Anth 165 pt 3

Abusharaf's point

- "mothers who bring their daughters for the operation believe that they are doing the right...

Global Women's Rights Movement

- 1979 WHO addresses female genital cutting - 1994 Cairo International Population Conference - Alternative initiation rituals -- Tradition can be reinvented - Employment for midwives -- Alternative ways for midwives and traditional healers to make a living - Health Education -- inform village elders, women and men

Body modifications: US and Europe

- 19th century US and Europe doctors performed clitoridectomies on women as a supposed cure for masturbation, nymphomania and psychological problems - Women undergo painful and potentially dangerous medical procedures: face lifts breast implants to conform to social norms about beauty

Unmasking Tradition: by Rogaia Abusharaf

- 200 million plus young girls undergo some form of genital cutting (WHO 2016) - Girls between ages 4-12 years undergo this practice

Sambian Population

- 6 clusters of population groups - subgroups (phratries similar to lineages) -- common ancestor, rituals and geographic origin - Intermarriage, joint rituals, warfare -- Warfare leads to fragmentation of groups White

Types of female Genital Cuttings

- 90% of female genital mutilation cases include clitoridectomy, excision, "nicking" without flesh removed - In West-Africa (Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, etc.) the tendency is to remove flesh (clitoriectomy and/or excision) without sewing the labia minora and/or majora together - 10% (over 8 million women) have infibulation (open it up and sow it back together) - Infibulation is the most severe form - Infibulation is mostly practiced in the north-eastern region of Africa: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan.

Marriage and Homoerotic play

- All marriages are exogamous with clans - Sexual contact is only permitted between unrelated kin - Homoerotic contact (fellatio) is forbidden between clansmen - No sexual contact between a boy and his ritual sponsor

Sambian Sexual Culture Aspects

- Brings up a unique feature practiced by Sambians of Papua New Guinea (rite of passage for boys) - Turning boys into adult men and warriors - Thru a process known as semen exchange - Semen-symbolic source of male power, authority and patriarchy - Exchange tied to wider meanings: the environment, ancestors, and social ties among groups

Modern Sambian Masculinity

- Contact with the outside world led to social identities - New models of marriage (love) and sexuality - Out-migration of men to coastal area plantations - Gender roles are now an issue of transition between tradition and citizenship

Early Period of Male Circumcision

- Egyptian bas reliefs (2300 BCE) -Ancient Jews institutionalized it after Exodus from Egypt as a mark of the tribe - 700s CE Islam accepts male circumcision but does not have Quranic mandate - Male circumcision 1800s in the US - Male circumcision among Jews and Muslims has religious meaning

James DeMeo's points

- Genital mutilations about anxieties around sexuality and pleasure - Control of the sexual lives of children and females - Adults, who have undergone circumcision, are afraid of uncut genitalia in children - it's sadostoc. andit has unconscious motivations of destroying the capacity for pleasurable sex lives

Sambian Belief system: girls and boys

- Girls develop fast due to menstual blood - womb blood and maternal care prevent boys from maturing - boys need the aid of older men to mature - boys need ritual inseminations and magical treatments to become strong, manly men

Delayed Exchange (Several years Later)

- Group A returns a Girl to group B - Girl from Group A made maby with semen from men from Group B and A via semen echanges via boy initiation rituals - Therefore, Group A and B are tied together via semen - Creates social and kinship ties that create a bond that prevents warfare for several years among the Sambians - baby goes back to family that gave the daughter

Results of delayed exchange

- Marriage turns enemies into kin, allies - Exchange of wome nhelps to reproduce the gorups - women and semen are circulating objects reating bonds among warring tribes - Procure women, semen exchanges, and help boys grow into warriors

Seventh Day Adventists

- Opened Lutheran schools for Sambians - Masculinity could no longer be produced through warfare an hunting - Femininity got a status boost from education = "Fish and rice" message of western food won sambians over - Shamans (witch doctors) shamed and replaced by western medicine

Sambians today

- Papa New Guinea gained independence in 1975 - Globalization, Christianity, and modernization (7th day adventists) - Banned boy initiation, eating possum, polygyny, dancing, smoking, chewing betel nut, new dress codes - Sambians gave up ancestral naems for western/christian name (Danny) - Recurited Sambians to work in the lumber mills and trade stores - Western goods in trade stores undermined the local subsistence exonomy and led to coffee plantations

Power among Sambians

- Power resides with men; authority figures - Women are inferior; wives ares stigmatized - women pollute and weaken men - Sexual intercourse leads to loss of valuable male energy (Semen) - Sexual contact is highly regulated

Semen Value in Social Transactions

- Semen is a cosmology of the sambians - ancestors are buried on land that feeds Pandanus trees - Sap from Pandanus trees helps Sambian men create semen - Sambian men give semen to young boys to help them become warriors/adult men - boys as adults give semen to their wives to create babies Semen is a highly valued means to social ends - personal strength, marriage, offspring, personhood, group ties between warring factions

Conclusions about semen in Sambia

- Semen turns men into warriors - Seme acts as a social bond between hostile bands of Sambians • Thru semen exchange, non-kin men become related thru the exchange of women and semen • Their descendants share semen and blood • Semen is symbolic of a patriarchal warrior social order

Female Genital Cutting Beliefs and Social Reasons

- Sexual control of women by men - Coming of age ritual in many cultures; group membership - contact with clitoris will kill baby during childbirth - Left uncut the clitoris will grow into a penis-like organ - vaginal fluids are lethal to sperm - Cleanliness, chastity, fertility - Enhances the beauty of the female body - Un-cut girls face ostracism; cannot get married

Socially Sanctioned Sexual Contact

- Sexual relations distinguish between kin and non-kin; friends and enemies - No sexual contact with kin - Semen ties these social relation together

Social Life of Sambians

- Small hamlets atop high ridges for defense - Patrilocal residence, patrilineal descent -- men inherit father's land - Tribal elders decide marriage -- MArriage is infant betrothal or sister exchange - Families (both nuclear and polygynous) -- Live in small separate huts - All hamlets have a men's house where boy's older than 7 years reside White Slide

Six stages of Male initiation attaining manhood and the role of semen

- Stage 1: 7-10 yo - Stage 2: 11-13 yo - Stage 3: Bachelorhood puberty rites, 14-16 yo (become warriors) - Stage 5: wife has her menarche; genital intercourse begins - Stage 6: when she gives birth to a child; man attains full manhood

Genital Modifications

- deeply embedded in gender - female genital modifications control of female sexuality and children's sexuality - Male subincision -- practiced among some groups in Oceania -- Slitting the underside of the penis straight through the urethra - Introcision, a form of vaginal enlargement practiced by some Australian Aborigines

Geography of Genital Mutilations: James Demeo

- is very insistent on calling it mutilations - Origins in Northeast Africa and Near East - Subsequent diffusion into sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania and the New World - Spread thru relocation, conquest, adoption

Reasons for Genital Cuttings

- some forms of subincision and superincision make male and female genitals less distinct - Cutting the penis to make it look like a vagina and to make it bleed (like a woman's vagina) - Removal of clitoris to make female and make genitalia distinct and crate greater separation between the sexes - Genital cutting as a rite of passage promotes social conformity and group membership

Sambian Sexual Culture

Book by Gilbert Herdt

US context

Circumcision gained in importance in the US only after allopathic medical doctors urged it as a "cure" for a long list of childhood diseases and "disorders" to include polio, tuberculosis bed-wetting, and a new syndrome called "masturbatory insanity"

Semen Exchange

Direct - Ingesting semen/fellatio - Genital Intercourse Indirect - Breast Milk - Sap of pandanus tree

Gender roles among Sambians

Male/Female roles and physical spaces strictly defined Women: - gardening., taro and sweet potatoes - raising children Men: - Hunting - Possum, cassowary, bird, eels White slide

Sexual Culture

Relationship between sexuality and meaning at a fundamental level - Marriage, sexual partnerships, parenting, childhood socializations, and their exceptions The sexual is one of many overlapping domains of shared meanings - Kinship, politics, religion, and economy Social and the sexual are indivisible - Study has to encompass all aspects of society - Holistic approach Studies Sambian society through sexual behavior - Unique sexual culture - The role of semen in creating men and social bonds

Cultural values of Semen

Sambian animate body fluid with agency and magical powers Growth - Semen, breast milk, pandanus nut Strength - Semen masculinizes men; facial hair, muscles, penis, physical prowess Spiritual Transmissions - Soul (kogu) and thought (konu)

Spirit Familiars and Semen

Spirituality - Both natural and supernatural elements - Spirit familiars (ancestors) are transmitted thru sexual intercourse - Boys get their father's familiars; girls get their mother's - Rituals endow a child with other spirit familiars (shamanism) in later life

Cultural Ideas of Semen

Two meanings of value - semen endows boys with power/manliness - scarce commodity - reciprocity (older man, donor, and younger man, recipient) Erotic Play - Non-genital Procreation - Genital to genital intercourse

Gilbert Herdt

a cultural and psychological anthropologist - professor of sexuality studies at San Francisco State University - Source: Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, Berkely, University of California, 1984. - Boy-insemination has been banned among the Sambians

Aims of the Sambian Semen article

to find out the different meanings around sexuality among the Sambians, specifically boy insemination - How is the student of human society and history to go about describing a phenomenon, such as sexual culture? - description and analysis of the phenomenon

Delayed Exchange: what do groups A and B exchange

when the exchange of semen and the results of that (turning boys into men) leads to making babies - group A gets a woman who is maker of babies - Group B gets food gifts and promise of a return woman - Boys of Group A get semen from bachelors of group B and vice versa - Boys of both group get ritual sponsors from each/other's groups - both groups exchange sexual knowlege and semen

Sexual Culture something

• Between married men and women • Between older men and younger boys Secret homoerotic fellatio • Six stages of initiations • Young boys (fellaters) perform "oral sex" on older boys (fellated) • 3rd stage, adolescent boys are fellated by new initiates • An older man forbidden to perform oral sex on a younger boy; older man cannot ingest semen of a younger boy