Good Vibrations: Perfecting Pleasure, Perfecting Health?

Cultures can be ... odd ... about sex. Secretive or censorial, seductive or saucy, sex has been on the minds of social and moral arbiters for centuries, if not millennia. In the Anglosphere and beyond, sexual behaviours and sexual identities have attracted expert, and particularly medical, attention because of their relationships with reproduction, with religion, and with commerce. They have also attracted the attention -- negative and positive -- of communities and politicians. Here we will look at a little device that brings these three significant cultural complexes together: the vibrator. When did vibrators emerge, who and what were they for, and why have they proven controversial, both in society and in the historical literature?

Weekly Questions:

• Why do societies care so much about sex and sexual pleasure?
• What is 'perfect' sex, and for whom?
• What can technologies of sexual performance and sexual pleasure tell us about the intersections between power relations, commerce, and social values?
• Whose pleasure 'matters' (and whose materialises) in (a given) society? Why might the answer to this question look similar even in very different cultures?