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May. 12th, 2007 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusOn a lighter note, since some people like the weird facts I stumble on to in my researches, here are some of the stranger things I found in the book I'm reading, One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the [Canadian] Military in World War II:
The Sambians
Comparing views of homosexuality, masculinity, and military from around the world and across time, Paul Jackson brings up the Sambians, a people from Papua New Guinea.
I've heard of them before. The Sambians believe that semen is an extremely limited resource -- (pauses while "Every sperm is sacred" jokes are made) -- but that a boy can only finish puberty and become a warrior if he drinks the semen (and thus the masculinity) of older teenagers. Homosexuality is required during their teenage years, but forbidden in adulthood as a waste of precious bodily fluids.
This practice is considered unique to the Sambians, but I understand that some all-boys British boarding schools work the same way.
Real Anti-Dentites
During World War II, men who wouldn't enlist and conscientious objectors were despised. So despised, in fact, that a Corporal Joanis and a Private MacRae of the Canadian dental corps were beaten in Toronto by an infantry unit because dentistry was considered an unmanly way to spend the war.
Nineteenth-Century Crackpot Theories
In other news, it seems Montreal is firmly in the Sotadic Zone -- the area of the Earth in which (according to 19th-century explorer Richard Burton) the climate causes homosexuality. Please note that Burton was an English writer, and England is carefully excluded.
Indeed, he was so careful to give England a wide berth, that he even excluded Paris.
The Sambians
Comparing views of homosexuality, masculinity, and military from around the world and across time, Paul Jackson brings up the Sambians, a people from Papua New Guinea.
I've heard of them before. The Sambians believe that semen is an extremely limited resource -- (pauses while "Every sperm is sacred" jokes are made) -- but that a boy can only finish puberty and become a warrior if he drinks the semen (and thus the masculinity) of older teenagers. Homosexuality is required during their teenage years, but forbidden in adulthood as a waste of precious bodily fluids.
This practice is considered unique to the Sambians, but I understand that some all-boys British boarding schools work the same way.
Real Anti-Dentites
During World War II, men who wouldn't enlist and conscientious objectors were despised. So despised, in fact, that a Corporal Joanis and a Private MacRae of the Canadian dental corps were beaten in Toronto by an infantry unit because dentistry was considered an unmanly way to spend the war.
Nineteenth-Century Crackpot Theories
In other news, it seems Montreal is firmly in the Sotadic Zone -- the area of the Earth in which (according to 19th-century explorer Richard Burton) the climate causes homosexuality. Please note that Burton was an English writer, and England is carefully excluded.
Indeed, he was so careful to give England a wide berth, that he even excluded Paris.