The Myth of Chastity Belts

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/everything-youve-heard-about-chastity-belts-is-a-lie

by tintinnabula • 11 years ago

82 36 11 years ago

atlasobscura.com

OnleMeMeMe• 11 years ago

Always love

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Beside chastity belts my favorite is the myth of the flat earth.

romanovcode• 11 years ago

This was interesting read, thanks!

fnordfnordfnord• 11 years ago

It is rarely necessary to wait 24 hours before filing a missing person report; in instances where there is evidence of violence or of an unusual absence, law enforcement agencies in the United States often stress the importance of beginning an investigation promptly. The UK government website says explicitly in large type "You don't have to wait 24 hours before contacting the police".

Saw this myth repeated on one of those John Walsh type cop shows the other day.

itsybitsycoder• 11 years ago

Anyone who believes microwaves cook things from the inside out has never tried to microwave a frozen burrito / pizza pop.

JoeAltmaier4• 11 years ago

? Cut a thick piece of meat that's been microwaved. You see complex red/brown variation, because microwaves penetrate. Its not all cooked from the inside, but its different from a conventional heat oven in that there's some cooking from the inside.

Its easy to write sophomoric puff pieces about how we had it all wrong. Just assume an Aristotelian posture of black/white 'facts' and show its actually grey. Voila!

goodcanadian• 11 years ago

As stated in the wikipedia article, the microwaves penetrate to a depth of about 1cm (give or take, depending on the food). So, in a sense, it can be argued that the microwaves heat from inside, though in reality, not very far inside.

The trouble is that microwaves work mostly by heating liquid water. Ice is not liquid water and absorbs microwaves relatively poorly. The already melted parts tend to heat up faster while the still frozen parts heat up very little. This, in addition to the limited penetration, is how you wind up with food that is napalm hot on the outside and still frozen in the middle. If you are trying to defrost something or cook it from frozen, you are much better off using a lower power setting. The peak power output is actually the same, but it gets turned on and off (you can hear it cycling) so that the warm areas of the food have more time to transfer some of that heat to the still cold areas through good old fashioned conduction. Incidentally, this is the same reason that the instructions for many pre-made items tell you to let them sit for 1 or 2 minutes before taking it out of the microwave.

erichsu• 11 years ago

Wait a second. The Wikipedia page first says that microwave do not cook from the inside out because the microwaves do not penetrate beyond 1 cm. but then it says that microwaves really cook by oscillating the magnetic field which jostles around dipoles like the water in food.

So does the magnetic field only penetrate very close to the skin, or are all the water molecules inside the food being excited, resulting in the food being cooked indeed from the inside?

tsotha• 11 years ago

On the other hand you really can get severe burns from the filling of a microwaved jelly donut even if the dough part is cool enough to hold. It's true the microwaves don't heat "from the inside out", but it's also true microwaves heat some materials dramatically better than others.

TeMPOraL2• 11 years ago

Learning the truth about many of those misconceptions even before discovering the whole list is what ultimately broke my trust in mainstream opinion. The whole time since I left high school has been a period of systematic unlearning of all the bullshit I've been taught - by teachers, friends, families and talking heads. Just how the hell is an adult supposed to live if every other day they discover another thing they thought is obvious is actually wrong? This is one of those things that really pisses me off about reality.

JoeAltmaier4• 11 years ago

Buck up! I think of it as, zeroing in on truth. Historically we had approximations and good guesses. Now we're in an unprecedented period of discovery and science. Of course we have a lot to unlearn!

Xcelerate• 11 years ago

I've had to unlearn and relearn chemistry like 7 times now (since quantum chemistry finally makes accurate quantitative predictions, I'll trust it for now...)

I know you can't teach third graders quantum mechanics, but I wish they at least wouldn't have taught me wrong stuff that became ingrained into my mind at an early age.

netcan• 11 years ago

The "everything you know about X is wrong" cliche always bugged me. I don't mind a little straw man to make a point, but not when I'm the straw man. I never really thought I knew anything about chastity belts!

It sounds that chastity belts are more of a long running trope than an actual thing, which sounds about right.

But, art imitates life imitates art especially when rule 34 gets involved. Once this idea was uploaded into the medieval blogosphere, joke or not, it almost certainly became real.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 11 years ago

But, art imitates life imitates art especially when rule 34 gets involved. Once this idea was uploaded into the medieval blogosphere, joke or not, it almost certainly became real.

As the final paragraph notes.

dfox• 11 years ago

I doubt that chastity belts in the medieval fantasy sense were practical before late 20th century manufacturing technology. Technology involved in manufacture of modern BDSM-targeted belts (CNCs, stainless steel, plastics... and even 3D printers) tend to support that view.

iSnow2• 11 years ago

Well, of course the middle ages would never invent sex toys - that chastity belts exist now can only mean they are recent, because people had not kinky fantasies back then.

peterwwillis• 11 years ago

Kink was a lot easier back then, because anything other than man-on-woman top-down missionary penetration was either not considered sex, or was blasphemous/unnatural. But there's also evidence of a lot of kink going on, even if it was somewhat tame by today's standards. The simplest examples were fashion that emphasized the male's, uh, manliness, like the poulaine shoes and codpieces.

The most popular sex trope of the day was probably 'the wayward nun' and 'the mischevious monk'. Plenty of people have written about sexual misconduct in the clergy - probably far more than was actually happening - because of the inherent naughtiness of the chaste getting away with lascivious behavior. Then there's just the stories in general of religious or political figures being objectified and chased after like veritable Ricky Martins, and of course, always gallantly rejecting all these people trying to fuck them all the time. Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight, a poem from the 14th century, does much with the trope of Knights as manly men who are constantly being lusted after and rejecting random women's objectification of them, and has plenty of bondage jokes, apparently.

One of my favorite stories is from a book on the history of flagellation. There was some traveling monk who got called on by a woman while he was passing her house, and she was asking him for help or something, so of course he went in with her - while her husband was away - but only to help, of course. Once inside, she throws herself on him, trying to fuck him for like a good four hours, him rejecting her advances the entire time of course. Finally he succumbs. (Awwww, poor monk!) And as a result of her wickedness, he flagellates her for another couple hours so she can pay for her sins. When the husband comes home to see his wife beaten & flogged by this monk, the monk tells him the whole story. The husband's response? Thank god you beat & flogged her! Now she won't have to pay for her sins in the afterlife!

The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality goes over some other common examples of 'unusual' sex documented in the middle ages, such as homosexuality, cross-dressing/gender role change, prostitution, contraception, castration, etc. And sure, we had to wait 'til the 17th and 18th century to see famous examples of kinky personalities such as John Wilmot and the Marquis de Sade, but you have to assume there were others rejecting the puritan attitudes of the day before them.

iSnow2• 11 years ago

Thanks for the interesting posting. I was trying to speak facetious, but well, that bombed.

Mz4• 11 years ago

Nice article. But:

For women, it's a fantasy about male cruelty and control.

Seems misogynist and like some uninformed male opinion not based on actual research or talking to women. Other than that one line, yeah, it sounds good. Actually locking women in an iron chastity belt would have horrifying health consequences. That doesn't mean people wouldn't do it anyway. Historically, women sometimes had ribs removed to accommodate the fashion of wearing a corset. But I haven't seen medical references to the serious medical problems this would cause. So I can readily believe this was a joke, not a reality.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 11 years ago

For women, it's a fantasy about male cruelty and control.
Seems misogynist and like some uninformed male opinion not based on actual research or talking to women.

What people want in sexual fantasies doesn't have to align with what they want in a relationship. BDSM is a testament to that.

Mz4• 11 years ago

I am a woman. Any intrigue I have with chastity belts is not about fantasizing about men being cruel and controlling. I stand by my assertion that it sounds like an uninformed opinion. Did the author do a study? I doubt it.

Nadya• 11 years ago

Speaking of painful body modifications for fashion: Lotus Feet [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

mkr-hn• 11 years ago

The author was possibly referring to how chastity belts are often used in less-informed feminist writing as an example of how patriarchy looked in the past.

Mz4• 11 years ago

Ah, thank you. I don't read a lot of feminist writings. Not my cup of tea.

It still strikes me as a not great thing to say, even with that context added.

The Myth of Chastity Belts

Related Stories