Growing Up Sexually

 

GILBERTESE, Gilbert Islands (Kiribati, Micronesia) (Makin G.:2,2,3,4-,4+,4+;1,1)

IndexPacificsMicronesia→ Gilbert Isl.


 

 

On Banaba (Ocean Island), “[a] girl was married to her betrothed a few months after she reached the age of puberty, if the boy’s initiation into manhood was by then complete”; coital defloration was then enacted (Grimble, 1921:p32)[1]. However, “[c]hildren might be betrothed at a very early age, sometimes before birth” (p29). Much emphasis is placed on virgin coitarche.

 

 

Additional refs:

 

-- Luomala, K. (1980) A mythological charter for 'making a boy wild’ in the Gilbert Islands, Asian Perspect 23,2:221-48

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

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

 



[1] Grimble, A. (1921) From Birth to Death in the Gilbert Islands, J Royal Anthropol Instit Great Britain & Ireland 51:25-54