Heterosexual Seduction in the Urban Night Context: Behaviors and Meanings

ABSTRACT

This article presents an anthropological analysis of heterosexual seduction behaviors of men and women (from 18 to 65 years old, with varying civil status) who attended nightclubs located in the movida areas of Lisbon, Portugal. These behaviors were analyzed according to structure versus communitas theories. Nighttime seduction behaviors were observed and recorded in a field diary, and in-depth semistructured interviews with 60 men and 60 women were conducted. Interviews were analyzed using the thematic content analysis model. Results suggested that the communitas domain was evinced in the various seduction strategies. These courtship behaviors tended to follow a specific pattern: nonverbal seduction, visual seduction, verbal seduction, and acting—consisting of caresses, touches, and kisses. When this escalation process evoked positive responses, it generally culminated in the complete synchrony of movements between the two bodies. The seduction process encompassed both masculine and feminine initiatives: Women engaged primarily in nonverbal and visual seduction, while men appeared to orchestrate verbal courtship and acting. However, sometimes men and women did not want to seduce or be seduced because they were married (especially women) or were with their partners (especially young men) and did not want to endanger the structure domain.

Notes

¹The “mentality of oppression and penury” was a feature of the previous authoritarian political and economic environment and was gradually replaced by a more open mind-set, accompanied by economic development, after the revolution of April 25, 1974, which established a democratic regime (Barreto, 2002). People started earning better wages and, since the late 1970s, there has also been greater participation of women in the labor market.

²Some social scientists have recognized that women are highly proceptive (Diamond, 2008; Ford & Beach, 1951; Jesser, 1978; McCormick, 1979; Perper, 1985; Remoff, 1980). There are also passing references to “proceptiveness” in ethnographic literature, such as Price's (1984) first-rate study of Saramaccan women, in Suriname, South America, and in other sources ranging from the Kama Sutra (Vatsyayana, 1961) through Marco Polo's (1958) infuriatingly brief comment that women in Tangut (modern Kan-su, in Northwest China) “made overtures to men, and that men sustained no sin if they responded!” (p. 91).

³In The Art of Love, Ovid (2002) states that flattery is done carefully so that the woman does not take notice of feigned words. If the pretense was found, the result might be disastrous and perhaps unrecoverable loss.

In the Middle Ages, chivalry and the practice of courtly love created a code of conduct that served the beauty of a lady. The courtly love expressed through troubadour poetry shows an exorbitant and quasi-religious praise of the lady's beauty. According to Steinberg (2003), the three main ideas expressed in the troubadours’ poetry are (1) love is caused by the beauty of the opposite sex; (2) the eyes; beauty enters the heart, and inflicts a wound which only the lady can heal; and (3) though absent from the loved one, the lover leaves his heart with her. Here is an extract from the poem “Merciless Beauty A Triple Roundel” (Chaucer, 2007) that brings to light some of these ideas:

Your two bright eyes will slay me suddenly; the beauty of them I cannot sustain, so keenly strikes it through my heart and brain. Unless your word will heal very speedily my head's confusion and my heart's sore pain, your two bright eyes will slay me suddenly: the beauty of them I cannot sustain. Upon my word I tell you faithfully, you are sovereign over my life and death, and by my death the world shall see it plainly: your two bright eyes will slay me suddenly, the beauty of them I cannot sustain, so keenly does it strike through my heart. (Chaucer, 2007, p. 21)

⁴In this research, some women (primarily young women ranging from 18 to 25 years old) took the initiative in verbally seducing young males, especially those of the same age group, contrary to observations made by Desjeux and colleagues (1999) and Spradley and Mann (1979). These examples serve to culturally relativize attitudes that tend to be seen as essential and natural, such as men being active and women as passive.