{"id":411,"date":"2003-04-18T09:06:17","date_gmt":"2003-04-18T14:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=411"},"modified":"2003-04-18T09:06:17","modified_gmt":"2003-04-18T14:06:17","slug":"while_were_on_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/18\/while_were_on_t.html","title":{"rendered":"While we’re on the subject …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eugene Volokh had an interesting thread <\/a>last Friday on the topic of vibrators.\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Imagine that a close single female friend (just a friend) mentioned to you that she has a vibrator that’s shaped like a highly stylized penis. It’s not too anatomically correct, just a normal vibrator. Assume that this came up in a suitable context, for example when something — a store you’re driving by, a joke you hear on the radio, a blog post you’ve just read — naturally raised the question, so it didn’t just come out of the blue (“You say you’re out of batteries? Speaking of batteries, I just LOVE my vibrator!”). What would you think?
\nI suspect that in my general circle — coastal, relatively socially liberal professionals — most people wouldn’t think much of it. We expect that many women use vibrators occasionally. We’ve heard about them often enough that they’re hardly shocking. If anything, some men might find the idea a bit exciting, perhaps because they see it as a sign that the woman is at ease with her sexuality.
\nOK, now imagine that a close single male friend (just a friend) mentioned to you, under similar circumstances, that he has a vibrator that’s shaped like a stylized vagina. What would you think then?
\nMy sense is that many people will think it’s a bit icky, in some hard to pin down way. Not everyone would; some people won’t care. But I think that a much higher fraction of people — again, at least people in my social circle — would be put off by the idea of a man using a vagina-shaped vibrator than a woman using a penis-shaped vibrator.<\/p>\n

Stripped to its essentials (meaning, his set-up for the question was a bit too long), his question was this: why is the idea of a woman using a toy for sexual gratification more acceptable, or less jarring, than the idea of a man doing the same (he couched it in terms of women with penis-shaped vibrators and men with vagina-shaped vibrators, but I think it applies in general). <\/p>\n

He solicited opinions, and here’s what I wrote back (since I wrote at length, why not blog about it?):<\/p>\n

Sexuality between the genders is seen differently. After the sexual liberation of the 60s+, the common wisdom said that women were highly sexual, multi-orgasmic creatures whose physical needs were often unmet by their boorish, self-centered, grunting, mono-orgasmic male mates. In that context, a woman having a vibrator is seem as natural, healthy, and even essential.
\nMen, on the other hand, are still perceived, sexually, the way they were before and during that era of sexual liberation — as competitive seed-sowers, judged by the size of their … harem. For a man to say that he has a vagina substitute is to admit that he’s “not getting some,” or not getting enough, or not getting any. It’s a sign of failure, not a sign of liberation. Men are still scored by their score, so to speak.
\nSo while “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” a man without a woman is seen as a loser, if not kind of creepy (I suspect the same would be true if I generalized it to a man without a mate of some sort, male or female). A woman who admits to having a vibrator is not inviting a judgment as to whether she is sexually successful in other ways, whereas a man who is “forced” to resort to a sex toy substitute is clearly losing out.
\nYou could probably (as long as we’re making this non-family) extend the the argument to any sort of sexual self-gratification. Female masturbation is seen as healthy self-discovery and satisfaction. Male masturbation, while widely acknowledge to exist, is popularly seen as a pale substitute at best, something to do until you can find a real<\/i> date.
\nI suspect this will change over time, but it may be a long time. There seems to be little interest among men in changing how they perceive themselves, and the vocal arm of the women’s movement seems to buy into the same rutting, wild-oats-spreading image of men as a stereotype to show why freeing women is an essential thing. Men, having arguably been the dominant force in our culture for millennia, are not likely to be able to effectively deal with changing the criteria for their sexual success for some time.<\/p>\n

Volokh basically agrees with me, but details the different sorts of answers he got here<\/a>. And, yes, this is probably one of those Real World questions that’s open to multiple answers. Interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eugene Volokh had an interesting thread last Friday on the topic of vibrators….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4859,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/17\/sell_a_vibrator.html","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":0},"title":"Sell a vibrator — go to prison","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Dec-03 7:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, in Texas at least. Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132306,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/14\/state-governments-will-get-invoices-of-stuff-you-buy-online-oh-boy.html","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":1},"title":"State governments will get invoices of stuff you buy online. Oh, boy!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 14-Dec-16 11:42pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of the growth of sales taxing of online purchases, and some oddities around SCOTUS rulings, states that are collecting sales taxes from online vendors will now not only get the taxes levied, but a line item list of what it was you bought, so that the state governments\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23919,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/20\/tweets-from-2011-11-20.html","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":2},"title":"Tweets from 2011-11-20","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 20-Nov-11 9:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"RT @pourmecoffee: I could never trust a President Gingrich. I would always be worried he'd run off with a younger democracy, like Canada. # RT @OMGFactsSex: Vibrators were sold in the 1918 Sears catalog. They were an item that 'every woman appreciates.' #","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11376,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/10\/sex_toys_are_becoming_a_c.html","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":3},"title":"“Sex toys are becoming a commodity – who would have thought?”","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 10-Sep-07 5:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Good Vibrations -- the ground-breaking sex toy retailer in San Francisco -- is in financial trouble, as its Internet sales have dropped dramatically. Company officials blamed the precipitous drop partly...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7745,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/23\/amazonian_sex.html","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":4},"title":"Amazonian Sex","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Aug-05 2:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Amazon has started offering (shhhhhh!) sex stuff. 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Mailifest Destiny: U.S. expansion visualized\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}