I was searching about the Tahitian culture to document for a novel I was writing. The main character was a young man that become obsessed with the idea of going to a paradise island. So, searching for Tahitian ideas and culture I found the word “mahu” and started to read. This was very interesting.   I had been always very curious about all sorts of things. Well, the “mahu” is something westerners can identify as a gay.   I was reading some interviews with “mahus” and it was something interesting. Pretty weird.
    Actually, in big cities of the Pacific we can see a mahu as a sort of native male prostitute. A western man could take him for a “queen” in the western sense. For some of them, surely looked like a queen. Most of the mahus in those cities work in the erotic shows of dancing and singing, impersonating females, or just they play the role of an ordinary drag queen in the western style.
    So I was reading several files about the mahus. Then, I found information about a book titled Tahitians, by Robert I Levy, a professor of anthropology in the University of California, San Diego, and I bought it.

    It is not clear in the book if the mahu is made, sort of conditioned. That is it has been pressed into this role by the peer pressure as a child by boys in their adolescent years or a little later. Perhaps, some of “mahus” had a natural bent to such, so it is ideally suited to play this role.
    It is said, that some of the “mahus” let's say they are a few, abandon their condition to marry a woman and have children. But in these rare cases, most of them sort of flee the village where they lived to start a new life. I imagine it is difficult to behave in a normal way as a father if everybody knows that you were a “mahus”, when you were younger.
    Some of the older mahus, actually living in any of the big cities in the Pacific, remember the happy times when they were living in their villages, they were loved as mahus as well as accepted in the fold of their families.
    You have to remember that to have a maho in the family, was like having a slave for life, cooking and washing clothes, taking care of small children, etc. Even, when some adult man needed the sexual service of a mahu, he have to go to the family and ask permission. So he has stay around helping and trying to be nice to them, for the mahu was mostly under the control of the family.   Only, when the mahu is very young can be mostly under the control of his peers. But, in general, the official doctrine was that the mahu could not go whoring freely on the village. This made me asume that the control over the mahu by his family could be around 85 or 90%, except when he is very young. At this time, the peers of the mahu are making him to accept this role.
    In general, a mahu is a male playing the role of a female. They can be more or less mannered as females and most times they cloth in female attire. They had not any need to overplay their feminine manners. They help the family as a female, cooking, taking care of little children, and washing clothes for the family. And everybody takes them for a male-female. Even they have a myth about a god-godess Mahu-ike, that sometimes is male, sometimes female. She is in charge of earthquakes and the fires under the earth. There is a Tahitian hero called Maui that convince the goddess to give him the fire.
    There is a saying that sometimes, the first-born male to a young female is raised to be a mahu. Sometimes, a timid child, or the less aggressive of them started being teased as he were a mahu. Perhaps, once identified as a putative or possible mahu, some older boys, or the most lustful boy in a group start to seduce the timid boy, to play the mahu role. In sexual terms, the mahu use to do a head on any boy that is in need of a sexual relief. An adult male that had broken with his wife, or separated, can go to a mahu for a sexual relief.
    In general, it is said by the elders, that each has village has a least a mahu. It is made by god this way. Due to influences of Christian missionaries that abhor homosexuality, many of the elders say, the “mahus” does not play any homosexual role at all. These are only a false gossip that is giving Tahitians a bad name. But young people has not any trouble to tell you that most of the young boys goes frequently to the “mahus” for a service.
    In an interview to a young Somoan, he was offended the "popoa" (western white people) consider them gays because of the mahu. They were not. They only made use of them when they start having sex as young boys; later on, they married and had children and take care of them. They do not use anymore the mahu. So this popoa's idea about Tahitians being gay, is totally false. They are very manly.
    Robert Levy says, that some married males, have little feminine manners, but they are not mahu. Well, the elders of some villages told Robert, that to each village there is only a manhu, and once a mahu dies, another one soon appears. In fact, sometimes there are two. One is old and the other is young. Lavy thinks, that the existence of a mahu serves the other males as a reference as "what they are not" or "what they should not be". For a little boy or young male, to be considered a female is to be ranked in a lower step; for females are regarded as inferior to males, like everywhere in the world. So, if you are a mahu, you are the lower male in the village. Even children can joke a little on a mahu and use the word to insult a peer.
    As a mahu you have to serve any excited male in the village. In general, the usual service is a fellatio. The male is standing up quitly while the mahu kneels down and do his job of moving his head to and fro, till the act comes to a natural conclusion.  Is is said by some young natives that the mahu swallows the sweet produce of the male member. Young males say, that the mahu is fed this way and he becomes very strong and heavy. As the mashus are so well fed they are stronger males in the village. Some mahus in some native villages have went to Tahiti to work as prostitutes. Some comfess that they do not swallow the natural fluids coming out from their customers, but spit them out. The say are not sexually excited while doing this job, and the act finishes as soon as the customer is served.