Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein, Susan Kim

own capacity for happiness, but their power for producing healthy, happy children.”
    Professor T. W. Shannon, in his 1913 book Self Knowledge and Guide to Sex Instruction, was another nattering nabob of negativity when it came to the whole idea of female self-love. Girls who masturbated and poked around where they shouldn’t be poking were clearly writing themselves a one-way ticket to lifelong pain, suffering, and worse. “The mind becomes sluggish and stupid,” he thundered. “Memory fails and sometimes the poor victim becomes insane. This habit leads to a gloomy, despondent, discouraged state of mind. Because of this mental state, many commit suicide.” At the same time, he urged mothers to teach their daughters that their reproductive organs were nothing to be ashamed of; instead, he wrote, they “form the sacred sanctuary which will one day enable her to become the sweetest and holiest of God’s creatures—a pure, happy mother.”
    Is it hilariously campy or truly creepy to realize just how many outrageous, sometimes silly, often dangerous theories and myths have been dreamt up about menstruation—and how those far-fetched ideas still resonate in modern society?
    Take a look at ads for menstrual suppression, menopause treatments, or medications for extreme PMS—they focus relentlessly on how much better a woman’s life would be if only she could control her blood. So let’s be frank: how far have we really come, when society is still pounding the message that our reproductive systems are faulty and need to be tinkered with, and that our bodies would work much, much better with a little help from the outside?
    How did we get here? It’s where we’re headed that freaks us out.

Chapter 4
    HYSTERIA
    O A GENTEEL, TREE-LINED STREET NEAR OUR spective homes in New York City’s Greenwich Village is a charming little shop exclusively dedicated to sex toys. Inside, cheerful, fresh-faced young men and women are happy to help customers ponder the options: a dominatrix catsuit made out of PVC, perhaps, or a titanium cock ring, multicolored condoms, pineapple-flavored lubricants, butt plugs. What catches our eye, however, is the extraordinary range of vibrators available: in various colors and sizes, rotating, waterproof, egg-shaped, filled with jelly. And we wonder: do any of the friendly, nipple-ringed staff realize that the vibrator’s history is actually inextricably linked to the ancient story of hysteria and the uterus?
    Hysteria, that mysterious catchall of female ailments that existed in recorded history for thousands of years, is a diagnosis that dates back to ancient Egypt. It’s associated with out-of-control emotions, irrational fears, and unregulated, over-the-top behavior, but overwhelmingly, only in women. And believe it or not, one of the most popular treatments for hysteria that literally spanned centuries was manual stimulation to orgasm by a medical doctor.
    Okay, it wasn’t actually called an orgasm back then, it was a “hysterical paroxysm.” And believe it or not, it wasn’t even considered sexual; in a world ruled by a heterosexual, male-oriented notion of sex (i.e., vaginal intercourse in the missionary position), stimulating someone’s clitoris was considered therapeutic and about as racy as bandaging a head wound. That being said, we find the whole thing more than a tad kinky. Just read the instructions Pieter van Forest wrote in 1653, which makes it all pretty clear to us: “A midwife should massage the genitalia with one finger inside, using oil of lilies, musk root, crocus or [something] similar. And in this way the afflicted woman can be aroused to a paroxysm.”
    Van Forest was far from the first to describe this method, and in such lingering detail, as an effective treatment for hysteria. Centuries earlier, Hippocrates, that father of modern medicine, mentioned a similar treatment in his writings. And Galen himself, that old second-century perv, wrote: “Following the warmth of