Hi Altairboy:
I Just came across this on the BBC World Service web site http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/eastasiatoday/ea980202.htm and thought that you might be interested.
Another Malaysian First: Kuala Lumpur Museum Opens Exhibition of Marital Infidelity
A world first on the museum circuit opened recently in Kuala Lumpur: an exhibition devoted to marital infidelity is being staged at the National Museum there.
It features tribes where men who think they're ugly allow their wives to sleep around, to increase the chances of having more attractive children, and a community from the Aleutian Islands, where hospitality includes satisfying the sexual appetites of your guests.
The exhibition includes famous adulterers, past and present, but disappointingly, omits examples from contemporary Asian politics.
On the line to Kuala Lumpur, East Asia Today's Christopher Gunness spoke to Mr Shah Rum Yub, the brains behind the show, who told him that one of the centre pieces of the exhibition is a fascinating display of chastity belts:
Shah Rum Yub (Kuala Lumpur): Altogether we have twenty-five sections of the exhibition, and the chastity belt comes under anti-adultery tactics. We have a replica of a genuine chastity belt I managed to get in 1966 - a couple of them: one for male and one for female - from Mexico. It was used in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the plantations to prevent male workers having sex with the wife or the daughter of the planters. In Europe we never came across male chastity belts.
Christopher Gunness: What does it look like?
Shah Rum Yub: It looks like... well, it covers the male's private parts.
Christopher Gunness: And how is it locked?
Shah Rum Yub: It's locked at the waist and the man's private parts are enclosed in that particular enclosure.
Christopher Gunness: What about in Asia? Have you got many chastity belts from Asia?
Shah Rum Yub: From Asia, no. We never came across any in Asia. Mostly they come from Europe, from the fourteenth, fifteenth up to eighteenth century.
Christopher Gunness: Chastity belts are only one of the anti-adultery devices that your exhibition features. What are the others?
Shah Rum Yub: Well the other one is castration - eunuchs. We have photographs of a Chinese male eunuch.
Christopher Gunness: And where else apart from China?
Shah Rum Yub: Apart from China they also had them in the Harems of Turkey.
Christopher Gunness: And what about the attitude of the Malaysian government? There's one report that you had to black out the picture of man's genitals because he was pictured trying to escape on a horse.
Shah Rum Yub: That's right I have one section called adultery in art. This is one illustration of one of the well-known artists - a French artist I think. And I didn't realise that that particular male part could be seen because my attention was not taken to that particular area. So somehow somebody noticed it and we had to spray that part. It's a very sensitive subject, and I was glad that it got through the cabinet. Originally it was supposed to be called an anthropology of adultery but we had to change it to infidelity.
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