Contrary to popular belief, chastity devices have been around in other cultures and before the European Middle Ages and the crusaders. Both Japan and China have known chastity devices long before the Europeans ever invented them and in Arabic countries vaginal (labia) piercing’s and locks have been used for ages as a very effective chastity device.

A deathless popular myth, one echoed also in academic publications, mystifies these devices. The fable will have it that they served to ensure the fidelity of wives during long absences of husbands, especially during the crusades. Even though frequently echoed even in scientific publications, there is absolutely no documentary evidence for this theory. Perhaps sometimes, but never by way of normal usage, fidelity was thus ensured for brief periods, for a few hours or a couple of days. Never for any greater length of time.

A woman thus locked up would soon fall prey to death from the sepsis caused by toxic accumulations, not to speak of the abrasions and lacerations caused by the rubbing of the iron, nor of the possibility of an incipient pregnancy.

Especially given the fact that the metal used in the dark ages was not anywhere near the quality we have available in modern days – and since there was no birth control or effective means to establish pregnancy in the very early stages – problems (to put it mildly) would be evident. It is, for example, very likely that the woman got pregnant just before her husband left for a trip of several years to the Holy Land and a chastity belt would have made it impossible for her to give birth – in fact the metal waist belt would have interfered heavily with her pregnancy.

The prevalent use of the belt was in reality a very different one: viz., that of forming a barrier against sexual compromise, a frail barrier and yet a sufficient one under certain conditions: in times of the quartering of soldiers in town, during overnight stays in inns, on journeys generally. We know from many testimonies that women locked themselves into the belt on their own initiative, a fact that some old Sicilian and Spanish women alive today will still remember.

For that same reason in this day and age the chastity belt is regaining popularity in violent areas, such as Indonesia where frequent assult is a serious problem for certain ethnics groups (such as Chinese women in Indonesia)

Apart from such practical protective use the chastity belt is predominantly seen as an instrument of (home) punishment because of its humiliating (and in those days very uncomfortable) nature and probably was predominantly used to “put a woman back on her place”.

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