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17-Feb-1978
Dear Cecil:
Have chastity belts ever been used on men? --Judy C., Washington,
D.C.
Dear Judy:
We live in an egalitarian age, my sweet. The Pleasure Chest, a New
York-based chain of erotic appliance stores, makes and markets a
tasteful little item it calls a "Male Chastity Device," which
consists of a metal tube that is slipped over the penis and
fastened around the testicles with a chain and padlock. As you can
imagine, this makes tumescence decidedly unpleasant.
But there are earlier, much cruder methods of enforcing male
chastity as well. Take male infibulation, for instance, which ranks
up there with female circumcision on the list of quack medical
procedures once (and in some places, still) practiced in this
world. Infibulation basically involves pulling the foreskin down
over the tip of the penis (obviously you have to be uncircumcised
for this to be feasible), drilling a couple holes in it, and
clamping the whole thing in place with a ring or thread. This
prevented sexual activity, and from the sound of it it probably
made the more prosaic bodily functions rather problematic as well.
The history of the procedure stretches back some two millennia.
Enforcing the celibacy of one's spouse was only an incidental
application, although there is a medieval story about a Frenchman
who woke up to find his penis padlocked and his Portuguese mistress
in possession of the key. In ancient Rome infibulation was most
common among comic actors and musicians, who believed that
discouraging erections would help them preserve their voices. In
that respect it was certainly an improvement over the alternative,
castration, in that it wasn't permanent.
Infibulation fell into disuse until the early 19th century, when it
was resurrected by one Karl August Weinhold, a professor of surgery
and medicine at the University of Halle. He came up with the notion
of rounding up all the poverty-level bachelors between the ages of
14 and 30 and infibulating them with a soldered lead wire, in hopes
of keeping the population down. A novel feature of his plan was the
proposed addition of a lead seal, which the authorities could
inspect from time to time to make sure you hadn't availed yourself
of a wirecutter on the sly.
Understandably the Weinhold plan did not go over in a big way with
the unmarried males of the day, but it later found limited
application in the treatment of masturbation, which, among other
things, was believed to cause "fatuity." (Maybe they were on to
something there.) At any rate, one could read in the medical
journals such testimony as the following, written in 1876 by a
fearless medical pioneer by the name of D. Yellowlees: "The
sensation among the patients was extraordinary. I was struck by the
conscience-stricken way in which they submitted to the operation on
their penises. I mean to try it on a large scale, and go on wiring
all masturbators." If you think your life is rotten now, be glad
you weren't alive in 1876.
--CECIL ADAMS
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