A Fetish For The Speculum?
People can develop a fetish for just about anything. And making an unpleasant experience into a pleasant one by fetishising some aspect of it is hardly unheard of. It’s one of many theories behind why some people enjoy getting spanked or caned, for example. And I personally know a urine fetishist who spent a rough year in a hospital during his adolescence, recovering from a traumatic injury that left him unable to handle his bodily functions without a lot of hands-on nursing care. (He’s also fond of nurse outfits and rubbery medical stuff of all kinds. Correlation does not indicate causation, but sometimes it’s a clue, right?)
Something I have not encountered (which is not to say she isn’t out there somewhere) is a woman who professes any sexual fondness for medical speculums. Most women report finding them unpleasant, for reasons that seem obvious enough. But in this long article on the history and design of the speculum, I noticed with interest the following account:
In 1850, the Royal Medicine and Chirurgical Society of London held a standing-room-only meeting in which the community heard arguments for and against the speculum. These doctors worried that women would mistake the exam for a sexual experience. The British physician Robert Brudenell Carter reinforced this fear in his 1853 book, On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria, writing that he had “seen young unmarried women, of the middle class of society, reduced by constant use of the speculum to the mental and moral condition of prostitutes; seeking to give themselves the same indulgence by the practice of solitary vice; and asking every medical practitioner … to institute an examination of the sexual organs.”
You can parse that as the empty blatherings of a moral panic about female sexuality, but what if we parse it instead as an honest report of observations of fetish behavior, a report that is almost buried in and obscured by the moral panic of the nonetheless attempting-to-report-his-observations doctor? To put it in modern terms, is Dr. Carter telling us that in his practice he encountered young single women who had fetishised their encounters with speculums, who were now sexually excited by speculums, who masturbated to memories of their experiences of being examined with a speculum, and who sought to recreate that fetishised experience at their next medical visit?
It ought not be a surprise, if that’s indeed what Dr. Carter encountered. And if it happened in the early 1800s, surely it still happens today?
Being a typical male-type pig-dog, I have always thoughtlessly assumed that the specula sold as sex toys were mostly about the pleasures of doing: looking, poking, prodding, playing doctor, inflicting (with sadistic intent, of whatever perhaps-mild degree). A woman’s pleasure in these scenarios I might have imagined to be reciprocal: pleasure at being the object of voyeurism, the enjoyment of any good roleplay that excites and inflames your partner, the masochistic pleasures (in whatever degree) of having been inflicted upon. I had never considered the possibility that the speculum itself — or the act of being examined by a speculum-wielder — might have fetishistic power in its own right.
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> And if it happened in the early 1800s, surely it still happens today?
Not necessarily – while some fetishes seem to be remarkably stable over time and between cultures (pain, uniforms, …), some are highly dependent on the cultural background: e.g. the Japanese fondness for tentacles would probably never have evolved, were it not for some peculiar censorship rules that served as incentive to become more creative.
As such, it would not be too hard to imaging a fetish for speculums as a symptom of a sexually repressed time – if women are allowed virtually no sexual experiences, any attention to the taboo body parts could be experienced in a sexual way.
OTOH, when I think of modern erotic usage of speculums, I’m pretty sure there are women out there actually enjoying their usage in an erotic context. At least I am yet to see a sexual practice that is exclusively enjoyed by the giving/receiving person in all cases.
But I’m sure there are enough women in the audience who know much better than me: Ladies, I know you are out there! Care to share your fascination with the speculum with the world? What is it that makes a speculum an erotic tool?
Endymion, I put a question mark on that because I wasn’t sure, and you’ve nicely unpacked some reasons that I couldn’t articulate behind that uncertainty. Of course sexual repression hasn’t exactly gone away since then, so I think it’s more likely the frequency of this response would change than that it would completely shift from “a thing” to “not a thing”.
I didn’t mean to suggest that this particular sexual practice (which we know is out there) was exclusively enjoyed by one party to it; I tried to list some of the reciprocal/reactive ways in which both parties could enjoy it without it necessarily being specifically arousing to both of them. There are tons of people in this world who are (as Dan Savage would put it) “good, giving, and game”, who participate in a thing they’re not into because they are aroused by their partner’s arousal.
There’s 450 people who list “speculum” as a fetish on Fetlife, and a large proportion seem to be women. There’s also a speculum group with 750 members and a similar gender ratio.
Good to know, thanks O!
As the famous saying goes, “Nine out of ten men masturbate, and the other man is lying about it”.
Unfortunately, women are even more timid about sharing their sexual behaviors and erotic thoughts. I’ve known women who claimed that they were too timid to even allow themselves to HAVE sexual thoughts. …or at least that’s what they say…
One of these days perhaps the majority of women will embrace their sexuality, and seize the reins of their own erotica, and share their turn-ons with others. Then we’ll know the answers to such questions.
Meanwhile, keep in mind it wasn’t that long ago that women regularly went to their doctors to be masturbated: http://www.psyc...ators & http://en.wikip...teria
Dr. Whiplash, I am not sure I would use the word “timid” to describe the reluctance you have observed. There are powerful cultural forces arrayed to shame and punish women who are “too sexual” or too open about their sexual desires and fantasies. It’s very possible that women are closed-mouth (or even closed-minded) about their sexual thoughts not out of timidity, but out of a harshly-trained rational assessment of what is safe in this world.
Thanks for the info, O!
Bacchus: You’re right, I formulated that a little harshly. By “enjoy”, I meant beyond being good, giving, game (not to say that people who are ggg do not actually enjoy it). Probably “to kink on” would have been a better verb than “enjoy”…
A friend told me that she always lubricated with anticipation when going to her ob/gyn. She wished that the specula were heated so that they would be more pleasant.