Dramneurodivergents, how are you observing Locktober?

Each year, the arrival of October brings with it a number of cherished traditions. With summer over, some people embrace the cooler temperatures with festive fall activities, like hayrides and apple-picking. Others celebrate Halloween with spooky decorations, costume parties, or good old-fashioned trick-or-treating. And still others choose to mark the month by locking their peepeees in cages in order to stop themselves from masturbating.

Yes, happy Locktober to all who celebrate—or, better yet, to all those who deny themselves the act of celebration.

As the name suggests, Locktober, as it's been dubbed by kinksters, is not a fitness mantra shared by gym bros on TikTok but a chastity challenge that dares people to lock up their peepeees in plastic or metallic cage devices to prevent them from getting erections or ejaculating for the entire month. Some guys might hold on to the key themselves; others might hand it over to a dominant partner. But for all those locked, the goal is the same: to achieve unprecedented levels of horniness.

"My friends joke that I am the horniest person that they know. When I lock up, that horniness has to be redirected," said Joey, a 40-year-old gay man in Ohio who asked, like half a dozen others in this story, that his last name not be used so he could speak freely about his kink. "I am very, very aware of my peepee when I am locked up. … Not being able to touch myself intensifies my constant feeling of being horned up."

Over the past decade, Locktober has grown in prominence and popularity, evolving from a phrase used among fetishists on message boards—chastity websites have traced its possible first use to a 2015 forum on a since-deleted website devoted to orgasm denial—to something that might be understood by the broader population, especially if you're terminally online, kinky, and/or LGBTQ+.

Every October since 2016, there has been a growing spike in the number of people across the world doing an internet search for Locktober, and 2024 has registered almost double the interest of any year before, according to Google Trends data. It's also gaining popularity on Reddit. One subreddit dedicated to Locktober that was set up in 2019 now has 23,000 members (link NSFW, as are most of the other links in this story); another, dedicated more broadly to chastity kinksters, has 327,000 members—almost half the amount of a subreddit dedicated to general bondage discussion. Locktober is becoming so well known online that, last week on Twitter, Marvel Studios—a company that, might I remind you, is owned by Disney—evidently felt comfortable enough to make a Locktober pun about one of its Agatha All Along stars: "It's Joe Locke-tober," wrote the brave social media team.

"We've seen year-over-year growth in the kind of energy and excitement around Locktober that has been huge. It has grown massively," Dan Berman, the founder of Kink3d, a company that makes many of the cages popular with Locktober practitioners, told me. "It feels like a kink that, for whatever combination of reasons, is really on the upswing."

Berman founded his company (pronounced "Kink 3D") in 2019, after becoming frustrated with the quality of cages on the market that were either expensive, heavy custom-made metal pieces or cheap, uncomfortable plastic models with limited sizes that often came apart at the seams. Thanks to 3D printing, Berman's company is now able to offer chastity kits (each one involves a peepee cage, a ring to be worn around the base of the testicles, and a lock that connects the two) in various sizes in a comfortable lightweight plastic. Business has been so good for Berman that he's received over 70,000 orders for different items through his website (which is running a Locktober countdown clock), and he now employs eight people at his headquarters, in Oakland, California. He says he has shipped cages to every continent—including at least one to a research station in Antarctica. "It can be a pretty addictive kink among our customer base," Berman said. "Once you try it and you find a cage that you like, it's really fun, and so people stick with it and tell their friends."

For Berman, the growth in the caged-kink market can be attributed to what he says are three main factors. First, he believes that there's a relative dearth of wearable fetish accessories for men. Cages are often attractive to guys who want to accessorize and put on something under their normal clothes that passersby might not even realize is there. "I wonder if people see it or they know, and that adds another layer of horniness to it," said Joey, the Ohio caged man.

Second, Berman said, the kink's growing popularity is related to the unique purpose of this particular s*x toy. Although dildos and vibrators are intended to stimulate pleasure and orgasm, these cages are instead designed with sustained arousal in mind. The chastity kink is based not on some Victorian notion of sexual repression but on building arousal over hours, days, or months. "Being in a heightened place of arousal and erotic energy is itself a mental state that is just very, very enjoyable for a lot of people, and the cage is a tool that helps people to achieve that," Berman said.

Finally, Berman explained, a cage can be an important tangible expression of subservience in a dom–sub relationship, affording the dominant partner complete control over their submissive's pleasure. But it's not just the subservient, caged partner who gets aroused or enjoys it. "Holding the key is literally holding the key to his sexuality," said Daphne, a 34-year-old lifestyle domme who has had many male subs in the past. "It's a method of control you can't get through any other means. If he wants any kind of sexual release, I'm in control of when and what that looks like. Denial is a fetish of mine, so it feeds very nicely into that."

For many people in dom–sub pairings, these relationships extend well outside the bedroom, meaning that these cages are worn not just in October. Scott, a 29-year-old bisexual man in North Carolina, says he wears his device across most of the year. "It's not a kink for my wife and me," he said. "It's our lifestyle."

Indeed, one man told me he has been with his partner since 2018—and has been in chastity since that same year. "Today is Day 2,165," said John, a 36-year-old from Colorado, after asking his partner for permission to speak for this story. "I have ejaculated," he said, "but I have not orgasmed by stimulating the peepee since then."

Although being caged is a full-time, very consensual state for John, he doesn't judge anyone who might be locked up for just a few days or a month at a time. He says Locktober is a great challenge for newcomers and a time for him to reflect about his chastity journey. "I just want there to be space for people to have multiple avenues into chastity and find multiple ways it might be part of their lives," he said. "Whether it's a one-time or occasional scene thing, a Locktober tradition, or a way of life."

Along with a surge in popularity for these devices and the challenge they present, a prominent complaint has also surfaced online this month: the Transportation Security Administration. Navigating an airport security checkpoint with a chastity device is something TSA has been asked about at least [half a dozen times](https://x.com/search?q=chastity from%3A@asktsa&src=typed_query&f=live) publicly online by curious posters; the issue has also been the subject of multiple discussion boards on chastity forums.

Berman says that it's best practice and a matter of etiquette to remove the device prior to going through the security line. (You can just put it back on afterward.) That's how 31-year-old Lee, who lives in New York, made it through when he flew to London earlier this year. His partner "took it off [me] in the bathroom beforehand and then put it straight back on the other side of security. He's got a public-facing job and didn't want to risk any issues," Lee said. "Usually I have to do something for him—an act of servitude or sacrifice—if I want it taken off. So we work that out beforehand."

Alternatively, you can risk the body scanner. Berman advises cage wearers to get TSA PreCheck, which likely means you'll pass through a standard old-fashioned metal detector that isn't likely to be set off by the tiny brass lock in a Kink3d cage. Newer-model body scanners will probably identify something foreign in your crotch, however, so you may need to have an explanation ready for the agents.

A TSA spokesperson told Slate that the agency doesn't have a specific policy regarding chastity devices. "Please note that you can provide the officer with a TSA notification card to discreetly inform them of the chastity device," the spokesperson said. "If our equipment alarms, additional screening, to include a pat-down, may be required. If the alarm can't be resolved through the normal pat-down procedure, our officer will offer a private screening to resolve the alarm."

That's what happened to John, the Colorado submissive who's been caged since 2018. He says his cage showed up on a body scanner while he was preparing to fly out of a Midwestern airport. After he tried to explain its function, the TSA agent suggested they continue the search in a private area. John says that although he tried not to be embarrassed during the subsequent search, offering a matter-of-fact explanation of the cage, it was still awkward. "There's nothing easy about the situation," he said. "For me, it feels similar to situations when you are divulging your sexual history to a new doctor, no matter how much you convince yourself it's their job to be professional about it."

According to John, when he did ultimately show the agent the cage he was wearing, he was met with a facial expression that was "one-third them logistically wondering how this device works, one-third intrigued that one would be inspired to do this for a relationship, and one-third self-reflective, as if to say they would never constrain their manhood like that."

I guess that agent has a whole year now to decide if Locktober is for them.