MEN AND WOMEN: SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS IN CONTEXTS AND CULTURE.
The forceful assertion of one person’s sexuality on another, that is, rapacious sexuality, is an extreme form of domination. Statutory rape is one of our more paradoxical legal concepts, with the age of the victim replacing consent. The legal definition is consistent, however, with an implicit aspect of American culture which denies responsibility to children. Young girls below the age of consent are not presumed mature enough to exercise consent, even if they have willfully engaged in sexual conduct. The law argues that it is not within their powers as persons to agree.
Because rape is defined as a special crime and a special issue in American culture, it is somewhat difficult to realize that this brutal attempt to engage persons sexually can be understood more generally as an extreme example of strategy in sexual encounter. One strategy similar to rape is the moetotolo (or moe dolo, mootoro) “sleep crawling,” or “night crawling” attempt at sexual intercourse reported in several Polynesian settings, as well as among the Cayapa of the lowland region of Ecuador.
Although each of these reports is somewhat different, Mead and several others depict “night crawling” generally as a rough and risky way to go about seeking sexual relations. The practice is to visit the female lover in her house at night, generally with a quorum of her kinspeople sleeping in the same room. Samoan boys will plan such an adventure to retaliate against girls who have stood them up or have chosen other boys over them. Moetotolo is not a delicate courtship maneuver, and Mead prefers to treat it as though it were out of the realm of proper courtship altogether, although such meetings occasionally are mutually satisfying. Girls can pretend that their lover’s presence was not sanctioned, should commotion awake parents, family, and dogs. Support for Mead’s conclusion that moetotolo is a “curious form of surreptitious rape” comes from Nukuoro, where Carroll found much of the “night crawling” attempted by drunken men and boys.
Ethnographic literature often refers to female strategy in sexual relationships, generally as a response to the constraints of domination. Dougherty reports that black women in the rural South are careful not to terminate a relationship with one man until they are certain of the sincerity and commitment of a new lover. Kgatla women will falsely pretend they are menstruating to ward off an unwelcome lover (Schapera). A Yanomam? woman who does not want to be bothered by her husband can tell him to take his drugs into the forest and chant to the forest spirits (Chagnon), which apparently works as a culturally standardized distancing mechanism. Dougherty and Gregor report that a wife will withdraw sexual and domestic services as a symbolic form of disappointment with the marital relationship.
In sexual approaches, both Mehinaku men and women manipulate kinship terminology to their advantage. A male will ask a female to have sex, but she may refuse, arguing that she is a “real” sister. Since cross-cousins are available for sexual encounters, Gregor finds that among the Mehinaku the attractive girls are usually cross-cousins and not sisters. The Tuareg are also reported to use their kinship domain to this same end.
Do the Mehinaku and the Tuareg violate the terms of their own kinship systems in order to make these sexual approaches? Or are we to understand these definitional strategems as part of a larger cultural system? The answer lies in how the Mehinaku and Tuareg themselves conceptualize relationships.
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