Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Miss Poubelle recently stumbled across a website for men who have a fetish for wearing a chastity device (http://www.tpe.com/~altarboy). Chastity devices go over or around the genitals of the wearer and prevent sexual activity till the device is removed.

Most of the men who have this fetish appear to be heterosexual, though it is sometimes difficult for them to find a woman willing to participate. Despite many individual variations, the basic fantasy seems to be connected to sexual submission to another person who will completely control your sexuality.

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There are variations in how chastity devices work. Many are some sort of tube that encloses the penis (and sometimes the scrotum as well) and locks to a belt worn around the waist. The lock that attaches the device to the belt is opened with a key. In a few cases, it is instead a lock worn through the foreskin-- for obvious reasons, circumcised men can't use these. Another alternative looks like a leather jockstrap, with a zipper which locks into place along the front.

But the absolutely necessary piece of a chastity device is the lock and key. The dominant person in such a relationship is often referred to as the keyholder, because she (or occasionally he) will hold the key that opens the device and allows the submissive to engage in sexual activity.

In some accounts written by wearers of chastity devices, the keyholder does not allow them to remove the device for weeks at a time. This presents some problems for the wearer. First of all, these things don't appear to be comfortable at all -- they tend to pinch and chafe.

Second are the problems of using the bathroom while wearing a chastity device. Wearers report that they must sit down to urinate and use toilet paper or cloth to wipe off the end of the device. Still, it seems as if urine is likely to accumulate inside the device. Some chastity devices include chains, and some wearers report anxiety about the possibility of others hearing their chains rattle while using a public toilet.

Finally, there is the hygiene problem. If you can't touch it, you can't wash it, right? Wearer of such devices have come up with a number of elaborate techniques of trying to do something about the inevitable funk of a crotch that hasn't been washed in weeks. One user (seriously!) advocates a Water-Pik to shoot narrow jets of water in and clean out the equipment. Other users describe alternate elaborate routines, but the basic answer seems to be that you're going to be pretty rank after wearing a chastity device.

Blanche will imagine that at this point, most readers are thinking of the enormous disadvantages of wearing such a thing-- the reduced sex, the discomfort, the problems in using the toilet, the problems of hygiene. So the interesting question is why anyone would subject themselves to all this.

For those who don't share this kink, it's hard to understand the chastity fetishists. It's hard for us to get inside the head of guys like this. But the important point is that understanding another person's fetish involves what's going on in the head-- not what's going on with the body.

For ordinary vanilla sex, it's easy for us to confuse the mental pleasure of sex with the physical pleasure of sex. We say that sex feels good, but feel is ambiguously between the mental and physical sensations.

What we see in some of the more peripheral fetishes is that some kinds of sex can be very uncomfortable for the body, but still feel good in the mind. The chastity fetishist subjects the body to various indignities because the sexual pleasure in the mind is so great that it outweighs the agonies of the devices. In this way, they are like the religiously devout who mortify the flesh for some spiritual ecstacy that the practice produces.

In more ordinary sex, we get both physical and mental pleasure. But Miss Poubelle suspects that the mental part is more important to the whole than we sometimes imagine. We in the gay community invest enormous time and money on the physical part of sex (just think of the bills for haircuts, gyms, clothes, and Viagra!) But we don't talk so much about the mental preparation for good sex. That preparation would presumably involve things like concentrating on the here and nowness of sex (instead of the checkbook, old boyfriends, or the dinner party), developing our fantasies, and paying attention to our whole bodies (and not just our dicks).

So while Miss Poubelle isn't about to put her business under lock and key, she wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the idea that we could learn something from guys who wear chastity devices. They've got their cocks in locks, but their imaginations are unfettered.