DATE CHANGE! Godless Perverts Book Club: The Technology of Orgasm

DATE CHANGE! This event is now on Friday, Nov. 17!

Godless Perverts Book Club is reading The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines. Friday, November 17, at Borderlands Cafe in SF. All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome. Please join us!

From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians in the treatment of “hysteria,” an ailment once considered both common and chronic in women. Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the efficiency of mechanical devices, including the electric vibrator, invented in the 1880s. In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages, focusing on the development, use, and fall into disrepute of the vibrator as a legitimate medical device.

The Godless Perverts Book Club is at Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia St. in San Francisco. That’s on Valencia at 20th: it’s near the 24th and Mission BART, and it’s close to the parking garage on 21st and Bartlett between Valencia and Mission. Friday, November 17, 6:00 to 8:00 pm. It’s free: we ask that you buy food and/or drink to support the cafe if you can — and tip the cafe staff generously — but we understand that cafe prices are prohibitive for some people, so please don’t let that stop you from attending. We will be meeting at a large table in the back of the cafe.

All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome. Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. So please join us!

Godless Perverts presents and promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion, by and for sex-positive atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-believers, through performance events, panel discussions, social gatherings, media productions, and other appropriate outlets. Our events and media productions present depictions, explorations, and celebrations of godless sexualities — including positive, traumatic, and complex experiences — focusing on the intersections of sexuality with atheism, materialism, skepticism, and science, as well as critical, questioning, mocking, or blasphemous views of sex and religion.

Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Please let the moderators or other people in charge of any event know if you encounter harassment, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other problems at our events.