ANOMALOUS WOMEN.... "From a symbolized body to a constrained sexuality"

 Book portrait

The title of this book corresponds to a field investigation done by Dr. Antonella Fagetty, director of the Anthropology department of the “Autonomous University of Puebla, México”, who describes the sexual culture of a small community of the state of Puebla, México, called San Miguel Acuexcomac, a patriarchate where the nahuatl language predominate. The total population of San Miguel Acuexcomac, comprises of 994 habitants, 471 are men and 523 are women.

In the index one can read the following titles:

-“The unsuccessful woman”

-“The unmarried woman”

-“The tally woman (the illegal sexual partner of a man)”

-“The adultery”

-“The sterile woman” 

-“The single-handedly woman (widow, abandoned, unsuccessful)” 

-“Death and Old Age”

-“A summary of a theory of the body and of sexuality”

The book details sexual ways of relationships that results from a complex process and lack of culture gestated and generated by the interaction and confrontation of two Cosmo visions: Nahua and the Judeo-Christian.

Some of these relations are described as follows:

• Sexual activity is considered to be induced by the Creator, propelled by the energy that generates blood in the body and that is generated from food, especially from corn.
• Blood brings warmth, the sexual energy that propels life and that turns into a desire. Sexual activities implicate the passing of blood and when women and men join, they conform a child.
•  Moderating the corporal balance by taking care of sexual excesses.
• The women´s body is considered pure and immaculate before their first sexual relationship due to its untouched hymen. [i]
•  Punctual rules and severe taboos must be obeyed regulating the sexual interchanges between men and women.
•  Masculine blood represents the fecundating blood, being the support of the social paternity.
• Women are compelled to a strict control on the uses of their bodies.
• The linage is given by the father. Only men inherit goods. [ii]
• The youngest son of the family is obliged to look after the parents.
• That woman who is deflowered by a man is considered his property.
•  One of the existing dramas is that men are forced to share “their women” with foreigners with whom they will engender children.
• If a couple marry, the father of the bride has to give presents before and during the marriage ceremony according to the catholic religion, representing in this way, the payment and the recognition of the virginity of the woman.
• Only the married couple acquires the right to exercise his or her sexuality; their children will get the social privileges for being legitimate.
• Marriage is an obligation. It is considered that men and women have been created to multiply, to sin and to reproduce. [iii]
• The unforeseen events, mistakes, destiny, violent events, deceits, weaknesses, etc., that women live in experience in this community, makes them anomalous: “the unmarried virgin is the women who has failed”, “the adulterous wife is disloyal”, “the woman who does not married becomes a single not wanted woman” or a “tally woman (the illegal sexual partner)” of a married man.
• That woman who is alone, abandoned, a widow or unmarried and that succumbs to sexual pursuits resulting in being a single mother, is often considered as a failed person.
•   Forgiveness is not contemplated in any of these situations.
•  That woman who does not have children because of sterility problems or because she has decided not to have children is considered a wasteful, unsuccessful and incomplete, with an anomalous body.[iv]
• The virility of men is often expressed trough violence and aggression, a behavior that endangers women´s life.
• To maintain esteem and recognition in the community as a woman of honour in the community, is highly complex as that of the role of the men who has to maintain his virility.
• Men must have a lot of girlfriends before he chooses his future wife. In the same way a women must choose her husband from all their suitors, accepting to run away with him or to marry him. [v]
•  If a woman is deceived she loses her honour, men do not.
• The investigator, Dr. Antonella Fagetty, comments: “Women who are submissive, and men who are pursuers, as incredible as it may seem, they complemented, because that activity guarantees their social survival. [vi]
• Women who preserve their virginity until they get married, become faithful and honorable. Along with those who have a lot of children, they acquire the recognition of being “feminine and complete women”.
• Those women who do not preserve their virginity and do not marry, are pointed out as disgraceful woman of indignity, and are treated as anomalous.

For these women, the hymen, the womb and the blood are constraints of the female body. 

This condition can be observed in the entire Latin America. 

There is everything to be done.

by Vickyvananda