If You Stay Hard, You Don’t Have to Get Hard: A Very Brief History of the Dildo
Whether you use it as a marital aid or your dog uses it as a chew toy the dildo has proven that it has stood the test of time. It’s one of the oldest human inventions in recorded history next to the wheel and RuPaul’s Drag Race. So what exactly is it about this magical stiffy that has made it last so long?
In 2005 researchers from Tubingen University discovered a phallic object made of siltstone in the Hohle Fels Cave in Germany. The object is dated to go as far back as the Upper Paleolithic period (about 30,000 years ago) when humans were developing stone tools and wearing animal pelts. We can learn a thing or two about prioritization skills from a period where humans had to hunt for food and survive the elements and still found time to jack off.
Hallie Lieberman, sex and gender historian and author of Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, shares in her findings that the double-ended dildo dates as far back as 13,000 - 19,000 years ago. She also writes about a plant called the “cantonese groin.” Women in the Middle Ages would soak the plant causing it to enlarge and harden so they could use it to masturbate.
Let’s not forget the Greeks who basically fucked until their legs went numb. Around the 5th century BC they made bread dildos called oliskobollix. I’m not particularly fond of food and sex because that’s a yeast infection waiting to happen, but I guess when life gives you bread and flour you make sex toys. Greek playwright Aristophanes mentions dildos in his comedy Lysistrata. Set during the Peloponnesian War, a woman named Lysistrata instructs the women of two warring cities to deny all the men any sort of sex until they achieve peace. So in the meantime, the ladies would have to satisfy themselves with their “eight-fingered leather dildos to serve as a sort of flesh-replacement for our poor cunts.” Rough.
We can also see the dildo make an appearance in Ancient China during the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD). The royals of the Han Dynasty lived in excess. As in Mercedes Iman Diamond opulence. They believed that the soul lives on in the tomb and deserved to live luxuriously in death as they did in life. They would be buried with their richest possessions including dildos. The Han believed in the principles of yin and yang, a state of spiritual enlightenment that can be achieved during sex. This was key to a long life and a healthy afterlife. In this context, sex had both a physical pleasure component as well as a spiritual part.
Jumping ahead to 16th century Europe we see the rise of the Puritans, the pearl clutchers who have scandalized the dildo. A libertine (an old word meaning thirsty slut) named John Wilmot was so anti-Puritan that he wrote obscene poems just to piss off the king. One of his most famous works is called Signor Dildo. He even tried to buy a whole bunch of dildos to start his sex club, but those were quickly burned. Speaking of burning phalluses, John died of syphilis and gonorrhea at 33. We thank him for his service.
Within the same century and a stone’s throw away to another country, we see the depictions of the dildo in shunga in Japan. Shunga literally means pictures of spring which is a euphemism for sex. Shunga is erotic imagery done by ink on woodblocks. These images showed women buying and enjoying dildos. Man, the Japanese truly revolutionize the sexual landscape.
Having seen the dildo go through many stages of development being made of many different materials, none have compared to the silicone dildo invented by Gosnell Duncan in 1965. Duncan was a Grenadian immigrant working at the International Harvester Company in Chicago. He was welding the bed of a truck which fell on him leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and impotent. He became active in the disability rights movement and connected with other disabled people who were also interested in having a fulfilling sex life. While working as a mechanic he connected with a chemist from General Electric. Yes, that GE. Together they made a material that was safe for human contact without the harsh chemical scent of rubber that was previously used on sex toys. Now that same silicone formula is used today on sex toys and other medical equipment alike. Yass, Gosnell. Werk, girl.
As of this writing the global sex toy market has an estimated value of $32.72B USD, and with an estimated growth rate of 8.4% it is expected to go up to $62B USD by 2030. Dildos account for more than 24% of the global sex toy industry. To put that in perspective, that’s just north of $7.8M USD worth of dildos sold. That’s a lot of dildos. Whether you’re a seasoned masturbating pro or an absolute beginner, dildos are the prime choice for anyone wanting to start exploring toys. They won’t discriminate what parts you have between your legs, and they won’t talk back to you after you smack them around. Coming (pun intended) in different shapes and sizes, there’s a dildo for every body to enjoy.
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