What's your opinion of the Kreung, and of their 'Love Huts'?

[SinghSong]

Deep in the Ratankeri region of Cambodia, lived the Kreung people. They get up with the sun every day and work in their crops harvesting rice and vegetables off in the jungle. Electricity and running water are not common. While in most other areas in Cambodia it is traditionally frowned upon for women to smoke or drink, the Kreung girls take part just like the boys. They live simple lives surrounding simple survival traditions: food, shelter, love and sex. However, when it comes to young women, they have a very interesting tradition: love huts. When young girls reach puberty, when they're as young as 9, their fathers build them separate bamboo huts, away from the family home, so they can socialize and experiment with boys in privacy. The Kreung people instill a strong message that sex before marriage is acceptable, and young girls are encouraged to indulge in it, to verify compatibility and find the best guy to marry.

The girls invite the boys they want into their love huts, sometimes for sex, sometimes just to talk. Speaking to Western reporters, all the young girls asserted their power and independence, as well as their parents’ approval and trust in their decision-making, and claimed that the love huts gave them a chance to figure out which man they wanted to marry. In this culture, divorce is unheard of. The word “slut” is not even a thing. Girls can have multiple boyfriends at a time in their hut, and there'd be little-to-no animosity if she ended up choosing one boy over another. Unwanted pregnancies happened, but usually the suitor the girl chose would raise the child as his own. “We don’t worry about female purity,” one elder father said. “Who knows what a girl does when she goes to another village anyway?"

So, what's your opinion of the Kreung, and their traditional love huts? And do you feel that it's a shame this culture and its traditions are being wiped out?

Updates

+1 y

Sorry, forgot to add the last link: broadly.vice.com/.../the-struggle-to-save-teen-love-huts-in-cambodia

[Anonymous]

I don't know who they are