5 Craziest Ways Men Have Censored Female Sexuality

5 Iran's Government Digitally Edits Hollywood Films to Add Modesty

The Iranian government has a problem (well, many problems). The people of Iran love watching American movies, but the government has over three dozen ridiculous rules about what you can't show in a film. Rules like no close-ups of women's faces, no shots of men and women sitting close together, and no showing bearded men in a bad light (we actually agree with that one).

These rules would leave out most of Hollywood's output, but that wouldn't stop Iranians from getting their hands on such films through illegal means. So, rather than banning every movie ever, the government censors allow them to play in cinemas, but they use digital technology to modify anything they consider obscene. Like this lady's cleavage:

That's a Kirk Cameron religious movie, by the way. Kirk Cameron is too raunchy for Iran. TV shows are made more modest, too: In Iran's version of Lost, one of the weird paranormal effects of the island is that cartoon shirts spontaneously appear on all of the female characters:

And just because Will Ferrell doesn't have boobs, that doesn't mean the Iranian government wants to see him naked -- in Iran's version of Talladega Nights, a fence grows 3 feet in order to cover Ferrell's bare chest.

The censors were also offended by a scene in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds where Bridget von Hammersmark has a bloody bullet wound in her leg ... specifically, because said leg was uncovered. That's nothing some leggings can's solve, though.

When women aren't being half covered by random foreground items (no doubt making some digital animator work for hundreds of hours to hide breasts that some Hollywood digital animator spent hundreds of hours digitally enhancing), they can be removed entirely from a scene. Like Kevin Spacey's friend here:

Meanwhile, Patrick Wilson's girlfriend is erased from his shot, leaving him with his arm suspended in the air like some douchebag.

In addition to the digital touch-ups, the dialogue in these films is also modified in the dubbing: References to beer become lemonade, and risque sexual dialogue turns into far less risque proposals of marriage. The movie Basic Instinct contains no fewer than 270 marriage proposals, probably.

4 Chinese Police Issue a Complex Chart to Stop Peeping Toms

In 2012, the Zhejiang province police in China got fed up with creeps spying on women and decided to end this peeping tom epidemic once and for all. After browsing their heavily censored version of Google for a while, the officers came up with the ultimate solution to protect the modesty of Chinese women: math.

The police's website divulged a series of charts and diagrams designed to help women avoid giving men a look up their skirts ... as long as they have a degree in geometry.

The diagrams show women in common situations, like sitting on the subway or standing on some escalators, and being ogled by weirdos. Lines show the peeping tom's field of vision, giving instructions on how to calculate it based on his height, the height of the woman, the distance between them, and other factors. Like if the guy is sliding back in his seat and manga expression lines are coming out of his head.

The idea, as far as we can tell, was that women could whip out the chart if they thought the guy sitting in front of them looked sketchy, quickly calculate the variables in their mind to figure out if they were being spied on, and then use this evidence to ... do nothing, because if the police put out this thing, they clearly weren't too interested in actually going out and arresting the perverts.

The whole thing was sparked when the police received a photo of a man putting his camera under a woman's skirt on a bus, a situation that observant readers will notice is covered nowhere in these diagrams. Other helpful tips included wearing leggings under a skirt, carrying a grocery cart behind you at all times, and, judging by the following picture, just avoiding stairwells altogether.

In the end, the diagrams seemed to cause more confusion than help and were removed from the police website. As some women pointed out, the diagrams were more likely to be used as some sort of guide for would-be peeping toms who were having trouble getting the angles quite right. After all, the cops admit that they found these images on the Internet -- in all likelihood they were created for that purpose in the first place.

3 Victorian Women Used "Bathing Machines" at the Beach

It's obvious to anyone who's ever been to a beach or watched a few James Bond films that women's bathing suits tend to get smaller with the years and will inevitably disappear, but let's take that in the opposite direction: Before bikinis, one-piece suits, or even the full-body garb of our great-grandmothers, what did Western society consider acceptable?

The answer is "machines." In Victorian times, upper-class women had to go into the water in big, bulky contraptions known as bathing machines.

A bathing machine was, essentially, a changing room on wheels, powered either by horses or by a mechanical device to carry heavy loads. Inside the box, the lady could change into her already conservative swimwear, but instead of stepping out and taking a splash, the entire structure would be wheeled out into the ocean. At this point she could come out into the water, always suspended by a cradle that prevented the waves from taking her away (because if she started drowning and yelling for help, then a man might see her). An optional modesty screen could spread out from the back of the machine to protect her from any prying eyes until she lowered herself down.

Most bathing machines were also staffed by what was known as a "dipper," a big, burly woman who would go out with the machine and help push the particularly incompetent/lazy bathers into the water. If more than one lady was present (the machines could hold as many as six), we're assuming the dippers would also be in charge of playfully splashing each other while giggling merrily.

The earliest records of these bathing machines in England date back to the 1700s, and they remained in use until the late 19th century, when people worked out that, even without a small hut in the way, they still couldn't see much of a woman's form beneath those old-fashioned bathing suits. They started disappearing in the early 1900s, after too many beachgoers confused them for poorly equipped public toilets.

Of course, there are still places in the world where the sight of a woman's exposed elbow on a beach could spark a riot, such as the Islamic nations where women have to wear burqas. However, a designer from Australia came up with a more practical solution for them -- the burkini, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Not all situations can be handled with such dignity when you're forced to cover your entire body, though ...

2 Saudi Arabia Didn't Let Women Work at Lingerie Stores

Buying underwear can be embarrassing for anyone -- how do you tactfully explain to the clerk at the other side of the counter that you need some extra room in the front of your briefs ... you know, on account of your third testicle? Well, if you've ever felt uncomfortable in one of those situations, you should be thankful you're not a woman trying to buy panties in Saudi Arabia.

You see, up until recently, only Saudi men could work at lingerie stores. Pair that with the fact that women in the kingdom are supposed to wear clothes specifically designed to not reveal anything about their bodies, and that to most of them even talking about said bodies is taboo, and you can see how that could get awkward.

This meant that, if a woman went in to purchase some new knickers, a male clerk would have to study her from across the room and just sort of guess which size would best suit her. If he got it wrong, tough shit: Many times, women would simply go home with the wrong underwear because they'd be too embarrassed to describe their anatomy to a man.

This is the result of Saudi Arabia's strict segregation rules, which dictate that women can't work at certain jobs, a fact that we're sure is completely unrelated to their alarming 30 percent female unemployment rate. And if the Saudis say you can't do something, you can't do it -- they have an infamously tough religious police that will let schoolgirls burn to death if they're not properly dressed.

The current king of Saudi Arabia finally put an end to this ridiculousness in 2012, thanks to a Facebook campaign, of all things (one of those actually worked?). The royal decree turned things completely around by banning all men from working in lingerie shops in any capacity ... which resulted in the closing of 100 stores.

1 Ultra-Orthodox Jews Wear Special Glasses That Blur Women

Being an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in Jerusalem isn't all cool hats and fancy speak. Their particular interpretation of Jewish law forbids any type of contact between men and women who aren't married, which is why Jerusalem has the most polite construction sites on the planet.

But having separate buses and sidewalks to prevent the accidental crossing of paths between members of the opposite sex just isn't enough for some communities -- since people from many different backgrounds move through their streets, including women who aren't willing to keep to "their side" of the street, some men feel that they're risking eternal damnation just by going to the corner store.

Enter "modesty glasses" -- glasses that deliberately blur your vision so you can't see women.

Unofficial "modesty" patrols have been set up in these neighborhoods, and they sell glasses specially designed to prevent a person from being able to see. For the equivalent of $6, they'll give you a pair of stickers that, when applied to your glasses, invert their purpose by making it so that only a few meters are visible, turning that bare-ankled heathen strolling down the road into a featureless blur. And if you don't wear glasses in the first place, they'll sell you a non-prescription pair for around $32.50.

What if you need to venture into other non-religious neighborhoods, where packs of unmarried women presumably roam the streets looking for men to harass? Don't worry: They also sell optional hoods and shields to block peripheral vision. We're just hoping that even with the blur a woman still looks different enough from an oncoming motorbike.

But these modesty patrols seem like debauched liberals compared to the Sikrikim -- a group of around 100 religious men who want their already ultra-Orthodox neighborhood to become, well, what comes after "ultra"? They hope to achieve this by smashing windows, scrawling graffiti, and hurling bags of poop, all in the name of decency. One of their targets is an ice cream shop. What's so offensive about ice cream, you ask? This part:

Yes, the Sikrikim claim that licking ice cream in public promotes promiscuity; apparently, you're supposed to either rent a room somewhere and lick it in private, or just bite the thing (which would promote cannibalism). The store, which already had separate entrances for men and women, had to put up a sign asking people to refrain from getting fresh with the cones, but that didn't stop these conservative extremists from breaking into the place at night and trashing it.

Hiram H. Huckabee is a writer of humorous short stories that can be found here.

For more on international fashion styles, check out 6 Weird Fashions From History (With Weirder Explanations) and 6 Popular Fashion Trends (That Killed People).