The Most Sexually Liberated Culture in the World

  This is sort of a sequel to my post on Inis Beag, the most sexually repressed society in the world.  If you want to check that out, it is HERE.
  The culture that is on the other end if the spectrum is very different.  Between Australia and South America in the Pacific Ocean is a cluster of islands called the Cook Islands.  The most southern of them is Mangaia, the most sexually liberated culture in the world.  In the 1970s, Donald S. Marshall studied Mangaia and learned that sex was to them the way that money, religion or football is to Americans.  Mangaians not only cared about and approved of sex but they encouraged sex, as much of it with as many different partners as possible at an early age.  The complete opposite of Inis Beag.  Marshall observed that at age 4 boys and girls who once ran around naked together were integrated into sexual segregation.  Boys, men, brothers, husbands on one side, girls, sisters, women, wives on the other.  All separated.  They'd all go to events together and sleep in one big open room, but on different sides.
  Around age 7,8,9,10 boys learn about masturbation and tried it frequently but not too much.  Once puberty began, determined by pubic hair and a retractable foreskin, boys would then undergo super-incision, which was when the father would invite an expert or sometimes two to take his son some place secluded like the beach or a mountain stream and there make a lateral incision along the top of his penis as far up as the stomach.  In the next two weeks, while the cut healed the expert would teach the boy, now a man, how to pleasure women.  Lessons in cunnilingus, breast suckling, serial orgasms, and simultaneous orgasms.  then the new man would be paired with an older woman who would run him through the practice sessions, which would include penetration, at which point she would remove the lateral incision scab with her vagina.  This is definitely squirm-inducing.  Take a deep breath.
  Girls also masturbated as children.  For them, it was by pressing their thighs together or rocking on their heels.  As they aged, girls also received instructions from older mentors about how to orgasm.  With orgasm then being such a given for all parties, the goal of sex is then endurance and matched reactions.  In Marshall's words, ultimate sex was when the men's orgasm "is achieved simultaneously with the peak of his partner's pleasure".  How did this happen though with the separation of the sexes?  Systems, nonverbals.  They'd figure out ways quickly because now that they were trained, sex was like a competition.  Who could have the most sex with the most partners and be the most satisfying?  Often a young man investigated beforehand how he could sneak into the open space room where the girls slept with her entire family.  Ideally, he'd reach her and she'd be into it.  Her parents wouldn't wake or they'd listen silently for their daughter's pleasure and hope for marriage.  Sometimes, she would expect to be coaxed, like sweet talk, which put him at risk for breaking segregation code.  Other times, if he was rejected or rushed, he'd try by force.  Even the most sexually liberated culture has a relationship with sexual violence.  Let's say the girl is enthusiastic about her night visitor, though.  She'll date him for a while, then another guy and another guy, because she's told that the more partners that she has, the less likely it is for her to get pregnant.  Pregnancy supposedly comes from spending too much time with the same person.  Typically, she will get pregnant, which is traditionally the move to marriage and monogomy-ish and more babies.
  What else might you find interesting about Mangaia?  Out of 2,000 on the islands there are a few noted to be intersex or what we might call trans.  There is no known use of sex toys, with the exception of a pillow sometimes used to prop up the women's hips.  The greatest cultural fear is "tiramate", translated to "dead penis" or impotence.  Although there is sex contact between youth and mentors, homosexuality was not considered present on Mangaia at the time of this study.  Sex there was and may still be the way they communicate, earn prestige, a sense of identity.