Pleasure!

by Queen

As a young African woman I cannot help but feel as if I was groomed to be a men’s sex object, I feel I was hoodwinked into thinking sex was merely for men’s pleasure and reproductive purposes only and never for my pleasure. How exactly was I “groomed” you might be wondering, but just like the grooming process itself it was a gradual process. It all started when I was 11 or 12 and my breasts had just started developing. My grandmother feared boys would notice I was almost ripe and I would become their sexual playground before marriage which was unthinkable because my virginity was the only currency that would bring the cows home. Her solution was to delay puberty by beating my then small buds with a cooking stick. Not sure if it worked or i am naturally small breasted, but to this day i have what we call in shona “tumatswinya hako” loosely translated to “you can just pinch” type of breasts, not big enough to squeeze or caress but all you can do with them is to pinch them. Fast forward to when I had my first period, I was taken to my aunt who talked me through how to take care of myself during my strawberry flow and how boys equal sex and pregnancy. Now that I was a woman, once I had sex I would get pregnant which is a sin especially if I am not married and this could not happen because remember cows had to come home. Basically I had to preserve my virginity for some lucky guy who would have deflowered god knows how many other girls but because it is a man’s world, the universe would still bless him with a virgin wife,me. 

Then came the kudhonza”pulling or elongating of the labia minora” episode, an overrated practice in my opinion dedicated to future husbands and guaranteed to give them pleasurable sex by “gripping their manhood while also giving them something to play with during foreplay”. This was a traumatic experience not only because of the discomfort and swelling that my older cousins talked about but the actual violation of one’s body from having someone pull on my labia as a way to show me how it’s done or having an elder “check” if I am actually doing it. Imagine going through all that only to end up with a wife and not a husband who couldn’t care less if you pulled or not, thinking about it now it would be fun to play “who has the longer labia minora” with your partner when you are bored and have a laugh about how some men are miserable, missing out on having their penis’ gripped by our vaginal flesh. What a great loss for them right!

Because I had only been taught how to have sex with men I struggled when it came to being intimate with females so much so I was a pillow princess in the beginning. I would starfish myself through the process moaning and orgasming away while not embracing the opportunity to also give pleasure. I blame my lack of eagerness to learn and the pride that stopped me from asking those who had been having sex longer than me and were known to have mastered the art of clit clitting, in the same breath i also blame the L Word and pornhub specifically for misleading me and not highlighting the messy or awkward side of sex, the pain that comes with certain positions, the involuntary laughing, crying after an orgasm, the ugly faces, the slip up and vaginal flatulence combo etc.

One would think sex between two people of the same sex is as easy as mirroring what you like done to you but it is a bit more complex especially when issues of society dictating what ones body should supposedly look like in order to be deemed sexy or issues around body dysphoria come to play which limit one’s ability to fully soak in whatever sexual enjoyment they subscribe to.

While some people actually get off by just giving pleasure and not receiving it, there is something overly satisfying about that mutual giving and receiving of pleasure for some. It is described as some sort of power that comes with allowing yourself to be vulnerable to someone else’s sexual wants and needs and trusting them to fully sate your own sexual appetite and desires. 

I was not always this sexual liberal, how could i possibly have been with the way society systematically made it so hard to freely express even my horniness without feeling like a sexual deviant or how knowledge about where i like to be touched or what positions make me cum quicker implies my body count is probably triple digited. I gained my full sexual independence through an ex female partner. They taught me how to unashamedly pleasure myself, how to be comfortable in my body and how to explore my sexual desires. Conversations about role plays, biting, scratching, confidence whilst being naked, sex toys, safe sexual practices, the introduction of food stuffs in the bedroom, seduction, foreplay, hygiene both before and after sex, kinks, fetishes became a norm because they managed to create a non judgemental space where i feel safe and free to openly air my views or concerns and even ask questions about things i did not understand. 

In a world where sometimes who one chooses to give their body to is a crime and one of men’s greatest fears is not being needed by women sexually to such an extent they think the use of sex toys is a replacement of their manhood, may we continue to prioritize our own pleasure.  May we never be slaves to society’s standards of what sex should be, may we always seek freedom from the chains of societal norms and perceptions and embrace our bodies and their needs. May we be blessed with healthy, fulfilling and enjoyable sexual practices.