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The sexual (r)evolution of an African feminist – Part II

JANUARY 15, 2015 BY MSAFROPOLITAN1 COMMENT

(This is the second part in a three-part blog essay about the aforementioned. Read part I here.)

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In my twentieth year on earth, I discovered feminismand therein the tools with which to question the prey/hunter paradigm that to a great – and rather unfavourable – extent had shaped my sexuality thus far. I lived in Sweden then, a country where gender equality consistently ranks among the highest in the world and which boasts a sexually emancipated cultural narrative unheard of in many other societies. My surroundings undoubtedly ushered me to view sex in a more liberated way and I saw myself, indeed, as sexually liberated.

Little did I know that while this self-image was a catalyst for a journey toward sexual autonomy, it was nevertheless simply the beginning of a long journey ahead: the damage of patriarchal conditioning was more deeply rooted than I could anticipate then.

During those years I had (in hindsight) a nagging feeling that 'sexual liberation' as I knew it in fact meant women being free to act like men, i.e. to be sexually needy, promiscuous and to view sex in a phallocentric way. Phallocentricity – that is, something which centres the penis exaggeratedly – meant in the sexual realm (even the allegedly liberated one) to adopt mainstream pornographic traditions such as strip-teasing for a lover, introducing vocabulary such as "facials" into your bedroom, and as was established in my early girlhood school corridors, obsessing with the penis to the loss of the clitoris. Which is not to say that the above cannot be a turn on; many women are genuinely aroused by those scenarios. However, incorporating mainstream pornographic terminology and patriarchal behaviour into the feminist project of sexual liberation has consequences that ought to be noted.

For progressive as we were, when my girlfriends and I dedicated our conversations to sex (which as young women was pretty much all the time), our lingo was often nothing more than a specious camouflage of sexual autonomy. We may have expressed ourselves assertively but we nevertheless used the same phallocentric hunter/prey language that young men used. When talking of intercourse we used phrases such as "penetrating", "screwing" and other gendered expressions that reinvigorate the idea that women are sexually passive while men are sexually potent. And we referred to the penis – which let's face it is the most sensitive of all external human body parts – even if in jest, with slang terms such as "soldier", "bazooka" and "cobra". We spoke (again, often jokingly) about notions such as "cock-blocking" and "giving it (pussy) up" reinforcing not only the notion that the male organ is a threatening body part but also that it is the centre-point of making love.

This resulted in an awkward relationship to the male sex. We were either repulsed by it, or oedipally obsessed with it. And we were far from alone in discomfiting perceptions of male genitals. Some years ago I read an article in The Washington Post ("Listen up, fellas: Naked man-parts? Not so sexy"), which reported that out of 237 reasons that women have sex with men, not one of them was the sight of male genitalia. Heterosexual women, according to the article, like how a penis feels but not how it looks. Well, I'll be damned. Sexuality is a complex geography where one person's peak is another's valley, but for Christ's sake, women who have sexual relationships with men should find erotic pleasure in the sight of their lover's dick.

Alas, it is not too surprising that they don't. Women are not attracted to a body part that they are repeatedly told from a young age represents power over them. Our societies have for so long associated male virility with male dominance that we are now at a point where the penis is no longer seen as neutral, albeit sexual, organ but rather it has become a symbol of dominance. As bell hooks argues in "Penis Passion", "To identify the penis always and only with force, with being a tool of power, a weapon first and foremost … is a celebration of male domination."

By that same token, ceasing to celebrate patriarchy through identifying the penis with dominance, as hooks might say, and instead seeing the penis for what it is – in my view, on the right person, an object of erotic desire and an intriguingly communicative body part, which speaks to its lover (me) by chameleonic transformation of form and appearance – was a key turn in my awakening of sexual instinct.

These are some of the reasons why I have come to believe that sexual autonomy is more important than sexual liberation. That women are finally entitled to be sexually adventurous is an important achievement; don't get me wrong. However, there is a difference between being sexually liberated and being liberated from limited notions of female sexuality. And while the former does not automatically result in the latter, the latter unequivocally precedes the former. Furthermore, as white-western feminisms have tended to dominate the 'sexual liberation' narrative, if unintentionally, it has resulted in it often being rejected in the global south due to anti-western sentiments. The truth is that sexual autonomy matters to women in all parts of the world because social norms about sexuality, whether they are remnants of politics, pornography or religion, disempower women in all our global habitats. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

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Viele GruBe

Robukui

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