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RAMCOCRAMECRA TIMBIRA (Brazil)
Nimuendajú (1946:p120-1)[1] stated that “some mothers try to
accelerate the development of breasts by dealing with a daughter a few light
taps against the nipples with their finger joints- usaully
in the morning on waking up. Girls also practise this custom themselves. I
once observed a ten-year-old girl who for this reason wore a broad grass
strip tied tightly across the chest, with a little disk of charcoal over each
nipple and under the grass strip”. On sexual life: “Nowadays only a minority
of girls attain puberty as virgins. De facto most of them are already married
at twelve or have had extramarital relations”. “Like their Apinayé cousins, the Ramkokamerkra
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 few exceptions are actually deflowered before their
first menses, but for the Ramkokamerkra it is
utterly inconceivable […]. 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”.
Lowie (1946:p499)[2] agrees: “The Timbira
and Pau d’Arco
oddly believe that menstruation is impossible for a virgin, but among the Apinayé most girls are actually married before puberty”.
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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