The Stomach-Churning Punishments Primarily Used On Women

Women across history have faced an impossible task – please, but don’t take up the space, fulfill a role but not one you get to choose, and become the ideal… by any means possible. In fact, fulfilling the demands on women from society at any given time has been a dangerous task. Maybe you’re a woman in 10th-century China, maybe you hear how all the women of the nobility have tiny three-inch feet – making your own that small becomes an agonizing life’s work.

Maybe you’re a woman of Victorian England – chasing the hourglass means day after day in organ-crushing corsets. Though you can forget beauty ideals, maybe you’re a woman of the medieval period, making your way as a respected and regarded healer, before the church, then the world turns on you, declaring what once served them so well, are only the workings of the devil.
The world’s positioning of women has been littered with pitfalls and punishment from antiquity to now. Welcome to History on Fleek, today we look at the unspeakable punishments befalling women.
The Spanish donkey
Despite sounding closer to a fairground ride or a rather vicious cocktail, The Spanish Donkey was nothing of the sort. This was a torture device of the cruelest means and was weaponized against women in particular, during the inquisition. Simple in design, the device – also known as the wooden horse or chevalet – was a sickening implementation of physics upon the human body. The Spanish Donkey was little more than a triangle prism of wood elevated off the ground on stilts, with its sharpest edge facing the ceiling. The victim in question would be forced to straddle the upright sharpest edge. While this alone stood to leave the victim in question in great discomfort, they would commonly have weights tied to their feed to heighten the torture. Needless to say, the victim’s genitalia would be maimed, at very least suffering a shattered tailbone for their troubles. At its worst, the heavier the victim and the heavier the weights tied to the feet – reportedly the Spanish Donkey could cut a victim in half.
Foot Binding
A form of body-altering cruelty that was only subject to women was China’s millennium-long history with foot binding. Tragically, the form of a 10th-century court dancer Yao Niang went on to inspire a hideous tradition of women maiming their feet for centuries to come. Yao Niang was said to have utterly captivated Emperor at the time, Li Yu. The dancing routine took place inside a golden lotus, no more than six feet in diameter and decorated with rare gems and ribbons. Yet the part that entranced the Emperor, was Yao Niang’s entire dance took place on her toes. To do this, Yao Niang had bound her feet into the shape of a crescent.
Sadly, it became a desired look among the ladies of the imperial court and with time to make it so, foot binding became something of a status symbol. Soon the ‘Golden Lotus’ was the ideal of ideals – a foot measuring three inches. That’s right, just three inches. To Chinese sensibilities, small feet on a woman were equivalent to a minuscule waist in Victorian England.
It should go without saying, but binding one’s feet into half their size radically alters physique and posture causing great disfiguration across a lifetime. Disturbingly, thanks to its ritualization, its normalization, and its evolution into a beauty ideal and Confucian value – women would perpetuate, administer and suffer food binding for centuries. The very last factory making ‘lotus shoes’ closed only as recently as 1999.
The Iron Spider
One medieval device used to maim women and women specifically was The Iron Spider, or as it was more colloquially known The Breast Ripper. Remarkably, archaeologists and historians have uncovered such devices surviving from long ago. Likely used from the late 13th century to the early 19th century, the iron tongs with claws at their end were a European specialty for torturing women. Their list of crimes… well, it was free for all of any sins deemed by the clergy: blasphemy, adultery, abortion, erotic white magic… take your pick. There is documentation of unmarried mothers being subject to some truly tasteless punishment.
France and Germany of the middle period would give a ‘bite’ from the ripper, liable to be white hot, while their babe lay at their feet. Another child ruined… congratulations…
Scold’s bridle
Another pretty hideous torture device used on women and women only was the Scold’s Bridle. This device was a specialty of the medieval to middle history period, first recorded in 1527 and used as late as 1856. Half public humiliation, half device of torture, the bridle was an iron frame around the skull that also had an iron muzzle. The imagery and purpose were clear – this was to stop women from speaking. Inside the scold would be a bridle bit to sit on the tongue, commonly a spike was on it as a compress. Used across England and its colonies, the fear of witches and their power would often inform its usage. Less charmingly, it was often used on women at the request of family members and husbands.
The Pear of anguish
From 1400 to around 1800 a device existed that… frankly if its proposed use on women is true, it stands as one of the very worst torture devices. The pear of anguish has been discovered by archeologists and stands in many museums across Europe to this day. Designed in a pear-like shape, the device can be spread open by the turning of a key at its other end. Now, its proposed use for torture was that it would be placed inside a victim (take an orifice of your choosing), when closed, before being slowly opened to mutilate them. Some would tell you that the pear of anguish would be used on women who had been deemed guilty of abortion… and er… yeah, I’m sure you can guess the orifice.
The only redemption to be found in any of this is that the exact use of the pear of anguish in torture can’t be verified. Attributed to the medieval era, there is no modern evidence that informs us it existed then. Moreover, many of the devices standing in museums have a design flaw suggesting their supposed use is fiction. Many of the pears of anguish found today can be closed by turning its key/handle, but not opened. Well… here’s hoping that’s the case, here’s hoping it wasn’t used for what many believe it very much was…
The Witches
Witches, witches, witches – middle period history’s all-time favorite villain. In Europe, the persecution of witchcraft was prominent from the 15th-18th century, with its height being in the late 1500s through to the early 1600s. The American colonies of the 17th century quite tragically would follow suit, most infamously across New England. What is most ironic and saddening about the prosecution against women for witchcraft is how it all started.
Many women of the medieval period were ‘wise women’: healers, all-knowing in the ethereal, and capable of bringing ailments to their end. Wise women were rare and feted figures in the medieval period, denied any type of formal education and profession – they made themselves useful to the masses. Yet when the Renaissance took hold and science and the spiritual were separated – any mysticism was characterized as the workings of the devil. Soon began many centuries of burning suspicious women at the stake.
What hideously short memories they had back then- THEY WERE TRYING TO HELP, GUYS!
Stoning
While a bygone item of biblical history to the Western mind, stoning as a legal and customary punishment still survives across Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, the UAE, and many corners of the middle east. Quite disturbingly, the punishment originally written in the Talmud and Torah (long ago… indeed), disproportionately affects women. In the parts of the world where this practice still stands, women are profoundly less educated or treated fairly by the courts. This leaves them more fallible to sign confessions of crimes they have not been guilty of and… well, there is a whole argument to be had, that one’s private life and activity are not matters to be criminalized anyway. Stoning has continually been used as capital punishment against adultery, yet in overwhelming majority against women’s adultery. In today’s world, women aren’t alone in this vile threat, the LGBT community stands vulnerable. Many practicing countries today, regard sodomy, as an offense worthy of death by stoning.
Corset – the deformity faucet
Corsets, corsets – nothing like chasing a beauty ideal to the point where it… more or less mangles your body. The history of corsets is a subject in itself and a remarkable one of some 500 years. Introduced in the late 16th century, these undergarments for women were soon viewed as ideals for maintaining the ‘beauty’ of the female figure. Initially starting as layers of linen and silk, unable to be aggressively fastened, corsets found before the Victorian era, were actually relatively comfortable. It’s when the Victorians came in and added whalebone as a material and started tying these things as tight as humanly possible that the trouble began. Once corset-wearing became common in the 18th and 19th centuries, the chasing of an ‘hourglass’ ideal got profoundly out of hand. Women weren’t wearing corsets for the big ball, a grand soiree, the most lavish of social shindigs – they were wearing them most days, all day. We even have records now of ‘pregnancy corsets’ – that’s right: while your natural form is naturally altering – let’s still try and keep you ‘hot’. Just as disturbingly, corsets from this era can be found that were clearly designed for children. Can we at least let ‘em grow before we mangle them? Just a thought…

What we can see now from anthropological research is the effect this had on the bodies of Victorian women. Observing their skeletons show traits. Seven skeletons inspected by researchers at the Musee de l’ Homme show deformation of ribs and vertebrae. Remarkably, other Victorian skeletons at the Museum of London show the same S shaping of the ribs. The V&A Museum in London researched corsets from the era – they worked out that a woman’s waist was approximately 10 inches smaller than the average today!
Beauty ideals, persecution, and silencing: history may not unequivocally prove ‘it’s a man’s world’, but it certainly proves, it’s been a cruel one for women.