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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat Pragmatic's Avatar
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    Unusual Thai customs

    Please don't take this wrong as I do not condone this practice. I've just learned about genital kissing of children in Thailand. I'd known, for a long time, of rumours, regarding Japanese parents carrying out the practice in years gone by. I then wondered if the ritual is still practiced today, if it ever happened at all, and was just talk?

    I spoke to my missus about it and surprisingly she admitted she did it to our 3 children when they were babies. I was stunned as I never knew it was generally done by Thais in rural areas. I assume in some towns/cities also. She said that grandmothers do it to their grandchildren as well, boy or girl. The wife then explained to me as why they do it. Apparently they do it to show love/affection to the child. She says she stopped carrying out the practice once the baby begins to learn to walk age.

    I Googled and came up with this. I'm totally amazed.

    I’ve read on several occasions that in some cultures, it’s seen as normal for parents and caregivers to perform sexual acts on babies and toddlers in order to calm them down and help them sleep. Cultures to which this disturbing practice has been attributed include those of Japan, Albania, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Bali, native Hawaiians, some native American tribes, parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, Australian aboriginals, and New Guineans. Does this really happen? —Matt Wells, United Kingdom
    Not to go all Bill Clinton on you, but we need to define what we mean by “performing a sexual act.” For now let’s just say that, based strictly on appearances, some cultures tolerate stuff that in the United States would get you branded as a pervert. Examples:


    In 2006 a Cambodian immigrant living in the Las Vegas area was charged with sexual assault for allegedly performing fellatio on her 6-year-old son. The woman’s attorney said what she’d actually done was kiss the kid’s penis, once, when he was 4 or 5. A spokesperson for the Cambodian Association of America said that while this kind of thing wasn’t widespread in Cambodia, some rural folk went in for it as an expression of love or respect, although in his experience never with children older than 1 or maybe 2.


    En route to being elected U.S. senator from Virginia in 2006, Jim Webb, onetime Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, was lambasted by his opponent for a passage in his 2001 novel Lost Soldiers in which a Thai man picks up his naked young son and puts his penis in his mouth. Webb responded that he had personally witnessed such a greeting in a Bangkok slum.


    Numerous ethnographers report that mothers and caregivers in rural New Guinea routinely fondle the genitals of infants and toddlers of both sexes. In the case of boys this supposedly aids the growth of the penis. It’s often done in public and is a source of great amusement.


    The Telegu-speaking people of central India dote on the penises of boys up through age six, which they hold, rub, and kiss. (Girls escape with minor same-sex touching.) A typical greeting involves an adult grabbing a boy’s arm with one hand and his penis with the other.


    A 1946 report claimed that among lower-class Japanese families, parents would play with the genitals of children to help them fall asleep, and a researcher visiting Japan in the 1930s noted that mothers played with the genitals of their sons.
    I didn’t make an exhaustive search and so don’t know to what extent such things occur in Latin America, Europe, Australia, or elsewhere. However, it appears that:


    Fooling with kids’ privates is a fairly widespread practice in Asia, particularly among people toward the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. The reports are too numerous and credible for them all to be dismissed as the ravings of hysterical Westerners. My surmise is that, as societies become more westernized, urban, and affluent, the practice dies out.


    The acts are sexual in the sense that those doing the fondling are well aware of the sexual implications and find it droll to give a little boy an erection.


    Lurid tales occasionally do surface. Reports of mother-son incest were briefly faddish in Japanese magazines in the 1980s. These stories played off the unflattering Japanese stereotype of the mother obsessed with getting her son into a top school, suggesting some “education mamas” would violate the ultimate taboo to help their horny pubescent boys stay relaxed and focused on studying. A few Westerners have taken these urban legends at face value. Lloyd deMause, founder of and prolific contributor to a publication called the Journal of Psychohistory, cites the Japanese mother-son stories as prime evidence in his account of what he calls “the universality of incest.” It’s pretty clear, however, that incest inspires as much revulsion in Japan as anywhere else.
    A less excitable take on things is that Asian societies just aren’t as hung up about matters of the flesh as we Western prudes are. In Japan, mixed-sex naked public bathing was fairly common until the postwar occupation, and some families bathe together now if they have a big enough tub. Nonetheless, so far as I can determine, Asian societies have always drawn a bright line between fooling around with babies and toddlers and having sex with your kids. If Westerners can’t fathom that elementary distinction, well, whose problem is that? —Cecil Adams

  2. #2
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    They’re a rum lot round your way.

  3. #3
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    In less so-called "civilised" communities the parts of the body are less distinguished between. A finger, a penis, a mouth, a vulva...just body parts. While at the same time there is obviously a distinction between platonic and sexual.
    I'm more alarmed at the ultra-ordox Jewish custom of sucking the penis of a newly circumcised baby. Quite a few of those babies end up with herpes.

  4. #4
    Not a Mod. Begbie's Avatar
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    Well Prag the bad news is that your google search may have landed you in the sex offenders list at GCHQ. The good news is that the Conservative Party will be contacting you shortly with a view to you standing at the next election.
    Last edited by Begbie; 31-07-2018 at 11:23 AM.

  5. #5
    Days Work Done! Norton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pragmatic View Post
    I was stunned as I never knew it was generally done by Thais in rural areas
    Common stuff Prags.


    Quote Originally Posted by Maanaam View Post
    A finger, a penis, a mouth, a vulva...just body parts.
    Yep.

  6. #6
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    Sounds to me, the uninitiated and unaware, that these practices were developed as a pacifier for unsettled babies. Probably routine in more impoverished families who had to make do with less.
    It might have influences in later life for both adults and children, were it to be a common practice on anyone above walking age?

  7. #7
    กงเกวียนกำเกวียน HuangLao's Avatar
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    Uncouth barbarians...

  8. #8
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    One custom I find strange, now my mother is Irish and I lived in Ireland a few times, wakes where the body is laid out in the house, whisky in the morning, whisky in the day, whisky in the night.

    Here, may be just local, Issan or Thailand general, don't know, but bodies get buried, if they had a bad death.
    Around here, just outside the local Wat wall, when their time, sentence is up, they get disinterred and taken home, or family members home for a big piss up and burnt the next day.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by jamescollister View Post
    Here, may be just local, Issan or Thailand general, don't know, but bodies get buried, if they had a bad death.
    Around here, just outside the local Wat wall, when their time, sentence is up, they get disinterred and taken home, or family members home for a big piss up and burnt the next day.
    Interesting. What's an example of a bad death? How long is the "sentence" (and you say that like it's a punishment)?

  10. #10
    I'm in Jail

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    Perhaps he meant "bad breath".

  11. #11
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    jamescollister's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Maanaam View Post
    Interesting. What's an example of a bad death? How long is the "sentence" (and you say that like it's a punishment)?
    All about karma, good previous lives, you grow old and die in your sleep, bad karma takes it toll in this life.
    How long you go in the ground for, guessing it's a monks call, longest grave time I know off was 5 years, brother of the guy who acted as my cousin during my wedding.
    Story was shot dead in a drug deal in BKK.

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