I'm curious, yet apparently the only one judging by the fact that no one else has asked. Aren't you?
Does anybody know of a book, website, or research studies that discuss the sexual practices of other than western cultures? What got me started on this, again, was when I read that some country just passed a law/rule that women can no longer handle a banana. If she wants to eat one, her husband must slice it for her. (I wonder: what about English cucumbers?)
So, does any one know what goes on behind closed doors in countries in which religion plays a guiding role in what is acceptable and not? How many of our western practices are actually universal and cross cultural in practice?
Do indigenous (native) cultures across the planet make love or have sex in the same ways we tend to, and if not, how are they different? What about Pacific Islanders, and other remote cultures? People in Middle East countries? African tribes? How embedded or ingrained are various religions in dictating what is acceptable and not and when?
What about male masturbation? Female masturbation? Sex for sex sake? What cultures are so male dominated that a woman's pleasure is essentially non-existent? In what cultures is "making love" not an outward expression of the love one partner has for the other?
Have modern birth control methods affected inherent cultural practices? Are their countries/cultures in which modern birth control methods are not common or available?
-doc
That banana one was hilarious to me (in that "good gravy" kind of way, not really funny). Naturally almost all the things like these laws are against women. You don't see men outlawed from holding vacuums or donuts. And good gravy, I'm sorry but what woman is immediately jumping to penis fruits and vegetables? I would think plain old fingers are way more a "threat" than bananas.
I think its weird that most "other" cultures spend their time devising ways to slow a woman down sexually, while all the "mainstream" cultures are looking for ways to drive it to the max.
As for my entry, I wish I could find the source, but it's been years since I watched it, and Google is a nightmare with the keywords "vagina sew sticks tribes".
I recall seeing a documentary where girls "of age" have their vaginas stuffed full of twigs and grasses (if I recall) and then stitched shut. It's meant to be a surprise for the new husband, and to prove her virginity by the contents. Obviously it's a health hazard, what with rotten vegetation and all.
Doc,
You need a friendly anthropologist. There are books entitled simply that: The anthropology of sex. I suspect that Amazon would yield many propitious titles.
Margaret Mead's early work included work on the sexual practices of whichever Pacific Islanders she was studying. Although that has been discredited by other crics, her work, alone, spawned much research on sex practices. Some anthropologists will claim that the sexual practices of many isolated cultures were well documented before Kinsey did his thing in the 1940s.
A book that I have used extensively is the "The Medical History of Contraception" by Himes. It was originally published in the 1930s and updated in the 1970s. Not specifically addressing sex practices, it is a difficult subject without some allusion to practices.
Sex at Dawn, Dancing Doc, not only for the book itself but also for its bibliography.
dlb, your allusion to slicing the bottom of the penis appears in Himes book suggested above. After two children, the man, using a clam shell or some such, slices the urethra from the bottom leaving the ejaculate and, yes, urine, exiting the base of the penis rather than the tip. Himes documents this as a contraceptive technique. Another tribe on the continent of Africa opposite the island of Madagascar, has an interesting menstrual ritual for men: Whilst the woman is menstruating, the man uses crab claws to puncture the head of his penis so that he, too menstruates. Also given as a contraceptive technique as it no doubt reduces frequency of "exposure" for the woman.
An interesting ttopic, doc.
I remember from my Human Sexuality course, sophomore year of college, the textbook mentioned cultures in which men cut a hole through the bottom side of their penes so that urine and semen come out there rather than the end, in which men make incisions around the penile shaft and insert small stones and after the wound has healed the resulting ridged penis is believed to be more pleasureful for the female partner, and another culture in which prepubescent girls are taught to sit crosslegged and stimulate their clitorises with the heel of the foot. I wosh I still had that book or could remember where these places are.
The Canela tribe of the Brazilian savannah have the following practices:
Sexual relations begin for girls between the ages of 10 and 13, and for boys between 12
and 14, that is, usually as young as possible. A lad is initiated into sexual relations by an
experienced woman in her late teens; formerly, he was then ordered by his “grandfathers” to have
sex only with older women in their forties and fifties for several years.
Until the birth of a child, young couples did not live in the same house. Although they
were “married,” young people were supposed to have sexual relations only very infrequently with
persons of their own generation (including their spouses). Thus, a young man would only
occasionally cohabit with his wife, and then usually just at night, on a platform bed raised high
under the rafters for this purpose in her house. He returned to the
plaza before the early morning dance (at 2 to 3 AM). Nevertheless, the Canela do call these
liaisons “marriages.” During this early childless stage, before the girl has given a whole deer to
her mother-in-law and had her ceremonial belt and body painted red with urucu (Bixa orellana)
in return, the public aspects of her extramarital activities are restricted. After the belt-painting ceremony, however, which amounts to her husband’s family’s
more complete acceptance of her, she is expected to be assigned as a girl associate to accompany male groups for the purposes of group sex. Read more about them here.
http://anthropology.si.edu/canela/literature/marrriage.pdf
This from the Kinsey Institute about sexual practices in Papua/New Guinea
[url=http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/ccies/pg.php]CCIES at The Kinsey Institute: Papua New Guinea
This is about initiation rites of males in the Papuan tribe of the Sambia
[url=http://lrivera0327.tripod.com/]The Sambia Tribe
This compares black ann white culture in South Africa from a sexological point of view.
[url=http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/southafrica.html]The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality: South Africa
and you might find these interesting.
[url=http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/PAP_MAC.HTM]Humboldt-Uni... zu Berlin
[url=http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2008/04/strange-sex-stories-from-the-mus... Sex Stories from the Muslim World :: Daniel Pipes
The Marquesas Islands! That is where Mead did her seminal work. Came to me in the tub last night.
[QUOTE=Brandye;276464]The Marquesas Islands! That is where Mead did her seminal work. Came to me in the tub last night.[/QUOTE]
I do some of my most brilliant thinking in the tub.
Anthropology searched came up, eReader Library, with some 1575 titles covering various aspects of the subject.
@dlb
In Brazil and Argentina as well as Uruguay a well formed woman's ass mostly younger is worshipped as the as much as a cleavage and it is always an honour for a man to do it. So the tangas very skimpy G strings bikinis were born and women use it a lot without any fear or the authorities to clamp down on them wearing these two pieces Well not exactly they fit into a matchbox LOL!
Papua is large island just north of us split between and independet state and Indoneasia's West Papua both share the same people but there are hundreds of tribes scattered throughout the mountain and steep jungle terrain many tribes are almost cut off from civilization by rivers and jungle so I am not surprised of exclusive sexual practices by some tribes but there are very small sample compared to their country's number of tribes each with different sexual customs.
[QUOTE]Girls are taught to sit crosslegged and stimulate their clitorises with the heel of the foot.[/QUOTE]
This is called "siddhasana", and is a tantric yoga practice:
"This practice, called "siddhasana," which is sitting with the heel under the perineum to provide gentle, steady preorgasmic sexual stimulation during sitting meditation practices. The effect of this over time is to cultivate spiritually ecstatic energies throughout our nervous system, which is a prerequisite for the union of our divine inner polarities, leading to the final stage of enlightenment."
By the way--it works, this is one of the main techniques by which tantric yoginis (women adept in tantra) are trained.