Kelsey Steven - Cross-Sexual Joking Ritual

In the book The Ritual Process by Victor Turner, he describes the Wubwang'u ceremony done in the Ndembu's culture, which is a tribe in Africa. This a particular ritual caught my attention and I found it intriguing. The Cross-Sexual Joking Ritual is for men and women to cause sexual arousal in each other by teasing each other about the unique aspects of their sex. The idea is that the more antagonistic and aggressive the men and women are to each other, the higher the sexual drive. They chant songs to each other that make fun of each other's sexual organs and prowess while praise themselves about their own. It is understood as being in good fun and there is an unspoken permission to be disrespectful. This ritual made me think about the fact that an oral culture, like the Ndembu, can share the same quality of a literate culture like ours. We always stressed the differences between the two but there are still core human traits that are present in any type of society. Men and women flirt all the time in our culture, mostly "competing" with each other as a form of attracting each other. Men will poke fun at women and vice versa in our culture just like the Ndembu do in their culture. So, even though there are some differences between an oral and literate culture, there still appears core similarities that all humans share, no matter their culture.