Interesting difference. I should add that my intro students are probably younger than yours: in cégep, students start at around 17. So to them, the marriage thing is a big deal indeed. I rarely discuss the whole semen thing unless the discussion meanders that way and I need it to make a specific point. Teaching Culture and Sexuality was a whole different ball game though.

About intersex births . . . for the most part, I haven’t had many serious reactions to it. Many of my students have already learned about it and when I raise the question of the reflection of a binary gender mindset in the medical practices associated with the birth of intersex babies, many of my students actually get angry at the lack of choice and discrimination that these people face.

So . . . .looks like we are teaching quite different populations in a few ways.

However, the vast majority of people fell into the indifferent middle. They didn’t really care either way whether or not polyandry existed. For some this meant that as long other people practiced polyandry, it was ok (i.e. not Americans). For others, this meant that they only cared about the practice if it directly affected their personal lives. (People in this group also didn’t care about cases where women married “trees” [actually spirits represented as a particular tree, can’t remember who practiced this though].

This was not the case with semen ingestion (I think the particular professor used an example from a different group than Herdt). There was definitely an almost universal condemnation of the practice. This, I would argue, has more to do with certain “Western” or “American” taboos about sex than anything else. Certain aspects of sex or sex like behavior are seen as so abhorrent by some that it is impossible to get them to see the larger context in which they exist. There’s also a heterosexist element of this (as Ozma noted in the other thread). Students often have no problem with younger girls (or boys) marrying older men (or women in the case of boys) in other cultures but have problems with practices that could be labeled gay (though not lesbian in the case of some men).

Of all behaviors, I would argue that sex (as in intercourse) and sex like behaviours are the practices in the “West” that have the most baggage attached to them. I’m not necessarily sure why this is the case (perhaps having to do with the influence of certain Christian factions) but it is something that intro level classes have to deal with. I personally think an entire course on sex and sexuality would be the only way to deal with sex in a meaningful way (these tend to be popular because of their course titles). One or two lectures in an intro class just doesn’t cut it.

If sex doesn’t work then what typse of practices or beliefs work for intro classes? The assumption challenging practices that seemed to work the best were those that challenged peoples understandings of biology. These would include race, gender (especially dealing with intersex births), pregnancy (“You mean women don’t necessarily have to make noise during birht.”), and other topics which might seem to be biological universals but aren’t. Many students are shocked to learn that behaviours which they believe to be instictual are not in fact instinctual.

A second category of practices that seemed to work well were those practices that challenge assumptions about the “primitive” nature of certain groups. This mainly include practices in supposedly “primitive” groups that were far more complex than those of people in the “West” (e.g. religious ceremonies, naming, kinship). These practices make it less likely that people will see a certain group as “simple.”

(I apologize for any typos. This post was very much stream of concsciousness.)