Harissa paste and how many men own a male chastity device
Why I think more men own a male chastity device than people realise
A while back, I used available data to calculate that about 2.5% of men in the US own a male chastity device. There’s no reason to think that figure is unrepresentative of the developed world.
Whenever I cite my calculations, a few naysayers always just can’t believe we’re anything other than a niche fetish.
I don’t think we are a niche fetish.
Here’s why.
There’s no obvious origin for a chastity fetish.
It’s not like, maybe, your first crush was a cartoon character so now you’re a furry, or you got caned by a hot teacher and grew up a flagellant — classic British kink of yesteryear.
It’s rather that male chastity seems to subvert existing drives, both in men and women, sometimes creating an instant fetish: we encounter the kink and it just feels right. My theory is supernormal stimulation is at work, triggering an ancient mating strategy. Think moth to flame, or better, read the article below.
It’s like being into foreign food and having the illusion that your tastes are quirky and unique.
The adventurous domestic foodie — like me — enjoys exploring cuisine from elsewhere. He finds this awesome Moroccan recipe in one of those cookbooks that’s part travel journalism — the celebratory chef poses eating chicken off a stick in the shadow of a kasbah while camels trudge past.
So our amateur buys fresh ingredients, makes harissa, marinades the chicken while making the flat bread.
Everything smells good and tastes better and he feels like an intrepid explorer pushing into esoteric culinary realms.
However, the next time he’s in Waitrose, it turns out they sell fresh harissa paste and flatbreads. They even sell a similar dish as a high-end ready meal.
Our hero realises that thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people share his enjoyment of the exact same meal… enough to make it viable as a mass market product.
A percentage of those buy the harissa and flatbread but cook their own chicken, and a smaller percentage of those do as he has done and make everything from scratch. Even so, that smaller percentage is still a lot of people… enough to justify printing that glossy cookbook.
Our culinary adventurer isn’t special after all, or even particularly adventurous. He’s just typical of a small but significant demographic who all got there independently, but now make up a marketing category.
And that’s why I think more men own a chastity device than some people realise.
Do Coquettes and Sneaky F*ckers explain the male chastity fetish?
Male chastity is weird. I should know, I’ve spent more than 32 months in near continuous 24/7 chastity. There were a couple of short breaks this summer, but no orgasm. Weirder still, my wife clearly has a strong gut preference to keep me this way, but can’t quite articulate why. Maybe a clue is the often m…
Speaking personally I’d agree. They used to be really rare and only the very odd shop sold them. When we bought our first one they were such an unusual item that it was actually quite embarrassing even in the confines of a sex shop and I remember the female assistant being very amused and intrigued. Now you can buy them at any sex shop and no one makes any comment. Also there is a huge variety of styles and sizes. Online it’s even easier. All of this supply is clearly catering to a big increase in demand. So yes many more men than you’d probably guess own and wear them, mostly for play but sometimes for longer.
Two points:
1) Some anecdata: I'm not keeping records, but iirc, among not-conpleteky-newbie sub leaning or switchy males I encountered on apps/in the scene and had more than a few words' conversation with either all or almost all had at least one chastity device. Before you start nodding smugly with "I told you so", the vast majority of those seemed to be either barely used or used as part of an array of sex toys, most certainly not as a key (see what I did there) or must-have kink. Of those who filled my spreadsheet (that's quite a bit further down the funnel) most were only into use of the device at playtime and not all that super keen. Yes, I'm not INTO chastity devices, so there's a natural filtering process going on but I only recall one person for whom it was a deal-breaker. So I suspect that a VAST majority of those things end up gathering dust in various knicker drawers, a male equivalent of That Weird Dildo With Sparkly Little Wings.
2) That said, I think there's an affordance there and the fact that chastity devices do languish in toy boxes has certain potential. What changed my mind about it was realising that the benefits (payout) were asymmetrical, not in the +/- sense of "I say, you do" or "his pain, my pleasure" but with a shift. The key benefit to the dom is different than the key impairment to the sub, I think, or at least can be. The key benefit to the dom (especially the kind you call a vanilla domme) is I think "no piv/no erections". The desired impairment for the sub surely must be "no orgasm". They both are achieved by the same means, but they differ substantially (tho there's a bondage aspect and potential for sadistic teasing of course).