Were Chastity Belts For Real?

Popular mythology claims that chastity belts were a byproduct of the Crusades (circa the 1100s). Crusaders supposedly locked chastity belts on their wives and girlfriends before they rode off to war.

Popular mythology has it wrong. Chastity belts did not exist in the 1100s, nor would they for several hundred years.

Fast forward to 16th Century Renaissance poetry. Asking a woman to wear a chastity belt was a Renaissance poet's way of saying “let us be true to each other,” not that any of the poets offered to wear a male version of the chastity belt. There were no real chastity belts, only poetic metaphors.

The first real chastity belts weren’t created until the 1800s. They were crude devices designed to keep children from masturbating. They were a byproduct of a panic about the horrors of masturbation.

There may have also been another version of chastity belts during the 1800s. It was the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and women were beginning to enter the work force. There was no protection against sexual harassment, which was rampant. Some women may have devised their own versions of chastity belts to keep from being raped or molested in the workplace.

The most popular use of chastity belts is today in the BDSM community. Some people enjoy this particular form of kink, although the term “chastity belt” is a bit of an oxymoron, given how chastity is not exactly the goal.

However, if leaders of abstinence-based "sex education" could force today's young women to wear chastity belts, they would. But for now, Purity Rings and shame will have to do.