Sexualities

Sex makes life possible as a biological urge and reproductive channel but it is rarely practiced or experienced universally in a singular dimension.  With its indepth study of human interaction in cultural environments, anthropology can uncover and analyze how and why “sex” and “sexualities” have differed across historical periods and cultural empires. Hastings and Magowan (2010;5) argue that anthropological study gives credence to the experiential aspect of sexual practice whilst focusing on the cultural underpinnings that formulate, limit and categorize different kinds or types of sexual activities, values and conditions across human existence.

What is sex? Apart from being a reproductive biological function, sex is also productive tool for social identities which, as Donan and Magowan (2010; 5) explain, are constrained by official and unofficial sexual contracts.  In daily life, the word “sex” is used to differentiate between male or female or to describe the physical activity involving the genitals or human body.   What is “sexuality?” There is no simple definition. Freud defined it as a “powerful physiological and biological force while anthropologist, Manilowski emphasized its sociological and cultural dimensions. (Masters and Johnson; 1988;4). There may be distinguishing characteristics between various sexual activities such recreational or relational sex, homo or hetero sex but it seems that the language to describe the full experience and expression or sexual  activities across cultural boundaries and historical periods is limited. Inasmuch as there are contemporary categories such as heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual or hypersexual and many others they still do not encompass the full expression, multi-dimensional elements and universality of human sexuality.  An example, in Lancaster’s Nicaraguan ethnography (1988 ;111) that illustrates this point is the social construction of sexual practices in Nicaragua, where a folk category called the’ chochón’ exists .  In English the word ‘chochón’ loosely translates to faggot or queer.  But close study of the homosexual practice shows a difference not only in practice to the Westernised homosexual standard but a variance in stigma to the homosexual partners.  The active “hombre-hombre” (manly-man) is not stigmatized at all and there is no clear category to classify this man. This man can gain therefore gain status in sleeping with both women and chochón simultaneously resulting in the male admiration for his sexual experience and prowess.  Although this act is seen as an infraction from socio-religious viewpoint in male to male social relations the hombre-hombre role is a status marker.  However the role of the anally passive receptive  visible chochón is met with amusement or condescension.   The stigma of the cochon is not based on perversity or “mis-use.”  Lancaster (1988:114) argues that this chochón stigma is ‘not one of fully rationalized, medicalized system of sexual meaning that elaborates a category, the homosexual, to identify both practice and identity but it is the anal passivity alone that is stigmatized which defines the status identity.’ The socialization and sexual stigma of the chochón come from culturally-shared meanings of passivity which is equated to being female which means feminized men not recognized as full men.  In the ethnography of the Nicaraguan chochón, Lancaster, concludes the phenomena is not a ‘refraction of larger, universal homosexual category’ but a study in the significance and assumptions that lie beyond sexual acts between two men with the role of sex/power defining the relationships.