Sex Rules!: Astonishing Gender and Sex Roles from Around the World by Janice Zarro Brodman

Sex Rules!: Astonishing Gender and Sex Roles from Around the World Reviews

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  Petra time heals but a week isnt quite long enough

  This is the Readers' Digest version of anthropology among the natives. There are a lot of interesting sexual practices involved in the book, but they are written in a snide, often disrespectful way, all meaning stripped out of them. (It's a long review so I've just put headings in bold, and the text in spoilers so you can check them if you want - or not). As an example.

  "When a Biwat child is born, the parents debate its future. Are they pondering school options and what career to encourage? Nah. They’re deciding whether to throw it into the river.
  
  But only the boys are at risk. Girls are much too valuable. Because the only way a Biwat man can get a wife is by trading a sister for her.
  
  Ah, the lucky family with lots of girls! All the sons will have a sister to trade for a wife…unless of course the oldest brother is a greedy SOB and trades all of his sisters for wives for himself. Poor younger brothers—they may end up without a legal wife.

  Or the out-and-out disrespectful and insulting,

  Four letter words even Grandma wouldn’t mind…
  
  Among some aboriginal societies in Australia, the word for man is “penis,” woman is “vagina,” and children are “semen.” So relax when your neighbor calls out cheerily, “Here comes a penis, a vagina, and some semen.” She just means a family is strolling down the road.

  The book has blank pages after each section, then a whole page with the section title, then another blank page.. It is a very lean, and badly-written, book.
  
  My father used to read Readers' Digest, and at the bottom of a lot of pages was a small anecdote or fact. That's what the book feels like, a collection of filler jokes, quotes and stories.
  
  It could have been such an interesting book. We all do exactly the same things sexually as a base so it is the culture, the variations and the kinks that makes different peoples and men interesting.
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  A genderless society - the Yoruba, This book disingenously states that the Yoruba people who because they have a genderless language, treat all people the same and don't see any differences. The author gives much praise to the absolute equality and power of women because of this. Shite! I am quite familiar with Yoruba-influenced music and some of the musicians who 'made it' in the West. Perhaps the most famous and most sexist of all is Fela Kuti who's lyrics are indicative of his viewpoint. Despite being the son of a prominent female activist, he mocked African women's aspirations for the freedom of Western women. Arguably as famous is King Sunny Ade - seven wives! None of this affects my love of their music.
  
  Yoruba culture was one where a woman was scorned for giving birth to a female child, where she was seen as owned by father, then her husband and if he should die then she would be transferred to a brother - they are a polygamous society so the brother would just take her on as an extra wife. One good and rather odd thing about the modern era is that the absolute insistence on a bride's virginity has gone to the extreme, absolute celebration if a woman becomes pregnant by her fiance!
  
  Gender on a spectrum, the Buginese and their five genders The author makes other very 'woke' conclusions I don't believe at all. She says that the Buginese, the largest ethnic group in South Suluwesi, have five genders, women, men, women who dress and act like men - calalai, men who act and dress like women - calabai, and 'bissu' who are born intersex or androgynous, and an attain the status of revered shamans and community priests. This seeing gender on a spectrum is very enlightened.
  
  But the author then says that calalai and calabai all have more freedom than men and women who have much forbidden to them. I doubt it. The way of the world has never been to give minorities more power than majorities and there are few societies in the world where women have equality to men, let alone more power and freedom. And considering that almost all Bugis are Sunni Muslims (somewhat syncretised with Sufis and ancestor worship), women in any guise having more freedom and power than men seems extremely remote.
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  The author's agenda is to quote really restrictive (and archaic) US State laws to do with sex and then discuss briefly and facilely, all the other much more liberal nations of the world. It's beginning to look like a dnf. I thought the book might offer me something to think on, but this is the sort of book you can put in the bathroom for guests to amuse themselves with.
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  Valentine's Day "Roses are red, violets are blue, I think I'm in love, but not with you." A real card! Don't send it or any other in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or Malaysia, but you need 12 in Korea. If you attempt to buy a tacky red metallic paper-covered chocolate heart in Saudi Arabia around the 14th Feb or show anything red peeking out of your black shroud, you can and will be arrested, imprisoned for an average of 8 years and quite likely lashed. Indonesia and Malaysia are not much better. The shops there are forbidden from sellling flowers on candy on Valentine's Day. They also imprison people attempting to celebrate it. A dour lot, aren't they?
  
  Love as a commercial opportunity in Korea The 14th of every month is devoted to a 'love day' of different sorts. Women buy chocolates on one, men buy white chocolattes on another, then there's yellow roses, kiss day, green day, silver day, commiserating with your other single friends day etc etc All uber-Capitalist with the romance absolutely sucked out of it.
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  Male suspicion of virgins - Tibet (Probably the most sensible people on earth about women's virginity.) Tibet has, much to China's disgust, some peoples, men, with very different sexual and gender attitudes, especially towards women's virginity and women choosing their own sexual partners and length (or lack of it) of relationships. See
  Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World The Mosul in China are closely related to these people with similar sexual attitudes, but identical. It's fine to screw around, but you cannot share a meal together publicly until you are married. The Tibetan branch don't go in for marriage. I don't know how they feel about going out for a stir-fry together. The wonderful Leaving Mother Lake wasn't really about food!. Men think that marrying a virgin is a problem, it might be painful, they probably won't have orgasms, they don't know what to do, it might not be the easy, enjoyable sexual relationship they are looking forward to. They say that any attractive woman with a pleasant personality must have had at least a fewwe lovers by the time she's ready for marriage. If she's still a virgin: warning sign - what's wrong with her? they want someone practiced, with who they can have an easy, enjoyable time (don't we all? Except men who want virgins)
  
  Rant on 'purity' and virginity What has purity has to do with virginity? I have never understood. I like pure water. I like unadulterated food. I like a red that is a pure carmine pigment. But virginity, that's just not having had sex yet! When I had sex for the first time, afterwards I thought, "is that all, is that what it was all about?" He was crap in bed, but I didn't know that then. I didn't feel impure or sullied or used goods. I felt a bit disappointed really. All that build up and then all I get is pine needles stuck to my ass.
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  The misogyny of Buddhism and Tibetan monks One of the things the the Buddhist monks have to do is think of having sex with an aged woman and rotting corpses, in order to 'cleanse' their mind of beastly, bodily things like lust. No tantric sex for them like their Hindu brothers!
  
  The expectation of tantric sex In Miami I met a MU philosophy professor, a Haitian guy I think as his name was French and he danced like a West Indian. He gave private life lessons and lectured in tantric sex. So we are getting it on and I'm looking forward to a long, slowwww night and I say, "What about tantric sex?" and he replies, "Fuck that, that's for the office." And there was no more philosophy or talk of any kind that night.
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  Notes on reading, Mangala, Dominica, and men being good in bed Just as the Inuit are reported to have a lot of words for 'snow', so the people from the tropical, Polynesian island of Mangaia have for the clitoris. Teenage girls get an education into being multi-orgasmic, teenage boys (from a lucky older woman) will learn the skills to please a woman. "omen score their lovers and broadcast which guy has good technique".
  
  When I first went to Dominica, I was surprised that men who went out with a lot of women instead of being thought the studs, that the West generally calls them, were reputedly all bad in bed and no girl wanted to hang on to them! 2.5 star. Rounded up because I did get something from it. Just not a thrill.
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  Hannah Spadafora

  Not quite the academic work I was expecting, but a quick entertaining read, with a very broad range of diverse practices in communities across the world discussed. A little wanting in depth, mixed level sources, and in-text citations, but an interesting collection of snapshots of sexual, gender, marriage, and beauty practices/worldviews across the planet, nonetheless.
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  Natalie Newman

  Sex, gender, and sexuality aren't as straightforward as you'd expect
  
  This was a good source of information to show how concepts around sex and gender are completely social constructs. It gives anyone who doesn't conform to norms access to cultures where they are the norm and permission to love themselves in a society that often rejects them.
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  Dan Laubach

  Really enjoyable and funny quick read. Not a scholarly researched and in depth described book. Didn't need to be, but worth pointing out. The author provides a 2-3 paragraph summary of different sexual practices around the world (typically in "less civilized" societies). Really interesting inspiring and worth reading
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  Jorge DeFlon

  Humans are a very diverse specie!
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  James Godin

  Sucked with a few interesting alleged facts.