[Reading this in-depth study presupposes knowledge of the content presented in the cultural test relating to this practice].

A note on the naming of behaviour.
 
The term 'penis homage' is a heteronym, i.e., it was created outside the cultural groups that practice this broad type of behaviour. Such groups do not have a specific name for the behaviour, which is generally part of a broader context of expressions of affection towards the child or of the process aimed at gendering the child to make him aware and proud of his masculinity. In some groups, behaviours such as kissing, caressing, rubbing are also directed at the genitals of girls, but do not have celebratory purposes as they are part of other types of kissing and caressing of the genitals (see the entry on Displays of affection concerning children's genitals in this Guidebook).
The coining of the term 'homage to the penis' dates back to 1991 when transcultural psychologist John Money and physicians K. Swayam Prakasam and Venkat N. Joshi[1] used it, along with another term - 'genitals greetings' - in a study devoted to the Telogu-speaking group living in the state of Andra Pradesh-India. The scholars, in describing the practice in detail (on which see infra section 2. Functions of the practice and groups where it is widespread), intended to show how, what in the United States was considered sexual abuse was, in other cultures, a gesture of affection or greeting towards the male child, which had to be read wearing the proper cultural lenses.

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 Functions of the practice and groups where it is widespread. Telogu (India), Roma peoples, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Japan.

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The practice of 'homage to a child's penis' consists of kissing, rubbing, tickling, touching, caressing, or even sucking a child's penis. The behaviour is a new culturally motivated offence in Italian law and in others.
Forms of homage to the child's penis are attested in Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and the Arab world in general, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, Spain, Italy, particularly Southern Italy, and among numerous Roma minority groups. Nevertheless more studies on the practice are needed as the only systematic ones so far published are yet incomplete in their surveys of countries analyzed (Ruggiu 2019a; Dauth, Ruggiu 2020).
The following will describe the morphological and semantic modalities that the practice takes on in certain cultural groups. The descriptions are extracted from anthropological studies or those of other sciences (psychology, medicine, sexology, history, art history), from cultural expert opinions rendered during trials in which accused parents defended themselves by resorting to cultural defence, from anthropologists interviewed, and from lay testimonies coming from a quisque de populo of the group in question, legitimised by the fact that, being a direct member of the group, he is able to explain the meaning of the practice. All of this data confirms, as we shall see, that certain gestures, in certain cultural contexts, have no sexual value.
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Telogu (India)
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The practice of 'homage to the child's penis' is manifested in this way among the Telogu-speaking group, a minority in India, which is a majority in the state of Andra Pradesh:
 
"parents and close relatives cradle, hug, cuddle and kiss a child, male or female, insistently. Kisses are placed on every part of the child's body except the mouth and anal area. In children, the penis is excluded until the child turns one year old. From then on, the father, as well as any other adult relative, but not the mother or any female relative, snaps a kiss of approval on the child's penis by lifting it up at the level of his mouth. Until the age of six, children of both sexes continue to be affectionately held, rubbed and cuddled by their parents and relatives. Inclusion of the genitals continues to remain a prerogative of children and their male relatives. The gesture, however, changes (over time) from direct lip-penis contact to a two-step gesture. First, the adult male taps and pulls the child's foreskin with his thumb and the first three fingers of his right hand. Then, he brings his fingers to his mouth, makes a kissing sound and turns the kiss towards the penis. This gesture can be repeated two or three times. If the man is a guest, e.g. an uncle, the gesture serves as an act of greeting. The host approaches the child, puts his left hand around the child's arm and with his right hand makes the gesture towards the penis. This greeting is a gesture of homage that honours the superiority of the son over the daughter. As a male in a line of patrilineal descent, a son is destined to ensure the spiritual well-being of his father after his death." [2]
 
The scholars Money, Prakasam and Joshi specify: 'the meaning of these costumes is neither erotic nor sexual.[3]
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Roma peoples
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Among various groups belonging to the broader Roma population, the practice of penile homage is a species of the broader genus of kissing and caressing (see the entry Displays of affection concerning children’s genitals in this Guidebook) practised on both boys and girls with the aim of 'gendering the body'. By this expression is meant that process aimed at preparing the child to fully assume its male or female gender and the reproductive functions associated with it.
Among the Jarana, a group of gitanos living near Madrid in Spain:
 
"From the moment of birth, adults emphasise and celebrate the child's genitals, particularly in the case of boys... their [adults'] attitude encourages children to become proud of their genitals and to develop their own identity within which genitals play a central role."[4]
 
The words defining the genitals (pija for male genitals and chocho for female genitals) are used as affectionate nicknames and often as nicknames to call the child:
 
"they [the words pija and chocho] are also used, in a metonymic way, to indicate the male or female child - thus pregnant mothers are often asked whether they are expecting a pija or a chocho. Along with other landmarks, these are among the first words a child learns.... Affection towards children up to the age of 5 or 6 is shown by rubbing or cupping their genitals in your hands, or kissing them and giving them squeezes down there.’[5]
 
Although both sexes are treated with great affection,
 
"children are most celebrated. Jarana mothers like to play with their little boys' penises, pictures of naked male children aged two or three hang on the wall of many gypsy homes, and children are very much encouraged to be proud of their penises.’[6]
 
Among the Cortorari, a Roma group from Romania, the use of touching and kissing the penis (and vulva) serves both to show affection and to make children aware that they have sexually different bodies (gendering the body). Again, the words kar (penis) and miž (vulva) are the first words children learn:
 
"For a child at a preverbal stage of development, being able to point to his genitals when asked by adults: 'where is your penis/where is your vulva? (kaj lo kio kar/kaj la ki miž?)' is considered a sign of his intelligence. It is common to rub and kiss both boys' and girls' genitals to show affection.’[7]
 
These gestures are accompanied, as the child speaks and grows, by practices designed to encourage a free relationship with one's sex and very much centred on the genitals:
 
"Phrases such as 'eat my penis/my vulva (xa miri kar/miž)', which normally amount to turpitude when uttered between adults, are taught to children whose ability to use them is highly valued. In infancy, during the process of language acquisition... children are exposed not only to sexually explicit language, which may have no meaning, but also to gestures that materialise these statements... After the age of two, children are teased by adults and already know how to defend themselves using phrases such as 'eat my penis/ vulva' to which adults reply 'why do you have a penis/ vulva?' Having reached an age where they are more fearless, children begin to show their genitals without fear, or even on purpose.’[8]
 
Roma peoples, therefore, confirm the existence of the practice of paying homage to the child's penis without sexual intent on the part of adults.

Albania
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While there are numerous scholarly studies on practices of 'penile homage' on a comparative and interdisciplinary level, in the case of Albania there are no written studies on the subject, at least in English. This absence is due not only to the intimate nature of the practice, but also to the fact that Albanian culture is still little studied and, as noted, 'remains little known to the Western world, even among ethnographers and anthropologists specialising in the Balkans.’[9]
The presence of the practice in the form of kissing with hickeys on the child's penis is, however, confirmed by the Albanian community. For example, Vladimir Kosturi, President of the Albanian association Illyria in an interview with the Italian radio Radio Radicale[10] in 2010 stated that the behaviour is absolutely normal and expresses pride in procreation as well as a more physical and natural relationship between the bodies of parents and children than in the western world, where this naturalness has been lost.
Anthropologist Harika Dauth also confirmed the existence of the practice in Albania, noting: 'Generally speaking, the parental practice of kissing the child's genitals is commonly practised in Europe among Kurds, Roma and Albanians. Although the majority of these groups are Muslim, among the Roma it is also commonly practised among Christians. There are other societies in the world that have similar practices. In Europe, this practice is linked to a sense of parental pride, joy, gratitude towards the child and has no sexual connotation. In a broader (linguistic) context, the practice should be seen as an emotional and psychological preparation for the future gender role of children in the sense that they are taught what biological and social gender belongs to them and what this implies. To this end, children are familiarised with their gender and encouraged to feel proud of their genitalia from an early age.’[11]

Bulgaria
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In Bulgaria, the practice involves kissing, caressing and praising the child's penis. A recent court case in Germany saw a Bulgarian father charged with distribution of child pornography for showing in an internet community the child who, so it was claimed, was the object of his erotic attentions. The father had started to undress and change the child's nappy. While doing so, the child had picked up a beer bottle lying nearby, whereupon the community started to insult the father. As a reaction, the father took the child's genitals between his thumb and forefinger and swung the hand holding his penis up and down. According to the father, by exposing the child to the camera he intended to show his 'little lion' (Dauth, Ruggiu 2020).
The judge acquitted the defendant after hearing the cultural expert report by anthropologist Harika Dauth, which confirmed the existence of the cultural practice without any sexual intent.

Spain
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In Andalusia, it is customary in all social groups to praise the child's penis with expressions such as 'que cojones', 'que huevecitos'. The child is called with a metonymy pija (penis) and the girl chocho (vulva) (informant: Susana Moya Espinosa, former foreign languages teacher, Sevilla, Spain, age 63). These expressions are attested among Roma peoples as well in Spain.

Japan
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In Japan, on the islands of Okinawa archipelago, there is a visual form of homage to the baby's penis. When the baby is over 100 days old, and it is therefore certain that it will live, a photograph is taken of the totally naked baby with its genitals in view. This photo, to which the gold imprint of the child's hand and foot is affixed, is hung in the family room in plain view, framed in a precious manner (informant: Yuki Asano, professor of philosophy of law, age: 53)

Italy

See question 8 of the cultural test, "The search for the cultural equivalent.” The practice of the minority translates into a corresponding practice of the (Italian) majority' in the above test

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The presence of practice in Europe. Anthropologist Philippe Ariès' study on childhood

The practice of 'penis homage' of the child in its physical phenomenology consisting of caressing, tickling, rubbing and kissing, has long been part of European culture.
The most authoritative source on this point is the historian Phillipe Ariès who, in his classic book on childhood, L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime of 1960,[12] devotes an entire chapter - 'From immodesty to innocence' - to showing how the genitals of children, particularly boys, were, throughout Europe, the object of pampering and stimulation of various kinds, which came from the child's parents, relatives and various care-givers (Ruggiu 2019a, Dauth, Ruggiu 2020).
Ariès observes how the child, ignored during the Middle Ages, becomes, from the 15th century onwards, the object of a tenderness expressed without reserve or modesty. The historian states that it was common throughout Europe from 1400 to 1700 to play with a child's private parts. Ariès cites, among the sources attesting to the custom, the diary of the doctor Héroard who recounts the life of Louis XIII of France, from which it emerges that the little king, up to the age of seven, was given kisses on the penis and experienced various groping. In addition, Ariès cites engravings and paintings attesting to forms of playful manipulation of the child's penis and other sources reporting episodes from everyday life.
The custom of playing with a child's private parts should, according to Ariès, be analysed through the cultural lens of the culture of the time:
 
"This lack of confidentiality with respect to children surprises us; we are astonished to hear such uncensored talk and even more so in the face of such bold gestures, such physical contact about which it is easy to imagine what a contemporary psychoanalyst would say. The psychoanalyst would be wrong. Attitudes towards sex, and certainly sex itself, change depending on the environment and consequently on the period and mentality. Nowadays, the physical contacts described by Héroard would impress us as bordering on sexual perversion and no one would dare practise them in public. But this was not the case at the beginning of the 17th century.’[13]
 
Ariès explains how the gradual discontinuation of the custom was due to a moral reform that led to a new conception of the child and its body:
 
"the practice of playing with a child's private parts formed part of a widespread tradition that is still operative today among Muslim groups. The latter remained isolated... from the great moral reform, first Christian, then secular, that governed society in the 18th and particularly 19th century in England and France. This is why we find in Muslim society characteristics that strike us as peculiar, but which would not have surprised good Héroard.’[14]
 

The ostentatio genitalium of the infant Jesus as a pictorial genre in Renaissance Europe.

Other sources showing the spread of the practice in Europe are canvases and pictorial engravings.[15] The practice of penis homage, in fact, took on the guise of a veritable pictorial genre between the end of the Middle Ages and the entire Renaissance, up to the Counter-Reformation, defined by art critic Leo Steinberg[16] as ostentatio genitalium, which manifests itself in the following iconographies: Madonna uncovering, showing, caressing the penis of the infant Jesus; St Anne playing with it, tickling it, touching it; other characters such as the Magi, saints or patrons peering at it in wonder, tenderness and veneration; angels celebrating the genitals of the Child with cascades of flowers.
This pictorial genre was studied by Leo Steinberg in particular in Chapter IV - 'On the Practice of Caressing the Genitals of the Male Child' - of his book The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and its Oblivion in the Modern Age (Steinberg 1983). According to Steinberg:
 
"Renaissance art, both north and south of the Alps, produced a large number of devotional images in which the genitals of the Christ child... receive such demonstrative emphasis that the viewer must recognise in them an ostentatio genitalium, comparable to the canonical ostentatio vulnerum, i.e. the flaunting of wounds [in paintings of the passion of Christ to show his body suffering and paintings of resurrection in which Christ show his bodily wounds to skeptical Saint Thomas]. In many hundreds of pious and religious works, from before 1400 until after the middle of the 16th century, the ostentatious unveiling of the Child's sex, or the fact of touching, protecting or presenting it, is the main action."[17]
 

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We invite the reader to look at the images, easily available on the Internet, of the following works that confirm Steinberg's findings. They are only an illustrative sample of hundreds of canvases. The Madonna and Child between St. Agnes and a Holy Bishop (16th cent.) from the school of Antoniazzo Romano, now in the main chapel of the Almo Collegio Capranica, Rome, uncovers the genitals of the child Jesus and caresses them. In Domenico Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi Tornabuoni (1487), now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, we see the type of 'presentation' of the child's penis in which one of the Magi stares in amazement at the genitals of Jesus. In Francesco Botticini's painting, Madonna and Angels Adoring the Child (c. 1490), the practice of penis presentation is performed by adoring angels who sprinkle flowers on the genitals of the baby Jesus. In the painting Madonna and Child, St. Anne, Mary Magdalene and St. John the Baptist by Cavaliere D'Arpino (1592-3), it is St. Anne who points with her finger to point at and then touches the genitals of the Child. In the engraving, made in 1511 by the artist Hans Baldung Grien, entitled Holy Family, St. Anne touches and tickles the penis of Jesus, while Joseph looks on a little apart.
Steinberg's conclusion in analysing these iconographies is a theological reading of the gesture: ostentatio genitalium served, similarly to ostentatio vulnerum, to prove Christ's humanity, his having become incarnate and made man. For the purposes of our investigation, here we are faced with a visual phenomenology of the practice of 'homage to the penis' performed for theological purposes, to convey a dogma of faith: the divine incarnation. The fact that the images did not arouse any scandal among the public of the time and were even approved by the Church, suggests that the painters also represented, with the theological message, a widespread practice among the population.

 

Giovan Francesco Caroto, Madonna with Child, 1540, Francesco Caroto, Public domain, da Wikimedia Commons

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The practice could, in certain contexts, also be a magical rite of protection for the child. For example, Carl Kock, a scholar of the painter Baldung Grien and the above-mentioned painting Holy Family, dated 1511, with St. Anne tickling Jesus' penis, "has interpreted St. Anne's gesture in the light of (the painter's) interest in popular superstition"[18] believing it to be an apotropaic gesture, linked to customs that were believed to possess magical power. In this way, "under the pretext of representing the pious group of the Holy Family, the painter dares to make the miraculous spell pronounced on a child the subject of his engraving,”[19] saving himself, behind the cloak of the religious subject of ostentatio genitalium, from any possible accusation of witchcraft or heresy.
Steinberg also notes that "Philippe Ariès cites Baldung's engraving to document what was once a 'widespread tradition' of playing with the child's private parts.”[20] According to Ariès, in fact, the choice of subject matter reflected the Renaissance naturalism attentive to scenes of everyday life.
Another piece of evidence from art history on the existence of the practice of 'homage to the child's penis' in Europe is the pictorial and sculptural genre that we could define, along Steinberg's lines, as ostentatio urinarum. Indeed, the genre is more technically defined as that of the puer minguens of the urinating child. This is the representation of the male child while, standing, with his hand on his penis, he performs urination. The most famous representative statue of the genre is L'enfant qui pisse (1619), which has become the symbol of Brussels. Various representations of puer minguens can be found in the history of European art.
This art-historical analysis based on the studies of Ariès and Steinberg shows that, far from belonging to exotic cultures far removed in time and space, various manifestations of 'homage to the penis' of the child also existed in Europe. And, on closer inspection, they still exist.
 
Below are a few pictures that show how the practice of homage to the child's penis is present in our culture and goes completely unnoticed, as it has never occurred to anyone to report museum directors for exhibiting child pornography:

notes

[1] J. Money, K.S. Prakasam, V.N. Joshi, Transcultural Development Sexology: Genital Greeting Versus Child Molestation in IPT (Institute for Psychological Therapies), vol. 3, 1991.

[2] J. Money, K.S. Prakasam, V.N. Joshi, Transcultural Development Sexology, cit., p. 3,1991.

[3] J. Money, K.S. Prakasam, V.N. Joshi, Transcultural Development Sexology, cit., p. 1,1991.

[4] P. Gay-Y-Blasco , A 'different' body? Desire and virginity among Gitanos, in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , 3(3) 1997, pp. 517-35, p. 520.

[5] P. Gay-Y-Blasco, A 'different' body? Desire and virginity among Gitanos, 1997, cit., p. 521.

[6] P. Gay-Y-Blasco, A 'different' body? Desire and virginity among Gitanos, 1997, cit., p. 522.

[7] C. Tesãr, Becoming Romani (male), becoming Romni (female) among Romanian Cortorari Roma: On body and gender, in Romani Studies 5, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2012, pp. 113-140, p. 126.

[8] C. Tesãr, Becoming Rom (male), becoming Romni (female) among Romanian Cortorari Roma: On body and gender, cit. p. 126.

[9] R. Elsie, A dictionary of Albanian religion, mythology, and folk culture, New York: New York University Press, 2001, p. VII.

[10] Interview with Vladimir Kosturi (6 december 2010) on the case of an Albanian citizen living in Italy accused of paedophilia and the demonstrations in Italy and Albania in his favour.

[11] Personal communication, December 2018 and, later, Dauth, Ruggiu 2020.

[12] P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood. A social history of family life, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, translated by R. Baldick in L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime, Libraire Plon, Paris 1960. In Italian Padri e figli nell'Europa medievale e moderna, Laterza, Bari 1994.

[13] P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, cit., p. 103.

[14] P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, cit., p. 103.

[15] Thanks to Michele Graziadei, professor of comparative law at the University of Turin suggested to explore the European cultural equivalent of paintings of Madonnas with Child.

[16] L. Steinberg, The sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and its modern oblivion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1983, ebook, transl. it. La sessualità di Cristo nell'arte rinascimentale e il suo oblivion nell'età moderna, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1986.

[17] L. Steinberg, The sexuality of Christ, cit.

[18] L. Steinberg, The sexuality of Christ, cit.

[19] L. Steinberg, The sexuality of Christ, cit.

[20] L. Steinberg, The sexuality of Christ, cit.