Where Do You Get That Way?

MARGARET MEAD

in "Coming of Age in Samoa"

These casual homosexual relations between girls never assumed any longtime importance. On the part of growing girls or women who were working together they were regarded as a pleasant and natural diversion, just tinged with the salacious. Where heterosexual relationships were so casual, so shallowly channelled, there was no pattern into which homosexual relationships could fall. Native theory and vocabulary recognised the real pervert who was incapable of normal heterosexual response, and the very small population is probably sufficient explanation for the rarity of these types. I saw only one, Sasi, a boy of twenty who was studying for the ministry. He was slightly but not pronouncedly feminine in appearance, was skilled at women's work and his homosexual drive was strong enough to goad him into making continual advances to other boys. He spent more time casually in the company of girls, maintained a more easy-going friendship with them than any other boy on the island. Sasi had proposed marriage to a girl in a pastor's household in a distant village and been refused, but as there was a rule that divinity students must marry before ordination, this has little significance. I could find no evidence that he had ever had heterosexual relations and the girls' casual attitude towards him was significant. They regarded him as an amusing freak while the men to whom he had made advances looked upon him with mingled annoyance and contempt.

The general preoccupation with sex, the attitude that minor sex activities, suggestive dancing, stimulating salacious conversation, salacious songs and definitely motivated tussling are all acceptable and attractive diversions, is mainly responsible for the native attitude towards homosexual practices. They are simply play, neither frowned upon nor given much consideration. As heterosexual relations are given significance not by love and a tremendous fixation upon one individual, the only forces which can make a homosexual relationship lasting and important, but by children and the place of marriage in the economic and social structure of the village, it is easy to understand why very prevalent homosexual practices have no more important or striking results. The recognition and use in heterosexual relations of all the secondary variations of sex activity which loom as primary in homosexual relations are instrumental also in minimising their importance. The effects of chance childhood preversions, the fixation of attention on unusual erogenous zones with consequent transfer of sensitivity from the more normal centres, the absence of a definite and accomplished specialisation of erogenous zones-all the accidents of emotional development which in a civilization, recognizing only one narrow form of sex activity, result in unsatisfactory marriages, casual homosexuality and prostitution, are here rendered harmless.