Gay Papua New Guinea News & Reports 1 British diplomat has Indian lover 2 "Sambia boys' ritual initiation," in book: Same Sex, Different Cultures: Exploring Gay and Lesbian Lives 1997
August 3, 2003 1 by Shyam Bhatia
in London The Mail on Sunday quotes Scaddam as saying, 'The days when gays could be blackmailed are over. Most reasonable people have got used to the idea. Some have not. But they will need to. There was a time when one really had to suppress one's feelings completely. The fact is that we are not all make-up and high heels. We don't sashay around. We are professional people doing as good a job as our hetrosexual colleagues in the diplomatic corps.' Divorced last year from his wife of 32 years, Scaddan also served in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi before he was assigned to Kolkata where he met Pablo, then a student in the city. 'He was, I would say, a very creative student. I met his parents and they approve of the relationship. He joined me here (Port Moresby) a year later and he has been an absolute bonus to my work, bringing his own amazing talents,' Scaddan declares in his interview. Ganguly is expected to live with Scaddan in Edinburgh when the high commissioner retires in a year's time. Scaddan's divorced wife Frances is quoted as saying, 'Simon met Pablo a few years after we separated. He told me he had fallen in love with him at first sight, just like he'd done with me. I have met Pablo on a number of occasions. They came to stay with me two weeks ago. I know Pablo is a lot younger, but I don't care. Now I'm divorced from Simon I don't mind what he does.' A spokesman for the British Foreign Office in London said, 'Today's Foreign Office is open to people from all sorts of backgrounds and increasingly reflects the UK's highly diverse society. At last week's Gay Pride Festival in London the Foreign Office had a stand giving out career advice. We need to make sure our diplomats are true representatives of Britain.'
The Sambia of New Guinea Semen conservation theory, explored later in this chapter in connection with Victorian sexual norms and mores, emphasizes sexual restraint and the inappropriateness of "wasting" semen through masturbation and too-frequent intercourse. This has been an influential idea in one guise or another in the Western world. An interesting custom in contrast to semen conservation theory has been called "semen investment theory" (Money, 1992). The anthropologist Gilbert Herdt did a field study of the Sambia, an aboriginal tribe in eastern New Guinea. Notable were his descriptions of customs related to the development of masculinity and male sexual behavior during childhood and early adulthood. The Sambia believe that semen has powerful properties and that to embark on the path to manhood young boys must drink the semen of young men in their village. These homosexual interactions are brief and do not involve relationships of any permanence. Sambian boys are taught the growth-promoting qualities of semen through a ritual teaching process: "Now we teach you our customary story . . . . And soon you must ingest semen in the culthouse. Now there are many men here; you must sleep with them. Soon they will return to their homes. Now they are here, and you ought to drink their semen. In your own hamlets, there are only a few men. When you sleep with men, you should not be afraid of sucking their penises. You will soon enjoy them . . . . If you try it [semen], it is just like the milk of your mother’s breast. You can swallow it all the time and grow quickly. If you do not start to drink it now, you will not ingest much of it. Only occasionally . . . . "And later when you are grown you will stop. If you drink a little semen now, you will not like the penis much. So you must start now and swallow semen. When you are bigger your own penis will become bigger, and you will not want to sleep with older men. You will then want to inseminate younger boys yourself. So you should sleep with men now." Both semen conservation and semen investment theories attribute powerful qualities to semen. This Sambian custom is thought to be independent of heterosexual interests, which begin in later adolescence and develop slowly and tentatively. Indeed, young Sambian men are truly bisexual. Very rarely do adult Sambian males adopt a homosexual orientation; the pressures to establish and provide for a family are keenly felt (Herdt, 1987). Further references to Sambian sexuality: http://www.gettingit.com/article/56 http://icarus.ubetc.buffalo.edu/users/apy106/cultures/sambia.html |
