About this episode
It's a sexual health episode! This week, Mike and Aubrey dive into the hotly debated medical history of vibrators and ask: who fact-checks the fact-checkers?
Note: A previous version of this episode included language that referred to “the female downstairs,” implying both that gender is linked to genitals (it isn’t) and that vibrators were used primarily by cis women (they weren’t). We love our trans listeners and we don’t want to do anything that makes them feel excluded, so we’ve removed the sections where that language appeared. We'll be discussing this and our approach to handling feedback in more detail soon. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to let us know! — Mike
Support us:
Links!
- The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel Maines
- Buzz by Hallie Lieberman
- Signior Dildo
- Hysteria! trailer
- Vibrators had a long history as medical quackery before feminists rebranded them as sex toys
- A Failure of Academic Quality Control: The Technology of Orgasm
- How Gosnell Duncan Changed the Sex Toy Game Forever
- Victorian Doctors Didn't Treat Women With Orgasms, Say Historians
- (Almost) Everything You Know About the Invention of the Vibrator Is Wrong
Get every episode summarized
Each time Maintenance Phase publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
Hosts & guests
No transcript yet
This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.
More episodes
