The chastity belts depicted in medieval literature weren't always intended as jokes, according to Classen. Sometimes they were metaphors for piety, likewhen one tract advised virgins to "hold the helmet of salvation on your front, the word of truth in the mouth ... true love of God and your neighbor in the chest, the girdle of chastity in the body" (via Atlas Obscura). But more often, it seems, it was depicted in comical fashion — for instance, with a husband leaving for a trip with his wife secured in a chastity belt, and her lover in the shadows holding a duplicate key.
The British Museum has a chastity belt in its collection, which it has determined is a forgery from the 18th or 19th centuries. The museum says that, though there is some evidence for the usage of chastity belts beginning in the 14th century, this evidence "is largely anecdotal or in burlesque fiction." Most of the "medieval" belts in existence today are, like the museum's chastity belt, Victorian forgeries intended as "curiosities for the prurient, or as jokes for the tasteless."
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