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Barton (1919:p18)[1] states that marriage took place
“at any age”. This encompasses trial marriages (including “primitive sexual
mating”) in the dormitories and contract marriage, usually arranged for when
the children are “quite small”.
Lambrecht (1935)[2] also stated this was the case
with prepubertal children, “although cohabitation and some particularities of
secondary importance may be postponed until the spouses have grown up; the
crime of adultery has become possible […], and real divorce negotiations must
be entered into in order to nullify such a marriage”.
An autobiography (Barton, 1938:p99-100)[3] reveals: “A boy is ashamed to
attempt sexual intercourse before puberty, because he fears that when the
girl discovers his organ to be small, she will ridicule him or scold him. On
the other hand, if a girl is being courted by an unwelcome suitor, she may be
glad to have an immature boy sleep with her: when the unwelcome one comes
around and tries to get her to leave the side of the immature boy, she can
answer, “Málamok! Bokun lalaki dumduma?”
[What’s the matter? Isn’t this a male, also?]”. Boys enter the agamang
dormitory at age 4 to 7. Masturbation and sex perversions would be
absent (“at least I am sure about the latter. There is no positive evidence
for the former and no word for either”). Little girls in the mixed dormitory
receive a “complete education long before they require it” (p9-10).
Lambrecht (1935:p171)[4] also states that preadolescents
may accompany their adolescent “elder aga'mang-mates
(ma-iaga'mangcha, “they share the
sleeping place of the girls”; ma-iha'ludcha,
“they flirt with the girls” […]). One must not however think that boys always
go to the sleeping places of the girls to have sexual relations with them:
they often go only to talk and to joke with them, and after a certain time go
back to sleep in their own aga'mang,
or may just sleep there”[5]. The dormitories are entered as
early as three or four (Goldman, 1937:p170)[6].
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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