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BIG
NAMBAS (MALEKULA, NEW HEBRIDES, EASTERN
MELANESIA) (EHRAF)
Featured: Big
Nambas, Tanna, Mewun
“Young Seniang children publicly simulate
adult copulation without being reproved; older boys masturbate freely and
play sexual games with little girls, but the boys are warned not to copulate
on the grounds that this behavior would weaken them” (Ford and Beach,
1951:p189). “On Malekula girls are married at six or eight” (cited by Sumner,
1906:p382)[1]. Prepubertal male
masturbation and heterosexual play were “common” (Deacon; see also Herdt,
1984:p12)[2].
“Sexual intercourse
before puberty is strongly condemned by parents as being weakening.
Nevertheless, masturbation and “playing” with the other sex are common among
young boys. Homosexuality among boys, on the other hand, is apparently very
rare. One boy at Benaur tried to make another his boy-lover, but the latter
retorted: “Do you think I’m a woman!” and gave him a thrashing”.
Parental intercourse is shielded from the
child’s eye:
“For sexual intercourse the
parents will wait until the children are asleep, and then the woman will
cross over to her husband’s mat. Unlike boys, who leave the house and go to
sleep in the amel when they are
about twelve years old, girls remain living and sleeping at home until they
are married and go to their husbands. […] If it is at night-time, the parents
wait until the children are asleep, and then the wife goes across the room to
her husband’s sleepingmat. If they wish to have relations at any other time
each of the children is told to go off on some distant errand, so that their
parents may be left alone. It is considered bad for children to see any man
or woman in the act of coition, and in the normal course of events this would
never happen. A man is ashamed, too, should his son see his penis through
some mischance, such as his nambas
slipping down. After a girl is married it is indecent for her father to see
her genitals, for only her husband now has the right to do so, and should any
other man see them, through her having exposed herself indecently, it is her
father’s duty to reprimand her severely. The line drawn between decency and
indecency differs greatly from our conventions. A small boy will give a
realistic imitation of copulation in public without being reproved[3], but it would be regarded as
indecent and suggestive were he to point out to a woman that there was a
cockroach or a piece of mud on her skirt” (Deacon, p155).
“If, as is very general, a marriage is
contracted before the girl has attained puberty, it may not be consummated
for some two or three years”. Nelaai signifies
marriage in the legal sense, and may be used of the marriage of girls before
puberty, when the consummation of the marriage is postponed for some years. Imi signifies to consummate a “child”
marriage, and it is used also for performing the ritual of the “legal”
marriage together with its subsequent consummation in adult marriage.
The expression Iap (to have intercourse with a woman) is an indecent word, used
only by men, and it cannot be used openly except among men; it is never
spoken in the presence of a woman or of small boys and girls.
Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin:
Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology, Berlin
Last
revised: Sept 2004
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