The Chastity Project - Chapter Three

In my other blog - the autism one - I spoke about an encounter I had with a bull. I lived on a farm when I was young, and this bull used to terrify me. One day, I tried to stare it down, and it started shaking its head, stamping its hooves, snorting loudly - generally acting like a fucking psychopath. My nerve broke and I ran away from it. I was completely safe from it. It was in a pen, and there was no way it could get at me. But it was still a terrifying moment, for an eight-year-old boy.

I think this has become typical behaviour for me. It’s the first example I can come up with of a particular characteristic I have; of identifying something that scares me and facing it down. Or, at least in this case, attempting to face it down.

It’s human nature to run from our fears. To build defensive walls and try to keep them at a distance. It’s also human nature to attempt to conquer them. That’s an approach that’s more suited to me.

I have a slightly passive approach to this, sometimes. I sit and think about all the potential consequences of the Terrible Thing happening. I wonder how bad they can be. I think about whether I can cope with this thing, if it comes to pass. And I think about whether it might inadvertently have any positive consequences. And in the process of doing all this, I will hopefully come to terms with the Terrible Thing.

I suspect my chastity blog has its root in this very same approach. Like most men, there is a degree of castration anxiety going on, deep down.

Cocks are such vulnerable things. I mean - not even in the same sense as arms and legs. Those are limbs that stick out from the body, but we can kick and punch with them. But cocks have absolutely no defensive capacity of their own.

I remember watching a documentary about the German cannibal. I listened with horror and fascination about how he cut his willing victim’s penis off, then took it downstairs, cooked it up and tried to eat it. It was too tough, so he gave up on it and sat down to watch TV. There was so much that disturbed me about this whole thing, but that... the fact that he could do something so mundane and dismissive, while his victim was still bleeding to death in the bathtub upstairs... somehow, that was more disturbing than anything.

But I took a strange kind of comfort in the fact that he couldn’t eat the penis. That told me that these things are pretty fucking tough. Clearly not tough enough, because he was still able to cut it off, but - hopefully - with some degree of effort. Well, maybe “hopefully” is the wrong word to use there. Because if that job was tough, then it could only have prolonged the victim’s trauma.

And yes... he may have been a willing victim, but I still believe he was a victim. Of the cannibal, of what he experienced in those final moments of his life and of his own tortured psychological distress.

Anyway... this castration anxiety still exists.

I’ve imagined all the ways in which a penis could somehow be removed, and I’ve wondered if I could cope with any of them. I heard a female friend talk intensely about how she would happily, personally cut the cocks off serial sex offenders - and there was something about the matter-of-fact way she stated all this that was truly terrifying and at the same time slightly arousing. I had a conversation with a dominatrix once, about how she had a fantasy about clinically castrating someone. She told me that this was something she genuinely wanted to do, at least once in her life. She really wanted me to understand that this was not just a fantasy. If there was a way she could do it and get away with it, then she definitely would. And I went to a fetish party, where I demonstrated a couple of chastity devices to some of the other guests - one of them happily told me that she would love to chop off a cock, one day.

Correlation does not imply causation, but still - all three of these people were women. And all three of them just made me want to find out more about their motivations. And two of them spoke about chopping off cocks - not just balls.

I suspect that a fear of something can develop into a curiosity about that thing. We mull the concept over and wonder if we can live with it, and hopefully lay that fear to rest in the process. This may lead to us wondering if, rather than just coping with it, we might gain some benefit from it. And this may lead to us imagining a life where our fear comes to pass and - almost - fantasising about it. A castration anxiety becomes a castration fantasy.

(In my case, it’s also possible that there are other factors at play. As is common with autistic people, I have to deal with repetitive thought processes, which can easily become obsessive thought processes. So when I start thinking about something, I can really let that thing take over.)

It’s occurred to me that if I was castrated, then perhaps I could be freed from one of the more overwhelming drives. There would be no testosterone and no sex drive. No desire to fuck or to wank. I’d just get on with my day and be completely free from the many distractions of having a libido. But of course, that makes absolutely no sense, no matter how I’ve tried to rationalise it. Because the logic just truly doesn’t have any reasonable component. It never adds up. Even if the sex drive did just magically vanish (and it wouldn’t) I’ve had over thirty years of habit forming masturbation - building up to a compulsion that isn’t simply going to go away. Reaching down and grasping a hard cock isn’t simply a matter of responding to a libido. It’s a daily routine.

Then there’s depression and osteoporosis. If the whole cock is lost, there’s the complete loss of bladder control. And the actual event itself - fuck - the pain, the horror, the sheer mess of it all.

I’ve seen various films and TV series. I’ve read comics. I’ve read books. I’ve watched Game of Thrones. I’ve watched and read Preacher; the TV series and the comic it’s based on. I’ve read a lot of historical fiction. Castration happens over and over again, and always with the same results - absolute horror. And no matter how I try to intellectualise this one, I’m always - always - left knowing that if it was to somehow happen to me, then my only possible response could ever be total and abject horror. If I ever lost my cock or my balls, I’d eventually learn to live with the loss. Somehow. I might even be vaguely philosophical from time to time. But I’d never truly come to terms with it.

I’ve also read about chemical castration. But only in a theoretical sense. It’s an even less plausible option than actual castration and has its own challenges. The main benefit is that it’s - theoretically, at least - completely reversible. But who wants to put that to the test? And the drawbacks..? Like actual castration, there’s the possibility of osteoporosis, but there’s also weight gain, reduced body hair, and muscle mass - even, potentially, the development of breasts. I wouldn’t want to risk any of those things, either.

So is this part of my fascination with chastity? A sort of temporary pseudo-castration that I can recover from, later? If so, it would only be a very small part of the fascination - but it’s still possible.

Chastity is mostly consequence free. Every chastity device I’ve experimented with so far, has its quirks and its troubles. There’s bruising, chafing and discomfort. I’ve yet to find a single one that I can wear for more than a couple of hours without having any problems.

But for a while, I may as well not have a cock - in the traditional sense, at least. It’s locked away, so I can’t do anything with it. And so I can try to disconnect myself from the libido, which means I can try to rechannel those urges into something more productive. I can focus on my art, or on my writing. I can create something.

(And is it possible that there’s an irony, right there? I can’t create life if my cock is locked up - but I have no desire to do that, anyway. But I can create other things, more easily. Pictures, videos, bits of writing like this.)

It might just be possible that the use of a chastity device is just another way of me facing up to something that terrifies me. This might be the closest I’m comfortable with getting to a reality that I’ve been intrigued and repelled by to varying degrees throughout my adult life.

It’s certainly the most sobering and uncomfortable bit of logic I’ve explored in my writing, so far.