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PUERTO RICO / ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO
Socialization
in Puerto Rico (Baumgartner, 1994 [p182-90])[1] is “gendered” from birth. “Two or three year old toddlers are asked
about their “girl-friends” and are made aware of their sexuality through jokes
and observations on the desirability of girls, which will seem out of context
for an outside observer who does not understand the “macho” personality being
enforced. Machismo develops in boys
on the basis of the encouragement of their mothers as well as fathers and
friends[2]. Little girls are less encouraged to have “boy-friends”. Instead,
they are constantly reminded of their beauty, the need to maintain pleasing
looks and demeanor, to keep their legs together when sitting, […] to never
say a “bad” word” […]”. The vulva is covered since birth, the penis may be
bare until age 7 years (Mintz, 1956:p384, 285)[3].
Parents would pull a two-year-old’s penis, and inquire for its function. The
answer would be, “For the women!” Thus the parents try to instill a macho concept, along with the double
standard, from early age[4].
“After about the age of five years, boys are no longer subject to the sexual
joking, teasing, and play of their parents. This kind of play apparently ends
abruptly, and one cannot but wonder at the psychological effects of this”.
Manners (1956:p146)[5] notes: “It is a common practice to stimulate the child erotically by
fondling or kissing his genitals- teaching him how “to milk the cow” or “put
the car in gear” ”. Stycos (1955:p42)[6]: “The most striking manifestation of attempts to inculcate machismo
occurs in the adult adulation of the infantile penis. By praising and calling
a great deal of attention to the penis, the parent can communicate to the
child the literal or symbolic value of the male organ”. Seda (1956:p291)[7] notes: “The masculinity of the boy child is a matter of considerable
interest, and parents and friends may play with the boy’s genitals until he
is around seven years old”. Further, “[v]arious sexual aberrations and
masturbation were reported among young boys”, and adolescents would have
homosexual congregations in the fields, with girls in their thoughts.
Children must not talk or joke about sex in the presence of adults lest they
be considered badly reared. Adult sexual talk is overheard and adult
intercourse is observed. At pubescence, boys collect in gangs in which sexual
joking becomes “open and articulate, often aggressively homosexual, and aimed
at insulting the listener”; unlike girls, the author adds. Girls, in whom sex
as such is “deemphasized and hidden” from birth to the start of puberty, are
educated sexually by their mother, and experience a restriction of their
mobility at puberty. Boys have their first sexual experience with prostitutes
(Manners, p147). One study[8] among 953 persons (aged 15 to 40, about 33% female) revealed the
ambiguity with which sex education is viewed in Puerto Rico.
Catholics
overwhelmingly (N=547) thought the
home was responsible for sex education; 103 respondents named the school, 5
the Church, and 96 nobody. Montesinos and Preciado (1997)[9] stated that “[a]s a result of marianismo
[[10]], the Church’s opposition, and the reluctance of society and families
to acknowledge female sexuality openly, many girls experience their menarche
with no formal education about it, and although males are expected to have
their first sexual experience before marriage, they do not receive formal
education either. Obviously, neither females nor males have any knowledge
about the health implications of various sexual practices (Burgos and
Diaz-Perez 1985)[11]. There are no systems or district-wide sexuality education programs
[…]”. “Childhood sexual rehearsal play and sexual exploration no doubt occur
in private as they do in many other cultures, but there are no statistics or
information on their incidence or extent”.
The above image is
solidified by similar accounts. Lewis[12]
found “danger of seduction by stepfathers, sexual rivalry between sisters,
between mother and daughters [and] male children erotically stimulated by their
mothers and by other members of the family”. Padilla[13]
reported parents and others regularly masturbating the infant’s penis.
Fernández-Marina[14]
found that a Puerto Rican father frequently, “wishing to show off his son as
a macho completo (complete he-man), will play with the infant’s penis” (p82). Green[15] describes a rural lower
class pattern in which “[g]irls are not evaluated as highly as boys:
economically they are not as valuable for agriculture, and they bear a lower
status generally. While some sex knowledge is obvious is such crowded
housing, the boys learn first-hand outside the home what the girls learn only
through gossip” (p37).
Some
valuable female autobiographical material was collected by Villanueva (1997)[16].
Girls, who are to become “señioritas” at menarche, are restricted in sex
information[17], and they would be
discouraged to play sexually ([p45, 58]). However, others mention
satisfactory experiments ([p45, 53, 57]). The atmosphere fits well into the
general attitude against premarital intercourse. Landy (1959 [1965])[18]
further deals extensively with childhood sexuality (p107-13, 159-61, 201-2,
236-7). Gender differences are noted in modesty training. Boys’ sex organs
are joked about, playfully carressed grabbed in combination with playful castration
threats (although the latter was found to be on the decline) (p108).
Masturbation is rigidly counteracted by both parents; parents, fathers more
than mothers, deny masturbation in their children, but note it in other
people’s children. Both parents state they never get questions on sex. In
comparison to data on the US[19], pressure for modesty rules, restrictiveness against masturbation and
against mutual sex play were significantly higher for the Puerto Rico sample (p202). Sexual
allusions towards dolls were rare (p161).
Wolf
(1952)[20]
offered an insight to three subcultures. In Manicaboa, information about sex is readily accessible, there is
no attempt to hide the facts of life from small children, and no privacy in
sexual relations. “There is however little discussion of sex and joking about
it, except for a short period among adolescent boys when they feel themselves
unobserved by adults (p414). In Barrio
Poyal, “[a] boy’s sexuality is emphasized when he is a baby; he may be teased
by having his penis pulled playfully, and is asked such questions as, “What’s
it for?” ”. Boys go nude, girls always wear panties (cf. Stycos, 1955:p45-6,
relating that mothers find nude boys look more pretty than nude girls. Boys
and girls are kept apart for every man, no matter how young, represents a
danger to women, no matter how small). “Sex play is frequent among small
children, but ceases abruptly around the age of five; sex is de-emphasized
from then on, and sexual joking and teasing of boys is discontinued. […]
Until puberty, boys […] engage in much sexual joking, often of a homosexual
nature. The girl’s sexuality is not overtly emphasized until she reaches
puberty” (p420, 421). Among the San Josémiddle-class
(p431),
“[g]irls learn at an early
age that their sexuality must be valued and hidden. […] Masturbation in girls
appears to be frequent and to go unreprimanded, but masturbation by boys is
usually noticed by the mother and stopped by scolding or by diverting their
attention. Yet women of this class often tease boys sexually up to the age of
two or three, by jocularly kissing or handling their genitals. Little girls
are rarely teased in the same way. Boys frequently have had sexual experience
with prostitutes by the time they are fifteen, while premarital relations
involving girls of the same class are extremely rare […]. Parents carefully
guard their own sex relations from their children, and many girls of this
group have no adequate sexual knowledge before they marry. Their first sexual
contact is often traumatic. Similarly, many girls have no knowledge of
menstruation before its first onset, though older sisters sometimes inform
younger sisters about it”.
According to a study by O’neill
(1990)[21], seventeen percent of male students and
17% of female students reported childhood sexual experiences that were
classified as child sexual abuse on the same age discrepancy criteria used by
Finkelhor (1979).
Padilla (1958)[22]:
“The games of girls
are different from those of boys, and this is another device used to keep
boys and girls separated. Some games, like baseball, are for boys of all
ages, but it is preferred that whatever the game, individuals attach
themselves to persons their own age for recreation and play. Hispanos who
have grown up in Eastville, however, do not generally follow these rules.
Among them are those who openly maintain that there is nothing bad about
girls and boys playing together, nor about people of different ages,
particularly adults, engaging together in games in the street. “What is bad
and dangerous”, said Gloria Pima, a woman who grew up in Eastville, “is that
children are not taught the facts of life at home”. She was commenting on why
she allows her daughters, ten and eleven, to count boys among their friends”.
“Since little girls
are expected to grow into demure and virtuous women, they are also supposed
to be innocent and ignorant of the physiological processes connected with sex
and sexual behavior. They are supposed to be feminine in the sense of being
coquettish, yet are to refrain from using their feminine charms to attract
men, unless they are addressing themselves to a suitor who has parental
approval. As she is supposed to be modest, a little girl is to have her body,
and particularly her genitals, covered. Only women—her mother, sisters, or
close friends of her mother—can bathe and change her. As an infant in her
crib, the tiny girl is covered with a small sheet or other clothing when her
diapers are removed. The genitals of the baby boy, on the other hand, are
more likely to be displayed. His chest, like that of the baby girl, may be
covered for protection against cold, but adults and older brothers and
sisters are likely to tease and play with his genitals, kissing them and
remarking on their size, commenting that he is a machito (real little male) or a machote (real he-man). A baby girl less than a year old may be
slapped on the hands if she touches her genitals, but a boy can play with his
until he is four or five. When the little girl starts to walk and to be
toilet-trained, she is told that she should not take her panties off in front
of others and that she is not to go around without them. But it is quite
usual to see a boy of three or four going about the house pantless. After
this age, however, boys are encouraged to cover up in front of strangers and
the women of the house [[23]].
They are called “fresh” and told they should be ashamed of letting women see
them in order to train them to wear pants” (p185-6) “Well before a girl is
five, she is taught that her chest is to be kept covered, for girls do not
show their bodies. A girl is not to let men or boys touch her, nor is she to
sit on their laps unless they are her father or her brothers. In turn, the
men of her family are to stop caressing and fondling her as they did when she
was a baby and starting to walk”.
Although a girl is introduced to maternal
tasks at an early age,
“[…] she is not
supposed to know about sex or even about her own physiological development.
Menstruation will take her by surprise, unless she has acquired some notions
about it from friends in school or has overheard her father or mother or
adult women at home speaking about sex. When she begins to menstruate, she
becomes señorita (virgin), and the
watch on her is intensified. While her brothers become more free as they grow
up, more restrictions are placed on the girl (for example, she can no longer
go to camp or Friendly Town once she is señorita),
for she must protect her virginity” (p188).
Alvarez (1988)[24]:
“By being closely
watched and kept away from men, daughters were externally protected from the
perils of their gender. They were left to discover for themselves, however,
the nature of their own sexuality. This left many unprepared for later sexual
encounters in their relationship: Lucila: Yo no tenía idea de nada. Para mejor decirte yo creía que las mujeres parían
por el ombligo. Y ésa es la ignorancia más grande…. I knew nothing. To be
more precise I thought that women gave birth through their belly button, and
that is truly ignorance. And how was one to open that belly button and take
the baby out? Imagine what can result from ignorance and the way one is
brought up. And God forbid that some boy should touch you, because “I’ll beat
you up”. But they wouldn’t tell you why; then you don’t know any better.
That’s why the father of my kids took me for a fool all those years. I didn’t
know any better. Imagine, he probably was saying to himself: “I brought her
from the docks untouched. With her I can do what I want because she doesn’t
know nothing from nothing”. In the process of cultural transmission, old ways
get replicated, reformulated, or transformed in the lives of individual
families. Doña Lucila and doña Eulalia employed quite divergent strategies
and approaches in the socialization of their own daughters. Lucila, for
example has learned from her own experience that a strict and repressive
family has subjected her to the perils of living in fear and ignorance. She
in turn seeks to empower her own daughters by creating a more open and
supportive family environment. She presents herself as their friend to whom
they can come fo help with any problem. She explains to them that they do have choices in life (for example,
that they don’t have to marry the first man that they meet) but that they
also have responsibilities to family and home”.
Irizarry
(1993)[25] compared adolescent reproductive behaviour of Puerto Rican women in New York and Puerto Rico. Findings from 1982 / 1985 studies “suggest that a
higher proportion of unmarried Puerto Rican teenage women in New York had had sexual intercourse than adolescents in Puerto Rico”].
In an interesting paper, Lucca and Pacheco
(1986)[26] present data on the sexological content
of bathroom wall graffiti in 10 Puerto
Ricanelementary schools, messages
and drawings presumed to be manufactured by children aged 6 to 11. “Sexual”
content categories occupied a fourth position in girls’ bathrooms (15%) and a
third position in boys’ (27%; p469).
Additional
refs.:
·
Comas-Diaz (1995)[27]
·
Fontes (1992, 1993)[28];
Asencio (1999)[29]
·
Moya, R. de (2004) La proteccion del menor frente a la obscenidad en
el Derecho puertorriqueno: Protegemos la obscenidad o salvaguardamos la
ninez? Rev Derecho Puertorriqueno
43,1:1-20
·
Villarruel (1998)[30] examined sexual norms
and attitudes of 49 Puerto
Rican and Mexican-American girls aged 10-15 year
old, together with 21 of their mothers.
·
http://www.interpol.int/Public/Children/SexualAbuse/NationalLaws/csaPortoRico.asp
Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin:
Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology
Last
revised: Dec 2004
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