CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOR 



1471 



auto-erotic behavior as "natural" behavior 

 rather than as substitutes for heterosexual 

 behavior. If the term natural be taken to 

 mean behavior of which all human beings 

 are potentially capable, then one may also 

 argue that the individual who is wholly in- 

 capable of a homosexual response has failed 

 to develop one human potentiality. 



In human societies, two trends in the 

 handling of homosexuality may be dis- 

 cerned (Westermarck, 1908j. A society may 

 focus on heterosexual behavior and treat all 

 other sex behavior as so peripheral that it 

 will not occur in a sufficiently large number 

 of cases to disturb the social equilibrium, 

 or it may stylize very strictly the age grade 

 at which homosexual pairing is permitted 

 ( ]\Iarind-Anim, Wirz, 1922), the role of the 

 individual who makes a homosexual choice 

 (Mohave, Devereux, 1937), etc. So periods 

 of adolescent homosexuality may be institu- 

 tionalized, and homosexuality may be 

 expected among warriors or in certain occu- 

 pational groups. The boy who fails to dis- 

 play the requisite male bravery may be cast 

 as a transvestite, referred to as "she" and 

 given a special role as story-teller to war 

 parties or go-between in love affairs (Chey- 

 enne, Grinnell, 1923) . 



A fundamental difficulty, not unrelated 

 to the problems which have been solved by 

 the institution of incest, remains in the in- 

 compatibility of a libidinal relationship 

 with competition and aggression among 

 males. The anatomic complexity of the male 

 ijody, with the analogy between anus and 

 vagina, makes the problem of activity- 

 liassivity a recurrent one and one which 

 may be intrinsically antithetical to a pro- 

 creative heterosexual role. The fear in young 

 males of attack by other stronger males, a 

 danger which all societies have to meet in 

 rigorous methods of protecting children and 

 in incest rules, is met by young primates by 

 presenting (Hamilton, 1914; Maslow, 1936a, 

 b). A survey of the existing knowledge of 

 human societies suggests that if male homo- 

 sexual tendencies are to be tolerated or en- 

 couraged, then social institutions fully as 

 rigorous as those governing incest are de- 

 sirable, protecting the young from exploita- 

 tion, prescribing certain types of loyalty, 

 and modulating the competition for new 

 partners which is such a frequent accom- 



paniment of socially unsanctioned male 

 homosexuality. Female homosexuality is a 

 reciprocal of male homosexuality; where 

 male anatomy suggests, lacking the human 

 face-to-face copulatory position, comple- 

 mentary attitudes, female anatomy dictates 

 no choices as to activity, passivity, asym- 

 metry, or complementariness and seems to 

 lend itself much less to institutionalization 

 as a counter-mores activity. 



One protection against treating the young, 

 male as a sexual object is to take steps to 

 regulate, limit, or defeat altogether his 

 sexual competition with older and stronger 

 men. Initiation ceremonies which involve at 

 first rigid exclusion from and then formal 

 admission to the secrets of adult males, very 

 frequently combined with acts of mutila- 

 tion (knocking out of teeth, incision, sub- 

 incision, and circumcision, scarification, and 

 tattooing involving submission to painful 

 attacks on the body) , are widespread human 

 variants of the conflicts between the spring- 

 ing sexuality of the young male and the 

 diminishing virility of his seniors (Hambly, 

 1926). Such conflicts may be handled in- 

 stead by social divisions which cut across 

 all ages: the more meditative may be in- 

 ducted into a life of celibacy, so that curbs 

 on the aggressiveness of the more virile are 

 not necessary. Castration of slaves and 

 captives so as to provide a supply of eu- 

 nuchs also reduces a certain number of 

 males to a noncompetitive status, as da 

 caste and class arrangements by which the 

 males of the lower status groups are denied 

 access to the females of the upper status 

 groups. All such patterns of behavior are 

 learned. Whether the learning is so phrased 

 that certain men choose a life of celibacy 

 as higher or purer, encouraged by the social 

 definition of sexual activity as low and 

 animal-like, or whether they have such a 

 choice thrust upon them by the class or caste 

 group in power will make a difference in the 

 way different roles are accepted and in the 

 psychologic price men pay for denying im- 

 pulses which they have been taught are 

 natural and necessary or undesirable and 

 unnecessary. 



In summary, a survey of cultural patterns 

 reveals intricate systems of learned be- 

 havior, within which the sexual capacities 

 of the young child, the inappropriate sexual 



