clitoridectomy. In talking with men who had experienced sex with both excised and non-excised women, they usually could not tell if it made a difference.
The cultural construction of sexuality
From a contemporary Western point of view, it is difficult to conceive of female sexuality when parts or all of the outer genitalia are missing. Without trivialising the harmful effects of different forms of excision, it is important to emphasise that “Western theories do not prove that the biological base for sexual satisfaction is completely removed by female circumcision” (Skramstad 1990:14). In conversations with close female friends in Casamance concerning sex and romantic relations, I understood that they do take pleasure in sex. They did not express any feelings of being denied sexual pleasure and the clitoridectomy is not mentioned as a problem. To understand circumcised women’s statements about their sexual experiences, sexuality has to be related to the particular cultural and historical context. Besides being a very individual experience that is difficult to measure and compare, sexuality and sexual pleasure are culturally and socially constructed (Caplan 1987). What is conceived as sexual pleasure is to a high degree dependent on what is defined as such within one culture. “What people want, and what they do, in any society, is to a large extent what they are made to want, and allowed to do” (Caplan 1987:25). In each society this changes with time, as “sexual behaviour and practice, morality, and ideology are constantly in a state of flux”. (Caplan 1987:1). Although far from defending female excision, I wish to emphasise that we cannot talk of pleasure and sexuality as something solely biological and dependent on anatomy (cf. Ahmadu 2000).