlarge]

The vibrator.

Even the mere mention of this friendly device makes some people uneasy. However, getting past the tabooed surface, vibrators truly are a mind-blowing innovation.

The Bay Area's own Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori's documentary film, "Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm," explains the history of this unsuspecting gizmo and discusses the misunderstanding of the female orgasm.

Brought to you by the Sonoma Film Institute, the revealing and poignant documentary is playing on Friday, April 18 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, April 20 at 4 p.m. in Warren Auditorium.

Included in the film are images of early 20th century vibrators, which bare no likeness to the happy, jelly-tinglers of today, but are instead strikingly similar to Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone, or worse-a medieval torture device.

I don't know about you, but I'd be afraid to lose a finger near one of these contraptions, let alone get it close to my most sensitive of areas.

And to be honest, I wouldn't know which cord or button to put where.

Modern day vibrators are amazingly straightforward (maybe this says something about our dummy-proofed, instant-gratification-crazed society) with the rare exception of the "Deluxe Rotating Wall Banger Rabbit," stimulating rabbit ears included.

Nowadays, discreet pocket rockets and "micro bullets" make self-sexy time a snap.

With the gadgets of the 1900's, I doubt anyone was getting down with themselves on their coffee break.

Bringing a large, suitcased "mechanical vibratory massage outfit" to work or DAR meeting-it was the early 20th century after all-would have surely turned some heads.

Though, I'm sure, it could have passed for a kitchen blender.

As the film explains, these intricate, but daunting mechanisms were even advertised in print.

In the Victorian era, however, electric vibrators were only used for medical purposes.

Historian Rachel Maines discovered this while innocently researching needlework patterns.

Continued...

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