[4] A small minority of males remain bachelors and continue to engage in homosexual relations, and are considered unusual and ridiculed by other tribesmen.
[8] Pre-pubescent boys are required to perform fellatio on older males and swallow the semen because it is believed that "without this 'male milk' they will fail to mature properly."
Upon reaching adulthood, men marry and engage in heterosexual behavior, initially requiring their brides to fellate them and later perform penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse.
"To go from absolute gender segregation and arranged marriages, with universal ritual initiation that controlled sexual and gender development and imposed the radical practice of boy-insemination, to abandoning initiation, seeing adolescent boys and girls kiss and hold hands in public, arranging their own marriages, and building square houses with one bed for the newlyweds, as the Simbari have done, is revolutionary.
In the 1960s, the Australian government's forced cessation of perpetual tribal warfare in Papua New Guinea eventually led to a significant altering of male identity and the warrior culture that had long sustained their initiation rituals.
Immigration, beginning in the late 1960s, also contributed to change, as tribal members began to leave the highlands to work on coastal cocoa, copra, and rubber plantations.
Rather quickly, Herdt reports, “schools began to displace initiation as a primary means for gaining access to valued positions within the expanding society.” Education was co-ed, which not only increased women's social standing, but for the first time in Simbari society, the genders were mixed in an intimate space prior to marriage.
Missionaries preached against the shamans, the practice of polygyny, and the boy initiations, shaming Simbari elders who still advocated traditional activities.
Seventh-day Adventist missionaries had a strong presence among the Simbari, introducing Levitical dietary restrictions, which dramatically altered the indigenous diet, since pigs and possum – “unclean animals” – were no longer hunted.