Bizarre sexual customs
Humans and their interest in sexual practices seem to have co evolved. Different cultures exhibit many commonalities as well as differences in sexual expressions. So let’s take a tour to a number of bizarre sexual traditions. The Masai tribe, Africa – semen helps a girl to attain puberty. Prepubescent girls are made to have sex with warriors before they reach puberty so that they develop healthy breasts and become fertile. Warriors can choose the girl they fantasize about by offering gifts to her mother. The girl needs to offer milk to the warrior in exchange of semen. Women of this tribe are known to drink cow dung to terminate pregnancy.
The nomadic Polahi tribe, Gorantalo, Indonesia – Incest is not a taboo. They live in deep remote forests and it’s very normal for a father to have sex with his daughter or the mother to have sex with her son. Siblings can get married and they claim that such inbreeding does not lead to genetic defects in children.
The Dayak people, Borneo – women prefer men with ampallang (glans piercing). Adolescent men get their glans pierced horizontally and wear a thin copper or silver rod called ampallang which has small balls at the two ends. Women desire their men in different types of ampallang and they secretly convey it to their partner by gifting specific ampallang hidden in rice or beetle nut leaf. Women can seek separation if the husband refuses to wear ampallang. They consider that it increases the orgasmic capacity and makes sex “salty”.
The Wodaabee, Niger – steal wives for love marriage. In this tribe marriages are arranged by parents between cousins in infancy. Such infant couples when grown up have a chance to run away with someone else in disguise. At the yearly Gerewol festival men wear bright makeup and costumes to dance and impress women. If the new couple can elope undetected from the current husband (who does not want to part) then they get social recognition of having a love marriage.
The Sambians, Papua, New Guinea – semen drinking and nose bleeding is mandatory to become a man. Young boys are isolated from women (since they are harmful and evil) and kept in men houses to train them to become a man. To remove the contamination brought about by women these young boys are incurred to nose bleeding and skin piercing. They are trained to perform fellatio and ingest the semen of tribe elders to mature as a man. When introduced back in the tribe and married, they engage in nose bleeding at the time of their wife’s menses.
The Trobianders, New Guinea – kids can have sex at 6 but dining together is not allowed before marriage. They revolutionised sex by believing that women want sex as much as men. Girls (6-8 yrs) go topless to lure men (10-12), having sex at a tender age without any social stigma. Pre marital sex is no issue but pre meal sharing is strictly prohibited.
Modern Iranian Culture – legalise sex with a paid temporary marriage. Young Muslim couples can pay for a short ceremony with a written contract of a specific time period. Once this short term marriage is done they can go bonkers in bed without contradicting Islamic Law.
Nyotaimori/Nantaimori, Japan- Body Sushi. It is the practice of eating sushi from the naked body of a woman (nyotaimori) or man (nantaimori). This sexual fetish is for those who like “food play” instead of foreplay.
Current societies teach us not to publicly examine sexual manifestations. To be human is to be sexual and sexuality can be exotic! ———— About the Author: This article has been contributed by Aqsa Zaidi, our intern. Aqsa is a Botany Hons. Student from Hindu College, Delhi University. She feels it’s her constant struggle and effort to understand and redefine independence and equality in its purest form through her writing . Believing in women and youth empowerment, Aqsa wants to induct the same in her readers.
