
The Myth of Chastity Belts - tintinnabula
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/everything-youve-heard-about-chastity-belts-is-a-lie
======
OnleMeMeMe
Always love

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions)

Beside chastity belts my favorite is the myth of the flat earth.

~~~
itsybitsycoder
Anyone who believes microwaves cook things from the inside out has never tried
to microwave a frozen burrito / pizza pop.

~~~
goodcanadian
As stated in the wikipedia article, the microwaves penetrate to a depth of
about 1cm (give or take, depending on the food). So, in a sense, it can be
argued that the microwaves heat from inside, though in reality, not very far
inside.

The trouble is that microwaves work mostly by heating liquid water. Ice is not
liquid water and absorbs microwaves relatively poorly. The already melted
parts tend to heat up faster while the still frozen parts heat up very little.
This, in addition to the limited penetration, is how you wind up with food
that is napalm hot on the outside and still frozen in the middle. If you are
trying to defrost something or cook it from frozen, you are much better off
using a lower power setting. The peak power output is actually the same, but
it gets turned on and off (you can hear it cycling) so that the warm areas of
the food have more time to transfer some of that heat to the still cold areas
through good old fashioned conduction. Incidentally, this is the same reason
that the instructions for many pre-made items tell you to let them sit for 1
or 2 minutes before taking it out of the microwave.

~~~
pmahoney
(Some?) Panasonic microwaves claim to be able to lower microwave power
linearly without the on/off power cycling. I'm mildly curious if their
marketing claims of superior cooking hold up.

[http://www.panasonic.com/in/consumer/home-appliances-
learn/t...](http://www.panasonic.com/in/consumer/home-appliances-
learn/technology/what_s-an-inverter-.html)

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Indeed, and they seem to make a difference:
[http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-
microwave/](http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-microwave/)

------
netcan
The "everything you know about X is wrong" cliche always bugged me. I don't
mind a little straw man to make a point, but not when _I 'm_ the straw man. I
never really thought I knew anything about chastity belts!

It sounds that chastity belts are more of a long running trope than an actual
thing, which sounds about right.

But, art imitates life imitates art especially when rule 34 gets involved.
Once this idea was uploaded into the medieval blogosphere, joke or not, it
almost certainly became real.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> But, art imitates life imitates art especially when rule 34 gets involved.
> Once this idea was uploaded into the medieval blogosphere, joke or not, it
> almost certainly became real.

As the final paragraph notes.

~~~
dfox
I doubt that chastity belts in the medieval fantasy sense were practical
before late 20th century manufacturing technology. Technology involved in
manufacture of modern BDSM-targeted belts (CNCs, stainless steel, plastics...
and even 3D printers) tend to support that view.

~~~
michaelt
Eh, by the late 1400 (towards the end of the middle ages) people seem to have
got pretty good at hammering steel and installing hinges and rivets.

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HJRK_A_56_-_Gauntlet...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HJRK_A_56_-_Gauntlets_of_Maximilian_I,_c._1485.jpg)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HJRK_S_XIV_-
_Jousting_arm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HJRK_S_XIV_-
_Jousting_armour_of_Maximilian_I,_side.jpg)

Of course, the fact they /could/ make such things doesn't change the fact they
/didn't/ in reality make such things.

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Mz
Nice article. But:

 _For women, it 's a fantasy about male cruelty and control._

Seems misogynist and like some uninformed male opinion not based on actual
research or talking to women. Other than that one line, yeah, it sounds good.
Actually locking women in an iron chastity belt would have horrifying health
consequences. That doesn't mean people wouldn't do it anyway. Historically,
women sometimes had ribs removed to accommodate the fashion of wearing a
corset. But I haven't seen medical references to the serious medical problems
this would cause. So I can readily believe this was a joke, not a reality.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> For women, it's a fantasy about male cruelty and control.

> Seems misogynist and like some uninformed male opinion not based on actual
> research or talking to women.

What people want in sexual fantasies doesn't have to align with what they want
in a relationship. BDSM is a testament to that.

~~~
Mz
I am a woman. Any intrigue I have with chastity belts is not about fantasizing
about men being cruel and controlling. I stand by my assertion that it sounds
like an uninformed opinion. Did the author do a study? I doubt it.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Maybe it is uninformed. I see now that, yes, that might not be the only reason
someone would like it. I was reacting more against the assertion that such an
opinion is misogynist, because I don't really know how far that quite goes
where sexual fantasy is concerned.

~~~
Mz
Sigh.

It _seems misogynist_ to me because it seems to assume that women universally
view men as cruel and controlling. The framing makes a very sweeping
assumption about both All Men and All Women.

I struggle with how to express this, but it implicitly disregards female
agency and the complexity of female psychology or sexuality.

I was sexually abused as a child. I have certainly had fantasies that I found
disturbing at the time. In my teens, I would fantasize about the Russians
invading and taking over my high school. In my fantasies, I would end up with
some Russian officer based on the virtue of knowing 2 dozen words of Russian.

In my twenties, I did a lot of therapy. I ultimately concluded this was a
rescue fantasy. It expressed how grim-dark my life felt in my teens and how
trapped I felt at the time. It expressed my fear that there were no nice men
and there was nothing but evil in the world. But it placed me in protective
custody of a powerful figure as the least worst answer I could imagine.

In reality, I got married at age 19 to another 19 year old. He was something
of a knife covered nutcase and he ultimately joined the army, which
effectively extracted me from my hometown and whisked me away from my abusers.
A "nice" young man would not have been able to help me. A previous attempt at
a relationship to a nicer man resulted in him being chewed up and spit out by
the situation.

So I have a history of both a fantasy life and real life experience of being
attracted to men who aren't "nice." In neither case was it really what it
appeared to be on the surface. No white knight could possibly have saved me.
So I sought out an honorable dark knight.

Any degree of intrigue I have with something like a chastity belt would be
rooted not in vilifying men as cruel and controlling but in trying to imagine
some means of finally feeling washed clean of the stigma of the abuse I
endured. I am 50 years old. It happened long ago and far away. There are
people who still judge me as a bad girl or dirty girl because of the crimes
and failings of other people. Some things are incredibly hard to wash off.

If you look at female fantasies as an outsider, as a man who sees his own
frustrations with women, perhaps they look pretty condemning of men. But if
you treat women as human beings, you have to wonder what's in it for them. You
have to ask what they are getting out of it. And that results in a very
different conclusion about why a specific unpleasant image might interest
them.

------
iSnow
Well, of course the middle ages would never invent sex toys - that chastity
belts exist now can only mean they are recent, because people had not kinky
fantasies back then.

~~~
peterwwillis
Kink was a lot easier back then, because anything other than man-on-woman top-
down missionary penetration was either not considered sex, or was
blasphemous/unnatural. But there's also evidence of a lot of kink going on,
even if it was somewhat tame by today's standards. The simplest examples were
fashion that emphasized the male's, uh, manliness, like the poulaine shoes and
codpieces.

The most popular sex trope of the day was probably 'the wayward nun' and 'the
mischevious monk'. Plenty of people have written about sexual misconduct in
the clergy - probably far more than was actually happening - because of the
inherent naughtiness of the chaste getting away with lascivious behavior. Then
there's just the stories in general of religious or political figures being
objectified and chased after like veritable Ricky Martins, and of course,
always gallantly rejecting all these people trying to fuck them all the time.
Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight, a poem from the 14th century, does much with
the trope of Knights as manly men who are constantly being lusted after and
rejecting random women's objectification of them, and has plenty of bondage
jokes, apparently.

One of my favorite stories is from a book on the history of flagellation.
There was some traveling monk who got called on by a woman while he was
passing her house, and she was asking him for help or something, so of course
he went in with her - while her husband was away - but only to help, of
course. Once inside, she throws herself on him, trying to fuck him for like a
good four hours, him rejecting her advances the entire time of course. Finally
he succumbs. (Awwww, poor monk!) And as a result of her wickedness, he
flagellates her for another couple hours so she can pay for her sins. When the
husband comes home to see his wife beaten & flogged by this monk, the monk
tells him the whole story. The husband's response? Thank god you beat &
flogged her! Now she won't have to pay for her sins in the afterlife!

The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality goes over some other common examples of
'unusual' sex documented in the middle ages, such as homosexuality, cross-
dressing/gender role change, prostitution, contraception, castration, etc. And
sure, we had to wait 'til the 17th and 18th century to see famous examples of
kinky personalities such as John Wilmot and the Marquis de Sade, but you have
to assume there were others rejecting the puritan attitudes of the day before
them.

~~~
iSnow
Thanks for the interesting posting. I was trying to speak facetious, but well,
that bombed.

