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Anthropology

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	Though they may be provocative and enlightening, anthropological studies of heterosexuality are still focused on mainstream gender categories and norms. Even more challenging to traditional Western sensibilities are studies, first emerging in the 1970s and 1980s, that demonstrate the prevalence of same-sex erotic interactions in cultures all over the world.
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	A contemporary of Malinowski and Mead, renowned British anthropologist E. E. <OpenstaxTerm>Evans-Pritchard</OpenstaxTerm> spent his early career studying social organization and witchcraft among two different African groups, the Azande and the Nuer. Later in his career, Evans-Pritchard began thinking about the many stories he had heard in the course of his years studying African societies, particularly stories describing the prevalence of same-sex erotic practices in <OpenstaxTerm>Zande</OpenstaxTerm> society in precolonial times. In an article on the topic, he describes how unmarried adult warrior men, unable to marry due to the scarcity of marriageable women and forbidden to engage in adultery with other men’s wives, often took younger men as sexual partners or “wives” (1970). The warrior paid bride wealth to the parents of the younger man and performed services to the young man’s family just as he would have to the natal family of a female wife. The partners took on the roles of husband and wife, and the younger men referred to themselves as women. As the Azande did not approve of anal sex, male partners had sex “between the thighs”—that is, the older man penetrating between the thigh gap of the younger one.
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	Like the men, Zande women also commonly engaged in same-sex practices and relationships. In Zande culture, men were permitted to have more than one wife (a form of marriage called polygyny, as you will recall from <a href="./cf0085c6-528c-4101-ad26-19c612c5a2fa@153910e:1651e3ac-8a31-4715-919d-695178929ad1.xhtml">Forming Family through Kinship</a>). A husband took turns sleeping with each of his wives. In a family of several wives, then, a woman would wind up sleeping alone many nights. If she had married a royal husband with several hundred wives, she might have sex with her husband only a few times in her entire married life. Zande men and women told Evans-Pritchard that lonely wives would often get together at night, cut a sweet potato or manioc root into the shape of a penis, and tie it around the waist of one of the women. With this vegetable phallus, they took turns penetrating each other. Women could also formalize a “love-friend” relationship in public, widely considered by Zande men to be a cover for same-sex relations. Unlike male-male relationships, however, women’s same-sex erotic practices were discouraged.
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	Sexual practices between senior and junior men have been found in many cultures, sparking controversies over questions of consent and child abuse. Studying a New Guinea group he called the “Sambia” (a pseudonym), anthropologist Gilbert <OpenstaxTerm>Herdt</OpenstaxTerm> (1984) described initiation rituals in which teenage boys were expected to fellate older male mentors in order to absorb the male essence that would make them into fully socialized men. Herdt termed this practice &quot;<OpenstaxEm>ritualized homosexuality</OpenstaxEm>,&quot; though some have argued with the application of Western categories of sexuality to describe such symbolically complex ritual practices.
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	While some same-sex practices are ritualized, others are more informal and less public. Some cultures construct same-sex practices as a phase associated with adolescent experimentation and tutelage. As in many parts of contemporary Africa, girls in boarding schools in Ghana are known to experiment with same-sex relationships. In Ghana, it’s called <OpenstaxEm>supi</OpenstaxEm> (possibly short for <OpenstaxEm>supervisor</OpenstaxEm> or <OpenstaxEm>superintendent</OpenstaxEm>). In boarding high schools, a senior girl might take a junior girl as a special friend (Dankwa 2009; Gyasi-Gyamera and Søgaard 2020). Some of these bonds are fairly casual. The junior girl runs errands for the senior girl, such as fetching water or food. The senior girl provides protection and help to the junior girl (such schools could be full of difficulties, including supply shortages and bullying). Some <OpenstaxEm>supi</OpenstaxEm> relationships can become emotionally and physically intense. The two girls often exchange gifts, write each other love letters, and fondle and caress one another. They might shower together or share a bed. <OpenstaxEm>Supi</OpenstaxEm> is not limited to a special category of girls (i.e., identified lesbians) but has been widespread among schoolgirls, nearly all of whom eventually marry men and fulfill their conventional roles as wives and mothers.
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	In the past two decades, evangelical Christianity in Ghana has branded same-sex relationships as evils to be rooted out through ceremonies resembling exorcism. While <OpenstaxEm>supi</OpenstaxEm> is an ambiguous practice, sometimes involving sexuality and sometimes not, it has been stigmatized by evangelicals in Ghana. Christian journalists have written stories about wealthy women who snatch away young wives, referring to lesbian relationships as <OpenstaxEm>supi-supi</OpenstaxEm>. Lurid popular films such as <OpenstaxEm>Women in Love</OpenstaxEm> (1996) and <OpenstaxEm>Supi: The Real Woman to Woman</OpenstaxEm> (1996) both sensationalize and condemn women’s same-sex practices, associating them with a secret cult of mermaid worship called Mami Wata.
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	Many anthropological studies describe same-sex practices in societies that otherwise strongly value heterosexual marriage and fertility. In such contexts, sexuality is not so much an identity as it is a ritual, life stage, coping technique, or form of pleasure. Though sometimes shielded from public view, same-sex relations are seen as complementary to heterosexual relations in some cultural contexts, fully compatible with conventional demands for heterosexual marriage and family life. In his research on gender and sexuality in Nicaragua, for instance, Roger <OpenstaxTerm>Lancaster</OpenstaxTerm> (1992) found that conventionally masculine men could maintain their essentially heterosexual identities if they took the “active,” penetrative role in same-sex encounters.
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	With the progress of the LGBTQIA+ movement originating in the United States and western Europe, people around the world who engage in same-sex and transgender practices have formed public identities and communities, calling for the acceptance and legal recognition of their relationships. Rather than indulging in same-sex pleasures as a substitute for “the real thing” or as something done “on the side,” American gay and lesbian communities recast their own practices as “the real thing,” a set of practices and relationships central to their whole way of life. This assertion has profound implications for notions of family and community. If heterosexual marriage and reproduction form the foundation of kinship systems based on the idea of biological descent, then same-sex relationships suggest new forms of kinship based on networks and shared values. In <OpenstaxEm>Families We Choose</OpenstaxEm> (1991), anthropologist Kath <OpenstaxTerm>Weston</OpenstaxTerm> explores how lesbian and gay families in the San Francisco Bay Area constructed family networks that both reflected and challenged mainstream notions of family.
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<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00002" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/ce3511803c119ffd3d3ba6b1ee4518d45acf6520" alt="A group of people walking in a parade. A woman is pulling a wagon with several children inside. A sign on the back reads We are a gay and happy family." mediaType="image/jpeg" width="800" height="600" />
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	Figure 12.16 Boston Pride Parade, 2007. LGBTQIA+ people around the world have publicly advocated for the acceptance and legal recognition of their relationships. (credit: “Children in Wagon (Part 2)” by greenmelinda/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
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	<OpenstaxNoteTitle> Profiles in Anthropology </OpenstaxNoteTitle> <OpenstaxH3> Esther Newton, 1940– </OpenstaxH3>
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		Personal History: <a href="https://openstax.org/r/esther-newton">Esther Newton</a> was born the child of an unmarried Protestant mother and an absent Jewish father. After she was born, she and her mother were ostracized from her mother’s genteel upper-class family. Her mother later remarried. Growing up in the gender-rigid, heteronormative 1940s and 1950s, Esther flouted gender norms at an early age, becoming “an anti-girl, a girl refusenik” (Newton 2018, 60). She was bullied for her unconventional dress and behavior. As a young woman, she wore men’s clothes, smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes, and dated hyperfeminine lesbian women. Thus, before she even came out as a lesbian, Newton self-consciously constructed her “butch” identity—“the first identity that had ever made sense out of my body’s situation, the first rendition of gender that ever rang true, the first look I could ever pull together” (92).
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		For her undergraduate studies, Newton attended the University of Michigan, where she earned her BA with distinction in history. In <OpenstaxEm>Margaret Mead Made Me Gay</OpenstaxEm> (2000), Newton describes her reaction to reading the work of anthropologist Margaret Mead as a college student. Mead’s relativistic portrayal of the flexibility of gender categories gave Newton consolation and ignited her interest in anthropology. She went to the University of Chicago to study anthropology at the graduate level with kinship scholar David Schneider.
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		Area of Anthropology: For her dissertation, Newton conducted fieldwork among men who dressed as women in the American Midwest. Entitled “The ‘Drag Queens’: A Study in Urban Anthropology” (1968), this pathbreaking work described the experiences, challenges, and culture of gender-nonconforming American men in a variety of theatrical and everyday settings. Her research on this topic was later published in her book <OpenstaxEm>Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America</OpenstaxEm> (1972), the first major anthropological study of a gay or lesbian community in the United States. In spite of its initially lukewarm reception, the book has since become a classic in LGBTQIA+ studies.
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		Accomplishments in the Field: Hired in 1971, Newton was a founding faculty member of the State University of New York at Purchase, also known as Purchase College. She helped establish the disciplines of anthropology, women’s studies, and gay/lesbian studies there. Newton taught at Purchase until 2006 and is now a professor emerita.
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		Importance of Her Work: In her memoir, <OpenstaxEm><a href="https://openstax.org/r/my-butch-career">My Butch Career</a></OpenstaxEm> (2018), Newton tells the story of the first half of her life, highlighting the challenges facing her generation of middle-class lesbians. She describes the difficulties of pursuing higher education and building a professional career, including the impossibility of coming out even as she studied and wrote about lesbian, gay, and gender-nonconforming communities in American society in the 1960s.
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		Esther Newton’s work has been translated into French, Spanish, Hebrew, Polish, and Slovak. She is the subject of the documentary film <OpenstaxEm>Esther Newton Made Me Gay</OpenstaxEm>, currently in production, which has a <a href="https://openstax.org/r/esther-newton-trailer">trailer available to view</a>. In an interview, Newton commented, “It’s been fun being a film star” (2019).
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12.4.2 Same-Sex and Queer Studies

1 What Is Anthropology?

1.1 The Study of Humanity, or "Anthropology Is Vast"

1.1.1 The Heart of Anthropology: Central Narrative and Commitments

1.1.2 Central Commitment #1: Exploring Sociocultural Diversity

1.1.3 Central Commitment #2: Understanding How Societies Hold Together

1.1.4 Central Commitment #3: Examining the Interdependence of Humans and Nature

1.2 The Four-Field Approach: Four Approaches within the Guiding Narrative

1.2.1 Biological Anthropology

1.2.2 Archaeology

1.2.3 Cultural Anthropology

1.2.4 Linguistic Anthropology

1.2.5 How the Four Fields Work Together: The Example of Race

1.3 Overcoming Ethnocentrism

1.3.1 Enculturation and Ethnocentrism

1.3.2 Primitivism and Orientalism

1.4 Western Bias in Our Assumptions about Humanity

1.4.1 Primitivism and Orientalism in Popular Culture

1.4.2 The Bias of Backwardness

1.5 Holism, Anthropology’s Distinctive Approach

1.5.1 Society as an Integrated Whole

1.5.2 Sources of Contradiction, Conflict, and Change

1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism

1.6.1 Relativism Is Not “Anything Goes”

1.6.2 Morality, Activism, and Cultural Relativism

1.7 Reaching for an Insider’s Point of View

1.7.1 The Challenge of Representing Others

1.7.2 Collaborative Methods of Representation

1.7.3 Working across Cultures toward Common Goals

1.7.4 Suggested Readings

2 Methods: Cultural and Archaeological

2.1 Archaeological Research Methods

2.1.1 Archaeological Techniques

2.1.2 Archaeological Dating Methods

2.2 Conservation and Naturalism

2.2.1 Early Efforts

2.2.2 Salvage Anthropology

2.2.3 Museum Collections

2.2.4 Interpretation and Voice

2.3 Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.1 The Development of Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.2 Perspective and Interpretation in Ethnography

2.4 Participant Observation and Interviewing

2.4.1 Participant Observation

2.4.2 Interviewing Informants

2.4.3 Ethical Considerations

2.5 Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

2.5.1 Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Information

2.5.2 Modeling

2.5.3 The Science of Anthropology

2.6 Collections

2.6.1 Archives

2.6.2 Three-Dimensional Collections

2.6.3 Ownership

2.6.4 Suggested Readings

3 Culture Concept Theory: Theories of Cultural Change

3.1 The Homeyness of Culture

3.2 The Winkiness of Culture

3.3 The Elements of Culture

3.3.1 Culture Is What We Make

3.3.2 Culture Is What We Do

3.3.3 Culture Is What We Think

3.4 The Aggregates of Culture

3.4.1 Symbols

3.4.2 Ritual

3.4.3 Social Structure

3.5 Modes of Cultural Analysis

3.5.1 Evolution, Adaptation, and Historical Particularism

3.5.2 Functionalism

3.5.3 Structuralism

3.5.4 Ontology

3.6 The Paradoxes of Culture

3.6.1 Paradox 1: Culture Is Continuous, but It Changes

3.6.2 Paradox 2: Culture Is Bounded but Mobile

3.6.3 Paradox 3: Culture Is Consensual but Contested

3.6.4 Paradox 4: Culture Is Shared, but It Varies

3.6.5 Suggested Readings

4 Biological Evolution and Early Human Evidence

4.1 What Is Biological Anthropology?

4.1.1 Looking to the Deep Past

4.1.2 Exploring What It Means to Be Human

4.2 What’s in a Name? The Science of Taxonomy

4.2.1 Defining the Science of Taxonomy

4.2.2 Defining a Species

4.3 It’s All in the Genes! The Foundation of Evolution

4.3.1 The Units of Life

4.3.2 Gregor Mendel and the Laws of Heredity

4.3.3 Mendelian Inheritance in Humans

4.4 Evolution in Action: Past and Present

4.4.1 Early Evolutionists and the Fixity of Species

4.4.2 Charles Darwin’s Role in Changing Views of the Natural World

4.4.3 Understanding Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection

4.5 What Is a Primate?

4.5.1 What Is a Primate?

4.5.2 Primate Behavioral Variation

4.5.3 Explaining Primate Success

4.5.4 Primate Classification and Taxonomy

4.6 Origin of and Classification of Primates

4.6.1 Understanding Concepts of Time

4.6.2 Fossils and Dating Methods