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SHAVANTE(Brazil)
Maybury-Lewis (1967:p73-4)[1]: “By the time a girl is five […]
she may well be married. When she is seven, she is already being watched
carefully both by her kin and by her husband, for she will soon be considered
physically able to cohabit with a man. Accordingly, a girl of about six years
old tends to behave like a small, weak, and underdeveloped woman”. Her
husband would wait until she is “matured sufficiently”, which was estimated
as age eight to ten (p82-3, n1):
“I am uncertain as to the criteria
according to which the Shavante deem a girl to be
old enough for sexual intercourse. Girls are normally deflowered long before
their first menses and before there has been any significant development of
their breasts. It seems to depend largely on the size of the individual girl.
Her husband will sleep with her as soon as he considers her to be big enough,
which is between the ages of 8 and 10 as far I could judge”.
“One of the main objectives of the missionary
boarding schools was to physically separate Xavante
boys from girls, whose ”precocious sexuality”--girls can go through sexual
initiation as early as 8 years of age-- outraged the chaste Christians”[2].
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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