The world hosts a rich diversity of cultures—where some consider it rude to keep shoes on when they walk into a home, while others cover people with cinnamon on their birthdays if they’re still single. Across the globe, there are many different sex practices and customs that you might not be aware of.
Cambodia
In the northeastern nook of Cambodia live a people called the Kreung. In this region, parents build their daughters huts where a girl can sexually experiment with any boy she likes. Boys are taught to be respectful toward girls from a young age, and jealousy and rape are unheard of. Because divorce is forbidden, girls are encouraged to have as many boyfriends as they want. The girls can even have multiple boys in their huts simultaneously. Yet despite their conjugal visits in the huts, the couples “cannot be seen in the public with their love unless they are engaged or married.”
Mangaia, Cook Islands
At 13 years old, young boys are taken away from society by an older man for two weeks. During these two weeks, the boy is “educated on sexual intercourse, positions and techniques with a heavy focus on one’s partner achieving orgasm multiple times.” While having no formal educational ritual, the women are encouraged to explore their sexuality and to have multiple sexual partners before marriage. In the Mangaian sex culture, orgasm is not just a goal but a standard part of all sexual encounters, with “almost all males and females reporting relative ease in regards to achieving sexual climax.”
New Guinea
In Papua, New Guinea, children are allowed to have sex starting at six years old. The Trobrianders tribe allows and encourages girls of six to eight to have sex while boys may begin from 10–12 years old. The Trobrianders “do not consider children having sex a taboo.”
Sahel
Sahel, a region in western Africa, is home to the Wodaabe tribe. The Gerewol festival is celebrated every year in September where the women judge the men. The Yaake is a dance performed by the men and “is the highlight of Gerewol, where men’s status as sex gods are set in stone or lie in tatters.” The men are judged by the tribe’s three most beautiful women. These women are typically chosen because their fathers won Yaake in previous years. If a man wins Yaake, he gets to pick whatever women he wants out of the tribe to marry. If a woman likes a man, whether the winner of the Yaake or otherwise, she can be “stolen” and leave her previous husband behind. In the Wodaabe tribe, “women have all the sexual freedom and are allowed more than one husband.”
