EDUCATION, EXPLOITATION AND CULTURAL SYSTEMS

The amount and quality of sex education for children varies widely from society to society. At one extreme we find Dahomean girls who, under the supervision of instructresses, learn the “language of love” or “adultery,” and later, the eleven positions of sexual intercourse (Herskovits). The Irish girls of Inis Beag, who are unprepared for and traumatized by their first menstrual period, occupy a place near the opposite extreme (Messenger).

Programs of formal or informal instruction are one measure of children’s and adolescents’ sexual knowledge. They also indicate the didactic and emotional relationship between generations and the relationship adults have to their own sexuality. Reports such as Schapera’s for the Kgatla that “from an early age children are familiar with the nature of copulation” suggest that these adults have a relaxed and direct relationship to their own sexuality. Wagley saw Tapirape boys and girls imitating or “playing” at copulation in full view of adults who made no move to stop the children or reprimand them.

Trukese men’s transition from adolescence to a fully adult male marital role is eased by legitimate sexual outlets (Goodenough). A man can sleep with his wife’s sister or his brother’s wife. Goodenough implies that men later in life are in fact faithful, but he does not demonstrate this. On the contrary, Goodenough found Trukese men’s interests in sex “surprisingly like those of American adolescents, or of men working in lumber camps, or in the Army, or in other places where women are relatively unavailable . . . Indeed, what might be called adolescent behavior in this respect lasts in the case of men into the late twenties and early thirties” Goodenough comes close to suggesting that Trukese men do not achieve a mature sexuality until relatively late in life, a suggestion that many other ethnographers might have wanted to make about other peoples but do not.

What is it that children, adolescents, and even adults are learning? Although explicit sexual “technique” is taught in some societies, everywhere people learn about relations, definitions, and contexts. Although Dahomean girls learn sexual technique, apparently in much detail, the girls of Inis Beag, caught by the surprise of their first menstruation, learn of the inherent weakness and imperfection of their own bodies. Adults could hardly provide a better lesson for these girls through formal instruction.

Mead has addressed the “educational” dimension of sexual knowledge in Samoa. She laments that Samoan boys and girls do not interact with each other sufficiently “to give boys or girls the real appreciation of personality in members of the opposite sex”. Mead recognizes that the Samoans’ emphasis on sexual technique is advanced at the expense of a regard for relationships. For Samoans, “sex is an end in itself, rather than a means, something which is valued in itself, and deprecated inasmuch as it tends to bind one individual to another”. Samoans do not reserve sexuality for important relationships that produce sexual satisfaction. Perhaps it is correct to say that Samoans reserve sexuality for important occasions, rather than for important relationships and that Samoans do not tend to value or especially appreciate relationships that produce sexual satisfaction. Apparently Samoans enjoy sex, but not the relationships in which sexuality is experienced, a finding which troubles Mead.

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