SEX AND SOCIETY: TRADITIONAL METHODS OF STUDYING SEXUALITY
The ethnographic sex researcher first is faced with the fact that most sexual behavior is conducted in private; observation is difficult, and all one can do is ask about the topic. Reo Fortune is the earliest to comment on this methodological limitation. He was forced to do so after realizing that traders in New Guinea knew more about indigenous sexual activities than he did. Recognizing the access to information that the trader had through sexual intercourse with native women, Fortune proposed I semi-fantastic “through-Trader’s-eyes methodology,” designed to discover sexual doings:
The Trader is usually entirely correct and gets to know more than the anthropologist can about such doings. He also discovers from the woman or women of his own how a Dobuan woman may teach her daughter that the way to keep a man faithful is to keep him as exhausted as possible.
By implying that the “with-the-native-living Trader,” to use Fortune’s phrase, had opportunities routinely denied to anthropologists, Fortune acquiesed to past and current ethical and scientific limitations on anthropological propriety.
With the exception of archaeologist Suggs who monitored the sexual talk of large gangs of men excavating sites in the Marquesas, basic research strategy has been simply to ask questions about sexuality, within the bounds of propriety. These bounds may be a severe obstacle in some societies, but not in others. Anthropologists seldom can check the accuracy of what they are told, and only a few will even speculate on the veracity of verbal reports. Berndt is an exception when he suspects “an element of exaggeration” in the tales of sexual conquest told by highland New Guinea men which add to their prestige in sexual matters. Likewise, Suggs is aware that in the Marquesas, “Females . . . tend to underplay the extent of their sexual activities, while men tend to exaggerate”. Such exaggeration is itself valuable data for constructing culture theory.
A related matter is the literalness of speech about sexual matters. For example, Marquesan men prefer to have intercourse with women who are not overly pregnant. They say, however, that men must do so “to make the baby strong”. We do not know if this statement is to be taken at face value, or whether it is something of a joke or hedge. Note that in comparison, Mangaian men in referring to this jokingly express fear that “baby would bite” (Marshall).
Marshall reports that his study of sexuality on Mangaia was relatively easy to investigate; people would readily talk with him about sexual matters. In contrast, Bailey felt compelled to give special thanks to the Navajo “who have shared their lives with us and permitted unusual intrusions into their privacy”. No wonder material on sexuality from Polynesia is so much richer than that available on native Americans!
The strength of the traditional anthropological approach to sexuality is best represented by Margaret Mead in her classic comparative study, Male and Female. The complexity and diversity of our own way of life and our uncritical involvement in this life style, obscures our vision and impairs our objectivity. By looking instead to the Arapesh, Balinese, and Iatmul for examples, Mead is able to make a reasonable comparison of maleness and femaleness in her own society.
In that work Mead comments on the tendency of Westerners to move away from the body itself. Closeness to the body is dangerous; one may lose control and behave irresponsibly, thereby jeopardizing decency:
The solution for the peculiar difficulties of a puritan society does not lie in a series of pin-up girls whose breasts, tailored for love, are explicitly not meant for the loving nourishment of their children. It lies rather in developing greater ease with our clothes on.
Given the erotic breast/nourishing breast alternatives, as well as other Western cultural fantasies, it is no wonder that the description of human sexuality in other cultures has been so uneven and devoid of analysis. Mead addresses several Western assumptions, such as our sexual understanding of adult nakedness, which she ascribes to many exotic peoples as a climatic adaptation and not a simple erotic custom.
Moralizing about sexuality is a widespread, indeed universal, phenomenon. For rural blacks in the South, it is something of a disgrace and a failure for a young woman not to know the paternity of her child, so that he or she later will not, unwittingly, commit incest (Dougherty). Because Ashanti men expect their brides to be virgins at marriage, women who are not have been known to put stinging ants into their vaginas just before their wedding day so as to bleed during the first sexual intercourse (Herskovits). Selby reports that rules of sexual continence for Zapotecs are not absolute; whether behavior is moral or not depends on if it violates the best interests of the kindred group, or if it can be taken as an affront to the moral order. Among the Gahuku of the New Guinea highlands, Read found that natives tended to blame all violations of sexual rules entirely on women, rather than sharing the blame with the involved men. A final example comes from central Brazil where short Mehinaku men are saddled with a moral failing. An adult male is not tall or short in stature due to genetics or diet, as we know. Rather, the Mehinaku believe that the loss of seminal fluid during a critical adolescent period weakens males and retards growth. Men suspected of having violated the rules of adolescence, including a ban on contact with women, have only themselves to blame if their adult stature is short (Gregor).
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