Procreation, pleasure and the power of the erotic

The term vulva, originally a Latin word meaning ‘sheath’ or ‘scabbard’, has been the standard name for the female passageway since the mid-sixteenth century. To this day, the standard view focuses on the reproductive function of the vagina. Ac­cording to the standard medical opinion the main functions of the vagina are to receive the penis during sexual intercourse and provide a passageway for the sperm; to provide a passageway for the baby during birth and to serve as a duct for menstrual fluid. Several studies have been done to establish whether the vagi­na serves a direct pleasurable purpose in female human beings (Kinsey et al. 1953; Masters and Johnson 1966; Sevely 1987). Most of these studies reported variabil­ity on vaginal responses in females. I argue that women’s potential pleasure from the vagina is purposefully distorted through the process of socialization.

To support this argument I present a childhood experience, which is still vivid in my mind. In my community girls are reproved for wanting to peep at their gen­itals. Infantile masturbation is highly restricted. When I was about nine years old, my mother caught me red-handed looking at my ‘private parts’ through a mirror. I guess I was just curious to know what this very private part looked like. Mother gave me a severe beating and warned me never to do that again. It is “bad man­ners” she said. A good girl never looks at that place; a good girl sits properly (with her legs drawn together) and never talks about issues regarding the vagina. Whether such experiences generate feelings of sexual inferiority and female social subordination is an issue for further investigation.

On the contrary, the boyhood experience is entirely different; at the time when I was getting lashed for wanting to know my genital form; boys of my age would have what the community refers to as a ‘urinating contest’. This game in­volves boys standing on a line struggling to pump their urine to the furthest point possible. Both adults and children would find this game very interesting. The boys were not reproached, instead the applause would increase their pride, making them proud of their little penises, while girls walked around with something be­tween their legs which they would not dare look at! The genesis of sexual gender socialization is configured around approval and disapproval.

In a cross-cultural examination, Elena Bellotti notes that in Italy, both girls and boys play with their genitals at the same stages of development and get obvi­ous pleasure out of doing so. But while in a boy this activity is regarded with a certain indulgence, it is rigidly suppressed in a girl. She further notes:

Already present in these diverse attitudes towards a baby’s earliest sexual activities is the preju­dice that boys are endowed with much stronger sexual instincts than girls, and that therefore any erotic activity in them should be tolerated if not exactly encouraged. A girl who indulges, on the other hand, is deviating from the norm and must be restrained. It is quite possible to grow into a woman without ever living one’s own sexuality, but one cannot become a man without living it fully. This is part of the creed created by stereotyping (Bellotti 1975:44).

Opening a Can of Worms: A Debate on Female Sexuality in the Lecture Theatre

In the African diaspora women face similar constraints. Bell Hooks urges black women to

… reconsider our relation to our bodies… all our eroticism has been shaped within the culture of domination. Despite our choices and preferences, we act in an erotic and liberatory way to­ward ourselves and others only if we have dared to break free from the cultural norms (Hooks 1993:114-115).

The provided cross-cultural evidence is obviously not sufficient to establish whether the suppression of female sexualities takes place universally. Further re­search especially in Africa may divulge interesting information. For example, the Baganda of Uganda are known to have a practice known as ‘pulling of the labia minora’ aimed at enhancing sexual pleasure. Arnfred (1990) noted a similar prac­tice in Mozambique. On female initiation rites, Arnfred notes that

… in the proper course of events, the women’s initiation rites would be preceded by the small girls (some 8-10 years) learning how to manipulate their small vaginal lips in order to pull them longer. This preparation previously was an integrated aspect of becoming a woman all over Mozambique (1990:71-107).*

The Baganda and Mozambique cases are a direct reverse of those ethnic groups that practise female circumcision. The practice of female circumcision, or Female Genital Mutilation, occurs in different forms, often including removal of the clit­oris. Masters and Johnson (1966) established that the centre of female sexuality is the clitoris; female orgasm they confirmed, is achieved through the stimulation of the clitoris, whether or not accompanied by vaginal penetration.

My discussions with students have gone further to confirm that in most ethnic groups the clitoral ability to give a woman sexual pleasure is perceived negatively. One of the reasons given for performing circumcision on girls and women is the reduction of sexual desire (cf. Kenyatta 1962:132; Mbiti 1969:123). Some stu­dents feel that in their communities, the priority is to control women so that they cannot indulge in immoral sexual behaviour and to prepare girls for marriage. This take precedence over sexual pleasure in those ethnic groups where sexual in­tercourse and its completeness is defined in terms of vaginal penetration and the ultimate ejaculation by the male in disregard of the female orgasm.

In her novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), Alice Walker explores the life of a daughter whose culture demands the literal destruction of the most crucial exter­nal sign of her sexuality: the vulva itself. Below I quote from the novel, a response from Tashi the genitally mutilated woman from Africa, to Raye her African — American psychiatrist:

Yes. My body was a mystery to me as was the female body, beyond the functions of the breasts, to almost everyone I knew… Everyone knew that if a woman was not circumcised her unclean [104]

Arnfred Page 162 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM

Mumbi Machera

parts would grow so long they’d soon touch her thighs; she’d become masculine and arouse her­self. No man could enter her because her own erection would be in his way (Walker 1992:54).

One of the students, whose Aunt is a circumciser, reported that sometimes mar­ried women are forced to get circumcised by their husbands: “I know my aunt has circumcised married women occasionally. Husbands send such women to her. Their husbands claim that the labia makes penetration difficult during sexual in­tercourse”.

Nici Nelson (1987) found that among the Kikuyu, sexuality for women has more to do with procreation than with pleasure; and more specifically procreation for the patrilineage. Her findings show that female circumcision in this ethnic group is also done to control women’s sexual drive and to keep them under con­trol. In this respect, female genital mutilation must be understood as a practice that is meant to enforce the subordination and suppression of women. The alter­ation of the vulva is supposed to facilitate other avenues of masculine domination in the sexual and social sphere. Studies have shown that most practising commu­nities circumcise girls in preparation for marriage; circumcision symbolically en­sures that a woman will remain faithful to the husband and other male relations (Toubia 1995; Walker 1992, 1993; Lightfoot-Klein 1989; Kenyatta 1975; Thiam 1986; El Dareer 1982; Dorkenoo 1994).

Beyond cultural dictates there is nothing to affirm that something is wrong with a woman being erotic and conscious of the physical and emotional presen­tations of their sexuality. In Sisters of the Yam (1993), Bell Hooks notes that,

when I speak of eroticism… it is not meant to evoke heterosexist images. I want to speak to and about that life-force inside all of us—there even before we have any clue as to sexual preferenc­es or practices—that we identify as the power of the erotic (1993:113).

In my opinion sexual arousal, pleasure and orientation goes beyond geographical boundaries; eroticism is not a Western thing, it is a life-force inside of every indi­vidual, like the G-spot.1 But many women may not be aware of this life-force, un­til sexual meaning is effectively constructed around it. This explains why some women enjoy the pleasures of the erotic and bodily zones such as the G-spot while others do not. The erotic is innately biological but the outcome is shaped and reshaped through societal norms. Until our cultures recognize the power that lies within female eroticism, then we shall continue to watch helplessly as women mutilate and maim their own kind and as men kill the female spirit through acts of sexual and physical violence and as hypocrisy builds up even within scholarly realms where denial of the fact that there is pleasure and freedom in the variety of sexual identifications for both women and men can be read in the silence re­garding these issues.

In recent years, feminist perspectives have focused more on a discussion of sexual pleasure. Richardson (1993) notes that this is often portrayed as a response to the emphasis on the dangers of sexuality during the 1980s, in particular debates

Opening a Can of Worms: A Debate on Female Sexuality in the Lecture Theatre

about the meaning and effects of pornography and sexual violence. Carole Vance believes that “feminism must speak to sexual pleasure as a fundamental right” (1984:24). I share Vance’s stand but this does not tell us much about the opinion of other women especially African women. Further investigations are necessary in this area. In the West, several feminists have observed that the issue is not find­ing out how women get sexual pleasure but of asking what constitutes ‘sexual pleasure’ and what functions it serves? Nici Nelson (1987) studying Kikuyu no­tions of sexuality notes that “the paucity of data on this subject in the literature is indicative of the reluctance of both anthropologists and their informants to dis­cuss sex and sexuality” (Nelson 1987). Similarly, Signe Arnfred (in this volume) observes that “discussions of sexuality are remarkably absent in analytical works of African feminists”. She notes the contrast to the Western women’s movement and feminist studies where analysis and critique of discourses on female sexuality were key issues right from the start.