Sex with the bride...

[angela146]

I remember reading in an anthropology class that in some cultures the male relatives of the groom get to have sex with the bride either at or shortly after the wedding.

There are some sketchy references on the internet, mostly having to do with the spread of HIV because of these practices.

However, I can't find anything that talks about the traditions themselves. In other words, does the bride just lay back or bend over and get it from a line of guys? Does she go to visit them and spend the night?

Does anyone know of anything on the net that talks about sex rituals between a bride and multiple male relatives of the groom? I am interested in any and all cultures.

Yes, I am planning on writing a story around this and, yes, I am planning on getting off reading about the various practices.

 

[cantdog]

I'm happy to see you here again.

People are getting all nostalgic (and self-important) on the Hangout lately. I remembered you yesterday and searched back. You were always one for the technical questions.

cantdog

PS I can't locate any references to what you describe. Sorry. Sometimes I'm useless.

c

 

[BlackShanglan]

People are getting all nostalgic (and self-important) on the Hangout lately.

Trust Cantdog to delineate those niggling connections that one never quite notices without his trenchant insight. Those two things do seem to come together rather a lot, don't they? It never struck me until now how often "the good old days" is tied to "why won't everyone listen to me?"

S

 

[Guest]

Angela, good to see you and your lovely AV. I think the term you need to search is "ritual defloration". It was common in many cultures (Japanese, Chinese I know of). Sometimes the virgins were penetrated by dildos used by priests or monks, and as you recalled above, in more primitive societies by male relatives (uncles were prominent), even females (using phalli, dildos).

best, Perdita

 

[Huckleman2000]

It's strange you mention this, because I think I must have read something about these practices too, and recently. It was probably in the HIV context, though. Or else it might have been in a story about the indigenous tribes on some tsunami-ravaged island, but I doubt that marriage rituals would come up in those articles.

I will say, though, that tribal customs like that are probably stranger than you might imagine. And way less romantic. I lived in Nigeria for a year and a half when I was around 10, and there were people in the bush who wore leaves, stuck large wooden plugs in their lips and earlobes, and packed their hair into helmet-shapes with dung. I saw one "coming of age" ritual of the Fulani tribe where the pubescent boys were beaten across their backs with long sticks, and tried to hypnotize themselves with mirror shards so that they wouldn't flinch and fail the test.

If it's ritualistic, it seems to me the whole village would be involved in some way (at least as spectators), with the men and women grouped separately. I think that's the basic protocol for those sorts of things

 

[BlackShanglan]

Is there a certain perverse logic to this? Ensuring that the bride's first encounter with her husband is not the potentially unpleasant experience of deflowering? Or is it something else?

How intriguing.

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

Is there a certain perverse logic to this? Ensuring that the bride's first encounter with her husband is not the potentially unpleasant experience of deflowering? Or is it something else?

Often the case was fear of hymeneal blood. Those who did the deflowering considered it a dangerous duty.

Perdita

 

[BlackShanglan]

Often the case was fear of hymeneal blood. Those who did the deflowering considered it a dangerous duty.

Perdita

Ahhhh yes. Now I recall ... many taboos about women and women's blood. I'd nearly forgotten.

You're such a rum little species, you humans.

Shanglan

 

[angela146]

Is there a certain perverse logic to this? Ensuring that the bride's first encounter with her husband is not the potentially unpleasant experience of deflowering? Or is it something else?

Actually, the way I remember it, it was a way of making sure that the woman got pregnant right away and that no one would be quite sure who the father was.

That way, the entire village/family would feel a sense of paternal feeling toward the oldest child.

Of course, the real purpose is that all the guys get to fuck the bride...

 

[Huckleman2000]

Ahhhh yes. Now I recall ... many taboos about women and women's blood. I'd nearly forgotten.

You're such a rum little species, you humans.

Shanglan

Don't be so harsh, Equus!

I understand Wal Mart now has a Bridal Defloration Registry, out of respect to native cultures in new store locations.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Of course, the real purpose is that all the guys get to fuck the bride...

As wedding traditions go, I'd rate this a few points above free whiskey sours.

 

[Liar]

Actually, the way I remember it, it was a way of making sure that the woman got pregnant right away and that no one would be quite sure who the father was.

Heard something along those lines too. As I recall, there have been infertile men, who traveled around as freelance deflowerers. It was mentioned in some dobumentary I saw... I can't remember where this was, western Africa, I think. Apparently, the family thing was unacceptable in that culture. But on the other hand, it became an even more splendid way to spread diseases around from village to village.

 

[wishfulthinking]

I can vaguely remember something in Australian Aboriginal culture where the women in a girl's family would use a stone to pierce the maidenhead. But I don't know if this was related to marriage ceremonies or mor to do with their belief system.


Edited to add: I think this was more a passage of rites to becoming a woman in the eye of the tribe. There would also have been a ritual for the male.

 

[wishfulthinking]

Again, loosely on the topic, didn't England have both sides of the family, but mostly the patriarchs, surround the bridal bed to ensure the marriage was consumated and that neither bride or groom were deformed??

 

[neonlyte]

Not Marriage, but Death

There is an account in Risala written in 922 by an Arab diplomat of the Caliph of Baghdad on a mission in the Middle Volga who came across armed merchants, Rus, usually identified as Swedish Vikings.

It concerns the death of their leader, by the rules of the Rus his wife was to be sacrificed to lay alongside her husband. On the morning of the burial the wife was brought to the ship and bound and handed to a elder woman called the Angel of Death. The woman took the wife to each of the tents of the remaining men, each had intercourse with her and told the wife "Tell your Lord that I did this out of love for him."

After each of the men had intercourse the wife was strapped to a frame and carried high in the air back to her Lord's ship crying "I can see my Master in Paradise..., he calls to me. Send me to him."

She is carried into the bowels of the ship where the Angel of Death kills her, the men making a protective screen around the killing beating on their shields with staves to deaden the screams of the wife. The wife is then strangled by a cord around the neck, each man takes his turn.

The Arab claimed to be horrified at the 'ceremony' and became more so when it was evident that the ship, and the Lord and his wife were to be burnt. The interpreter told the Arab, he and his kind were stupid, "You take the people you love and honour most and bury them in the ground, where worms and insects eat them. We burn them in the twinkling of an eye, so that they enter Paradise at that very moment."


It is a remarkable account because no other record of Viking ritual cites this practise. Yet evidence exists to show Vikings were in the Volga at that time working river routes across Central Europe to the Black Sea. Equally confusing is the notion of cremated burial, Vikings usually buried their ships, bodies interned. Not a marriage ceremony, but a death ceremony.

 

[angela146]

Thanks for all the help, folks. And... Thank you for noticing that I was gone and welcoming me back.

My tenth anniversary is fast approaching and I've been working on a story.

In the story, my husband's brothers and uncles take turns with me because we've been married for ten years and don't have children.

Yes, this is absolute fantasy.

My husband's family is Scandinavian and the idea of eight tall lean blond men screwing me one after the other is... ahem... interesting.

My family is Italian/French/Spanish. For me, there's something exotic about blond hair and light skin.