It wasn’t until their appearance in erotic magazines and pictures that the idea of a vibrator as a medical device was debunked, its “social camouflage” blown. Vibrators then went underground, and the film jumps to the 1960s, when women’s liberation, the pill, and Betty Dodson, the “godmother of masturbation,” put female sexuality and the vibrator front and center. Dodson gives candid interviews of her own initial shame regarding her vagina, which she thought abnormal, to her discovery that an electrical barbershop tool could induce amazing orgasms. For her, masturbation is not just for pleasure, it is empowering. “Independent orgasms, I guarantee, will lead you to independent thought.”

We also hear from feminist pioneer Dell Williams who started one of the first sex toy stores in the 1970s. She now appears to be in her own 70s, and her grandmotherly stature mixed with her rational approach to sexuality make female orgasms and vibrators seem as natural and normal as peanut butter and jelly.

Yet we learn they are not. In 2003, Texan Joann Webb, a Chamber of Commerce member, wife, and mother of three, was arrested for selling vibrators at a Passion Party. Though her case was dismissed, up until 2006, it was still a felony to sell devices that stimulate the genitals in Texas, Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia. Given the legal and extremely lucrative sale of drugs like Viagra and Cialis, one can’t help but hear the double standard calling.

Though many of the issues broached in this film could incite indignation and outrage in its audience, the movie is fun, informative, and exciting. It doesn’t encourage you to get rid of your lover; it encourages you to introduce a new friend into the bedroom—an electrical one. Since 70 percent of women don’t have orgasm through coitus—the traditional definition of sex—the film enlivens the notion of sexual satisfaction and how to get it.