The strange culture of chastity belts in ancient and modern times at home and abroad

In history, there may be nothing more than chastity belts to imprison and lock up women to a cruel and absurd degree. This is an "invention" that appeared in the Middle Ages in Europe that brutally destroyed women. Researchers speculate that chastity belts appeared in Europe about after the 12th century and continued to be used until the 17th and 18th centuries. That is to say, they were popular in the dark Middle Ages of Europe.

Chastity belts are quietly popular in Europe

Nowadays, the term "chastity belt" is no longer new in the domestic media. Five years ago, Zhao Xin applied for a patent for the insurance underwear he "invented" to prevent sexual harassment, which triggered discussions about chastity belts. Also in recent years, domestic media have reported many vicious incidents in which men used barbaric methods to force women to maintain chastity, and there was also a similar incident in which women forced men to maintain chastity. However, the "Encyclopedia of China Sexual Science"(1998 edition) compiled by domestic sexology experts said: "With the development of civilization, chastity belts have basically disappeared."

Chastity belts are limited in popularity in contemporary Europe and America

According to Russian media reports earlier this year, 30,000 men in Europe currently wear chastity belts. Devout male believers were 100% willing to wear chastity belts when they were young to prove their sexual loyalty. Eighteen years ago, a magazine reported that 35,000 chastity belts were sold worldwide that year. In 1956, the first company in the UK to provide practical chastity belts to contemporary people appeared. So far, there are 129 chastity belt making companies in various countries that have gone online. Due to the secretive nature of chastity belt commodity trading, it is difficult to achieve comprehensive statistics.

In 2001, programs introducing their country's chastity belts appeared on television in the UK and Germany. As for the appearance of chastity belts in newspapers, movies, and dramas, it was nothing new in the 1950s. Dr. Dingwall's research monograph "Chastity Belts" published in 1931 has been reprinted in one edition, and now it is the 1992 edition, which reflects a knowledge need of society.

Now the keyword "chastity belt" is typed on Yahoo and is told that there are 128,000 websites! The largest English-language personal website for chastity belts had more than 10.21 million clicks on February 19, 2005. From 1998 to August 2004, the largest English chastity belt discussion page opened more than 780 discussion topics, and 4760 people participated in the discussion. The content includes specific help for chastity belt technology, discussion of chastity belt concepts, chastity belt research works and literature discussions, as well as the supply and request of chastity belt information. The writing is mostly genial.

2003-2004 In 2008, a British website conducted a survey on the use of chastity belts, and more than 700 people responded. They came from 31 countries and regions on all continents (there is no the mainland of China, but the background of this demand in China is: In recent decades, Western social life has been too stable and rich in materials. Therefore, ordinary life has been turned into drama, the bleak, monotonous and numbing sexual life has become stronger, and the estranged relationship has become more intimate. A pursuit of people. Reality is boring, so games and drama are needed.

Symbolically used female chastity belt

Since there are so many traditional chastity belt stories in Europe, the rituals in this story are still alive. Some women hope to wear chastity belts to attend weddings and hand over the key to the groom on the wedding night to express trust and dedication. In early 2003, an English-language college student website discussed "self-restraint", and some girls said that she was willing to wear a chastity belt and hand over the keys to her loved ones at future weddings. A single professional woman wearing a chastity belt wrote:

"I continued to wear my chastity belt until I had a stable friend. Before getting married, he had to understand my thoughts and allow me to wear a chastity belt. If he wants to have the key, there is no basis for it. Unless he comes to my room to liberate me, I will wait for him in a chastity belt: it was a sweet dream of mine, and he liberated me on the night of the wedding."

Chastity belts before the 19th century

A chastity belt is a tool that blocks sexual organs without damaging the flesh. It is usually made up of a metal belt connected to a longitudinal metal belt that passes through the crotch to cover the genitals. Lock the connection between the two metal strips. Once locked, the longitudinal metal band bends towards the crotch and cannot move, preventing sexual activity.

The male chastity belt that emerged in the 19th century has basically the same principle as that of women. It has a metal belt, and the inside of the longitudinal metal belt is fixed with a tube with a downward opening to bind the penis inside so that it cannot be touched and erect. Men wearing such chastity belts can only urinate while sitting or squatting. There is also a chastity device that covers the penis with a cylindrical metal cage with an opening down, and then secures it in place with two chains attached to the waist belt at the front and back.

Contemporary popular chastity belts

The exquisite stainless steel chastity belt based on the Florentine chastity belt is the mainstream style of contemporary chastity belts. Most of the waistband and longitudinal shields of the chastity belt are made of integral stainless steel, and the lining and edges are made of soft chlorine-tincture rubber that is harmless to the human body. The locks at the junction between the belt and the shield are unique to each company. They are now usually flat and round in order not to be exposed outside the clothes as much as possible; the internal structure of the lock is extremely precise and requires a special key to open it. The shield opening directly in front of the woman has smooth edges and the labia will not be harmed if they are embedded in it. Stainless steel chastity belts can usually be worn for a long period of time to defecate, bathe, swimming, etc. while locked.

The male penis tube is firmly pressed by the shield directly in front of it, and once the penis is placed inside, it is difficult to escape. The integral chastity belt has the curve of the metal belt passing through the crotch almost exactly the same as the body curve, and the part covering the anus has a large opening for hygiene. Male chastity belts still come in a penile cover type, but the cage is more appropriately designed and is usually made of stainless steel. In 2000, an American company invented a male chastity device without a belt. This is a set of fiberglass steel products, based on a ring that simultaneously traps the roots of the penis and scrotum, and then connects it to the fiberglass steel cage that covers the penis and fixes it with a lock.

Various contemporary chastity belts pay attention to aesthetic shapes, and some chastity belts are almost a pair of completely metal and very close-fitting underwear. Therefore, the measurement data of the wearer's body required before purchase must be accurate and only suitable for the specific wearer. Chastity belts made of high-grade stainless steel are shiny and are also plated with color.

In addition, there are various chastity belts made of leather and other fabrics combined with part of metal. This type of chastity belt is generally only suitable for short periods of time and has no drainage opening. Leather chastity belts have also become part of popular clothing. Some young women wear leather chastity belts directly on the outside of their trousers and lock them to enter and exit public places. There are many styles.

Since 2001, my country has sold various leather chastity belts for men and women imported from abroad online. Since the end of 2004, metal chastity belts have been sold online.

Men are the main users of contemporary chastity belts

Interestingly, most of the contemporary chastity belts are worn by men. Seventy to eighty percent of the chastity belts sold in Western countries are male chastity belts; while almost all chastity belts sold to Arab countries and Japan are female. When exchanging articles on the Internet about wearing chastity belts, seventy to eighty percent of the authors are men; even among the many novels about chastity belts on the Internet, seventy to eighty percent of the content about women or same-sex controlling male chastity belt wearers. In the online chastity belt user survey, 85% of the respondents were men. Obviously, the concept of using chastity belts in the West has undergone fundamental changes, and it has lost the meaning that men ruled women in a social-political sense.

Chastity belts now play a very different role than before. In order to understand this shift in concept, it is necessary to understand the history of the development of chastity belts.

The origin of chastity belts can be traced back to the epic of Homer

Hundreds of years before BC, Homer described in the Odyssey that Aphrodina, wife of Hephistus, the fire god, had sexual relations with Homer's brother. In order to prevent his wife from cheating again, Hephistus, the patron saint of blacksmiths, forged a girdle for her to wear, preventing her from having sexual intercourse with men other than her husband. This may be the earliest prototype of the chastity belt.

There is no solid evidence that the commonly called chastity belt was invented during the Crusades (11th century). Direct records of chastity belts in Europe began on August 28, 1405. Poet K. Gissel completed a poem about chastity belts that day and drew a picture. He explained: "It's a heavy iron belt that Florentine men have, and it's locked like this." In other passages in his poem, he also describes other Italian cities that produce this kind of thing: Rome, Venice, Milan, Bergamo. Most historical researchers believe that Francisco Carrara II (reigned in the late 14th century), the tyrant of Padua, Italy, was the first to use chastity belts to lock all his wives and concubines, a time consistent with the poet's records. A chastity belt now hidden in the Venice Museum belongs to his queen.

Two chastity belts stored in the Clooney Museum in Paris were custom-made by King Henry II of France (1547-1559) for his queen Catalina and Louis XIII (1610-1643) for his queen Anne.

15-18 Chastity belts were popular in the upper class of Europe in the century. Chastity belts in medieval Europe were mainly popular among the wealthy classes of society. In the later period, chastity belts were already quite exquisite, inlaid with ivory carvings and gold and silver jewelry, potentially containing the tendency of chastity belts to be jeweled. However, this type of chastity belt is not suitable for wearing for a long time and cannot solve hygiene problems.

In 1901, the skeleton of a young woman wearing a chastity belt was accidentally unearthed in a cemetery near the Austrian city of Linz. The woman lived in the 16th century and belonged to the upper class.

Male chastity belts appeared in the 19th century

During the Queen's Victoria period in England (1836-1901), some doctors invented chastity devices that teenagers had to wear even to sleep to stop masturbation. Since boys had the most obvious masturbation problem, the first thing to invent was male chastity belts; and the device to prevent girls from masturbation was similar to chastity belts in history.

Chastity belts in my country's history

There is no record of chastity belts like those in Europe in the history of China. Writer Zhou Zuoren published an article in 1932 devoted to chastity belts. According to his textual research, there are two things comparable to chastity belts in China and Europe: one is poor trousers (the same as the word "pants"), and the other is palace guarding. They are all things to guard against female sex and maintain chastity.

"The Biography of Conquers", Volume 97 of the Han Dynasty, records that during the reign of Emperor Zhao of the Han Dynasty, Huo Guang, the uncle of the country, wanted the emperor to only favor the queen and give birth to a son, so he catered to his intention and required other concubines to wear poor clothes and not to get close to the emperor. When mentioned here, the poor trousers refer to a kind of underwear that is blocked by something in the front and back and has a lot of straps, which is inconvenient to remove. This happened in the 1st century BC. "Poor Ku" is just a thicker fabric or leather product.

Since 2001, the "Reproductive Health and Sexual Culture Science Education Exhibition" has been held in major cities in China, displaying a bronze chastity belt from China in the late Qing Dynasty. It is certain that the existence of chastity belts in the late Qing Dynasty in China is an isolated phenomenon. If it is common, even if it is secretly and limited in large households, it will be revealed in various records.

The contemporary chastity belt is actually a multi-edged knife

Today, when the concept of male dominance is denied, chastity belts have the functions of controlling fertility, maintaining virginity and virginity, preventing rape, etc. However, chastity belts still have the need to exist on the basis of "loyalty".

For example, some men and women wear chastity belts in order to identify a partner (key holder) in a loyal relationship; when one party cannot guarantee loyalty to the spouse but still has feelings, the other party requires him to wear chastity belts to maintain the marriage relationship; men and women in love, one or both parties also wear chastity belts so that the other holds the key, in order to fulfill the oath of single-minded love. However, regardless of the cause, once the relationship formed by voluntarily wearing the chastity belt will turn into a mild sadomasochistic relationship.

These simple prohibitive functions are actually a multi-edged knife. They can not only become a tool of domestic violence, a symbol of male rule, but also discover many unimaginable psychological effects that cannot be explained by the word "function".

"We tend to want more than we can't get"

Being bound by the chastity belt can directly feel the material and spiritual oppression, which causes the wearer to have more sexual imagination and thus be in a special state of excitement. One man wrote about his experience of wearing a chastity belt: "When I wear a chastity belt, I am in a slightly intoxicated state most of the time due to my own desire for sexual carnival." Wearing a chastity belt will create a sense of humiliation that is afraid of others knowing, which makes the wearer feel a special pleasure.

Chastity belts take a long time from measuring the body, ordering, and finally receiving the product. Many articles on the experience of chastity belts talk about the anxiety when waiting and the excitement when receiving the chastity belt. According to Ms. Li Yinhe, a well-known sexual sociologist: "Masochistic tendency is a state of waiting" and "the happiness of masochistic comes from strong expectations." Regardless of men and women, most of them put on the chastity belt excitedly immediately when they receive it. The initial strange feeling is almost perfect, but only after a period of time will they discover some misfit problems.

In either case, there is a famous saying in ancient Greece: We tend to want more of what we cannot have. Wearing a chastity belt arouses people's pursuit of some potential pleasure.

Chastity belts enable sexual power to affect sexual power. In our sexual relations with the opposite sex, each of us has some tendency to sadism, such as limited rudeness, biting, and illusions about limited violence, which is normal within certain limits.

When talking about the nature of sadomasochism, Li Yinhe wrote: "In sadomasochism activities, the power relationship is open, the master can become a slave, and the slave can become the master. This is very attractive to people who have never tasted the taste of power and too much power in real life."

The keys to most chastity belts are usually held by someone else. This is a non-social-political power, and the feeling of this power is completely different from the feeling of social-political power. In contemporary society, men are under great social pressure and also have more power.

Finding a psychological balance for your power in your real life, feeling the charm of your powerlessness and sexizing it may be the overall social reason why contemporary chastity belts have many male interests. Women who are interested in chastity belts have more personal personality characteristics.

Get rid of the monotony and numbing sex life

Diversifying life may also be another overall reason. One German woman who volunteered to wear chastity belts wrote: "Anyway, I believe that many women own or at least accidentally wear chastity belts. There may be many reasons, and as far as I know, it is to diversify life." Men seem to demand more diversity in their sexual lives than women, which is one of the reasons why male chastity belts are sold far more than women.