***The Sambia believe that semen is all important to human life but is in short supply, and must therefore be circulated through people, both males and females, very carefully. Women and men, the Sambia believe, are born with an internal organ called a tingu that secretes their sexual substance. The poor old male tingu is born shriveled and dry and its ability to produce semen is developed slowly through childhood and adolescence, through a certain practice which takes years.

At the age of 7 to 10, Sambia boys are taken away from their mothers to a men’s house in the village, where they will live for the next ten or so years. there they learn the key act by which their maturation is ensured; regular fellatio of an older youth, aged roughly 14-18. the whole point of Sambia initiation is to build up the poor little dry baby tingus of the young boys by feeding them the semen of older, stronger teenagers. Only when they’ve gone most of the way through this process, and have a well-functioning tingu, and know a lot of male secrets, will they be ready for the dangerous but exciting business of mature adult sex with women.

After practicing fellatio several times a week for 3 to 6 years, at around the ages of 13 or 14, the younger boys start to mature physically and sexually as their bodies develop, their sexual organs get bigger, their muscles get stronger, and the Sambians say, in effect, “hey, look, it works; this is why we do it!”

Another 3-4 years after this, at the ages of 17-18, the men are ready to be married. Married couples don’t set up house together. The young man stays in the men’s house, the woman with her family. But they do meet for regular oral sex, the husband now being fellated by his wife, who ingests his semen which is believed to toughen her up. During this first stage of marriage, Sambian males also go on being fellated by younger males, so this is actually a period of bisexuality for them.

For the second part of the Sambian marriage, the couple move in together on a fulltime basis. They experience for the first time “man-woman penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse”. The man is considered strong enough and knowledgeable enough to engage in the work of sex for the purpose of procreating his own children. He must no longer allow younger males access to his nurturing penis, for it will now be a threatening penis, too polluted by sex with women to ever be safe for men again.

*** I’ve just read some of the comments on the link from reddit. Please be aware there is a link to the original article at the very beginning of the post. Just hover your mouse over the words next to the asterisk. Thank you