Cross-Cultural Differences

Numerous studies have documented different cultural patterns of erotic development and sexual orientation, challenging the notion of sex­uality as a universal biological given. The work of Herdt (1984) is partic­ularly illustrative. He identified 53 distinct societies in the Pacific and New Guinea that have “age structured homosexual practice.” In a longitudinal study of the Sambia of Highlands Papua, New Guinea, Herdt (1991) de­scribed an elaborate pattern of sexual identity development, marked by what Westerners would see as a dramatic discontinuity. Same-sex erotic contact between 7-year-old boys and adolescent unmarried youths is en­couraged, in the belief that the male body cannot spontaneously produce sperm. “Insemination functions like an externally introduced androgen to secure maleness maturation” (Herdt, 1991, p. 7). Youths are forbidden to engage in male-female interactions or contacts until their late teens when arranged marriages occur. Married men are permitted homosexual activities until their wives give birth, after which all homosexual activity is forbid­den. Herdt (1991) points out that the Sambia pattern (followed by 95% of the men studied) provides an alternative to the Western cultural con­struction of sexual orientation, its locus, and the meaning of sexual pref­erence. It is worth noting that the Sambians have no categories for ho­mosexual or heterosexual. Herdt concludes, “The Sambia pattern of coercive and obligatory homosexual activity is simply a more extreme form of the many social influences that regulate sexuality across all societies, ours included, perhaps, especially ours, with our strong ideas of individu­alism, romantic love, and ‘the right to orgasm’” (p. 9).