Breadcrumbs, goat erection rings and vibrators as "medical devices". Which sex toys changed the history of intimacy?
If the history of mankind were written not only in terms of wars, rulers, inventions and the fall of empires, but also in terms of what people did behind closed doors, textbooks would look very different. They might have been funnier in some chapters, a little more awkward in others, and surprisingly human in many. Because sex, pleasure and curiosity are not modern fads. They're things that were around long before we started worrying about whether something was "normal", "decent" or "too much".
Sex aids are fascinating in this regard. Not because they have to be shocking in themselves, but because they are great at showing how society views the body, intimacy, female pleasure, male performance, queer sexuality, and shame. The history of sex toys is actually the history of human creativity, just written in stone, leather, glass, rubber, metal, silicone, and now even phone apps.
And yes, some of the chapters sound so bizarre that one would expect to find them in an internet discussion rather than a museum. Stone phallic objects from prehistoric times. Ancient tools made of leather. Alleged bread "dildos". Erection rings, often associated in popular history with goat eyelids. Victorian anti-masturbation devices. Vibrators masquerading as serious medical technology. And finally, the sleek silicone objects that now sit in the bathroom cabinets of people who might never speak of them aloud, but order them online without shame.
The first revolution? The stone that wasn't just a stone
One of the most famous finds mentioned in connection with the history of sex aids is a phallic stone object from the Hohle Fels cave in southwestern Germany. Archaeologists have pieced it together from fourteen fragments, it measures roughly twenty centimetres in length and is dated to around 28 to 29 thousand years before present. At the same time, it has been suggested that it was not only a symbol of sexuality, but perhaps also a practical tool, as traces of its use in working flint have been found.
That's what makes the find beautifully human. Maybe it was a ritual thing. Maybe a fertility symbol. Maybe a tool. Maybe a sexual tool. Maybe all of them. Contemporary man tends to put clear labels on things - this is art, this is a tool, this is erotic. But prehistoric times probably had no such drawers. One object could carry multiple meanings at once.
Antiquity: when tools were mentioned in comedies.
Ancient Greece is often mentioned in the history of sexual aids. Not because it was some carefree paradise of freedom - that would be a rather simplistic idea - but because sexuality was a visible part of art, literature and satire. Historians point to the term olisbos, for example, which appears in connection with artificial phallic devices. At the same time, however, the meanings of these words themselves are not always unambiguous, and some of the later interpretations are based on literary humour, exaggeration and contemporary context.
This includes the famous idea of 'bread doughnuts'. This appears repeatedly in popular texts, but it is worth treating with care. The term associated with bread and dildos is documented more as a linguistic and literary curiosity than as clear archaeological evidence that erotic pastries were commonly made in ancient kitchens.
It was not just the stuff of which the utensils were made that was subversive. What was revolutionary was that they could be written about, joked about, and used as part of stories. It also made the erotic device a cultural symbol. It could be a source of amusement, anxiety and male fear that the human body might not be the only possible instrument of pleasure.
Goat rings and other chapters from the "not this" department
One of the most bizarre stories that keeps coming up in sex toy history reviews concerns ancient Chinese erection rings supposedly made from, among other things, goat eyelids, sometimes even with eyelashes left on. It sounds like a joke someone wrote after the third glass of wine, but that's why this information has stayed alive. It appears repeatedly in popular texts on the history of erotic paraphernalia, often alongside mentions of jade, ivory and other materials.
Not everything in the history of sexual aids is as firmly grounded in reality. Some stories are well-documented, others straddle the line between history, exoticization, and the internet's fascination with the weird. Still, they have value - they show how readily people pass on stories that combine sex, technology and shock.
And they also remind us that the concept of "body-safe material" is a very modern invention indeed. Today we're dealing with silicone, porosity, phthalates, hygiene and certifications. People used to experiment with what they had around them. Leather, wood, bone, stone, glass, metal, animal materials. Sometimes it was craft, sometimes it was desperate improvisation. And sometimes a modern sexologist would probably just quietly put his head in his hands.
Not every intimate tool was for pleasure.
It's easy to slip into a smile when reading the history of sex toys. But alongside the curious and humorous chapters, there are darker ones. The 18th and 19th centuries, in particular, produced a whole range of objects that were not intended to promote pleasure but rather to suppress it. Masturbation was considered in parts of contemporary medicine to be a threat to physical and mental health, and various anti-masturbation devices were therefore created - for example, metal rings and barriers to prevent touching or erection. Masturbation was then associated with weakness, madness and, in extreme imaginations, even death.
This is perhaps one of the most important parts of the whole story. Sexual aids aren't just about people getting off. It's also about how society tried to discipline the body. The same area of human life that gave rise to pleasure devices also created devices for shame, punishment, and control.
The vibrator: from medical briefcase to bedside table
When one says revolutionary sexual aid, most people think of the vibrator. But its history is more complicated than is often told. English physician Joseph Mortimer Granville invented an electrically powered vibrating device in the early 1880s to help with neuralgia and other nerve problems. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History preserves Granville's "percuteur" as an electrotherapeutic medical apparatus.
It has long been a popular tradition that Victorian physicians commonly used vibrators to treat female hysteria through orgasm. It's a compelling story because it beautifully combines medicine, hypocrisy and repressed sexuality. But more recent historical work has significantly problematised this thesis. Historian Hallie Lieberman, for example , points out that period vibrators were indeed used for a wide range of ailments, but claims of routine clitoral stimulation as a treatment for hysteria are not, in her view, based on sufficient evidence.
But that doesn't detract from the vibrator's importance. On the contrary. Its real revolution lies in something else: it brought mechanized pleasure to a world that had long needed to hide it behind a medical dictionary. For a long time, it could masquerade as a device for "tension release", "massage" or "nerve stimulation". And it was this ability to disguise pleasure as health that may have helped it survive.
The Magic Wand and the moment when pleasure stopped being an excuse
In the 20th century, sexual aids gradually began to move out of the grey zone of shame and into the realm of personal autonomy. One symbol of this transformation was the Magic Wand, originally marketed as a massage device. It was made famous in the 1970s by, among others, sex educator Betty Dodson, who used it in her workshops on female pleasure and self-discovery. It was Dodson who was instrumental in turning the unassuming "body massager" into a cultural phenomenon of sex-positive feminism.
In this era, the sex toy ceased to be a secret object. It becomes an instrument of emancipation. A tool that allows women - and later queer people, trans people, and people outside of normative ideas about the body - to think of pleasure as something that is not a bonus for obedience, but part of life.
Interestingly, the Magic Wand was and is relatively genderless in appearance. It doesn't look like a caricature of the body, it doesn't prescribe one particular sexuality, one role, or one scenario. This is one of the reasons why it has become popular across queer communities.
Another huge shift came not just with the motorcycle, but with the material. Silicone, stainless steel, borosilicate glass, and other materials have changed modern sex aids, making it possible to produce objects that are safer, more hygienic, more aesthetic, and more diverse. Gradually, the sex toy stopped looking like a suspicious object from a dingy shop window and started to resemble a designer accessory that doesn't have to be hidden to the bottom of a drawer.
An app, a remote control and the question: who owns our pleasure?
The present has moved sex aids to a stage where it's no longer just about mechanics, but about data. Toys can be paired with a phone, controlled remotely, synced with content, linked between partners on opposite ends of the world. What would have seemed like science fiction a couple of decades ago is now part of the mainstream of sex-tech brands.
Sex aids are changing. Human desire remains
At first glance, it's all a bit grotesque: stone, bread, leather, metal, rubber, silicone, an app on your phone. The history of sex aids can feel like a bizarre museum of human ingenuity, in which one alternately laughs, shakes one's head and thinks that our ancestors were certainly not as chaste as we sometimes like to learn about them.
But underneath the curiosity is something much more ordinary - and perhaps more powerful for that very reason. The desire to touch one's own body, to explore it, to relieve oneself, to experience pleasure or just to step out of a prescribed role for a moment is as old as humanity itself. Materials have changed, technologies have changed, shame and social tolerance have changed. But the need for intimacy, pleasure and curiosity has remained.
So perhaps sex toys are not as marginal a topic as they might seem. In fact, they show very accurately the relationship we have with our own bodies. Whether we see it as something to be guarded, punished and hidden, or as a space that deserves care, security and pleasure. And this is where their greatest transformation lies: from being secret objects that were not talked about, they have gradually become tools of self-discovery.
And so, perhaps one day our descendants will look at today's smart vibrators, erotic apps and silicone design objects the way we look at ancient phallic artifacts or strange historical experiments. With amusement, mild astonishment, and a questioning of how we actually meant it. But the answer will probably always be the same: we wanted to feel good. We wanted to know our own bodies. And we wanted to finally allow ourselves pleasure without having to apologize for it.
