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** Not For Dykes Alone

November 2006

Not For Dykes Alone
A brief history of plugging holes

By Jim D'Entremont

Along with other tools meeting simple everyday needs, dildos are at least as old as humanity. Implements for sexual enhancement were in use when men lived in caves.

The first known double-headed dildo was carved more than 20,000 years ago in what is now France. Phalluses made of wood, stone, leather, ivory, metal, or clay are among the relics left by ancient civilizations from Rome to China. At various times and in various cultures, phallic or vaginal objects have served religious, social, or personal ends.

Rubber dildos became available in the mid-19th century and were instantly-- though surreptitiously-- popular. Rubber phalluses and other masturbatory equipment were soon targeted-- along with contraceptives and pornography-- by disciples of Anthony Comstock, founder in 1873 of the prototypical New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

In 1734, nearly a century before the rubber revolution, the French social philosopher Abbe St, Pierre had already added a groundbreaking refinement to the dildo by creating a wind-up vibrator called a tremoussoir. In the late 1860s, Dr. George Taylor introduced the Manipulator, a steam-powered vibrator intended to produce "paroxysms" to relieve female hysteria. Ironically, such devices appealed to American anti-masturbation obsessives such as John Harvey Kellogg, who used them to treat women at his Battle Creek, Michigan, health spa. In an era when female sexuality was obscured by prudery and myth, it was thought that stimulation of the vulva had nothing to do with sex.

The electric vibrator, originally intended as a massage instrument for aching skeletal muscles, was invented by British physician Joseph Granville in the early 1880s, and soon put to uses Granville never envisioned. Battery-powered vibrators followed in 1899. Electric dildos were first produced and sold for personal use around 1911. Until the 1920s, advertisements for such products appeared in the Sears, Roebuck Catalogue and Woman's Home Companion. "Vibration is Life," touted a pre-World War I ad. "The secret of the ages has been discovered in Vibration.... Vibrate Your Body and Make It Well."

Today the average US citizen can purchase an unprecedented array of sexual aids-- including vibrating, lifelike, ultra-flexible latex dildos. But political dominance by the erotophobic Right encourages caution, especially in Texas and other states where legal restrictions overtly apply. Hitachi's Magic Wand, ideal for clitoral massage. is legal in Texas because it is sold as a back massager. Retailers in Texas are also free to stock sexual merchandise not shaped like genitalia and thus evidently beyond the ken of many state legislators-- cockrings, butt plugs, anal vibrators, penile sleeves, cock harnesses, Ben Wa balls, ribbed condoms, and, of course, medical specula.