Male chastity is a fetish that is often filled with challenges of different kinds. Whether it’s simply the challenge of controlling your orgasms, or something dreamed up by your Mistress to test you, facing these challenge is a core part of proving your worth as a slave.
But once a year, the community prepares itself for the biggest, toughest chastity challenge – Locktober.
What is Locktober?
Locktober is a simple challenge – spend the entire month of October locked in your cage.
Those of you in long term chastity or permanent chastity might not think that’s such a big deal, you do it all the time! But for the majority of slaves, a month is the longest time they’ll ever be caged (if they can even last that long).
Where Did Locktober Start?
There’s no definitive place that Locktober began. Like many traditions, it likely gained traction in smaller groups before becoming more mainstream and talked about online. Some slaves say they’ve been doing it since the early 2010s, but the origins could be even earlier.
Some people think Locktober is an offshoot of No Nut November, a similar challenge in which men try to go through the whole month of November without an orgasm. NNN (No Nut November) is a little more mainstream though, so Locktober is sometimes thought to be the BDSM communities version.
Whatever the original origins, Locktober is now observed every year by members of the chastity and wider BDSM community every October.
Do You Need a Mistress to try Locktober?
Committing to a month in a chastity cage is tough, so it’s understandable that some slaves think that a Mistress is required to make sure you stick to the challenge.
But even without a Mistress, Locktober is still completely possible. It just takes a little more effort and preparation.
The best scenario is if you have a trusted friend who you’re able to be completely honest with. That way you can explain exactly what you need them to do, and when you might need the keys back from them.
If that’s not an option then check out our guide to solo chastity. There’s plenty of suggestions of what to do with the keys to your device.
Ways To Play
- Solo (self-lock): Simple rules and once a day proof-of-lock (e.g., timestamped photo or sealed code like “LTC-9731” in a signed, dated envelope).
- Partnered (Keyholder-led): Agree on check-ins, unlock windows, and orgasm policy up front. Hand your partner this one-time read: Partner Starter Guide.
- Community/coaching: Work with other members of the chastity community to hold you accountable. Short scheduled reviews.
Do You Stay in the Cage the Entire Month?
A common misconception in the male chastity community is that permanent means permanent, and a month locked up means 31 days, 24 hours a day.
The reality though, is the cage should never be on every single hour for an extended period of time. At the very least it should come off every couple of days for a proper clean. Taking the cage off for cleaning obviously doesn’t mean you’ve failed at Locktober.
More extended breaks are also completely fine. If you’re the kind of person who usually wears a cage on one weekend each month, you might decide that you’re going to try and do every weekend in October.
Someone who doesn’t wear their cage overnight can still decide to wear it during the day for every day in October. While these kinds of challenges aren’t strictly 24/7 for the whole of October, they’re no less an accomplishment!
Locktober Levels
- Light (starter): Short but regular stints in the cage, with unlocks for specified activities. Maximum of one orgasm a week (could be a ruined orgasm). Once a day check ins.
- Steady (committed): Multiple day lock up periods, with either no orgasms for the whole month, or one scheduled release. Once a day check ins.
- Immersive (31-day focus): One full month wearing the cage, with any removal needing a written exception from your key holder. No orgasms throughout the month.
Setting Your Locktober Boundaries
During an extended chastity challenge, it’s ideal to have clear boundaries for the submissive to follow. How these boundaries look will depend on the kind of relationship you have, or the kind of submission the slave enjoys. Here’s a few examples:
The Doting Husband
- Core Concept: Mistress comes first. The slave can earn attention by serving her devotedly.
- Activities:
- Helpful tasks such as dishes, laundry or washing the car.
- Care routines like foot rubs, back massages or serving her favorite drinks.
- Weekly home improvement jobs of her choice.
- Looking your best for her with adequate grooming and appropriate outfits.
- Sexual Contact:
- Only touching when given permission.
- Planned sessions of edging and teasing.
- Mistress decides if you get to orgasm, have it ruined or are left to suffer.
- Provide regular orgasms for Mistress throughout the month.
Locked and Lonely
- Core Concept: The solo slave who’s self-locked for Locktober.
- How it Works: Self accountability through inventive key storage or pairing up with others to keep you locked.
- Activities: Pre-planned blocks of time to do certain chores or jobs decided before the month begins OR activities delivered by text message or email from a remote dominant.
- Sexual Contact: Pre-planned edging or teasing sessions decided before the month begins. If playing with a remote partner, sessions should be done on video call to ensure no cheating.
Switch On, Switch Off
- Core Concept: Explore sexual tension and keep things erotically charged throughout the month.
- Role-Reversal: If you enjoy switch play, decide times that you’ll swap roles throughout the month. Both partners should have an equal time locked up. See Chastity & the Not-So-Submissive Man for more info.
- Tease to the Extreme: Keep the submissive fired up throughout the month with extreme teasing sessions that are scheduled throughout every single day.
- "Improvised" Torment: Make a simple deal. Whenever you see each other, the slave gets teased. Then “run into” him at the store, “surprise him” on his lunch break. Before long he’ll be on edge everywhere he goes.
Your Locktober Contract
You might already have a chastity contract, but for a specific and lengthy challenge like Locktober we recommend creating a specific contract. This should cover exactly what’s going to happen throughout the month and sets out the rules of the challenge. Here’s a template if you just want to fill in the blanks:
- Dates: The slave shall remain locked from October 1st to October 31st. Unlock is to be permitted only in extreme exceptions. These exceptions do not count as failure.
- Keys: Keys will be held insert place by insert keyholder name/service/device.
- Orgasm policy: The slave shall be permitted number of orgasms orgasms. If orgasms are permitted, add details.
- Check-in: The cage will be checked daily at time for evidence of tampering or unauthorized unlock.
- Partnered Play: Name of keyholder will check the device each day at time/place.
- Solo Play: The slave will provide a timestamped photograph of the locked device to Name of Keyholder at time each day by email/message/whatsapp/etc.
- Pause/Resume: Both partners are to immediately bring up issues such as discoloration, numbness or pain in the penis, issues with headspace, or any changes that are needed to the arrangement. The challenge will be paused until these issues are resolved, then will resume with any necessary changes.
- Allowed Exceptions:
- Cleaning: The cage should be removed for cleaning every insert time period. This should take no longer than number of minutes and should follow the agreed cleaning procedure. Video evidence may be required.
- Sports: While taking part in sport the slave is permitted to remove the cage.
- Work: While at work the slave is permitted to remove the cage.
- Safe Word: The safe word for this challenge is insert safe word.
- Rewards: Upon successfully completing their Locktober challenge, the slave will be rewarded with insert reward (and make it good!).
Best Chastity Cage for Locktober
Moving onto one of the most common questions about Locktober, your cage choice is very important for this kind of challenge.
While you might enjoy wearing an extra small or extra heavy cage when you play with your Mistress, you have to consider that you could be wearing this cage for a lot longer than you’re used to.
That means we recommend comfortable and lightweight cages for your Locktober challenge. Some ventilation also is a great thing to have to help you stay fresher for longer.
Something like the Sevanda Ergo is ideal.
It also doesn’t hurt to have a few cages to choose from. If your Mistress wants to push you, she might have you in a comfortable cage during the week, but then something smaller and more challenging during the weekends. Or you might simply like to switch cages frequently, so you could have a whole Locktober line-up!
Whatever cage you end up going for, make sure to get it in plenty of time. You’ll want to try it on, and wear it for at least a few hours to make sure it fits well before Locktober begins. After all, having to give up after a couple of days because of a poorly fitting cage would be rather disappointing.
Check out our measuring guide for some tips to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
Do You Have To Do Anything Else During Locktober?
That’s entirely up to you! At it’s core the challenge is simply to stay caged for the entire month, and if that’s enough for you then that’s completely fine.
If you (or your Mistress) want to make things a little more interesting though, there’s plenty of ways to spice up your Locktober. Some ideas include:
- Having a weekly humiliation challenge.
- Providing the opposite of Locktober for your Mistress. (Make her cum every day in October)
- Keeping a journal of your experience and sharing it online.
- Adding some regular teasing and edging sessions to your month.
- Watching porn to make you even more desperate to escape.
Basically, you’re going to want to get out. It might be after a few days, it might be after a couple of weeks, but it’ll happen. So anything that makes you even more desperate is a great addition to Locktober.
What Should Your Locktober Reward Be?
Most of the time, when a slave succeeds, they expect a reward. Locktober should be no different.
While it might seem fun to be cruel and simply say “Well it’s November now, so lets start your next month of no orgasms”, the simple fact is that they’ve accomplished something great and should be rewarded.
That could be an orgasm, but it doesn’t have to be. Depending on your relationship that honor might be saved for very special occasions.
But making sure the slave knows that his effort was appreciated is crucial to the chastity dynamic. So whether it’s going for his favorite dinner, a weekend without a cage, or full penetrative sex, make sure you agree on a reward before October starts.
He’s much more likely to succeed if he knows what he’s working towards!
Anything Else?
Our last piece of Locktober advice is simple:
Have fun!
We’re all in this fetish to enjoy it, so make sure that your Locktober challenge isn’t something you’re dreading or can’t wait to be over. Turn it into a fun experience for both slave and Mistress and use it to take your chastity dynamic to a new level.
Male Chastity Is Crowned 2025’s Fetish of the Year
Male chastity and the wearing of cock cages have been awarded the tits of 2025’s fetish of the year.
It’s not a headline we expected to see, but it’s certainly a welcome one. And the accolade landed thanks to online video and clip platform Clips4Sale, revealing:
- A 71% increase in sales of chastity content in the last 12 months.
- A 193% growth rate since 2020.
Male chastity is hot right now, people. And it seems the cock is out of the cage (so to speak) regarding the benefits of male chastity.
Should we be surprised? Probably not, given the amount of (some great, some not so great) chastity-related chat in the world right now.
Chastity’s Popularity Has Been Rising for a While
Signs from the last few years may explain why chastity content has taken off.
Online Searches and Resulting Product Sales
A quick look at Google Trends, reveals that searches for the term ‘chastity cage’ leapt up in 2022 and 2023, with the UK, Canada, US, Czech Republic, and Australia leading the way in cock cage play.
According to the same data, Japan, Turkey, and several South American countries are yet to discover the delights of our fetish. But maybe they soon will, thanks to this accolade.
Now, despite my love for things that grow upward and stronger over time, I’m equal parts intrigued and unnerved to say that graphs and sales stats aren’t the only reasons for male chastity’s entry into the fabulous fetish hall of fame. Generational change, global shifts in how humans think about and practice sex and increased media exposure may all be playing their part.
Cultural Shifts With Chaste Overtones and Messaging
For starters, there’s Gen Z’s purported dwindling interest in sex, coupled with the rise of conservative ideologies and rollbacks in reproductive rights. While in South Korea, the sex-striking 4B movement encouraging women to withhold sex, has gained global interest and sparked similar movements in other countries.
Pop Culture and Media Coverage
On the other hand, mainstream media outlets are more willing to feature the lifestyle. For example, the 2021 story of cock cages being hacked received widespread coverage. As did the fitness bros who misunderstood the meaning of Locktober. (Oops!) In addition, shows like Californication and Big Mouth, include storylines that allude to the caged lifestyle.
Admittedly, the people involved in these movements or shows may not be actively promoting the wearing of cock cages or adopting the lifestyle. But their activities stimulate curiosity and increase awareness. They bring the concepts of male chastity into the collective consciousness. As a result, people reframe how they think and feel about sex, pleasure, orgasms, and how they give and receive them.
(Which sounds very familiar, don’t you think?)
Avery Martin from Clips4Sale, is thinking along the same lines.
“With so much anxiety around sexuality, it can bring relief to have someone or something, whether a Domme or a cage, that denies you the ability to get off,” he explained. But even if there’s less interest in having sex, there’s still an interest in exploring pleasure and gratification.
“We may be in an anti-pleasure timeline, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be joyless or sexless,” Martin added. Cue cock cages. And, as Martin rightly says, “There’s freedom in restraint, denial and humiliation—so long as it's enjoyable, self-aware and consensual.”
If Cock Cages Went Mainstream
Let’s fantasize for a moment that our fun little fetish is about to blow up big time. What exactly might that look like? Here’s how we envision it.
Cages Would Be Stocked in Target
In 2012, Target and Walmart caused an absolute furore when they started stocking personal lubricants and vibrators. Can you imagine what would happen when a range of Sevanda cages rock up next to the briefs?
They’d Get a Female-Friendly Rebrand
‘Cock cage’ is just such a masculine phrase. For cages to gain cred (and sales) on female-led sexual wellness sites, like Goop, they’d need a rebrand. Perhaps Intimate Female Empowerment Devices (iFEDs) could work? ‘A 3-in-1 experience: Release your inner power, experience total yoni freedom, and quell his overt desires.’ (Or some such marketing crap.)
We’d Have an Exclusive Cock Cage Emoji
Combinations of the current padlock and key emojis are fine. But wouldn’t it be hella nice if we had our very own? A simple cage design with padlock, available in chrome, pink, and black would be perfect. For something less obvious? Perhaps an aubergine with a padlock dangling off it? Or a cockerel in a cage?
Influencers Would Post About It
The likes of Kim Kardashian, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would endorse cage brands. Or even model them. (Which would really test the standards of those social media community guidelines.)
Tay-Tay Would Write a Chart-Topping Chastity Song
I can hear it now. Remixed and re-released with catchy titles such as Can’t Shake It Off and You Need to Come Now. (If you see this Taylor, you may have them. You’re welcome.)
More People Buy the T-Shirt
And wear the t-shirt. We’ve got a whole merch range waiting for the masses.
It’d Show Up in a James Bond Movie
Aston Martin, Martini, Omega, Holy Trainer. Oh yes, I’d love to see one of pop culture’s greatest Lotharios in a cock cage.
Fun to Think About. But Would It Be Good in Real Life?
Imagining cock cages cropping up in the mainstream is a giggle. And there would certainly be some positives. But things that get rapid, massive mainstream culture exposure can also get torn apart. Especially fringe and sub-culture ideas. I guess there are pros and cons to everything.
Pro: More discussion and greater acceptance. More people talking openly about the benefits of cock cages and female led relationships will bring greater acceptance. We saw this happen during the 50 Shades of Grey craze.
Whatever you think about the book and its portrayal of BDSM relationships, it undeniably got people talking. The wider community wanted to speak to people living the lifestyles. And this gave those communities a voice and an opportunity to educate, which ultimately benefited the community.
Pro: It could encourage innovation and design. If cock cages became popular, they’d be more profitable. Sex toy designers—or even non-industry product designers—may feel inclined to create new products, giving us more choices and more cages to play with.
Con: It could dilute the community. Trends attract people who want to jump on the bandwagon. These people may think they want to try chastity, but really they’re in it to look fashionable rather than being genuinely interested. An influx of people who flit in and out of the fetish like this could make it harder for those with a genuine interest to find each other and connect.
Con: The fetish would be subject to greater scrutiny. This is the flipside of more exposure. Not all discussions would be constructive or positive. Like so many fetishes, male chastity would be examined, talked about, and judged or speculated on by more people. It may even trigger moral panic, leading to laws and restrictions.
But hey, let’s not end on a downer. These are only ‘what ifs.’
What Do You Think?
If 2025 really is to be our year, how does that make you feel about your favorite fetish? Will you embrace the accolade or would you prefer that this level of recognition hadn’t landed on our doorstep? Add your thoughts to our to the discussion on Instagram.
