The etymology of the worddildo was long considered unclear,[1] but the third edition of theOxford English Dictionary concluded in 2018 that the word originates in nonsense syllables common in early-modern popularballads (not dissimilar to the still-familiar nursery rhyme phrase "hey diddle diddle"), which came to be used as a coy euphemism for dildos.[2] The phrase "Dil Doul", referring to a man's penis, appears in the seventeenth-centuryfolk ballad "The Maids Complaint for want of a Dil Doul".[3] The song was among the many in the library ofSamuel Pepys.[4]
Other theories that have previously circulated include that the worddildo originally referred to the phallus-shaped peg used to lock anoar in position on adory (small boat). It would be inserted into a hole on the side of the boat, and is very similar in shape to the modern toy. The sex toy might take its name from this sailing tool, which also lends its name to the town ofDildo and the nearbyDildo Island inNewfoundland,Canada. Others suggest the word is acorruption ofItaliandiletto "delight".[5][6]
In some modern languages, the names fordildo can be more descriptive, creative or subtle—note, for instance,Bengalidalda (ডাল্ডা),Hindidarśildō (दर्शिल्दो),Russianfalloimitator (фаллоимитатор, literally "phallic imitator"),Spanishconsolador ("consoler"),[8] andWelshcala goeg ("fake penis").
Description and uses
General
A dildo is an object usually designed forsexual penetration of thevagina, mouth, oranus, and is usually solid andphallic in shape. Penisprosthetic aids, known as "extensions", are not considered dildos. Some include penis-shaped items clearly designed forvaginal penetration, even if they are not true approximations of a penis. Ananal dildo is intended for repeated anal penetration, to be distinguished from abutt plug which is flanged with the intent of remaining in place. People of allgenders andsexual orientations use these devices formasturbation or othersexual activity.
Mahogany wood dildoTwo women embracing and using carrots as dildoes, 19th century India.
Materials
Phallus-shaped vegetables and fruits, such asbananas orzucchini or other food items, such ashot dogs or other types of sausages, have been used as dildos in a form offood play. Any object of sufficient firmness and shape can be used like a dildo.[9]
Conventionally, many dildos are shaped like ahuman penis with varying degrees of detail, while others are made to resemble the phallus of animals. Not all, however, are fashioned to reproduce the male anatomy meticulously, and dildos come in a wide variety of shapes. They may resemble figures, or simply be practical creations which stimulate more easily than conventional designs. InJapan, many dildos are created to resemble animals or cartoon characters, such asHello Kitty, so that they may be sold as conventional toys, thus avoidingobscenity laws. Some dildos have textured surfaces to enhance sexual pleasure, and others havemacrophallic dimensions including over 12 inches (30.5 cm) long.[10]
Starting in 2012, 3D models of dildos became available for printing by individuals, offering size personalization. This, however, did not take off at that time, in part due to the porosity issue of the materials used (which is mainly a problem if no condom is used over the dildo). Some websites have continued to exist however.[11] Besides printing it at home, it is also possible to print it off at afablab,makerspace,[12] or3D printing marketplace. All of these avoid needing to purchase a personal 3D printer for printing off 3D models.
"Anal dildo" redirects here. For the vibrating device intended to remain in place for some time, seeanal vibrator.
Most dildos are intended forvaginal or anal penetration and stimulation, formasturbation on oneself or by asexual partner. Dildos havefetishistic value as well, and may be used in other ways, such as touching one's own or another's skin in various places, often duringforeplay or as an act ofdominance and submission. If of appropriate sizes, they can be used asgags, for oral penetration for a sort of artificialfellatio. Dildos, particularly specially designed ones, may be used to stimulate theG-spot area.
A dildo designed for anal insertion that then remains in place is usually referred to as abutt plug. A dildo intended for repeated anal penetration (thrusting) is typically referred to as an anal dildo or simply "dildo". Anal dildos and butt plugs generally have a large base to avoid accidental complete insertion into therectum, which may require medical removal. Some women usedouble-ended dildos, with different-sized shafts pointing in the same direction, for simultaneous vaginal and anal penetration, or for two partners to share a single dildo. In the latter case, the dildo acts as a sort of "see-saw", where each partner takes an end and receives stimulation.
Some dildos are designed to be worn in a harness, sometimes called astrap-on harness or a strap-on dildo, or to be worn inside the vagina (then calledstrapless dildo or "strapless strap-on dildo"[13][14]), sometimes with externally attachedvibrating devices. Strap-on dildos may be double-ended, meant to be worn by users who want to experience vaginal or anal penetration while also penetrating a partner. They may also be used for anally penetrating men. If a female penetrates a male, the act is known aspegging.
Other types of dildos include those designed to be fitted to the face of one party, inflatable dildos, and dildos with suction cups attached to the base (sometimes referred to as a wall mount). Other types of harness mounts for dildos (besides strapping to the groin) include thigh mount, face mount, or furniture mounting straps.
History
Dildos in one form or another have existed widely in history.Artifacts from theUpper Paleolithic of a type calledbâton de commandement have been speculated to have been used for sexual purposes.[15] Few archaeologists consider these items as sex toys, but archaeologistTimothy Taylor put it, "Looking at the size, shape, and—some cases—explicit symbolism of the ice age batons, it seems disingenuous to avoid the most obvious and straightforward interpretation. But it has been avoided."[16][17]
The first dildos were made of stone, tar, wood, bone, ivory, limestone, teeth,[18] and other materials that could be shaped as penises and that were firm enough to be used as penetrative sex toys. Scientists believe that a 20-centimeter siltstonephallus from the Upper Palaeolithic period 30,000 years ago, found inHohle Fels Cave near Ulm,Germany, may have been used as a dildo.[19] Prehistoric double-headed dildos have been found which date anywhere from 13 to 19,000 years ago. Various paintings from ancient Egypt around 3000 BCE feature dildos being used in a variety of ways. In theMiddle Ages, a plant called the "cantonese groin" was soaked in hot water to enlarge and harden for women to use as dildos.[18] Dildo-likebreadsticks, known asolisbokollikes (sing.olisbokollix),[20] were known in Ancient Greece prior to the 5th century BC.[21] In Italy during the 15th century, dildos were made of leather, wood, or stone.[22]Chinese women in the 15th century used dildos made of lacquered wood with textured surfaces, and were sometimes buried with them.[18] Nashe's early-1590s workThe Choise of Valentines mentions a dildo made from glass.[23] Dildos also appeared in 17th and 18th century Japan, inshunga. In these erotic novels, women are shown enthusiastically buying dildos, some made out of water buffalo horns.[18]
Dildos were not just used for sexual pleasure. Examples from the Eurasia Ice Age (40,000-10,000 BCE) and Roman era are speculated to have been used for defloration rituals. This is not the only example of dildos being used for ritual ceremonies, as people in 4000 BCE Pakistan used them to worship the godShiva.[18]
Many references to dildos exist in thehistorical andethnographic literature. Haberlandt,[24] for example, illustrates single anddouble-ended wooden dildos from late 19th centuryZanzibar. With the invention of modern materials, making dildos of different shapes, sizes, colors and textures became more practical.[25]
Dildos may be seen in some examples ofancient Greek vase art. Some pieces show their use in group sex or in solitary female masturbation.[26] One vessel, of about the sixth century BCE, depicts a scene in which a woman bends over to performoral sex on a man, while another man is about to thrust a dildo into heranus.[27]
And so, girls, when fucking time comes… not the faintest whiff of it anywhere, right? From the time those Milesians betrayed us, we can't even find our eight-fingered leather dildos. At least they'd serve as a sort of flesh-replacement for our poor cunts… So, then! Would you like me to find some mechanism by which we could end this war?[28]
Herodas' short comic play,Mime VI, written in the 3rd century BCE, is about a woman called Metro, anxious to discover from a friend where she recently acquired a dildo.
METRO
I beg you, don't lie,
dear Corrioto: who was the man who stitched for you this bright red dildo?[29]
She eventually discovers the maker to be a man called Kerdon, who hides his trade by the front of being a cobbler, and leaves to seek him out. Metro and Kerdon are main characters in the next play in the sequence,Mime VII, when she visits his shop.
Page duBois, a classicist and feminist theorist, suggests that dildos were present in Greek art because the ancient Greek male imagination found it difficult to conceive of sex taking place without penetration. Therefore, female masturbation or sex between women required an artificial phallus to be used.[26] Greek dildos were often made out of leather stuffed with wool in order to give it varying degrees of thickness and firmness. They were often lubricated with olive oil, and used for sexual practice and other activities. The Greeks were also one of the first groups to use the term "toy" in reference to a dildo.[18]
Talmud
The Talmud'sAvodah Zarah Tractate[30] records the interpretation whichRav Yosef bar Hiyya gave to the Biblical reference of KingAsa of Judah having "(...) deposed his grandmotherMaakah from her position as Queen Mother, because she had made a repulsive image for the worship ofAsherah. Asa cut it down and burned it in theKidron Valley".[31] According to Rav Yosef, Maakah had installed "a kind of male organ" on her Asherah image "in order to fulfill her desire", and was "mating with it every day". Rav Yosef's words are quoted byRashi in his own interpretation of 2 Chronicles 15:16. Whether or not Rav Yosef was right in attributing this practice to the Biblical Queen, his speaking of it indicates that Jews in 3rd CenturyMesopotamia were familiar with such devices.
In the early 1590s, the English playwrightThomas Nashe wrote a poem known asThe Choise of Valentines,Nashe's Dildo orThe Merrie Ballad of Nashe his Dildo. This was not printed at the time, due to its obscenity[32] but it was still widely circulated and made Nashe's name notorious.[23] The poem describes a visit to a brothel by a man called Tomalin; he is searching for his sweetheart, Francis, who has become a prostitute. The only way he can see her is to hire her. However, she resorts to using a glass dildo as he finds himself unable to perform sexually to her satisfaction.[33]
Dildos are humorously mentioned in Act IV, scene iv of Shakespeare'sThe Winter's Tale. This play andBen Jonson's playThe Alchemist (1610) are typically cited as the first use of the word in publication (Nashe'sMerrie Ballad was not published until 1899).[32]
John Wilmot, the seventeenth-century Englishlibertine, published his poemSignor Dildo in 1673. During the Parliamentary session of that year, objections were raised to the proposed marriage ofJames, Duke of York, brother of the King and heir to the throne, toMary of Modena, an Italian Catholic princess. An address was presented toKing Charles on 3 November, foreseeing the dangerous consequences of marriage to a Catholic, and urging him to put a stop to any planned wedding '...to the unspeakable Joy and Comfort of all Your loyal Subjects." Wilmot's response wasSignior Dildo (You ladies all of merry England)[Note 1], a mock address anticipating the 'solid' advantages of a Catholic marriage, namely the wholesale importation of Italian dildos, to the unspeakable joy and comfort of all the ladies of England:
You ladies all of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signor Dildo? ...
A rabble of pricks who were welcomed before,
Now finding the porter denied them the door,
Maliciously waited his coming below
And inhumanly fell on Signor Dildo ...
This ballad was subsequently added to by other authors, and became so popular thatSignor became a term for a dildo.[34] In the epilogue toThe Mistaken Husband (1674), byJohn Dryden, an actress complains:
Many other works of bawdy and satirical English literature of the period deal with the subject.Dildoides: A Burlesque Poem (London, 1706), attributed toSamuel Butler, is a mock lament to a collection of dildos that had been seized and publicly burnt by the authorities. Examples of anonymous works includeThe Bauble, a tale (London, 1721) andMonsieur Thing's Origin: or Seignor D---o's Adventures in London, (London, 1722).[35] In 1746,Henry Fielding wroteThe Female Husband: or the surprising history of Mrs Mary, alias Mr. George Hamilton, in which a woman poses as a man and uses a dildo. This was a fictionalized account of the story ofMary Hamilton.[36] The 1748 chapbookA Spy on Mother Midnight depicts an innocent country girl who travels with a dildo and a copy of Rochester's dildo poem in her luggage.[37]
TheWellcome Collection, a London museum of medicine, owns several dildos made from wood, cloth or ivory,[38][39][40] including one ivory example possibly made in France in the 18th century.[41]
The possession and sale of dildos is illegal in some jurisdictions, such asIndia.[46] Until recently, manysouthern states and someGreat Plains states in the United States banned the sale of dildos completely, either directly or through laws regulating "obscene devices".[47] In 2007, a federal appeals court upheld Alabama's law prohibiting the sale of sex toys.[48] The law, theAnti-Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1998, was also upheld by theSupreme Court of Alabama on September 11, 2009.[49] There are even instances where dildos have been seized and burned at customs.[18]
In February 2008, a United States federal appeals court overturned aTexas statute banning the sales of dildos and other sexual toys, deeming such a statute as violating the Constitution's 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.[50] The appeals court citedLawrence v. Texas, where theSupreme Court of the United States in 2003 struck down bans on consensual sex between gay couples, as unconstitutionally aiming at "enforcing a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct." Similar statutes have been struck down inKansas andColorado. Alabama is the only state where a law prohibiting the sale of sex toys remains on the books.[51]
SomeConservativeChristians believe that the use of sex toys is immoral. TheSouthern Baptist preacher Dan Ireland has been an outspoken critic of such devices and has fought to ban them on religious and ethical grounds.[49] Ireland led an effort to outlaw dildos and other sex toys in Alabama to "...protect the public against themselves."[52] Other Christian religious leaders such asEvangelical Lutheran Church of America pastor Heidi Johnson, who founded a student group on sexuality atDuke Divinity School, have a positive view of sex toys in Christian sexuality.[53]
^ab"dildo, int. and n.1.",OED Online, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Accessed 29 May 2019.
^"The Maids Complaint / For want of a Dil doul".Samuel Pepys Library. Magdalene College.The Maids Complaint / For want of a Dil doul. / This Girl long time had in a sickness been, / Which many maids do call the sickness green: / I wish she may some comfort find poor Soul / And have her belly fill'd with a Dil doul.
^Mirabella, Bella (2011).Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories. University of Michigan Press. p. 140.ISBN9780472051175.
^Marshack, A. 1972 The Roots of CivilizationMcGraw-Hill New York: 333
^Taylor, T. 1996.The Prehistory of Sex. New York: Bantam. p. 128.
^Paul L. Vasey,Intimate Sexual Relations in Prehistory: Lessons from the Japanese Macaques. World Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 3, Intimate Relations (Feb., 1998), pp. 407-425
^abcdefgLieberman, Hallie (2017).Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy. Pegasus Books.
Taylor, T. 1996.The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture. New York: Bantam.ISBN0-553-09694-X.
Vasey, PL. 1998. "Intimate Sexual Relations in Prehistory: Lessons from Japanese Macaques",World Archaeology 29(03):407–425.
Wagner, Peter (1987). "Chapter 2: The discourse on sex - or sex as discourse: eighteenth-century medical and paramedical erotica". In Porter, Roy; Sebastian Rousseau, George (eds.).Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment. Manchester University Press.ISBN0719019613.
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