“I am a lady from Africa and I was going through your site and I thought of sharing my problem with you. In our community they circumcise women and Yes that was done to me. Apparently I lost confidence to be with men in bed, especially those who want to touch my clitoris (I refuse because I don’t want them to know that I don’t have it). I have been watching some porn movies and I wish I could feel how they feel. I need to have oral sex but I just can’t because it is shaming. Please help me.”
Thanks for your email, it sounds as if you are in a difficult position with a lot of things happening at once. Many feelings, many thoughts, many different things to consider. I’m glad that you are reaching out to get more information and look for support. When it comes to relationships and sexuality and pleasure there is never one answer or one way to change things in your life. I’m going to offer my thoughts below, but I will also include links to other places where you may want to turn for ideas and support. While there are some aspects of sexuality which we may all experience, each of us has a different lived experience of sexuality, and our perspective is informed by that experience, which is why getting input from different people can be so helpful.
Your experience of female circumcision, as you describe it, is one that many people want to politicize. They’ll want to tell you what it means, and what it says about you, your family, and your community. Since you emailed me as an individual asking for suggestions, in my response as a sex educator I don’t think it’s my place to tell you what it means to you.
So while another person would give you a very different answer, what I’m going to do is just focus on the information you’ve given me and provide some thoughts about where you might go from here. Because you’re asking about sexual pleasure, this is what I’ll focus my answer on.
First I want to share something about the clitoris with you. In your email you say you don’t have one, and while I don’t know the details of your body, I think this means that you have had part or all of the external clitoris removed. What you might not know is that the clitoris actually runs deep into the body and our bodies have a capacity to feel pleasure much beyond one body part being removed or altered. All bodies can give and receive pleasure. We may need to find ways that work for us, but it’s important for you to know that it’s possible, even if it may be a long road to get there.
I’m not telling you this to suggest that you are wrong about how you feel about your body, or to minimize your experience, I mention it because often we think that the way we feel now is the way we will always feel, and knowing that your capacity to feel pleasure and joy from your body is often greater than you imagine can be useful to keep in mind. You may have the experience of not liking to be touched around your clitoris or vulva or even your whole genital area. And you may always feel that way. But maybe not.
Next, you mention that you don’t let partners touch your clitoris because you don’t want them to know you don’t have one. I want to share a few thoughts about this. To experience sexual pleasure, most people need to feel at least a little relaxed, safe, and comfortable with our bodies and with our partner (except of course when we are having sex by ourselves, and then we don’t need to worry about a partner at all). Feeling relaxed, safe, and comfortable isn’t easy in this world, which tends to tell most of us that our bodies are wrong or unattractive. Few of us feel this way all the time. In fact, we may only feel that way for a few minutes or a few hours a day. It might happen a couple of times a day, or only a few times a week or a month. For some people, they only feel good in their bodies when they are having sex.
I say all of this to point out that one way to help yourself feel sexual pleasure is to think of things you can do where you feel as comfortable and safe as possible. If having a partner touch your clitoris, or your leg, or any part of your body, doesn’t feel good, then that’s okay. You can just let them know (and they should listen and respect your requests). But you should also let them know what parts of your body DO feel good. What parts would you like them to touch? If you don’t know the answer to this, then that might be one place to start. It may not even be a part of your body you think of as sexual; maybe it’s your head, or hands, or arms.
Try not to feel pressured to have sex or be touched a certain way. In healthy, consensual sex, you get to set the rules, and everyone involved should want to know the best ways to make the other person feel pleasure. At the same time, it’s almost impossible for our partners to guess where we will feel sexual pleasure, so giving them some guidance can help.
Speaking of feeling pressured, I want to respond to your comment about pornography. Pornography is about performance and most porn is not a good measure of sexual pleasure. It may look like people are having fun, and hopefully they are. But they are often professionals, and using porn as a guide for your own sexual pleasure is not that helpful. Also, because porn is a performance, and reflects very mainstream values about beauty and bodies, it can often lead us to feel even more like we aren’t doing things the right way – as if there is something wrong with us because we don’t have multiple orgasms from the stroke of a penis, or feel like having sex every time someone knocks on our door. Porn can be great for many things, but it sounds as if it may not be giving you what you need at this moment to get to a place where you can feel sexual pleasure on your own terms. I’m not saying you should stop watching it, but just keep in mind the ways that porn only shows you one picture of sexuality.
You mention wanting (or needing) oral sex, but not being able to engage in it because it feels shaming. I’m not sure I know exactly what you mean, but maybe you mean that you like receiving oral sex, but don’t feel comfortable with that because of the way you feel about your clitoris, or maybe your genitals. This is totally understandable. Many people describe oral sex as feeling like the most intimate sex they have. Because in most cultures and societies we are raised to be ashamed of our genitals, the idea of having someone so close and personal can make us feel very vulnerable. Changing how we feel about our bodies isn’t easy, but it can be done! There is no single way to do this. Part of what is needed is to start working through your own feelings of sexual shame. You may also need to work specifically on your feelings about your body.
One thing that some people find helpful in this area is to use masturbation. Learning how to touch ourselves and give ourselves pleasure, when we want, how we want, can be a powerful way to begin to change how we feel about our bodies. It isn’t an immediate cure, but if this isn’t something that is part of your sex life already, you may want to consider it. Learning to give yourself pleasure can also uncover all sorts of pleasurable parts of your body, which you can then share with a partner, if what you need to do is not include your clitoris in sex play for now.
Finally, in your email you say that you have lost your confidence. This too is something that can change. It might mean working with your body to feel good in your body not just when you’re having sex but in general. It may mean talking with someone (a trusted friend, counselor, family member, or someone else) so you can have a chance to explore how you feel now, how you want that to change, and what you think would help you get from here to there. It will almost certainly mean talking with sexual partners eventually. Although that might be something for later. For now it seems important for you to get more specific about what you’re feeling, and maybe even where you think those feelings came from.
Remember that our experience of our bodies, of sexual power, and sexual pleasure, are not just about us as individuals. We are bodies that live in relation to other bodies, and in relation to societies that exert a great influence on how we feel. Making change will require you to do some things on your own, but you shouldn’t confuse that with the idea that your struggles are only yours. To make change in ourselves it can help to see how the people and culture around us gets in our way, and to be able to say that all the “problems” aren’t a result of our bodies or our minds or our emotions. They come from the ways we have been raised, the way we are treated and talked to today, and the expectations put on us.
The good news is that we all have the capacity for sexual pleasure and to feel sexual power and confidence in who we are. Those things aren’t just something that people with certain bodies get to have. But there isn’t one path to this, and the path you take must feel right for you, it must respect your life experience and your values and desires.
This turned into a very long response. I hope some of it has been helpful. One of my favorite sex education websites, Scarleteen, has an article about sex after female genital cutting so you may find that of interest.
