One of the common obstacles a guy must often overcome when trying to persuade his wife or girlfriend to lock him in chastity is the prevalent notion that male chastity is only a kink or sexual fetish. Is it? Let’s talk about that and find the answer.
Defining Kink and a Sexual Fetish
While people often use the terms “kink” and “fetish” interchangeably, the terms refer to different things.
A kink is an activity or behavior that someone enjoys that exists outside the “norms” of “traditional” sex. For example, someone’s kink might be bondage. They may be incredibly excited when they’re tied up because they find restraint sexually stimulating. Bondage arouses them. It’s important to remember that what may be kinky to one person may be considered vanilla by another. We are all different and embrace different sexual “norms.”
What defines a fetish, though, isn’t an activity so much as its role in someone’s sexual response cycle. In psychology, a fetish is a term used to describe sexual excitement coupled with a typically non-sexual object. Sometimes they add a fetish object is something a person cannot get sexually aroused without. I can’t entirely agree with that point. Common fetish objects include things like shoes, feet, women’s panties.
Here is why I disagree with the idea that a fetish object is something a person cannot get sexually aroused without. I’ve always suspected that I have something of a panty fetish because seeing female panties is something I find arousing. I don’t mean wearing them, but looking at them.
Panties needn’t even be worn by an attractive model in, say, a lingerie catalog for me to find them arousing to look at. Looking at a display of panties in a store has the same effect. Yet, I find plenty of other things sexually arousing. I don’t have to have panties to experience sexual excitement. So, I think we can leave the definition of a sexual fetish as arousal coupled with some typically non-sexual object.
Is a Chastity Device a Fetish Object?
Like panties, I find chastity devices arousing to look at as many men do. Just window-shopping the various online retailer websites can stoke sexual excitement. Some guys find the devices so sexually arousing they have difficulty putting one on because they become erect while trying to do so.
I think it fair to say that chastity devices can be fetish objects, but that isn’t what defines them. After all, even though some people view shoes or attractive feet as fetish objects, they are still just shoes and feet in the greater scheme of things. I’m only guessing here, but I suspect it’s true that they are fetish objects for some men who wear chastity devices but for others, they aren’t. For some chaste guys, it seems likely it’s the bondage aspect, the orgasm denial, or the control a key holder exerts over them that they find arousing, not the device itself.
Chastity devices can be fetish objects, but they are not only fetish objects.
Where Did the Notion of Chastity as a Kink Come From?
It’s easy to understand why may vanilla people so often dismiss male chastity as a kink. The gay and BDSM communities have eroticized sexual denial and orgasm control for decades, and makers of the first modern male chastity devices aggressively marketed the devices to those communities first.
Male chastity devices are still hugely popular in BDSM play and D/s relationships as well as the gay community. Many younger gay men wear male chastity devices presumably because it fits with the whole boi vibe.
A London-based retailer, Tickleberry, which claims to be “at the very heart of all things fetish and BDSM,” says this about why men desire male chastity. “It’s a secret fetish that your man finds highly provocative, arousing, and very sexy, to the point that even just an image of a chastity device could cause the beginnings of an erection.”
While that may be the view of Tickleberry’s fetish and BDSM focused customer base, male chastity has long since gone mainstream and now transcends only a fetish or kink activity. Chastity devices are now the third most popular sex toy. Today, people buy only more dildos and vibrators than chastity devices. More and more men buy and wear chastity devices today for reasons like curbing masturbation or gaining the ability to focus more on their partner’s sexual pleasure than their own.
Also, there has been an explosion of manufacturers worldwide offering inexpensive devices of various materials from silicone to plastic to steel. It’s no longer necessary to spend two hundred dollars or more to purchase a decent chastity device. As a result, plenty of vanilla guys with no interest in BDSM are buying and wearing male chastity devices.
The Future of Male Chastity
I think for various reasons, male chastity will only continue to grow more mainstream. I think there is already enough widespread interest in wearing chastity devices among all types of men to consider it mainstream now. When it truly takes off, I believe, is when more vanilla women decouple chastity from the realm of kink, fetishes, and start to embrace it as the relationship enhancer chastity can be. I see the day coming when it will become just as common for women to ask to lock their male partners in chastity as for guys to request it.
There is plenty of room in the male chastity tent for all views. But male chastity has not been only a kink or sexual fetish in a good long while. It’s rapidly becoming a mainstream lifestyle option for anyone who embraces it. So, even if you’re not into BDSM or kink in general and don’t view a chastity device as a fetish object, you can still be a proud member of the chastity community.