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Chastity Belts
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A chastity belt is a locking item of clothing designed to prevent sexual intercourse and possibly masturbation. The purpose may also be to protect the wearer from rape or temptation. Devices have been created for males and females.
The use of such devices against another's will would now be considered abusive in most western societies.
The term "Chastity belt" is also used metaphorically in modern English to mean an overly protective device or practice. The term carries a derisive connotation and may also imply that the subject is antiquated, or is cumbersome, or provides unnecessary protection.
History
Chastity belts are surrounded by myths and folklore, the most common of which is that they were first used by crusading knights on their wives. However, there is no evidence of the existence of chastity belts until ca. 1400 (over a century after the last Crusade), and pre-20th-century chastity belts had padded linings which had to be changed fairly frequently, and so were not practical for uninterrupted long-term wear.
The first known mention of chastity belts in the West is in Konrad Kyeser von Eichstätt's Bellifortis, a ca. 1400 book describing the military technology of the era. In it is included a rough drawing, accompanied by the Latin text: "Est florentinarum hoc bracile dominarum ferreum et durum ab antea sic reseratum." ("These are hard iron breeches of Florentine women which are closed at the front.") [1] We don't know whether this mention is true or fictional.
The period of the chastity belt's diffusion to Europe beyond Italy, and of its relatively most common use (though this was still quite rare), was the 16th century and the 17th century — so that the classical historical chastity belt can be more accurately described as a "Renaissance" phenomenon, rather than "Medieval".
In 1889, a leather-and-iron belt was found by A. M. Pachinger—a German collector of antiquities—in Linz, Austria in a grave on a skeleton of a young woman. The woman was purportedly buried sometime in the 16th century. Pachinger, however, could not find any record of the woman's burial in the town archives. The belt itself, along with most of the rest of Pachinger's collection, has been lost.
Two belts have been exhibited at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. The first, a simple velvet-covered hoop and plate of iron, was supposedly worn by Catherine de' Medici. The other—said to have been worn by Anna of Austria—is a hinged pair of plates held about the waist by metal straps, featuring intricately etched figures of Adam and Eve. There are other such belts at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg and the British Museum in London. Most have been removed from display because the authenticity of these belts as Renaissance devices has since been called into question.
From the 1700s through the 1930s, masturbation was widely regarded as harmful in Western medicine. Numerous mentions can be found in medical journals of the time of the use of chastity belt-like devices to prevent masturbation in children and adolescents.
Designs for many anti-masturbation devices were filed in the US Patent Office. Anecdotal accounts suggest that the use of anti-masturbation devices on juveniles continues in the United States and Europe through the present day.
Modern chastity belts made from stainless steel are descended from improvements on the Florentine design by John Harold Higginbottom of Sheffield, England. His company, Tollyboy, now run by Richard Davies still makes chastity belts today including new designs with drop waists for more freedom of movement.
Custom made chastity belts are necessarily a cottage industry, so many firms have come and gone in recent years. Access Denied (USA), Kastley (Germany), Reinholds (composite belts, Germany), Pourquoi Pas (Germany), and Atelier Mode (Cologne, Germany) are among the more notable makers to have gone out of business from the 1980s to the present (2006).
Some Vaishnavan sadhus (ascetic practioners of the Hindu faith) have a tradition of wearing arbandh—or metal balls or cups enclosing the penis—for decades at a time as a way of demonstrating their strict celibacy and dedication to austerity.
In the year 1998, racial riots against the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia prompted the production and sale of "anti-rape corsets" by Simon Sanjava of West Java. These devices were of Florentine design with a waistband and a single crotch strap with no holes for going to the toilet. They were made of imitation leather and steel and were secured with a combination lock.
In April, 2002, the Uwe Koetter Jewellers company of Cape Town, South Africa completed and delivered a spectacular diamond and pearl-encrusted chastity belt made of gold to a British customer. The belt cost reportedly cost R160,000 and was a wedding gift from a husband-to-be for his bride to wear at their wedding.
On February 6, 2004, USA Today reported that in at Athens airport in Greece, a woman's steel chastity belt had triggered a security alarm at the metal detector. The woman explained that her husband had forced her to wear the device to prevent an extramarital affair while she was on vacation in Greece. She was allowed to continue her flight to London on the pilot's authority. The incident was said to have happened just before Christmas in 2003. [8] Weekly World News also wrote an article about this event.
