Trobriand Island Sexuality

[00:00:09]No more of that. I mean, you have You sleep with a man when you're married and you have sex, but that's not happening nowadays, you know.

[00:00:15]>> No, there's premarital sex. Mhm.

[00:00:18]But it sounds like in the Trobriands that was the norm way before today. Mhm.

[00:00:26]>> I I see that with my brother-in-law with the different girls. I thought I thought it was a steady girlfriend, but then I wake up in the morning to a different girl with only the shorts of last girl, you know.

[00:00:37]>> You're walking out of his house.

[00:00:39]>> Mhm.

[00:00:39]>> And I would say >> Were they very quiet when he'd bring them in?

[00:00:43]>> Yeah, very young girls. I would say 12 or 13.

[00:00:46]>> 12 or 13?

[00:00:48]>> 20 years ago it could be normal to grab a girl by the arm and drag her onto the side of the road and have a good time with her.

[00:00:55]>> And she would want to do it.

[00:00:57]>> Whether she likes it or not.

[00:00:59]But if you force her, then that's not going to be a rape.

[00:01:03]Take for instance.

[00:01:05]>> So there was no definition of rape.

[00:01:07]>> No.

[00:01:08]>> There was no understanding of consent.

[00:01:12]>> Yeah.

[00:01:13]But up to today, if you do that, you'll be arrested because everybody knows that there is a law against that. Whereas in our traditional times or in our what Trobriand belief, that should show your manhood.

[00:01:31]To rape someone is a sim- significance of your manhood. It identifies you as a powerful man. But nowadays, you do that, it's a crime.

[00:01:43]It's that when time of Milamala comes, the the man or the husbands tend to go far and enjoy maybe cooler cooler voyages and women tend to behave kind of like single and they go across to the opposite sex and practice freely what they wish to as though they are single.

[00:02:19]And their marriage commitment is going to be violated but not in their conscience. Their conscience tells them that this is still okay because one of the theories that the trobriands believe is that upon the return of their husbands from cooler voyage and realize when their wives are expecting they believe that it is the spirit It's the spirits that come in and take women and fall in love with women and now women are conceiving from the mortals.

[00:02:58]>> This is from the waves?

[00:02:59]>> The waves. When when people die and we bury them in the ground.

[00:03:05]And when rain falls on the graves and what they believe is rain falls and goes and saturates right down beneath the graves and the water together with the mucus or whatever remains of humans it flows right down to the beach.

[00:03:27]When it goes to the beaches it goes to the salt water and when waves are crashing on the shores and as women walk along the coasts along the shores and the bubbles sit on women they conceived.

[00:03:44]When they conceive give birth to children with a belief that the children were born not through reproduction, uh not through reproductive system, but through this theory believed by the Trobriands in the past that it's the way bubbles that sit on women and conception takes place.

[00:04:09]>> So, is there rape?

[00:04:11]>> Sorry?

[00:04:12]>> Is there Do men ever rape women?

[00:04:15]Or just women rape men?

[00:04:17]>> Just women rape men during the Milamala >> Like that. That's what uh only that only that I have heard.

[00:04:23]>> Now, do you know men that have resented being raped? So, we can't really define it as rape then. It was They're seducing.

[00:04:33]>> Because the bottom my true father said that we He used to would rape.

[00:04:36]>> Mhm.

[00:04:37]>> And I said, "What do they do?" They said, "They do it in the bush anywhere.

[00:04:39]They get them and they grab the men when they're walking. They come after men."

[00:04:42]That's what they He told me.

[00:04:44]>> Well, that sounds like a male fantasy.

[00:04:45]>> That's right.

[00:04:47]>> So, um the men were happy to go along with it.

[00:04:52]>> Yep.

[00:04:52]>> No.

[00:04:53]>> But when it happens during the Milamala Festival, then no one fights over it because that's normal.

[00:05:01]Mhm.

[00:05:01]>> So, have you participated in these activities in the Milamala Festival?

[00:05:09]>> Yes.

[00:05:09]>> And have you had um enjoyable times?

[00:05:15]>> Yes.

[00:05:17]>> Did it make you ever want to um leave your wife?

[00:05:21]>> No. [laughter] No.

[00:05:24]>> [gasps] >> All right.