|
|
Featured: Pukapukans, Ra’Ivavae, French Polynesia [Marquesans, Cook Islands [Tahiti, Aitutaki, Mangaia], Samoa, Tonga Isl.]; Santa Cruz Isl., Santa Cruz Isl.
Suggs (1966:p51-2): “Marchand
(1797:p109)[1] noted eight-year-old girls indulging in
public intercourse and other unnatural acts. (One girl was held by four old
women when she would not submit.) Lisiansky
(1814:p67)[2] stated that “age was no test of innocence”
for the Marquesan girls who had sexual relations
with his crew. Some, who he believed were not more than ten years old,
“rivalled their mothers in the wantonness of their mothers and the arts of
allurement”. The same was noted by Von Krusentern
(1813, I:p116, quoted by Danielsson,
1954 [1956:p88])[3]. Waitz
(1872:p124)[4] remarked that, among older women, an
eight-year-old girl “offered herself” to the ethnographers. Handy (1923:p93)[5]
points out that in aboriginal times, presuperincision
was practiced earlier than at the time of writing, suggesting an earlier
coital license in that era.
Even as late as 1989, Oliver (p592, 593)[6]
mentions that coitus is practised in childhood, and that actual insertion
occurs at age seven to nine.
Apparently without
more recent data, Bolin (1997)[7],
reviews on French Polynesia:
“The cultural practices of Marquesans and Pukapukans not
only allowed open sex play among children but [...] provided children
clandestine opportunities to observe adult sexual behavior
due to sleeping arrangements. According to Oliver (1974)[8] on Tahiti, coital simulation became actual
penetration as soon as young boys were physiologically able. The Tahitians
found children’s imitation of copulation humorous. Other evidence suggests
that young girls may have engaged in copulation before age 10 (Gregersen 1983)[9]. […] Suggs (1966:p25) comments
that in traditional Marquesan society, girls may
have had their first coital experience by age 10 […]. Oliver’s (1981)[10] ethnography includes in-depth
discussion of infancy, childhood, and other life-course stages in Tahiti (see the chapter on “Passing
Through Life,” p342-400). In this regard, he notes that children played in
mixed-gender groups until 13 or 14 years old. The Tahitian attitudes
to children playing at copulation was one of amusement (1981:p366). However,
as children approached the age of 11, adult parental attitudes shifted in
regard to young females but not males. Oliver points out that parents
objected to girls engaging in sex prior to marriage, an ideal that coexisted
with an open and sex-positive attitude”.
Suggs (1966:p45-6, 51-3)[11]:
“[At the age of approximately seven years, Marquesan
b]oys and girls, playing
at “mother and father”, will often place their genitalia in contact for brief
periods. The girl either stands against a tree or lies supine on the ground,
with the boy assuming the normal position for coitus. Contact is brief,
accompanied occasionally by pelvic movement with much laughter. This activity
is carried out in isolated areas where adults will not be apt to surprise the
gathering”. Suggs agrees with Linton (1939)[12]
that it was a group event. Linton (1939:p168): “Sexual play was a regular
practice among the children from the earliest period. The adult attitude
toward it, if not one of active encouragement[13],
was at least that of mild amusement. […] Regular intercourse began before
puberty with patterns of group sexual play, two or three girls in the gang
serving a number of boys in rapid succession with the other boys looking on.
Occasionally there were individual affairs. Sexual techniques were learned
through imitation of the adults. […] Homosexuality was present in the form of
mutual masturbation, but I have no data as to its frequency”. The children
had their own sexual culture: “The gap between adults and children was such
that it was impossible for an adult to win the child’s confidence. Relations
between them were amiable but entirely dissociated”.
Suggs (1962:p118-21)[14] relates:
“Marquesan
children are likely to suprise Europeans with their
sophistication in sexual matters- if they can be induced to talk at all. This
is a direct result of the matter-of-fact treatment that such matters receive
in daily life and the fact that in most families
parents and children sleep in one room. The children begin experimenting
rather early; little boys begin masturbating at two or three years of age,
engaging in group activities of this type by the age of five or six, and
having casual homosexual contacts as well. Little girls are carefully
prepared for their roles as future mates by parents and grandparents. At the
age of a few weeks a course of medication is begun with a view to making them
more satisfactory sexual partners later in life. Astringents, concocted from
a number of herbs and bushes, are employed for this purpose, with daily
dosages continuing to the age of about twelve. Little girls also engage in
“the solitary vice” and begin homosexual contacts at an early age, which
continue from the years before to shortly after puberty”.
“A boy usually has his first
sexual experience [sic] with a much older woman, who instructs him in his
first bungling attempts. Many of my older Marquesan
friends looked back upon this initiation with fond memories and much
amusement at their own ineptitude. The boys generally join a small informal
group of comrades of similar age, who spend their evenings wandering about
the dark valleys attempting to enter the homes of receptive women of all ages
and conditions of life. […] For girls, adult sex life begins somewhat earlier
than for boys, usually with defloration by an older male, after a chance encounter
in the bush or a surreptitious invasion of the family home. Girls are
usually, therefore, far more experienced than boys of their own age and may
have been indulging in normal sexual relations for some months before the
onset of menstruation”
Frequent sexual
relations in adolescence are considered normal.
Contemporary Marquesans seem to recognise an adolescent sex problem
(Kirkpatrick, 1987)[15].
Menarche gives occasional for “a few words of instruction” from the mother,
not a public rite. Boys are supercised at age
10-18, and no sexual intercourse should be had until then. One woman would
“make a point of initiating boys in her valley soon after they were cut, but
this was her choice, not a ritual role”.
Additional refs.:
-- Kirkpatrick, J. (1987) Taure'are'a:
a liminal category and passage to Marquesan adulthood, Ethos
15,4:382-405
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
|
|