Admitted to frequent and complex secret male ritual activities, they begin to spend longer periods away from camp at ceremonies that exclude women. It is only after these rituals that a youth is likely to have heterosexual relations and marry. Male solidarity sometimes involves a homosexual experience, since a circumciser may be obliged to have sexual relations with a newly recovered novice to whom he will later give a wife. Aborigines associate circumcision with marriage not simply to prepare a man to take a wife but to reinforce the bonds the man enjoys with the men of his wife's family. Male solidarity and hierarchy are closely associated with the bestowal of and submission to pain, a prevalent theme in Aboriginal belief and ritual.
Circumcision is widespread in East Africa.
Among sedentary speakers of Bantu language it is usually performed annually on groups of youths approaching adolescence. Novices are stripped, shaved, bathed, and sometimes marked with ashes or white earth, all to denude them of their previous status and to place them in a liminal state, neither minor nor adult. The actual operation is often performed by an expert who is outside or peripheral to the group. Bravery under pain is usually required. During their weeks of recovery, novices are hazed by older circumcised youths or by elders.