Short Stuff: Chastity Belts

Were chastity belts real? Sort of. But not in the way you might think. Tune in to hear the real story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Dave's here in spirit, and that means
this is short stuff, which already said, which is a
waste of time. Let's just start, which is funny because
Jerry is actually here. I think supposedly she is, but
I haven't heard from her in a while, so who
knows she's here. But then she's like, I can't be

(00:26):
bothered with those twelve minute episodes. Dave here take it?
Yeah I can't. There's only so much of these shmos
I can take. Jerry has a lot on her plate,
and we we're glad she's still around doing our full
length episodes, right, Yeah, we are. We're very hashtag blessed
to have Jerry still working. Left us in the dirt
a long time ago, totally, and she doesn't because I

(00:47):
secretly suspect that she likes us. So Chastity Belts, I
don't think I ever got the memo. And we'll go
ahead and spoil this right up front. Uh, that Acity
Belts were we're probably not even a real thing used
for that the purpose that we all think they were
used for. Yeah, I mean, I guess I never did

(01:08):
either I never really sat around and gave some thoughts,
so like reading this, I wasn't like blown away, but
it it does occur to me that, um, I guess
I had always thought that they were a real thing,
and they are technically a real thing, but they're just
not from the time we thought they were from. And
it all seems to just be uh misinterpretation of potentially

(01:30):
an old timey joke that we just lost the punchline
to over the years. Yeah, I think maybe that's kind
of sad that this could have been a very believable
thing that they did in medieval times, you know, because
it seems like something that could could have happened. Well.
Part of it, though, is is like this desire from

(01:51):
people looking backward and saying, like, look, how dumb and
savage and brutal and just uncaring those people were back then,
And it gives us a sense of self satisfaction and
that that's why, like basically myths like this are allowed
to perpetuate and it's really just a a misunderstanding. But
it also prevents us from understanding those cultures a little

(02:12):
better than we do because we just think they're dumb
and backwards instead. So it's a it's a real issue.
It's probably the greatest issue humanity has ever faced. Chastity
belts in the myth behind them, So I guess we
should say what they are. I kind of figured everyone knows.
But if you have never heard of a chastity belt,
the legend was that if you could picture basically um

(02:35):
metal underwear that a man would put on his wife
that is locked onto their body um like with a padlock,
and it had a couple of openings for going pp
and poopoo, and sometimes they were gussied up with like
hearts and flowers and stuff. And the idea was like, well,
I'm going out of town on a on a rampage,

(02:58):
like I don't want you messing around on me. I'm gone,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna lock your private parts away
basically behind this iron underwear. And that's what a chastity
belt was. Yeah, And if you look at pictures of
some of these chastity belts, like they like the the
place where what did you say you go peepe and
poop poo like the the the holes are exit only

(03:20):
because they have like metal teeth like she carved into them.
So it's like, yeah, it's not meant to mess around. Um,
and when you look at these things, you're like, this
can't be right, Like is this for real? And it
certainly seems that way because you can see these things
with your own eyes. But the problem is is they

(03:40):
the things you're seeing with your own eyes come much
later than than the age that we attribute them to write. Yeah,
so a guy actually wrote a book on this. His
name was Albrecht Klassen, and he wrote The Medieval Chastity
Belt Colon a myth making process. Boy, I'm gonna flip

(04:01):
my lid if we ever get a book that comes
through this podcast it doesn't have a colon. Uh oh yeah,
Like yeah, like just in our research, you mean, yeah,
that's not a novel. I dare somebody to write one. Well,
I mean we did well. Ours feels like as a colon,
but it doesn't test it definitely does. The colon is
implied for sure. Uh so that this is the book

(04:24):
that all Wrecked Chasin wrote and basically he's like listen
poets wrote about it. Uh, you know, there were artists
who made these things, but it's basically, um, it seems
to be just a big sort of practical joke or
or maybe he's the equivalent of like an editorial cartoon
or something in its origin because the first mention of

(04:47):
it comes from Conrad with a K. Kaiser von Eichstadt,
great name, and this was an engineer who designed all
this technology around sieges like weapons and and defenses and stuff.
And he wrote in the early fifteenth century about a
device in a manuscript called Bellafortis meaning strong in War,

(05:10):
which was just a big catalog of like military gadgets,
and among them was a chastity belt. Yeah, because I
mean this was frequently supposedly used by men who were
leaving for war, um, while they were gone, like you're
saying they would they would use it while they were
out of town or whatever. So it would kind of

(05:30):
make sense that it would it would be in this
you know, um military gadget book um, and you would say, okay,
proof positive, this thing was written in the fourteen hundreds,
early fourteen hundreds. This is a medieval device, and this
is possibly where it was invented, was in Belafortis. But
the problem is is if you go through Bellafortis with

(05:51):
a scrutinizing eye, you're going to see that there's other
stuff in there that don't quite add up, like um
a machine that makes you invisible um or a device
that propels you um through fart power. That's my favorite.
There's a chariot apparently that shaped like a cat. So

(06:11):
the while a lot of the stuff that von Eichs
thought was was designing and creating was real and legitimate,
he also was apparently not shy about peppering his works
with joke stuff as well. Right, And there were other
instances where it was clearly used in a satirical way,
uh like a political cartoon basically of the time. There

(06:33):
was one in German from the sixteenth century that has
this sort of older gentleman saying goodbye to his young
wife and she is naked except for this chastity belt,
and then behind a curtain is her younger lover sort
of hiding with a chastity belt shaped key, and the
husband has these donkey ears growing out of his head.

(06:54):
So this all sort of leads us to believe that
this was kind of a joke, not something that was
really used. No, and maybe it was even originally used
and described metaphorically, and it just kind of took off
from there, almost like a medieval meme. But the fact
is there are chastity belts in existence, and I think

(07:16):
we should take a break and then we'll come back
and talk about where those came from. How about that?
What a perfect spot. Okay, Chuck. Where did the chastity

(07:50):
belts that you can actually go see in a museum
come from? They come from much later. They come from
probably the nineteenth century. There was a little Gothic revival
thing that happened then, and you know, iron and steel
were much more readily available as Europe became more industrialized,
and they started making things out of them, and they

(08:13):
you know, obviously they made things like bridges and things
like that, but they also made things for fun. And
it looks like there were these manufacturers in England who said,
you know what, there are these curiosity shows and museums
that would that would pay for chastity belts to display them,
and so we're gonna start making them as sort of
a joke. Yeah. So the idea was that the Victorians

(08:36):
were wound up so tight and we're so proper that
they would they would expel their prurient interest in uh
bound up sexuality and like side shows and stuff like that.
They would pay to see things like torture devices or
like a chassis or something. And for their part, part

(08:56):
of it also was being able to become self satisfied
with your your own culture, in your own place in
history by mocking or or judging earlier ones. But the
fact is these things were all they were recently made
and apparently passed off as much older than they actually were.
And so some museums said, well, we need to get
these out of our collection because we've been we've been

(09:18):
displaying them as medieval and they were really created twenty
years ago. Um. And the British Museum actually still has one,
but there, um they have a little placard next to
theirs that basically says, uh, there's no real evidence that
any of these were actually created or used during the
medieval era. Yeah. I love that last line. It says

(09:39):
that the evidence is largely anecdotal or in burlesque fiction.
Very tantalizing. So yeah, they kept one around because you know,
I guess they thought it was still funny to look
at in their proper context. Um, which it's really not,
you know when you think about it, right exactly, But yeah,

(09:59):
it looks like it was basically an urban legend from
back then that came about many years later as an
actual object. And like you were talking before, like you know,
I think people look at the that period as these
you know, backward people that would do something like this,
and I think scholars of the Middle Ages try to

(10:21):
be a little kinder, uh and point out that while
it was no picnic certainly to live back then because
of disease and uh no, no modern medicine and no
electricity and not very much plumbing. Um, it was no party,
but they weren't like completely backward and it wasn't you know,
just a culture full of maidens locked away in towers either,

(10:43):
right exactly. And um, there's a USC professor named Lisa Battell.
I think it's maybe how you say your last name.
She um. She points out that like, like, yeah, they
had a different way of looking at things in the
medieval era, and there were lots of different politics and
socio politics, but they weren't just stupid, you know, like

(11:05):
the the so the idea that that they that they
couldn't possibly have had jokes or you know, written things
in jest or whatever and basically pulled one over on
those of us alive today inadvertently is a falsehood. It's
actually seems to be the case for sure. Yeah, and
there were even some women who were writers who didn't

(11:25):
write under pseudonyms or pen names or anonymously. And I
don't think we're trying to make the case that it
was just like a really progressive society or anything like that,
but it may not be exactly as backward as as
we're led to believe. Yeah, it's like, take a look
at your own age for you know, for buddy, no kidding,
maybe maybe put your own house in order first before

(11:46):
you go judging out right. Um, what's funny is that, Um,
there really are chastity belts in existence today that are
of recent manufacturer, but they're mostly made of latex and
they're used almost exclusive le for B D s M.
And I think, Chuck, we should just leave the listener
here to explain to whoever else they're listening with what

(12:08):
B D s M is. That's right, And maybe we
should do a podcast on that one day. Sure we'll
explain it for you later on. All right, Well that means,
of course, then everybody short stuff is out. Stuff you
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(12:29):
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