Everything You’ve Heard About Chastity Belts Is a Lie
Including their very existence.
by Sarah Laskow July 12, 2017
"...What accounts for the persistence of this story? “Male fear,” according to Classen. “There’s always a lover in the background who already has the duplicate key, he says. In other words, even in the 1500s, no one took the idea of locked-up metal underwear very seriously as an effective anti-sex device. When chastity belts were depicted, it was in the Renaissance equivalent of Robin Hood: Men in Tights—and the audiences for those pieces of art probably thought the idea of a metal chastity belt just as giggle-worthy as late 20th-century teenagers did..."
@shekinahcancook The whole arranged marriage + chivalric love probably had more than a bit to do with it. It was a romantic ideal for a lady to fall in love with a knight who wasn't her husband!
Think Lancelot and Guinevere.
How the heck do you square all these stories about adultery and preserving the line of succession?
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