Cultural Anthropology SSC-327

Fertility Control

People in all cultures since prehistory have had ways of influencing fertility, including ways to increase it, reduce it, and regulate birth spacing. Some ways are direct, such as using herbs or medicines that induce abortion. Others are indirect, such as long periods of breastfeeding, which reduce the chances of conception.

INDIGENOUS METHODS  Hundreds of direct indigenous fertility control methods are available cross-culturally (Newman 1972, 1985).

Research in Afghanistan during the 1980s found over 500 fertility-regulating techniques in just one region (Hunte 1985). In Afghanistan, as in most nonindustrial cultures, it is women who possess this information. Specialists, such as midwives or herbalists, provide further expertise. Of the total number of methods in the Afghanistan study, 72 percent were for increasing fertility, 22 percent were contraceptives, and six percent were used to induce abortion. Most methods involve plant and animal substances. Herbs are made into tea and taken orally. Some substances are formed into pills, some are steamed and inhaled as vapors, some are vaginally inserted, and others are rubbed on the woman’s stomach.

INDUCED ABORTION  A review of 400 societies found that induced abortion was practiced in virtually all of them (Devereaux 1976). Cross-culturally, attitudes toward induced abortion range from absolute acceptability to conditional approval (abortion is acceptable but only under specified conditions), tolerance (abortion is regarded with neither approval nor disapproval), and opposition and punishment for offenders. Methods of inducing abortion include hitting the abdomen, starving oneself, taking drugs, jumping from high places, jumping up and down, lifting heavy objects, and doing hard work. Some methods clearly are dangerous to the pregnant woman. In Afghanistan, a midwife inserts an object such as a wooden spoon or stick treated with copper sulfate into the pregnant woman to cause vaginal bleeding and eventual abortion of the fetus (Hunte 1985).

The reasons women seek to induce abortion are usually related to economic and social factors. Pastoralist women, for example, frequently carry heavy loads, sometimes for long distances. This lifestyle does not allow women to care for many small children at one time. Poverty is another frequent motivation. A woman who is faced with a pregnancy in the context of limited resources may find abortion preferable to bearing a child who cannot be fed. Culturally defined “legitimacy” of a pregnancy and social penalties for bearing an illegitimate child provide long-standing motivations for abortion, especially in Western societies.

Some governments regulate access to abortion, either promoting it or forbidding it. Since the late 1980s, China has pursued a rigorous campaign to limit population growth (Greenhalgh 2008). Its One-Child-per-Couple Policy, announced in 1978, restricted most families to having only one child. The policy involved strict surveillance of pregnancies, strong group disapproval directed toward women pregnant for the second time or more, and forced abortions and sterilizations. In 2014, the Chinese government loosened its policy and said that a couple could apply to have a second child if the mother or father was an only child (Levin 2014). Religion and abortion are often related, but there is no simple relationship between what a particular religion teaches about abortion and what people actually do. Catholicism forbids abortion, but thousands of Catholic women have sought abortions throughout the world. Predominantly Catholic countries have laws making induced abortion illegal. This is the case in Brazil where, in spite of Catholic beliefs and the law, many women, especially poor women, resort to abortion. In one impoverished shantytown in the city of Recife in the northeast, one-third of the women said that they had aborted at least once (Gregg 2003). Illegal abortions are more likely to have detrimental effects on women’s health than safe, legal abortion services. Several local studies conducted in the northeastern part of Brazil, the country’s poorest region, report high percentages, up to one-fourth, of maternal deaths due to complications from illegal abortion (McCallum 2005).

Islamic teachings forbid abortion. Abortion of female fetuses is nonetheless practiced covertly in Pakistan and by Muslims in India. Hinduism teaches ahimsa, or nonviolence toward other living beings, including a fetus whose movements have been felt by the mother. Thousands of Hindus, however, seek abortions every year. In contrast, Buddhism provides no overt rulings against abortion. Japanese Buddhism teaches that all life is fluid and that an aborted fetus is simply “returned” to a watery world of unshaped life and may later come back (LaFleur 1992). This belief is compatible with people’s frequent use of induced abortion as a form of birth control in Japan.

In Japan, people regularly visit and decorate mizuko, small statues in memory of their “returned” fetuses.

THE NEW REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES  Since the early 1980s, new forms of reproductive technology, or methods that seek to bypass biology to offer options for childbearing to infertile couples, have emerged and are now available in many places around the world.

In vitro fertilization (IVF), in which egg cells are fertilized outside the womb, is highly sought after by many couples in Western countries, especially middle- and upper-class couples, among whom infertility is high. It is also available in many cities worldwide (Inhorn 2003). As IVF spreads globally, people interpret it within their own cultural frameworks. A study of male infertility in two Middle Eastern cities—Cairo in Egypt and Beirut in Lebanon—reveals the close connection between masculine identity and fertility (Inhorn 2004). While married couples want to have children, if the husband is infertile, IVF is not a clear option. In these cities, infertile men face social stigma and feelings of deep inadequacy. In addition, third-party donation of sperm is not acceptable according to Islam. These couples are trying to balance their desire for children with Muslim values.

Infanticide

Infanticide , or the killing of an infant or child, is widely practiced cross-culturally, although it is rarely a frequent or common practice. Infanticide takes two major forms: direct infanticide and indirect infanticide (Harris 1977). Direct infanticide is the death of an infant or child resulting from actions such as beating, smothering, poisoning, and drowning. Indirect infanticide, a more subtle process, may involve prolonged practices such as food deprivation, failure to take a sick infant to a clinic, and failure to provide warm clothing in winter.

The most frequent motive for direct infanticide reported cross-culturally is that the infant was “deformed” or very ill (Scrimshaw 1984). Other motives for infanticide include the infant’s sex, an adulterous conception, an unwed mother, the birth of twins, and too many children in the family. A study of 148 cases of infanticide in contemporary Canada found that the mothers convicted of killing their offspring were relatively young and lacked financial and family resources to help them (Daly and Wilson 1984).

A study by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, carried out among the urban poor of northeastern Brazil, found that indirect infanticide in the late twentieth century was related to extreme poverty (Scheper-Hughes 1992). From the 1960s through the 1990s, Brazil experienced what Scheper-Hughes calls the modernization of mortality. In Brazil, the modernization of mortality means that infant and child mortality is class-based, mirroring a deep division in entitlements between the rich and the poor. Economic growth in Brazil in the latter part of the twentieth century brought rising standards of living for many, and the infant mortality rate (deaths of children under the age of one year per 1,000 births) declined dramatically. This decline, however, was unevenly distributed with high infant death rates concentrated among the poorest social classes of society. When Scheper-Hughes did fieldwork in the later twentieth century, poverty forced mothers to selectively, and unconsciously, neglect babies who seem sickly or weak, sending them to heaven as “angel babies” rather than struggling to keep them alive. People’s religious beliefs, a form of Catholicism, provided psychological support for indirect infanticide by allowing mothers to believe that their dead babies went safely to heaven. In an update to her earlier research, Scheper-Hughes reports that young women in her fieldwork area now, in the early twenty-first century, give birth to only three babies, and most of them survive. A major factor creating this change is government-provided health services. Unfortunately, while the infants now have a better chance of surviving, as adolescents they face new challenges of drug-related gang violence (2012).

A mother and her malnourished son in Bom Jesus, a shantytown in northeastern Brazil. Nancy Scheper-Hughes first lived as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bom Jesus in the 1960s and then returned to do fieldwork in the 1980s. At that time, extreme poverty meant that mothers could not provide good food for their children, and they had to deal psychologically with frequent child death. Now, children in northeast Brazil are more likely to survive, but adolescent boys especially experience high mortality because of drugs and violence.

1. Have you studied bonding theory in a psychology class? What did you learn?

Personality and the Life Cycle

1. 4.3 Identify how culture shapes personality over the life cycle.

Personality  is an individual’s patterned and characteristic way of behaving, thinking, and feeling. Cultural anthropologists think that personality is formed largely through enculturation (also called socialization), or the learning of culture through both informal and formal processes. They study how various cultures enculturate their members into having different personalities and identities. Cultural anthropologists also investigate how personalities vary according to cultural context, and some ask why such variations exist. Others study how changing cultural contexts affect personality, identity, and well-being over the life cycle.

Birth, Infancy, and Childhood

This section first considers the cultural context of birth itself. It then discusses cultural variations in infant care and how they may shape personality and identity. Last, it deals with the topic of gender identity formation in infancy.

THE BIRTH CONTEXT  The cultural context of birth affects an infant’s psychological development. Brigitte Jordan (1983), a pioneer in the cross-cultural study of birth, conducted comparative research on birth practices in Mexico, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States. She studied the birth setting, including its location and who is present, the types of attendants and their roles, the birth event, and the postpartum period. Among Maya women in Mexico, the midwife is called in during the early stages of labor. One of her tasks is to give a massage to the mother-to-be. She also provides psychological support by telling stories, often about other women’s birthing experiences. The husband is expected to be present during the labor so that he can see “how a woman suffers.” The woman’s mother should be present, too, along with other female kin, such as her mother-in-law, godmother, sisters, and friends. Thus, a Maya mother is surrounded by a large group of supportive people.

In the United States, hospital births are typical. Some critics argue that the hospital-based system of highly regulated birth is extremely technocratic and too managed, alienating the mother—as well as other members of the family and the wider community—from the birthing process and the infant (Davis-Floyd 1992). This critique has prompted a consideration of how to improve the way birth is conducted in the United States.

BONDING  Many contemporary Western psychological theorists say that parent–infant contact and bonding at the time of birth is crucial for setting in motion parental attachment to the infant. Western specialists say that if bonding is not established at the time of the infant’s birth, the infant will not develop later. Explanations for juvenile delinquency or other unfavorable child-development problems often include references to a lack of proper infant bonding at birth.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1992) questions Western bonding theory on the basis of her research in northeastern Brazil from the 1960s through the 1990s. She argues that bonding does not necessarily have to occur at birth to be successful. Her observations reveal that many low-income mothers at the time did not exhibit bonding with their infants at birth. Instead, bonding occurred later, if the child survived infancy, and when the child was several years old and clearly likely to survive. Scheper-Hughes proposes that this pattern of later bonding is related to the high rate of infant mortality among poor people of northeast Brazil at the time. She suggested that, if women were to develop strong bonds with their newborn infants, the mothers would suffer untold amounts of grief. Thus, Western bonding is adaptive in low-mortality, low-fertility societies in which strong maternal attachment is reasonable because infants are likely to survive. Close bonding would be disastrous for mothers in contexts where infant and child mortality rates are high.

The Western medical model of birth contrasts sharply with non-Western practices. Sometimes they come into direct conflict. In such situations, anthropological expertise can mediate the conflict by providing what medical specialists now refer to as  cultural competence , or awareness of and respect for, among Western-trained professionals, beliefs and practices that differ from those of Western medical practice (Gálvez 2011).

GENDER IN INFANCY  Anthropologists distinguish between sex and gender (see Chapter 1). Sex is something that everyone is born with. In the view of Western science, it has three biological markers: genitals, hormones, and chromosomes. A male has a penis, more androgens than estrogens, and the XY chromosome. A female has a vagina, more estrogens than androgens, and the XX chromosome. Increasingly, scientists are finding that these two categories are not airtight. In all populations, up to 10 percent of people are born with indeterminate genitals, similar proportions of androgens and estrogens, and chromosomes with more complex distributions than simply XX and XY.

Gender, in contrast, is a cultural construction and is highly variable across cultures (Miller 1993). In the view of most cultural anthropologists, a high degree of human “plasticity” (or personality flexibility) allows for substantial variation in personality and behavior. More biologically inclined anthropologists, however, continue to insist that many sex-linked personality characteristics are inborn.

Proving the existence of innate (inborn) gender characteristics is made difficult by two factors. First, it is impossible to collect data on infants before they are subject to cultural treatment. Culture may begin to shape infants even in the womb, through exposure to sound and motion, but current scientific data on the cultural effects on the prenatal stage are slim. Once birth takes place, culture shapes infants in many ways, including how people handle and interact with them. There is thus no such thing as a “natural” infant.

Second, it is difficult, if not impossible, to study and interpret the behavior of infants to try to ascertain what is “natural” and what is “cultural” without introducing biases from the observers. Studies of infants have focused on assessing the potential innateness of three major Euro-American personality stereotypes (Frieze et al. 1978:73–78):

· That infant males are more aggressive than infant females

· That infant females are more social than infant males

· That infant males are more independent than infant females

What is the evidence? Studies conducted in the United States indicate that boy babies cry more than girl babies, and that some people accept this difference as evidence of higher levels of inborn aggression in males. An alternative interpretation is that baby boys, on average, tend to weigh more than girls at birth. They therefore are more likely to have a difficult delivery from which it takes time to recover. So they cry more, but not because of aggressiveness. In terms of sociability, baby girls smile more often than boys, and some researchers claim that this difference confirms innate personality characteristics. But culture, not nature, may be the explanation because American caretakers smile more at baby girls than they smile at baby boys. Thus, the more frequent smiling of girls is likely to be a learned behavior. In terms of independence or dependence, studies thus far reveal no clear differences in how upset baby boys and girls are when separated from their caretakers. Taken as a whole, studies seeking to document innate differences between girls and boys are not convincing.

Cultural anthropologists who take a constructionist view make two further points. They note that, if gender differences are innate, it is odd that cultures go to so much trouble to enculturate offspring into a particular gender. Also, if gender differences are innate, then they should be the same throughout history and across all cultures, which they clearly are not. The following material explores cross-cultural cases of how culture constructs gender, beginning with childhood.

Socialization during Childhood

The Six Cultures Study, mentioned in Chapter 3, was designed to provide cross-cultural data on how children’s activities and tasks shape their personalities (Whiting and Whiting 1975). Researchers used similar methods at six sites (Figure 4.4), observing children between the ages of 3 and 11 years. They recorded the children’s behavior, such as caring for and being supportive of other children; hitting other children; and performing tasks such as child care, cooking, and errands. The data collected were analyzed in terms of two major personality types: nurturant-responsible and dependent-dominant. A nurturant-responsible personality is characterized by caring and sharing acts toward other children. The dependent-dominant personality involves fewer acts of caregiving, more acts that assert dominance over other children, and more need for care by adults.

Of the six cultures, the Gusii children of southwestern Kenya had the highest frequency of a nurturant-responsible personality type. They were responsible for the widest range of tasks and at earlier ages than children in any other culture in the study, often performing tasks that an Orchard Town, United States, mother does. Although some children in all six cultures took care of other children, Gusii children (both boys and girls) spent the most time doing so. They began taking on this responsibility at a very young age, between five and eight years old.

In contrast, Orchard Town children had the highest frequency of the dependent-dominant personality type. The differences correlate with the mode of livelihood. In the research sites in Kenya, Mexico, and the Philippines, all reliant on horticulture, children were more nurturant-responsible. Livelihood in the sites in Japan, India, and the United States was based on either intensive agriculture or industry.

How do these different modes of livelihood influence child personality? The key underlying factor is women’s work roles. In the horticultural societies, women are an important part of the labor force and spend much time working outside the home. Their children take on many family-supportive tasks and thereby develop personalities that are nurturant-responsible. When women are mainly occupied in the home, as in the second group of cultures, children have fewer tasks and less responsibility. They develop personalities that are more dependent-dominant.

This study has many implications for Western child-development experts. For one thing, what happens when the dependent-dominant personality develops to an extreme level—into a narcissistic personality? A narcissist is someone who constantly seeks self-attention and self-affirmation, with no concern for other people’s needs. Consumerism supports the development of narcissism via its emphasis on identity formation through ownership of self-defining goods (clothing, electronics, cars) and access to self-defining services (vacations, therapists, fitness salons). The Six Cultures Study suggests that involving children more in household responsibilities might result in less self-focused personality formation and more nurturant-responsible people.

The transition from “childhood” to “adulthood” involves certain biological events, as well as cultural events, that shape the transition to adulthood. Cultural anthropologists provide rich data demonstrating how this transition is at least as much a cultural transformation as a biological one.

IS ADOLESCENCE A UNIVERSAL LIFE-CYCLE STAGE?   Puberty  is a time in the human life cycle that occurs universally and involves a set of biological markers. In males, the voice deepens and facial and body hair appear; in females, menarche and breast development occur; in both males and females, pubic and underarm hair appear and sexual maturation is achieved.  Adolescence , in contrast, is a culturally defined period of maturation from around the time of puberty until the attainment of adulthood, usually marked by becoming a parent, getting married, or becoming economically self-sufficient.

Some scholars say that all cultures define a period of adolescence. A comparative study using data on 186 societies argues for the universal existence of a culturally defined phase of adolescence (Schlegel 1995). The researchers point to supportive evidence in the fact that people in cultures as diverse as the Navajo and the Trobriand Islanders have special terms comparable to the American term “adolescent” to refer to a person between puberty and marriage. Following a biological determinist, Darwinian model, they interpret the supposedly universal phases of adolescence as being adaptive in an evolutionary sense. The logic is that adolescence provides training for parenthood and thus contributes to enhanced reproductive success and survival of parents’ genes.

Other anthropologists view adolescence as culturally constructed, highly variable, and thus impossible to explain on only biological grounds. These researchers point out that people in many cultures recognize no period of adolescence. In some others, identification of an adolescent phase is recent. Moroccan anthropologist Fatima Mernissi (1987), for example, states that adolescence became a recognized life-cycle phase for females in Morocco only in the late twentieth century:

The idea of an adolescent unmarried woman is a completely new idea in the Muslim world, where previously you had only a female child and a menstruating woman who had to be married off immediately so as to prevent dishonorable engagement in premarital sex. (1987:xxiv)

Another line of evidence supporting a cultural constructionist view is that, in different cultures, the length and elaboration of adolescence varies for males and females. In many horticultural and pastoralist societies in which men are valued as warriors, a long period between boyhood and adulthood is devoted to training in warfare and developing solidarity among males of similar ages. This pattern occurs, for example, among the Maasai (sometimes spelled Masai). The Maasai are pastoralists, numbering over 500,000, who live in a large area crossing Kenya and Tanzania (Map 4.4). The extended adolescent period for males has nothing to do with training for parenthood. Maasai females, by contrast, move directly from being girls to being wives with no adolescent period in between. They learn adult roles when they are children.

In some cultures, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon region of South America, girls go through lengthy adolescent phases during which they live separated from the wider group and gain special knowledge and skills (Brown 1978). After this period of seclusion, they reemerge as women, get married, and have children.

A cultural explanation exists for whether a young male or young female goes through a marked adolescent phase. Cultural materialism (Chapter 1) says that a long and marked period of adolescence is preparation for culturally valued adult roles such as worker, warrior, or parent. Confirmation of this hypothesis comes from the finding that an extended adolescence for females in nonindustrial societies occurs in cultures where adult females are important as food producers (Brown 1978). Whether or not this theory holds up in industrialized societies has yet to be examined. Some scholars might argue that an extended adolescent period among middle class youth in wealthy countries is a way of deferring their entry into a saturated labor market where jobs for them are scarce.

COMING OF AGE AND GENDER IDENTITY  Margaret Mead made famous the phrase “coming of age” in her book Coming of Age in Samoa (1961 [1928]). The phrase can refer generally to the period of adolescence or specifically to a ceremony or set of ceremonies that marks the boundaries of adolescence. What are the psychological aspects of such special events for the children who go through them? Some ceremonies have a sacrificial element, with symbolic death and rebirth. Most coming-of-age ceremonies are gender specific, highlighting the importance of adult roles of men and women. These ceremonies often involve marking the body of the initiate in some way. Such marking may include scarification, tattooing, and genital surgery.

In many societies, adolescent males undergo genital surgery that involves the removal of part of the skin around the tip of the penis (circumcision); without this operation, the boy would not become a full-fledged male. Among many African pastoralist groups, such as the Maasai, adolescent males go through a circumcision ceremony that marks the end of adolescence and the beginning of manhood and full membership in the group. A young Maasai male, in a first-person account of his initiation into manhood, describes the “intolerable pain” he experienced following the circumcision, as well as his feeling of accomplishment two weeks later when his head was shaved and he became a warrior: “As long as I live, I will never forget the day my head was shaved and I emerged a man, a Maasai warrior. I felt a sense of control over my destiny so great that no words can accurately describe it” (Saitoti 1986:71).

Less common worldwide is  female genital cutting (FGC) , or female circumcision, a term that refers to a range of practices involving partial or total removal of the clitoris and labia. In some contexts, FGC is practiced along with infibulation, the stitching together of the vaginal entry, leaving a small aperture for drainage of menstrual blood. These procedures are usually performed when a girl is between 7 and 15 years of age. In the Sahelian countries, extending from Africa’s west to east coast (Map 12.5), many people practice some form of female genital cutting. FGC is also found in Egypt, in some groups of the Middle East, particularly among Bedu tribes, and among some Muslim groups in South and Southeast Asia. In terms of religion, FGC is often, but not always, associated with people who are Muslim. In Ethiopia, some Christian groups practice it. Genital cutting occurs in many groups in which female labor participation is high, but also in others where it is not.

Scholars cannot explain the distribution of FGC. Anthropologists who study this practice ask the people involved for their views. Many young girls say they look forward to the ceremony so that they will be free from childhood tasks and can take on the more respected role of an adult woman. In other cases, anthropologists have reported hearing statements of resistance (Fratkin 1998:60). Few issues force the questioning of cultural relativism more clearly than female genital cutting (see Think Like an Anthropologist).

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Disputing the Myth of the Sexual Dysfunction of Circumcised Women: An Interview with Fuambai Ahmadu

Initiation rites often involve themes of death and rebirth as the initiate loses his or her former identity and emerges with a new one. During the early 1990s, Abigail Adams conducted research on initiation rituals at what was then a men’s military school, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) (2002). Freshmen students, called “Rats,” are each assigned to an upperclassman, called a “Dyke.” The freshman year involves continuous humiliation and other forms of abuse for the Rats. Dykes treat their Rats like infants, telling them how to eat, bathe, and talk and yelling at them in baby talk. The culminating initiation ritual for the Rats takes place during March. The town’s fire truck sprays the outskirts of the campus to create a large area of mud. The Rats have to crawl through the mud while sophomores and juniors attack them, shout at them, push them down, sit on them, and fill their eyes, ears, faces, and clothes with mud. The Rats can barely see as they grope their way along, and many lose their pants. The ordeal continues over two banks of earth and a ditch, with continuous harassment from the sophomores and juniors. When the Rats finally reach the top of the second bank, the Dykes rush to greet them, tenderly wash the mud off them, and wrap them in blankets. The moment when the mud is washed away is the transition of the Rat into a cadet.

Adams interprets this ritual as a birthing event, with the newborn emerging blinded by and covered with fluids, then cleaned and blanketed. One senior said that being a Dyke “is like having my own child” (2002:39). Many aspects of this ritual, however, are ambiguous, not least of which is the term “Dyke” for male “mothers” (or “fathers”?). The Breaking Out initiation ritual is no longer practiced at VMI. In the mid-1990s, VMI, as the recipient of public funds, was under pressure to admit women to be compliant with the law. After a drawn-out legal battle that ended up in the Supreme Court, VMI admitted its first women students in 1997. Breaking Out has been replaced with a long weekend series of events involving physical and field challenges.

SEXUAL IDENTITY AND GENDER PLURALISM  Scholars have long debated whether gender identity and sexual preferences are biologically determined (ruled by genetic or hormonal factors) or culturally constructed and learned. Biological anthropologist Melvin Konner (1989) takes a middle position, saying that both factors play a part, but simultaneously warning that no one has a simple answer to the question of why an individual is gay.

The cultural constructionist position emphasizes socialization and childhood experiences as more powerful than biology in shaping sexual orientation. These anthropologists find support for their position in the cross-cultural record and its cases in which people change their sexual orientation once, or sometimes more than once, during their lifetimes. In the Gulf state of Oman, the xanith (hah-neeth) is one example (Wikan 1977). A xanith is a man who, for a time, becomes more like a woman, wears female clothing, and has sex with other men. Later, the xanith returns to a standard male role, marries a woman, and has children. Thus, given the same biological material, some people assume different sexual identities over their lives.

Some cultures allow for a third gender, which is neither purely “male” nor purely “female,” according to a particular culture’s definition of those terms. As with the xanith of Oman, these gender categories offer ways for “males” to cross gender lines and assume more “female” behaviors, personality characteristics, and dress. Among some American Indians, a “two-spirit person” is someone whose work roles and sexual orientation may or may not conform to their genital endowment, usually a male who adopts stereotypically female behaviors (Williams 1992). Someone may become a two-spirit person in a variety of ways. Sometimes parents, especially if they have several sons, choose one to become a two-spirit person, or it may be that a boy shows interest in typically female activities or who likes to wear female clothing. Such a child is a focus of pride for the family, never a source of disappointment or stigma. During decades of contact with Euro-American colonizers, including Christian missionaries, the outsiders viewed the two-spirit role with disapproval and ridicule (Roscoe 1991) and American Indian cultures began to suppress their two-spirit tradition. Starting in the 1980s, as American Indians’ cultural pride began to grow, the open presence of the two-spirit has revived. Many contemporary American Indian cultures, compared with mainstream White culture, are more accepting of gender role fluidity.

In India, the counterpart of the two-spirit person is a hijra (hij-ruh). Hijras dress and act like women but are neither truly male nor truly female (Nanda 1990). Many hijras were born with male genitals or with genitals that were not clearly male or female. Hijras have the traditional right to visit the home of a newborn, inspect the newborn’s genitals, and claim him or her for their group if the genitals are neither clearly male nor clearly female. Hijras born with male genitals may opt to go through an initiation ceremony that involves cutting off their penis and testicles. Hijras roam large cities of India, earning a living by begging from store to store and threatening to lift their skirts if not given money. Because women do not sing or dance in public, hijras play an important role as performers in public events, especially as dancers or musicians. Mainstream Indians do not admire or respect hijras, and no family would be delighted to hear that their son has decided to become a hijra.

In mainland and island Southeast Asia, the situation is even more flexible, with a wide range of gender options, or  gender pluralism . Gender pluralism is the existence in a culture of multiple categories of femininity, masculinity, and blurred genders that are tolerated and legitimate (Peletz 2006:310). In Thailand, three gender categories have long existed: phuuchai (male), phuuyung (female), and kathoey (transvestite/transsexual/hermaphrodite) (Morris 1994). A kathoey is “originally” a male who crosses into the body, personality, and dress defined as female. The sexual orientation of kathoeys is flexible, including either male or female partners. In contemporary Thailand, explicit discussion and recognition of homosexuality exists, usually couched in English terms, conveying a sense of its foreignness. The words for lesbian are thom (from the word “tomboy”) and thut (an ironic usage from the U.S. movie Tootsie, about a heterosexual man playing the part of a woman).

Yet another variation in defining one’s sexuality results from the combination of Islamic values, urban modernity, and the rejection of Western binary labels of heterosexual and homosexual among youth in Tehran, the capital of Iran (see Map 8.3) (Mahdavi 2012). Many young women in Tehran have their first sexual experience with another woman, given the gender segregation that exists and the likelihood that young women will become close with one another. Yet they do not self-define as gay and would even make occasional homophobic comments. Politically, however, many male and female youths in Tehran are subscribing to international human rights standards in protesting the execution of gay men in Iran.

Beyond sexuality and its many complications, another category exists that challenges all the existing terms:  asexuality . An asexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Asexuals exist around the world and are beginning to come out and identify themselves through websites and in public arenas, such as gay rights parades, even though asexuals are not gay (Scherrer 2008).

All the above examples speak against  heteronormativity , the belief that all people fit into two distinct genders, male and female, with corresponding distinct social roles and adhering to heterosexual relations.

No matter what one’s theoretical or personal perspective is on sexuality, homosexuality, and asexuality, it is clear that homophobia (hatred of people whose sexual preferences are toward the same sex) is widespread worldwide, and homosexuals are discriminated against wherever heterosexuality is the standard. In the United States, homosexuals are disproportionately victims of hate crimes, housing discrimination, and problems in the workplace, including wage and benefits discrimination. They often suffer from being stigmatized by their parents, peers, and the wider society. The psychological damage to their self-esteem by social stigma and discrimination is related to the fact that homosexual youth in the United States have substantially higher suicide rates than heterosexual youth (Suicide Prevention Resource Center 2008). A public health study shows that lesbian Hispanic women in the United States have higher rates of several health problems compared to heterosexual Hispanic women, including asthma (Kim and Fredriksen-Goldsen 2012).

Think Like an Anthropologist

Cultural Relativism and Female Genital Cutting

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Female genital cutting (FGC) is a necessary step toward full womanhood in cultures that practice it. People believe that an uncircumcised daughter is unmarriageable and that removing the labia makes a woman beautiful by removing “male” parts. The prevailing Western view, increasingly being shared by many people who have long practiced FGC, is that FGC is both an indication of women’s low status and an unnecessary cause of women’s suffering.

FGC is linked with several health risks, including those related to the surgery itself (shock, infection) and subsequent genitourinary complications (Gruenbaum 2001). Infibulation scars the vaginal canal and may lead to problems during childbirth, sometimes causing the death of the infant and mother. Having an infibulated bride’s husband “open” her, using a stick or knife to loosen the aperture, is both painful and an opportunity for infection. After giving birth, a woman is usually reinfibulated, and the process begins again. Health experts say that repeated trauma to the woman’s vaginal area increases the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

Besides the pain and health risks, outsiders argue that clitoridectomy severely reduces a woman’s sexuality since it makes clitoral orgasm impossible. Others point out that FGC and infibulation may cause infertility, which lowers a woman’s marital value. Thus, a practice done to ensure a woman’s marriageability may reduce her value and happiness as a mother. So far, however, studies have not found a clear relationship between FGC or infibulation and infertility (Larsen and Yan 2000).

What are the views of insiders? Is there any evidence for female agency in these practices? Or is it all structure and should anthropologists support FGC liberation movements? Insights that transcend insider–outsider divisions come from cultural anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu, who was born and raised in Washington, DC, and is descended from a prominent Kono lineage in Sierra Leone (2000). In 1991, Ahmadu traveled to Sierra Leone with her mother and other family members for what she refers to as her “circumcision.” Upon her return, she wrote about her initiation experience and what it meant to her. Although the physical pain was excruciating (in spite of the use of anesthetics), “the positive aspects have been much more profound” (2000:306). Through the initiation, she became part of a powerful female world. Her analysis addresses the effects of genital cutting on health and sexuality. Ahmadu argues that Westerners exaggerate these issues by focusing on infibulation rather than on the less extreme forms. She adds, however, that if global pressures against the practice continue, she will go along with that movement and support “ritual without cutting” (2000:308).

Food for Thought

· Why do you think FGC is a prominent issue in human rights debates in the West, whereas male circumcision and other forms of sometimes dangerous forms of adolescent initiation (such as fraternity and sorority hazing) are not?

· Where do you stand on FGC and why?

· What kinds of cultural remodeling of the female body are practiced in your culture?

Map 4.5

Sierra Leone

The Republic of Sierra Leone was an important center of the transatlantic slave trade. Its capital, Freetown, was established in 1792 as a home for African slaves who fought with the British during the American Revolution. Sierra Leone’s coast is covered with mangrove swamps, while the interior is plateau, forests, and mountains. The population is six million. Sierra Leone suffered a terrible civil war from 1991 to 2002, causing thousands of deaths and the displacement of two million people. It has the lowest per capita income in the world. English is the official language, but most people