FDA History: How Regulation Shaped Sex, Health, and Medicine

When you think of the FDA, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency responsible for regulating food, drugs, medical devices, and cosmetics. Also known as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it has spent over a century deciding what’s safe, what’s dangerous, and who gets to decide. The FDA didn’t just approve pills—it shaped how we think about sex, pleasure, and bodies. From labeling vibrators as medical devices to banning erotic literature, its rules didn’t just control products—they controlled conversations.

Take female hysteria, a once-official medical diagnosis used to justify treating women’s sexual desire as a disease. In the 1800s, doctors used steam-powered vibrators to induce "hysterical paroxysm"—what we now call orgasm. The FDA didn’t exist yet, but when it did, it classified those same devices as medical equipment, not sex toys. That label kept them in clinics, not bedrooms, for decades. Meanwhile, HIV medications, life-saving antiretroviral drugs that turned a death sentence into a manageable condition. were fast-tracked through the FDA because activists demanded change. The agency’s slow pace on women’s health contrasted sharply with its speed on HIV drugs—revealing who got heard and who got ignored.

The FDA didn’t just regulate pills. It influenced what stories got told. When Thomas Nashe’s 1592 dildo poem was banned, it was censored by moral panic. But in the 1970s, the FDA banned a vaginal cream marketed to boost libido because it had no proven effect—not because it was immoral, but because it was unscientific. That shift—from morality to evidence—changed everything. Today, the FDA still decides whether a new contraceptive can be sold, whether a sex robot counts as a medical device, or whether an AI-generated porn video violates labeling laws. These aren’t dry bureaucratic decisions. They’re battles over who controls desire, who gets treated as a patient, and who gets treated as a threat.

What you’ll find below are articles that trace how the FDA’s hidden hand shaped everything from masturbation myths to LGBTQ+ rights. You’ll see how regulation didn’t just keep us safe—it silenced, shaped, and sometimes saved us.