Tchambuli Society

An excerpt from Men and Women, 1975, Time-Life Books, about the New Guinean Tchambuli culture, observed by Margaret Mead in the 1930s. It reminds one strongly of the gender reversal passage in Maxine Hong Kingston's Chinamen, in which young men were forced into foot-binding practices, constrictive clothing, and then married off as reproductive chattel:

"The most conspicuous feature of Tchambouli society was the division of labor. Fishing and mosquito-net weaving were exclusively the work of women, who went unadorned, shaved their heads and were much given to loud and raucous humor as they hauled their nets by the lake. While men carried their wives' wares to market and often did the actual buying and selling, they took little part otherwise in providing for the community. The work of the men, who paid considerable attention to their dress and to their elaborate hairdos, was the creation of art: almost all of them were trained as musicians, dancers and wood carvers.

"Polygamy was permitted but rare. Ostensibly, a man chose his own bride, paying a bride-price to her family, but in practice, courtship meant, for a man, a process of being chosen by a woman. In the early stages of child rearing, women regarded men as interfering nuisances. Boys and girls were treated alike until they were six or seven, when the women began including the girls in their work activities. ... Generally ignored in the jealousies and petty conflicts that seemed to set the tone for adult men, the boys grew up devious, gossipy, passive, dependent on the opinions of others for their self-esteem, and, in many cases, neurotic."