THE ABONIMATION THAT IS SEX!
Oh, I’m sorry. I meant the demonization and abomination of sex and sexuality FOR women. Gender inequality is an age long tale starring the brutalization of women, the oppression and harassment of women, the inability of women to vote, to trade, to own lands or homes; the refusal of a patriarchal world to make way for women as leaders relegating them to domesticity as their sole mission and highest accomplishment in life.
Wikipedia says “Gender inequality acknowledges that men and women are not equal and that gender affects an individual’s living experience. Some of their distinctions are empirically grounded while others appear to be socially constructed. Gender inequality is experienced differently across different cultures”
The problem of gender in this world, even though a lot of people have refused to see this, targets women. After all, women are the ones more easily objectified either sexually or domestically; women are considered the weaker sex and as such should be seen and not heard and these problems are actively present in every facet of society today and sadly even in an act as primal as sex.
In many parts of the world, sex is seen as sacred and untouchable; a shameful act to keep well hidden and undiscussed especially for women. Sexual inequality, which by the way, needs to become a global term, does not simply refer to lack of equality during sexual intercourse, which, YES, is an actual thing. It is a perfectly jumbled up mess boasting of ridiculous ideas and practices from teaching girls shame about their bodies to requiring virginity from a woman in exchange for respect and praise that she is not ‘loose’ or ‘wayward’ as though she had to prove a point to all society.
Leading Nigerian author and feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her book We Should All Be Feminists, discusses gender issues from different aspects and she touches on the area of “sexual inequality”. Here are excerpts from her beautifully written work:
We teach girls shame. Close your legs. Cover yourself. We make them feel as though by being born female, they are already guilty of something. And so girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. Who silence themselves. Who cannot say what they truly think. Who have turned pretense into an art form.
I believe that the beginning of sexual inequality is the teaching of girls at a young age, shame and distaste for their own bodies. “Close your legs”, “Cover yourself” as if being born with their body parts was a thing of shame. I understand the place of decency as that is likely to be an argument brought up, but in this situation, girls are not merely taught to be decent. They are taught to hide. If a girl is comfortable wearing an alter necked dress or showing some cleavage, she is easily considered “cheap”, “easy” or “without home training” without consideration for the fact that she is wearing what she wants, what she likes, what makes her happy or even feel more “womanly”. On the flip side, if a girl was wearing an hijab, for example, or a turtle neck top, she is perceived as “homely”, “well trained”, “marriageable” and yet so many of these women are not necessarily comfortable in their clothes but God forbid they speak of their desire to wear what they like. If girls are taught early on that showing skin devalued them, how then are they expected to enjoy intercourse when it almost always involves being completely nude without feeling like the scum of the earth or like the black sheep of womanhood? How is she supposed to have any power over her own sexuality when the entire time, she’s stressing about her body?
I, personally have never once heard a boy being told that there was a proper way of sitting so that his crotch didn’t bulge in his pants or that his pants were too tight and revealing or that he needed to wear a shirt to cover up in order not to be considered cheap. These on the other hand, are things of glory. The more shirtless you are, showing off your ‘six packs’ or the more poses you do in only underwear that make women blush, then the more powerful you must be. Hence, these men go into sexual relations having a false sense of power and authority.
Sadly, having grown up hiding their miraculous bodies not out of decency but in defeat, a lot of women in this world have body image issues while men are left unchecked and masculinity runs wild, reigning supreme in the bedroom.
Desire is not even acceptable for a woman. How dare you have desire? In Africa, using the Nigerian Hausa/Fulani tribe as an example, young girls are married off as early as 15, sometimes earlier just so that “her eye no go tear” which in essence means that she had to be sent off to a husband’s house, quickly, before she had the opportunity to explore her sexuality and her desires. As if that was not already horrifying and sexually stifling, these girls marry into households where there are already “senior wives” and each woman has to wait her turn for her husband to ‘come’ to her. For the men, it is like a buffet feast, picking and choosing what they wanted to eat and yet none of these women couldn’t possibly say to her husband, “I need you tonight; let’s make love”. That would be considered bold, which I didn’t realize was a bad thing, wayward and might I add, disrespectful.
We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likeable.
And here we see another root cause of a woman’s lifelong insecurity in the face of masculine dominated sexuality. Girls are taught to be pretty enough, quiet enough, shapely enough, well dressed enough in order for men to, perhaps, consider her the lucky woman that he chooses out of her million and one competitors. And for what? The beginning and end of a woman’s sexual power is, presumably, in her ability to make a man look twice at her and then decide that HE wants her.
In the Igbo culture as well as other cultures around the world, dating as far back as ancient times, men fought for the attention of women. Literally. There were fighting contests held in village squares and the strongest young man who won, got to take the woman as his wife. The men fought for women’s attention!
And yet, somehow, more than 50 years later, women are still expected to sit prettily and quietly while men jousted for their hands. In this part of the world, a woman that did not necessarily sit around waiting for a man to like her but went out of her way to tell a man that she liked him would be considered rambunctious and as a consequence she had to be loose. She is considered forward and looked upon as one who could not be submissive to a man.
Irritably, boys are taught little or nothing about being likeable. They are allowed to be egoistic, self-centered, and insensitive and yet these are all celebrated as traits of masculinity. Men are taught from when they are boys that they had the choosing power as though sexual relations or in fact, any relation between a man and a woman was grocery shopping for the man. After being “picked” because you are their “spec”, women are expected to show their gratitude, most times sexually, because after all, if he didn’t pick you, you would be alone, miserable and dying.
All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.
When it comes to sexual relations, the numbers gathered in research show glaringly that men are quite selfish. They somehow expect to be pleased by women as though it were their birthright with little or no consideration for the, in this case, sexual satisfaction of the woman. The height of inequality! I mean, shouldn’t sex be give and take? Women are constantly showing deference to men in this area, barely ever having the courage to ask for what they want or even need while engaging in intercourse. Men on the other hand have no difficulty coercing a woman down on her knees for fellatio or using his masculine power to flip a woman into a desired sexual position. Little wonder, some women do not enjoy sex and only partake in it as a matter of duty. I once had an acquaintance say to me that she had never enjoyed sex and when I asked why she continued to engage anyway, she did not have a concrete answer. In the end, sex is expected of women whether they enjoy it or not. I stand to be corrected but I have personally never heard of a man that does not like or enjoy sex.
According to Wikipedia, “women fake orgasms more frequently than men, with one survey finding that 26 percent of women fake an orgasm every time they have sex. Other studies have found that anywhere from 25 to 74% of women admit to having faked an orgasm at some point in their lives. For women in heterosexual relationships, faking an orgasm can also be based on deference to the man, need for his approval, or feelings of shame or sexual inadequacy.”
“Feminists have asserted that women faking orgasms is a sign of male-centered sexuality; in a society that celebrates only male sexual pleasure, women may feel pressured to engage in acts that bring their male partners to orgasm but that do not provide them physical pleasure. Women in a discussion group in 1967 analyzed their motivations for faking orgasms and decided that faking was a response to pressures placed upon them by men. As such, the urge to fake an orgasm often sits in a broader context of other problems with sexual repression or male-centered sexuality. Many of these women also experienced feelings such as sexual rejection by their partners, or on the other hand, unwanted sexual attention; some were afraid to tell their partners what they wanted, and others said their partners resented being told what they wanted.”
If more facts are needed to prove that sexuality in our world today is male centered, it is interesting to know that the recommendation to fake orgasms in the first place came from a MAN dating as far back as AD2. The Roman poet Ovid in his famous book Ars Amatoria wrote:
“So, then, my dear ones, feel the pleasure in the very marrow of your bones; share it fairly with your lover, say pleasant, naughty things the while. And if Nature has withheld from you the sensation of pleasure, then teach your lips to lie and say you feel it all. Unhappy is the woman who feels no answering thrill. But, if you have to pretend, don’t betray yourself by over-acting. Let your movements and your eyes combine to deceive us, and, gasping, panting, complete the illusion.”
The last line here shows that (some) men would rather be deceived about a woman’s sexual satisfaction rather than putting in the work it would take to actually please her. The illusion is apparently good enough for them.
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about their girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid. (But we of course expect them to bring home the perfect man for marriage when the time is right.) We police girls. We praise girls for virginity but we don’t praise boys for virginity (and it makes me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out, since the loss of virginity is a process that usually involves two people of opposite genders).
This makes me laugh. In annoyance and disgust for cultures and beliefs that continue to imprison the minds of people. A tradition that has somehow managed to stay alive is that of the “sacredness of a WOMAN’S virginity”. For centuries, African girls have been taught that their virginity was their gift to their husbands on their wedding night. All well and good but since we are being Santa and exchanging gifts, dear husband, where is your own virginity?
In ancient Yoruba culture, a family received gifts and praises if their daughter was a virgin on her wedding night. Her new husband was given a white piece of cloth in a calabash to take with him before going in to consummate their marriage and after intercourse, he was expected to show that piece of cloth to those waiting outside, blood stained. If that cloth remained white, the girl’s family received an empty match box or a half full bottle of palm oil which signaled disgrace and shame for generations to come.
In my country, across different cultures, young women are often and quite easily admonished by their parents with words like ‘please o, don’t disgrace me o” as if people still give empty matchboxes in this 21st century. The problem with this though, is that no one polices the boys. No one asks them about their virginity or admonishes them about the sacredness of their own virginity. They are in fact, expected to have a level of confidence and sexual prowess that they brag about and are praised for. Just as confused, I am led to wonder like Chimamanda, “how do these boys lose their virginity seeing as it takes two to tango?"
The answer is simple. Girls are not allowed to be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Decent and “marriageable” girls keep their virginity while the wayward ones serve as practice tools for the boys. When the ‘decent’ girls then get married, they are confused, inexperienced and left completely at the mercy of their husbands sexually. How is a woman supposed to master her sexuality if she is not even allowed to explore it?
And yet at the same time, if a woman is a virgin or sexually inactive, she is considered a prude by these same men who go around looking for virgin brides. What a joke.
Virginity is a myth, a tradition that should have died as a result of old age but now must be murdered and made extinct. Whether for religious reasons, cultural or personal ones, a woman should be allowed to decide, voluntarily and of her own accord, whether or not she wants to be a virgin. That right is solely hers, not tradition’s and certainly not men’s. In the same way, no woman should be slut shamed for wanting to be a sexual being like men are allowed to be.
Dear men, if you want to “the gift of virginity” from your wife on your wedding night, please make sure that you have your own virginity ready to be offered to her on a silver platter. Double standards is not a good color on you.
The truth is that the world is changing. Women are discovering their worth and value every day and are constantly demanding to be treated better in every walk of life and sexual relations would not be left out. I am not advocating for moral decadence or saying that every man on the face of the earth falls into the category of those who promote or practice “sexual inequality”; I am, however, saying that women should be allowed to take their lives into their own hands including their sex life and since the data suggests that a lot of practices support male centered sexuality, something needs to be done to change it and quickly too.
This change will begin from our individual refusal to stifle or be stifled sexually, realizing that sexual relations between a man and a woman should produce mutual satisfaction and pleasure. Repeat after me, orgasms do not belong to one gender! We also, as a matter of urgency should start raising our children differently and allowing them more freedom regardless of their gender. Dear African parents, it is not your job to ‘demand’ virginity from any of your children or bully them into celibacy just so you can boast to your friends about it; it is your job, though, to teach them about safe sex and consent as a conversation, not an assumption. The reason why we have so many rape stories and cases is because some men assume consent, something that comes from a culture of male sexual dominance but that is another story for another day. The best part of this narrative is that change has already started and it would continue to spread like a burning wildfire.
There is nothing abominable about sex or sexual relations for women.
