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CANELA(Western Brazil)
Crocker and Crocker (1994:p33-4, 156-7)[1] stated that girls begin sexual
relations between ten and thirteen before menarche.
Boys and girls are segregated at ages 6 to 7. At ages 6 to 14, a girl “is
appointed to be a girl associate of a male society for one or a number of
successive years. At one or more ceremonial points in the festival, beginning
in her early teens, she has sexual relations with the society’s members,
teaching her that one of her roles in mature Canela life is to keep
nonrelated males sexually satisfied”. At age 11-13, “[a] girl’s genitals
[are] formally inspected by a disciplinary aunt to see if she had lost her
virginity. If she had, the name of the male was demanded (Girls are no longer
inspected)”. After she has graduated as a girl associate, she is secluded
under [postpubertal] food and sex restriction. At age 13 to 16, she presents
food to her mother-in-law provided by her lover in return for sex with him.
The period 13-18 is considered a time for sexual liaisons and few social
responsibilities. The average age of first conception is 15¾. Formerly, girls
were engaged to be married when they were 4 or 5 to young men 12 to 15 years
older. Now, courtship takes place, and marriage is equated with defloration.
“Girls almost always have intercourse before they menstruate, so their
experience reinforces the Canela theory that sexual intercourse is the cause
of menstruation. Ideally a girl has first intercourse with a young man in his
late teens or 20s who has no children of his own” (p104-5).
As for boys, at ages 12-14, “[s]ome older
woman who likes an unrelated boy takes him into the woods to give him his
first experience in sexual intercourse. Formerly, the woman was in her 40s or
50s; now, she is more likely to be in her 20s. The boy’s aunt goes to the
woman to collect a small payment for his loss of virginity [cf. p110-1].
After defloration, his disciplining uncle orders him into seclusion, with sex
and food taboos, while “the socializing attitudes of his uncles [change]
abruptly from supportive to confrontational”. At ages 12-17, he should, to
gain strengths and become a person of character, refrain from much sex, or if
so, only with older women.
“First sex occurs between the ages 10 and 13;
between the ages of 13 and 18 girls are generally married but childless”[2].
“Sexual relations begin for girls between the ages
of 10 and 13, and for boys between 12 and 14, that is, usually as young as
possible. A lad is initiated into sexual relations by an experienced woman in
her late teens; formerly, he was then ordered by his “grandfathers” to have
sex only with older women in their forties and fifties for several years.
When a young male takes a girl’s virginity (kormã ?kuuni, “still
whole”), he has the choice of staying “married” to her (mëhikhwa,
“they lie down”) or of withdrawing from the relationship, after which his kin
must pay a significant fine (kute-kukhën ya?pan-tsà-?nã,
“his-having-broken-in payment”)”[3].
Nimuendajú
(1946:p120-1)[4]:
“Like their Apinayé cousins,[5]
the RmkÇ´kamekra firmly assert that menstruation is
impossible prior to sexual congress. Such a theory is after a fashion
intelligible for the Apinayé, whose girls with possibly a few exceptions are
actually deflowered before their first menses, but for the RmkÇ´kamekra it is
utterly inconceivable: first, because I personally know a number of girls who
were surely of age yet were rated and married as virgins; secondly, as
explained above, marriage three generations ago was quite generally not
entered before this age and in a condition of chastity. This is
confirmed by Ribeiro: “Destinam-se entre elles o consorcio das mulheres logo
que pouco mais ou menos tenham 14 ou 15 annos.” Moreover, says Pohl, writing
of the Põrekamekra, “dass hier das Beispiel eines gefallenen Mädchens eine
unerhörte Sache sey.”[6]
The statement by Pohl, cited by about frequently married eight-year-old
girls, refers not to the Timbira, but to the Southern Kayapó. How the native
theory of defloration as prerequisite to menstruation could persist is a
complete enigma; and its occurrence in identical form among Eastern and Western Timbira proves that the
idea is not an innovation. I myself took cognizance of its existence
relatively late. An accurate determination of the facts encounters
difficulty, not because of Indian prudery, but because the natives could
never grasp that I was interested solely in the objective facts: they always
supposed that I was taking a personal interest in the girl I asked about.
That I was inquiring about two or three girls was also intelligible, though
my simultaneously concerning myself with all of them seemed a bit odd. I left
the puzzle unsolved”.
Crocker (1990)[7]
deals extensively with sex play in childhood. A full excerpt from the online
edition [codes extirpated]:
SEX TRAINING
In a society
where frequent extramarital sexual relations were the custom, and where the
purpose of certain festival acts was to help young women become accustomed to
multiple sexual relations with men, sex training of the very young and of
adolescents must be especially interesting and unusually important to them.
Penis Play
Mothers
occasionally twist or tweak the penises of their young baby boys. This is
done, like the use of a breast, to distract a baby from whatever he might be
doing that adults feel is inappropriate, untraditional, or dangerous. It is
done to give a baby an alternative pleasure, or interest by indirectly
diverting its attention away from what is not desirable.
More often than
mothers, however, the infant's other wife category persons are the most
active in teasing or playing with his penis. In my sister's house, one
childless young woman in her early thirties, who had been married for a while
to one of the baby's older brothers in his twenties, spent a lot of time
teasing the baby about his penis. (Since she had been a wife to his older
brother, she was a classificatory or "other" wife to him.) Several
years later when the baby was 4 or 5 years old, she threatened several times
with a knife to cut off his penis. This was done in a spirit of fun,
nevertheless he was scared, and sometimes cried. Then she rushed in to
reassure him, becoming very supportive.
Research assistants
said that sometimes much older brothers pull a baby's penis, and that women
may also do this to a tiny nephew. In the latter case, this practice is
consistent with the extensive joking relationship that traditionally exists
between aunts and nephews. Nothing similar was recorded for a baby girl.
Under no
circumstances are any attempts ever made to pull back the baby's foreskin,
which should remain intact until the time of his first sexual experience.
Masturbation
In babies and
young children masturbation is strictly disapproved of and not allowed. If a
little boy of 1 or 2 years develops the habit of playing with his penis, his
mother gently corrects him. If much older, his mother and sisters are
embarrassed and ashamed to approach such matters. Thus, for a little boy of 5
or 6, a grandmother or aunt who has been summoned for the purpose tells him
to stop the activity. Parents traditionally do not like to talk about the
sexual matters of their children, although they would talk to their children
in the absence of aunts, uncles, and grandparents. One unmarried female
research assistant [In.4.e] reported that she had had to correct her young
son in this way. The Canela can be expected to be flexible about almost any
matter.
One reason given
for such directness with both girls and boys is that either could lose their
virginity payment, the significance of which is serious for girls but slight for boys. Apparently, some
foreskins have to be torn somewhat to be retracted, they say. Sufficient
stretching could occur through masturbation so that no tearing occurs during
first intercourse.
Just like the
girl, the boy is said to lose his payment for the loss of his virginity, if
his foreskin can be retracted easily and does not tear when he has his first
sexual relations with an older woman. Although this is the traditional
position on male virginity, one male research assistant [In.4.e] said his
foreskin did not tear upon retraction in intercourse with a classificatory
wife at the age of puberty, though no masturbation preceded.
Whether this
physical concept of virginity can apply to men of the world in general is an
interesting ethnological question. An obstetrician in Washington, D.C., told me that
this variation—a tight or loose foreskin—exists among human babies. More
research is needed among tribes in which males are naked from birth through
puberty, tribes in which no traditional alteration is performed, such as
circumcision or subincision, or could have occurred through masturbation.
However, it may be too late in the history of the world to find such
comparative ethnological evidence.
Canela do not
pull back the prepuce and expose the glans in order to clean or inspect it.
This is not done generally, although some may do this in a hidden manner
under stream waters, they say. A woman or man feels embarrassed to see a
glans penis exposed, including men seeing those of other men, except for a
man with a sexually contacted classificatory spouse or his wife.
Although both
sexes used to go naked in their homelands most of the time, some
circumstances were considered embarrassing regarding body exposure: the
exposure of the glans penis for men, and the visibility of the inner
genitalia for women.
Opposite-Sex Siblings' Sex Play
Canela socialization
is mild in disciplining children; but opposite-sex sibling sex play is one of
the two occurrences about which they are quite non-permissive, although never
cruel or abusive.
In the context of
socialization, I asked research assistants what could be the worst possible
occurrence imaginable (short of death or dismemberment) that could occur if a
parent were returning home and heard a great commotion in her or his house
from a distance. What would the parent fear? The answer eventually after much
discussion, was either that two young sons had been fighting or that a young
daughter and son had committed some form of incest, the latter being the
worse by far of the two possibilities. Actually, incest (Glossary) between
young cross-sex siblings was so unthinkable that it was not the first
mentioned offense. Incest was not thought of as a possibility, but when I
suggested it, the reaction of research assistants was one of extreme dismay.
A mother uses
distraction to discourage the usual infractions of tradition, or just
frowning disapproval when the misdeed involves a 2 to 4 year old. She would,
however, be very severe and scold a daughter of this age who was playing with
her little brother's penis or a boy who was exploring his little sister's genitalia,
they said. At the ages of six to eight or older, however, such occurrences
could precipitate the calling of aunts and uncles to administer more severe
punishments.
It is considered
worse for girls to be caught in opposite-sex sex play than for boys. It is
very important for a girl not to lose her virginity so that she can receive
her virginity-payment (ganho) promptly from her first lover (by definition
her first husband).
Adolescent Or Adult Incest
With adolescents
or adults, cross-sex sibling incest is punished, according to tradition, by a
shortened life, or even by early death for uterine siblings. Another result
of uterine sibling incest was that both participants soon become crazy.
The Canela have a
story about sibling incest that occurred in 1937, after the time of
Nimuendajù in 1936 but before the first residence of Indian service personnel
near a Canela village in 1938. In this case, it is believed that the full
siblings went crazy after having had sexual relations with each other. The
woman died very soon after. The man survived but became so physically
dangerous that they had to imprison him in what was called a "pig
pen" (a small stockade). They constructed a cage a little larger than
his standing body of strong poles made of saplings stripped of bark, put in
the ground as posts, and tied together securely. Confined and continuously
watched in this stockade, the man soon died. This occurred in one of the two
old village sites that are close together on the Raposa stream just below the
actual village site where Nimuendaju (1946:33) joined two parts of the tribe
during his last visit with them in 1936.
This story is not
a myth in the classical sense, although it may become one. In the late 1950s
the Canela informants knew the names, time, and place of these events. They
showed me the site of the stockade in 1960.
Sexual Education of Males
Young boys first
hear about sexual relations in stories told by adults. Adolescents or grown
people do not modify their stories involving sexual relations just because of
the presence of young children or pre-adolescents. Sometimes when my research
assistant group was talking about sexual relations, small boys sat near us
listening with interest. None of my research assistants seemed at all
concerned about their presence.
Another way that
young boys learn of sexual relations is by hearing the sounds of sexual
intercourse coming from platform beds in the rafters. A young wife, or a
young woman who has lost her virginity but not retained a husband, is often
sexually active at night in her high platform bed. Sexual relations are
approved of by the family as long as they cannot be seen—even though
everything can be heard. Thus, a little boy can add these sounds to the
stories he has heard and understand something about what is going on.
If a young boy
has a classificatory spouse of the right age (adolescence to 20s or even
30s), the joking relationship described earlier, which involved her threatening
his penis with a knife, might take place. In this context, particularly with
their verbal exchanges rather than just the threats, he is likely to learn
extensively about sexual relations.
A young boy also
learns about sex from overhearing the ordinary joking between aunts and
nephews and uncles and nieces. In my sister's house, when a certain uncle of
one of my adolescent nieces came in, they invariably had a sex joking
exchange. One time he said she had a large vagina, like a mortar made from a
tree trunk, into which it would please her to have a large wooden pestle
grinding. She responded that his penis was twisted at a strange angle and had
a black head. This descriptive joking went on between the two relatives,
amusing everyone for about 15 minutes.
Inferences from
Nimuendajù suggest that parents and siblings of such role performers were
embarrassed to hear such verbal exchanges. However, my observations were that
such one-link-away kin merely sat or stood by quietly, paying little attention,
but nevertheless listening and appearing to be unamused but certainly not
embarrassed.
The situation in
which many boys learned most extensively about sexual relations was when they
spied on couples having sex in the woods. Young boys of 6 to 9 years were
often used as messengers between lovers. One research assistant told me he
first saw sexual relations taking place when he was such a messenger boy.
Since he knew where the tryst was going to take place, he went there, hid,
and watched. Considering the freedom allowed boys between the ages of 6 and
12, I have no doubt this kind of sexual learning often took place.
Research
assistants reported that homosexual acts did not occur between pre-adolescent
boys wandering alone through the cerrado. If discovered, this offense would
have been cause for being struck by an uncle. Boys were warned thoroughly
about such matters, and of the likelihood of losing their first sex payment
if their foreskin became loose.
Turning to
associated adult practices, only three men were thought of as being
homosexuals during my period with the Canela. Two were in their 60s in the
1970s, and one was also identified for me in Nimuendaju's (1946) volume. Both
wore wrap-around skirts like women, though the lower edge of the skirt was a
little higher than the knees, instead of well below the knees as women wear
them. One of them had effeminate mannerisms but the other one did not.
Neither raced with logs when younger but tilled the soil and helped their
female kin keep house. The more effeminate one was ridiculed occasionally,
but not to his face, so research assistants said. He was married, but his
wife required him to leave, even though they had children. I never heard the
less apparent homosexual being ridiculed, even though his wearing a short
wrap-around skirt made it clear to everybody that he did not intend to carry
out certain male roles. He lived with his female kin. Both of these men
belonged to the age-set of the Pró-khãmmã of the 1960s and 1970s. However,
they seldom sat with the Pró-khãmmã in the plaza in the late afternoon, nor
were they active talkers in the council of elders.
Research
assistants said neither man was an active homosexual, but that the more
effeminate one occasionally allowed Canela men to have anal intercourse with
him when he was younger. No tradition existed among the Canela for
homosexuals or transvestites to follow. The Canela have no berdache
tradition, as do some North American Indians, and they have no myths or
stories about homosexual practices. It is an important comment on Canela
social relations that the individuality of these two men was respected, and
that they did not receive extensive criticism. They were allowed to remain as
they were.
One man of the
age-set of the new Pró-khãmmã (Glossary) of the 1980s had obvious effeminate
characteristics. At the time of my arrival in 1957, he was a late teenager
just leaving his childless first marriage, with his family paying the girl's
kin heavily. Then, he went to live at the Ponto Indian service post (Plate
11a) and made dresses there on the new sewing machine, following the
instructions of the Indian agent's wife. In 1963 and 1964, he lived away from
the Canela community entirely, spending many months as a cook's assistant in
hotels, first in Fortaleza and then in Sao Luis.
When he returned
to the tribe in 1966, he owned and played one of the first radios. Later,
between 1967 and 1969, he married again and had a first child in 1972.
Research assistants commented that nobody was very sure that the child was
actually his son. The child was more likely the product of several
contributing-fathers, they thought, although as the social husband he might
have contributed some small amount of semen, but they doubted this,
considering him impotent. Nevertheless, this younger homosexual—if he was
one—was not conspicuously oriented in this behavior in the late 1970s. He
remained a married man, had several children, and did not wear a wrap-around
skirt. Homosexuality was more disapproved of by the late 1970s than the late
1950s because of acculturation, a fact that may account for his marrying and
not wearing a skirt.
An adolescent
male has his first sexual experience
at about age 13 with a woman considerably older than himself who wants
to initiate her young classificatory spouse, or who might simply like the
young fellow.
Older research
assistants said that the earlier age for initiating a young man into sexual
relations was for the old "wife" to be 45 or 55, but that could not
happen these days. Now, the woman would be in her late teens or 20s.
Afterward, an aunt of the boy approaches the woman to receive a small payment
from her.
One research
assistant claimed that a woman's vagina is very hot, and therefore not good
for the penis of an adolescent boy. He also said that if a woman took a boy
who was too young, he might be so shocked by the experience he would become
ill.
A belief
supported by all research assistants was that the penis and testicles grew
after his first sexual relations, and that these organs matured because of
occasional sexual relations. Also, the first nocturnal emission occurred as a
result of sexual relations.
Sexual Education Of Females
Little girls
learn about sexual matters by hearing detailed sex jokes, probably not from
older "husbands" but rather from uncles. Of course, they also hear
sounds coming from platform beds in the rafters (Plate 9b) occupied by an
older sister or another female relative.
By the time she
is 6 years old, a little girl is closely segregated from boys and has to stay
near her female relatives, especially her mother, doing small tasks. The
feared potential danger is that a gang of little boys might catch and
experiment sexually with her, it was said.
In the late
1950s, a girl started wearing wrap-around cloth by 11 or 12, but by the late
1970s, she began at 7 or 8.
An uncle who is
not carrying out a disciplinary role might joke with a niece extensively. One
such uncle in his early 30s threw his 10-year-old niece on the ground in the
boulevard, in front of all their relatives, and pretended to be having sexual
relations with her, thrusting between her legs, to the merriment of
everybody, but to the inexperienced girl's embarrassment. There is safety in the
kinship relationship, in the protection of clothing, and in the presence of
onlookers.
By the age of 10
or 11, a girl received inspections of her genitals from an aunt, or the
person who had made it her responsibility to carry out the role of her disciplinary
aunt. If it were found that she had lost her virginity without gaining a
husband at an age ranging from 10 through 14, her aunt or uncle required her
to reveal the name of the man (or men) who had taken it. If she refused to
tell, her uncle might have slapped her. This is one of the very few extreme
situations in which an aunt or an uncle might have resorted to physical
punishment, a practice that was not continued into the 1970s.
Before serving as
a girl associate or participating in the various semipublic extramarital
situations, a girl learns to be sexually generous through individual
experiences. The man who takes her virginity is her husband by definition, if
he has fathered no children in an already existing marriage. He remains her
husband unless his kin pays for him to leave her.
For several
months after her marriage, the young girl is allowed to be exclusively with
her husband. Then men, her "other husbands" [III.E.3.a.(6).(a)],
begin to seek her out to ask for what they believe is their right, namely, to
have sexual relations with her. If she refuses too often, so that female and
male groups begin to talk about her lack of cooperation, the refused men
organize themselves to teach her to be generous (hà?kayren).
Usually, these
men gain the cooperation of a female companion of the "stingy"
girl. If the companion agrees that the girl has been stingy, the companion
takes her stingy friend out to the woods or into the cerrado to collect
fruits, having first told the men where to find them. The men may leave the
companion to herself or enjoy her sexually, but a half dozen "other
husbands" will force intercourse on the stingy girl, if necessary,
holding her down and having intercourse with her in turn. The lesson for the
stingy girl is that she must be generous in individual relationships with
men. When men desire her, she must give her assets or suffer such group
encounters again.
My research
assistant groups reported on different occasions that if the
"stingy" girl were hurt (bleeding or a bone broken) in such an
encounter, her kin could not collect a payment as a result of an interfamilial judicial
hearing. Her uncles would be too ashamed of her to bring her case to a
hearing. Her mother and her female kin would also be ashamed of her but would
give her sympathy.
Comparing such
group encounters with the Murphys' gang rape among the Mundurucú, research
assistants of both sexes say that the Canela "stingy girl" group
encounters mature an early adolescent girl into traditional sexual
generosity, while the Mundurucú gang rape serves to maintain male supremacy
over mature women. "The loose woman who seduces men takes the initiative
from them," and if she persists, gang rape by 20 Mundurucú men or more,
not by four or five rejected Canela lovers, follows as her punishment for
stepping beyond the limits of male control (Murphy and Murphy, 1974:107).
Older Canela women participate and take the initiative in sexual trysts as
fully as men. Three women giving a male work force "relaxation" in
the early afternoon do it out of generosity and to cooperate with the chief,
not to enable men to maintain their supremacy.
This kind of
training for generous sexual behavior still existed in the late 1970s. It is
relatively easy for traditional occurrences that are as inconspicuous and
private as this "lesson in generosity" to continue into modern
times, because it is not a socially visible activity carried out in the
plaza, by a farm hut, or near some other public place. The traditional sexual
practices being lost are those that are socially conspicuous, like the Ayrën
ceremony, where the sexes sit on either side of a fence and choose lovers
sitting on the other side (Figure 47). The purpose of this ceremony was fairly
obvious to an Indian service agent in the 1940s, exerting his
"right" to roam around freely. Similarly, the festivities during
the Wild Boar day can be hampered by the presence of backlanders or Indian
service agents wandering through the village. A group of young men teaching a
girl to be generous is carried out only where it can be seen by Canela
individuals. Thus, it can be expected to remain part of the practices by
which girls are made to understand what is expected of them as mature women.
By 12 or 14, if
not earlier, a girl becomes a girl associate (Glossary) to a men's society,
during which time of service she becomes accustomed to group sexual relations
with men, depending on the character of the society into which she is
inducted.
A female is not
considered a fully responsible adult until she has borne a child. Ideally,
childbirth occurs after her belt painting by her mother-in-law and after she
has passed some time in the free më nkrekre-re stage [II.D.2.g]. Thus, before
becoming pregnant, she should have been "made tame" (kapônu-re) in
a group ambush session, if necessary, and she should have become experienced
in sequential group sex through the fun of being a girl associate of a men's
group. Through these group experiences she is well prepared for the free
existence of the nkrekre-re woman who spends much of her time mixing with men
and having free sexual relationships with them even though both may be
married.
[end of
excerpt]
Additional references:
§
Crocker, W. H. (1982) Canela Initiation Festivals: 'Helping Hands' through Life, in Turner,
V. (Ed.) Celebration: Studies in
Festivity and Ritual. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, p147-58
§
Fielder, Ch.&King, Ch.
(2004) Sexual Paradox:
Complementarity, Reproductive Conflict, and Human Emergence [Academic
Version, http://www.dhushara.com/paradoxhtm/contents.htm]
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Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin:
Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology
Last
revised: Sept 2004
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