In the 1920's a researcher discovered a chastity belt in Florence Italy that dated to the renaissance. Further research unearthed the fact that all the so-called Crusades chastity belts were fakes created in the 1890's. Museums around the world scurried to remove the fake chastity belts from display. Since then, the chastity belt remains a footnote on history and it is difficult to find any on display.
The period from 1850 to 1930 is full of truly strange sexual history. For example, in the 1850's it became a widely held belief that male masturbation caused insanity. This triggered nearly a hundred years of increasingly demonic inventions like the chastity belt, designed to prevent young men from playing with themselves or having wet dreams. Male inmates in asylums were routinely fitted with a chastity belt to prevent them from making their conditions worse through masturbation. It's interesting that all of those "historic" fake chastity belts were intended for women, but the real belts were intended for men and boys.
There are modern chastity belts for women. They are designed to not only prevent penetration, but also stop the woman from pleasuring herself. The significant issue is that the male chastity belt is intended to change behavior; the wearer is deprived of the ability to masturbate at will. Given the fact that females can easily learn to orgasm with non-genital contact, a chastity belt is at best a temporary stop to female masturbation. However, the chastity belt does prevent penetration, but that's about all.
This sets the stage for current chastity belt play. Interestingly, most of the players do not identify themselves with dominance and submission. They see using the chastity belt as a way to give their fidelity to one another. We'll explore what that means later. According to Paul of Access Denied, chastity belt maker, seventy-five percent of chastity belts are for male wearers. A substantial portion of female chastity belt wearers buy the chastity belts for themselves out of concern about rape or other sexual attack. This means that in the main, chastity belt play is for the boys.
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