Homosexuality?

World’s heaviest man (1230 lbs.), confined
to his bed for six years, loses 560 lbs. and
is married from his special bed to girlfriend.

Bubblehead, you are soooo… weird. First of all, there is nothing unreasonable about my belief that Bush/Cheney are either stupid or evil or both. They are known war criminals, guilty of multiple war crimes, including attacking a country that was not a threat to us (the premier war crime), war profiteering, using banned weapons, killing innocent civilians, including many children, hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, renditions, and worst of all, torture. These are not merely my opinions, they are widely shared by a great many people who believe Bush/Cheney should be both impeached and tried in court for the horrors they have wrought. And this says nothing about their blatant violations of our constitution such as abolishing habeas corpus, illegal spying on American citizens, and so forth. So, yes, it is true that Bush/Cheney have made me believe they are stupid and evil. There is nothing circular about it. If you wish to defend such people I guess that is your prerogative (although I confess I cannot understand it), but don’t accuse me of being illogical.

I am so sick of hearing about politics I think I may be losing it. When I heard the latest accusation today from some right-wing lunatic, that Barack Obama is really a love child of Malcolm X, I decided it probably couldn’t get much worse so I turned off the TV and decided to think about other things. This led me to this brief discussion of homosexuality. If you don’t like hearing about homosexuality or are particularly squeamish I suggest you stop reading right here.

Homosexuality?

This is a question that has been in my mind off and on for quite some time, but as I have not been active in anthropology also for some time, I am perhaps not conversant enough with these issues to speak in any detail about any recent developments. Here I will present only a rough general outline of what I think about so-called “ritual homosexuality,” usually associated with “male cults.”

In parts of the New Guinea Highlands there were groups of people that practiced what is often called ritual homosexuality, that was part of male cult behavior. Young boys were taught and encouraged to practice fellatio on the older youths. As they became youths in turn they were fellated by the next generation of younger boys. Once a youth was considered an adult, certainly by the time of his marriage, he no longer engaged in this kind of activity at all. Indeed, for an adult male to have continued this he would have become the subject of much laughter and disdain. Thus, after a few years of being engaged in homosexual acts, a man became and remained entirely heterosexual. There were few, if any, exceptions.

Further south, especially on the northern coast of the Papuan Gulf, there were homosexual practices that utilized anal intercourse. Here, part of the initiation rites involved sodomizing the initiates. The men and boys involved in these rites were not otherwise homosexual. The men were married men who cohabited exclusively with their wives or, at least, with women, and not with other males.

In neither of these cases was there any indication that males were naturally attracted sexually to other males. That is, they were not born homosexuals, but engaged in these homosexual acts for other reasons, and only on certain specific occasions. It is possible to argue that these practices in some sense were not basically sexual at all. The males involved were subject to strong cultural prescriptions that demanded they participate in these (to us) rather strange and even outrageous customs. There is some evidence that, especially in the Highlands, many of the youths sometimes actively resisted being made to participate, and, on the coast, the initiates did not regard the practice as in any way enjoyable..

So, how does one explain this behavior? It has to do primarily with cultural beliefs about the nature of semen and its critical use for fertility. That is, the youths were believed not to grow and mature properly unless they ingested semen. Semen was the most powerful life force, the function of which was to promote healthy growth and fertility in general (of the gardens, the females, and etc.), as well as for the youth men. Semen was not only ingested, but was also often rubbed over young people and sometimes cooked in their food. It was regarded as the most powerful life force. Sometimes, in Papua, a woman, especially a newly married woman, would be forced to have sex with multiple men of the group and semen for ritual purposes would be acquired in this way. Women, like the boys, did not enjoy this practice but were told it was for the good of the community, etc.

These practices pose some obvious questions about the nature, practice, and definition of homosexuality. Here you find what are obvious homosexual acts, but homosexual acts performed by those who are essentially non-homosexuals. The men and boys who participate are not born homosexuals, they have no sexual attraction to other males, and in spite of being introduced to homosexuality, do not continue to engage in it. If this is so, and as far as I can determine it is so, can this truly even be considered homosexuality? In its most fundamental sense it is a part of religious ritual that just happens to employ this idiom in the service of transmitting the most vital life force from generation to generation and for the well-being and fertility of all.

LKBIQ:
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
TILT:
Switching from contact lenses, after many years of wearing them, to ordinary glasses, is quite uncomfortable.