Articles

Lynn Comella is the author of Vibrator Nation - it's on our Bodysex reading list.  She chronicles the rise of the vibrator as a woman's pleasure device and included Betty's contributions.  In this interview with Jezebel, she talks about Betty's speech at NOW:

I talk about the 1973 NOW conference on women’s sexuality where Betty Dodson boldly stood up on stage and talked about her great affection for her vibrator. That was so groundbreaking at the time, to be in a public setting at a conference—and, granted, the conference was devoted to female sexuality. But she was really blazing a trail by being very open about her affection for her vibrator and calling on women to learn about their bodies, and one way to do that was through masturbation. You had feminist writers that were writing almost sexual manifestos, right? We need to rethink the female orgasm, we need to blow apart this long-standing Freudian theory of the vaginal orgasm and really teach women about the power of the clitoris. There were all these cross currents.

There were essays that were being published and conferences that were being organized and then you have people like Betty Dodson, who started to have sexual consciousness raising groups in her Manhattan apartment, where she would get together with a group of women and they would get in touch with their bodies and talk about sexuality, and Betty Dodson started to do masturbation demonstrations. Because she really felt like there was no good visual representation of female sexuality and the female orgasm, and what better way to learn what female orgasms really looked like than seeing them?

At this same conference, Betty brought a case of vibrators that quickly sold out.  The pictures are all over the internet thanks to Betty Lane.  What a time it must have been.

Originally published September 29, 2017