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It's certainly not universally viewed as acceptable intimacy by all cultures. Even more certainly, it's not viewed as acceptable intimacy in public. In some c
by retrac 7y ago
It's certainly not universally viewed as acceptable intimacy by all cultures. Even more certainly, it's not viewed as acceptable intimacy in public. In some cultures, you're about as likely to see a couple kiss in public as you are to see them have sex in public.
> Similarly, the authors state that “no ethnographer working with Sub-Saharan African, New Guinea, or Amazonian foragers or horticulturalists reported having witnessed any occasion in which their study populations engaged in a romantic–sexual kiss”
That doesn't mean they don't kiss, of course. Consider that an ethnographer studying people in Tehran would probably conclude their society simply doesn't have homosexual behaviour. If nothing else, I would imagine that, like with other forms of intimacy often viewed as deviant (for example, anal or oral sex), clever people frequently rediscover it, and some like it, and then practice it, even if in secret.
- roywiggins 7y agoYou say that, but I have read at least one in-depth journalistic piece on the gay underground in Tehran. Ethnography isn't that different from journalism. Ethnographers interview people!
- Johnny555 7y agoThey didn't just use observation: "The Tsonga people of Southern Africa are also openly disgusted by the practice: “Kissing was formerly entirely unknown… When they saw the custom adopted by the Europeans, they said laughingly: “Look at these people! They suck each other! They eat each other’s saliva and dirt!” Even a husband never kissed his wife"
- retrac 7y agoYes, and people say the same thing about homosexuality in societies that strongly disapprove of it. They find it comical, disgusting or similar. Doesn't mean the practice doesn't occur.
- bawolff 7y agoThe original article was about kissing not being a general thing in lots of cultures. If a minority of people in those cultures still engage in kissing that hardly disproves the point of the article.
- 1000units 7y agoThese views are more sympathetic in the absence of potable water plumbing.