A Critical Look at the Sambia
In order to become a man in Sambia culture one must rid themselves of the pollutants associated with womanhood and take in the fluids that are necessary to becoming a man (Herdt). This rite of passage is based on the idea that women are pollution to men and when a boy becomes a man he must rid himself of the womanhood that has polluted his life so thoroughly (Herdt). Elders take him violently from his mother at age seven or eight and force bloodletting from the nose with sugar cane rid him of the female pollution because blood symbolizes womanhood (Herdt). Bloodletting is viewed as essential to "male growth" (Herdt 368) in Sambia culture. He bleeds out the female pollution he has received from his mother (Herdt). He then must ingest the fluids, which will make him a man. He does this by performing fellatio on the elders of the tribe and swallowing their semen (Herdt). By doing this, the boy gains semen himself and over time and repeated fellatio's becomes a man (Herdt). He is also taught to be a warrior and to be disgusted by women, distrustful of them and remain as distant as possible from them (Herdt). This very anti-female ritual exemplifies how women are treated in the Sambia culture. They are considered inferior and
A woman's main bodily function and purpose is to support and provide for someone else (a child), just as nature's main function and purpose it to support and provide for its inhabitants. According to Douglas that which doesn't fall under the heading clean is therefore unclean and treated as such (Douglas). Through these different anthropological viewpoints one comes to see that the rites of passages in this society are vital to the reinforcement of the ideas surrounding gender and social structure from generation to generation. The first source of why woman are viewed as pollutants to males is the symbolic associations that can be made with blood, menstruation, and menstrual fluid. As youths boys are attached to their mothers and spend most of their time with their mothers (Herdt), they do not have a negative view of women until they are taught by example from their fathers and lessons from the elders. If the rite of passage for the Sambia boys did not exist they would not be instilled so deeply with a feeling of female inferiority and male superiority. In particular, through the rites of passage for the boys; both, what is done to the boys and, what they are told and taught. Nose bleeding is an effective social control that conforms the boy to the norms and values of the male ritual cult including both a fear of woman and a feeling of superiority towards women (Herdt). There are two reasons according to Mary Douglas's view that this cultural idea could exist creating a need to have a rite of passage to reinforce it (Douglas). The association of blood with these things causes the Sambian men to view the menstrual cycle as a sign of danger or pollution for themselves. Through the ideas of Sherry Ortner, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner this rite of passage and the beliefs it is based on concerning the inferiority and fear of women can be critical analyzed and explained. Through Mary Douglas's "Abominations of Leviticus" the case can be made for the symbolic associations menstruation has in society being the cause of the inferiority of women and the necessity for a rite of passage that separates the men from these negative symbolic meanings. Along with sexual repression, nose bleeding effectively instills a strong misogynistic attitude towards women and a fear of pollution and sperm depletion from women (Herdt). The violence with which they are stolen from there mothers and are forbidden to ever go back and see her and the intense trauma the boy endures in the first days of separation is supposed to "radically resocialize the boy" (Herdt 385). She sees discovering why women are placed in inferior roles in society vital to changing this universal practice (Ortner).
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