Antique Vibrator Museum — Attraction in San Francisco

2024 EDIT AT END.

Very informative and fun and wild at times. It's a small room in the back of the store, so more of an exhibit than a museum. 20-30 minutes to fully look at everything. Should probably call ahead because it seems like the hours can sometimes be weird.

In order to visit the museum, you need a photo ID (not sure what the age restriction was, though) and you need to be comfortable walking through a store full of sex toys and related merchandise, but if you're thinking of visiting the Antique Vibrator Store, you're probably already there.

EDIT: I've been meaning to edit this for months since I learned that the narrative from Rachel Maines that the museum supports is actually a myth. A lot of the history in the museum is still legit and the vibrators in the museum are certainly real and still very cool, but I hope that the museum provides more clarity on this point (rating switched from 5 to 3 stars for now). As another sex historian Hallie Lieberman notes in a 2020 article for the NY Times,

"The myth can be traced to Rachel Maines’s 1999 book “Technology of Orgasm” (she wrote some earlier articles, but the book is what put this version of the vibrator’s history on the map). Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, “Technology” seemed like a well-researched scholarly book, with 465 citations and a plethora of primary sources, some in Greek and Latin; the problem is that none of them actually supported this story. (Ms. Maines has said she put forth her version as an “interesting hypothesis” and never intended it to be seen as established fact.) Nonetheless, the idea caught on and spread."

Here's a citation for the scholarly article Liberman co-wrote to debunk the myth:

Lieberman, Hallie and Eric Schatzberg, "A Failure of Academic Quality Control: The Technology of Orgasm." Journal of Positive Sexuality 4, no. 2 (2018): 24-47.

EDIT 2: Sadly we're down to 2 stars till hopefully it's updated. Upon finally editing this review I read the entire academic article from the Journal of Positive Sexuality mentioned above, and it turns out that a lot more of the historical timeline in the museum (which I have pictures of from a year ago) are misleading in the same way that Rachel Maines's use of those "sources" were misleading (the article touches on Galen, Forestus, Highmore, and Taylor). The museum's founder (Joani Blank) is even referenced in the article for her partial critique of the myth.

More importantly, I thought that the account in the academic article about how easily Maines's book was accepted and used in academics, law, and pop culture (not to mention vibrator museums), is far more interesting than the false narrative Maines put forth. I would readily watch that movie over the various films made about this...

It was the most exciting for me to take my best friend to a first sex shop in her life. Girls at the counter were really nice and welcoming. They had all sorts of goodies for someone that had no idea how sex shops are set up. Also they have another room which is exibition of little history of vibrators and massagers. It is definitely a place to check out if you are into...

The museum is inside the back of an adult store. Some visitors tend to giggle, but the staff was very informative and serious. We didn't get to vist during the educational tours, but the staff of the store did speak to us about facts. We did go in thinking it would be funny, but we actually learned alot about how womens health was percieved in the past. Great...