Female sexual pleasure and autonomy: What has inner labia elongation got to do with it?

Introduction

The African continent has been described as a hotbed of sexual diversity and sexuality controversies (Wekker, 2006). Sexual orientation and sexual pleasure have become hotly debated issues subjected to contested legislations. Despite the dynamic nature of culture and the increasing evidence of a liberal sexual ethic on the African continent, many traditional practices and customs relating to sexuality have endured thus making Africa a prime example of how traditional culture continues to impact on different aspects of sexuality. An example of such practices is the traditional preparation of girls for marriage and sexual intercourse through inner labia elongation among the Basotho of Lesotho.

Sex education, counselling and preparation of young girls for womanhood and marriage for Basotho were traditionally done by aunts and older sisters under the supervision of grandmothers. The older women were responsible for transmission of sexual knowledge and acceptable sexual practices to young women and girls. The sexual preparation of the female body mainly involved teaching girls how to elongate their inner labia as a rite of passage into womanhood. Through this socialisation process, girls acquired knowledge and skills and their attitudes and values towards sexual relationships were constructed (Gay, 1986).

The practice of labial elongation in Africa has been studied by various scholars (Bagnol and Mariano, 2008; Gallo et al., 2006; Johansen, 2006; Koster and Price, 2008; Larsen, 2010). These researchers have established that labial elongation begins very early in a girl’s life before her first menstruation. They argue that in Buganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Mozambique, elongation is through massaging and stretching the labia from the top to the bottom, with the tips of the thumb and index finger of each hand. Girls use different locally available herbs which are ground into a paste to ease the pulling. These herbs are believed to promote stretching of the labia by softening and lubricating them such that the pulling does not cause any skin laceration.

It is worth noting that practices aiming to beautify, enlarge or reduce the external female genitalia are highly controversial. In 2000, the World Health Organization classified inner labia elongation as a Type IV female genital mutilation – FGM – (WHO, 2000), and the United Nations classified it under ‘harmful traditional practices’ (United Nations, 2006: 45) while some scholars prefer ‘ethnic genital modification’ (Gallo et al., 2006: 65). Interestingly, the United Nations’ (2006: 45) report on ending violence against women highlights that more than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital modification or mutilation/cutting mainly in Africa and the Middle East. Since then, the World Health Organization has amended its classification to argue that Type IV FGM comprises a large variety of practices that do not remove tissue from the genitals (WHO, 2008). This report argues that even though limited research has been conducted in relation to such practices, they are less harmful than Types I, II and III (see also WHO, 2011).

Mwenda (2006), on the other hand, takes a rights approach to labial elongation and looks into the extent to which labial elongation violates the rights of women in Africa. He argues that ‘as long as labial elongation is undertaken freely, and with full consent, it does not violate the rights of women’ (2006: 353–354). According to Mwenda (2006), there should be a distinction between voluntary labia elongation and other forms of FGM that either compromise the health of women or are non-consensual.

The position taken in this article is that labial elongation is a form of genital modification because it does not compromise the health of women. My understanding is that women who practise labial elongation do so to augment their sexuality. The elongated labia make their genitalia more attractive and supposedly more effective in pleasuring their sexual partners. I am, however, troubled by the apparent silence on labial elongation and its effects on female sexual desire and pleasure, in the context of Lesotho, and this has forced me to question the legitimacy of the practice. I am also troubled by Mwenda’s (2006) argument that if women undertake to elongate their labia freely then the practice is not violating their rights. If girls are expected to start elongating their inner labia before the first menstrual period, then the legitimacy of free and consensual elongation stands to question. How free can an eight-year-old be to decide for or against labial elongation? If it is a rite of passage into womanhood, then it means those women who do not conform are supposedly not complete women. My next question then is: can women willingly choose the ‘shame’ of being incomplete? Despite the many debates raised on labial elongation, little has been written about its role in the construction of female sexual identity, and more specifically in relation to sexual pleasure, eroticism and desire among women.

In this article I aim to highlight how the practice of labial elongation perpetuates the violation of women and girls’ rights to sexual pleasure. I also aim to highlight the silences around sexual pleasure and desire for Basotho girls and women through discussing the importance of labial elongation in the construction of sexual identities. I present the challenges women face as they negotiate the spaces between the social constructions of proper womanhood and female sexualities within a hetero-patriarchal society.

Methodology

This article draws on a study I conducted for my Masters degree (see Motalingoane-Khau, 2007) which employed autobiography, memory work, one-on-one in-depth interviews and focus group discussions to explore the memories of adolescent sexual experiences of 12 purposively selected Basotho women science teachers tasked with teaching sexuality, HIV and AIDS education. The purpose of the study was to explore women teachers’ lived experiences of adolescent sexuality in order to understand how such experiences have shaped their approach to teaching about sexuality in schools. The study was conducted over a period of four months: September to December 2006. Ethical clearance was sought from and granted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The participants were informed of the purpose of the study and were given an option of withdrawing from the study whenever they felt uncomfortable. The participants were also free to withdraw any content of their discussions which they felt uncomfortable to disclose to the wider community.

Because of the sensitive and taboo nature of the research topic it was important to get the participants to feel at ease with discussing their intimate lives with me. Under Customary Law Basotho women are constructed as children and therefore, by implication sexually ‘innocent’ (see Motalingoane-Khau, 2007, 2010). This means that women are expected to be sexually pure and hence in the same manner they should not talk about sex. Within this context it was a challenge to get women to talk about their personal adolescent sexual experiences. Thus the data production involved three phases. The preparation phase, a pyjama party, was aimed at building rapport between me and the participants and to address the power dynamics within the group. The second phase was the actual data production in which, as a participant-researcher, I shared my experiences with the other participants. The last phase was a debriefing session whose purpose was to allay any fears and discomforts that could have arisen during the data production phase and to discuss how being involved in the study affected us as women teachers.

Locating myself within a feminist approach to research, I acknowledge my own position as both a participant-researcher and a producer of the narratives of female sexualities, while deconstructing traditional conceptions of truth and objectivity in my analysis. Feminist research brings to light the practical and lived experiences of women in everyday life through problematising the meanings associated with the complexities of women’s daily lives (Grumet and Stone, 2000). Thus, while I present and problematise the women’s lived experiences of labial elongation together with mine, I have valued their voices in the meanings they make of their experiences.

Some feminist researchers note that women researchers often choose topics that mean something to them, and argue that drawing from and theorising on one’s own personal experience is valuable (Cotterill and Letherby, 1993; Ribbens and Edwards, 1998; Stanley and Wise, 1993). My topic was also chosen because I have personal experiences relating to it and it is of importance to my development as a woman, mother and scholar-teacher. This article draws only from the data produced through focus-group discussions as they provide collective views and perceptions of the participants on their experiences of labial elongation. Focus groups are important in the advancement of social justice for women because they can serve to expose and validate women’s everyday experiences of subjugation and their individual and collective survival and resistance strategies (Madriz, 2000).

The data were analysed using thematic inductive analysis, whereby themes are generated from the data and coded for meaning (Patton, 2002). Braun and Clarke (2006) argue that although thematic analysis is widely used in analysing qualitative data, it is poorly demarcated and acknowledged in its own right as a method. In fact, it is debatable as to whether thematic analysis is a method on its own or not (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006; Roulston, 2001). Scholars who do not recognise it as a method mainly argue that thematic analysis just provides core skills, such as ‘thematising meanings’ (Holloway and Todres, 2003: 347), and the process of thematic coding (Ryan and Bernard, 2000). As such, thematic analysis can be used in many forms of qualitative data analysis. Thus it is considered as the foundation for qualitative methods searching for patterns or themes, such as conversation analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). In this study, themes have been generated from women teachers’ memories of their adolescent sexual experiences.

Findings

Discussion

There are many beliefs regarding the importance of elongated inner labia as exemplified in the findings. It was believed that elongated inner labia kept a woman hot as they blocked the vaginal entrance and kept the heat inside (Gay, 1986). Young girls were told they would lose favour with their husbands if they did not elongate their labia as they would be sexually unpleasant (cf. Arnfred, 2007; Parikh, 2005; Tamale, 2005). In other African contexts the practice of labial elongation seems to be premised on the sexual satisfaction of both partners despite the fact that emphasis is still on male sexual pleasure, thus showing the role of culture in the construction, manipulation and conditioning of desire and sexual pleasure (Bagnol and Mariano, 2008; Gallo et al., 2006; Johansen, 2006; Koster and Price, 2008; Larsen, 2010).

In contrast, Basotho people believed elongated inner labia made girls less sexually excitable because elongating forced the clitoris to retract into the labial folds (Gay, 1986). This practice was used to keep girls and women ‘good’. Thus the main reason behind inner labia elongation has been the need to control female sexuality. However, young girls were not given this information. As a Mosotho woman having gone through this practice, I do not think I would have elongated my inner labia given this reason. I believe the negative messages that were given were the only way to get Basotho girls to elongate because of fear of the consequences. The blame placed on women who do not have elongated inner labia and the shame they are forced to endure within societies perpetuates women’s silence regarding the violations they endure within marriages and other social structures. The public humiliation of deviant women, mostly by other women, serves to reinforce this violation of women’s right to sexual autonomy and pleasure.

Basotho women used labial elongation as contraception because it prevented girls from desiring and enjoying sex. This argument was valid during the days when other forms of contraception were not available. One wonders, however, whether on getting married the young woman with elongated labia was expected to enjoy sex with her husband or just to please him. If the practice was mainly to promote heterosexuality and male sexual pleasure, then it does not hold sway in today’s generation of Basotho women because not all of them get married to men. One then wonders why Basotho women are still passing this tradition on to their daughters if they know that it reduces women’s sexual excitability. With today’s variety of contraceptive devices and sexual identity choices, should labial elongation continue?

Reference to labial elongation being used to reduce girls’ sexual excitability, as far as my research has gone, appears only within the context of Lesotho. Some of the participants argue they only learnt about this reason for elongation after getting married. However, they attest that girls who do not pull their inner labia are promiscuous and fall pregnant in big numbers because ‘ha ba ea fokotsa bohale’ that is ‘they have not reduced their sexual excitability’ and hence pursue sexual pleasure more than those with elongated labia. In Basotho communities, a proper girl waits for sexual advances from a man and never goes in pursuit of sex, let alone her own sexual pleasure. By implication Basotho people see girls without elongated labia as deviant and pursuit of sexual pleasure by girls and women as wrong.

These arguments show that female sexual pleasure is an absent presence in the practices of preparing girls for womanhood and marriage in Lesotho. If preparing Basotho girls for womanhood centres around labial elongation whose specific aim is enhancing male sexual pleasure and reducing female sexual pleasure, it means female sexuality is constructed as not needing pleasure. Girls and women are forced to construct their sexual identities around sexual restraint and passivity because pursuing sexual pleasure transforms good Basotho girls into bad girls (cf. Kimmel, 2004). By not conforming to the norms of proper womanhood, women without elongated inner labia are said to be able to pursue their own sexual pleasure. Thus in this context, non-conformity is good as it gives girls and women the space to enjoy sexual autonomy and pleasure.

It has been common for Basotho girls to have ‘mummies’ and ‘babies’, with older girls being the mummies. However, this practice has been forbidden in many church schools because it is believed to promote lesbianism. Some participants talked of kissing their mummies or babies and engaging in mutual masturbation in the form of fondling and pulling each other’s inner labia. Despite this, homosexuality ‘does not exist’ in Basotho culture. The practice of assisting each other in stretching the inner labia served to reinforce the importance of elongated labia. Despite the homo-erotic implications of this practice, the apparent and crucial objective of the elongation rite was to enhance heterosexuality. However, young women ended up exploring many aspects of their sexuality during the pulling sessions, which proved to be against societal expectations of proper womanhood.

Additionally, Kendal (1999) reports that women she interviewed in Lesotho, who engaged in what was seen with western eyes as same-sex practices, did not see this behaviour as sexual at all. To them sex had to do with penetration. Their argument was ‘you cannot have sex unless somebody has a koae (penis)’ (Kendall, 1999: 167). This means women’s ways of conveying passion, love, and lust, or joy in each other were neither immoral nor suspect. This, however, does not mean mutual sexual pleasuring among girls (or boys) was socially accepted. Masturbation was also not an openly discussed issue because it was regarded as sinful and against nature. Thus, labial elongation provided a context in which Basotho women explored their bodies and inherent sexual identities while also engaging in forbidden sexual practices within the safety of established friendship groups as evidenced by the testimonies of the participants who enjoyed being assisted to pull their labia. Despite the intended suppression of female sexual desire and pleasure, the practice of labial elongation created a space for the exploration of pleasurable female sexuality and hence in some situations became an arena for challenging traditional sexual norms. The enjoyment derived by women from mutual sexual pleasuring shows that the practice of assisted inner labia elongation challenged the hegemony enjoyed by male sexual pleasure and heterosexuality.

The practice of labial elongation, in many African communities, shows that even though female sexuality is highly policed, it is never completely silenced. The challenge, however, is girls and women are socialised to believe that ‘the pursuit of sex transforms good girls into bad girls’ (Kimmel, 2004: 240). Ericsson (2005:131) also argues that ‘a delinquent boy is criminally active; a delinquent girl is sexually active’. Growing up with these perceptions makes it difficult for girls to fully embrace their sexuality and its pleasures because good girls should not pursue sex or be sexually knowledgeable. Female sexuality in this context is only legitimate if it is in relation to heterosexuality and male sexual pleasure. This positions auto and homo-erotic experiences for women as deviant, and thus denies exploration of such alternative avenues of sexual pleasure. The conceptualisation of women’s homo-erotic experiences under the rubric of lesbianism reflects the embedded heteronomativity in Basotho society.

The deviance attached to homosexuality and women’s pursuit of sexual pleasure is also testament to the perceived abnormality and immorality of homosexual practices, and is a reflection of Christian moralistic teachings. In European traditions, women were seen as assets in state building as mothers of the nation (Amadiume, 2007). They therefore had to adhere to the strictest and highest Christian standards of purity in order to produce citizens of high moral standing. In this context the purity of motherhood inhabited a different world to the desiring body. According to Ifi Amadiume,

In Victorian English culture, women were not expected to experience sexual arousal, and these cultures were enforced on Africans by Christian missionaries and through modern Eurocentric education. These were not originally African practices. (2007: 5)

Thus through appropriating colonial sexual practices as their culture, Basotho eventually promoted the passive Victorian female (Wekker, 2004) as a virtuous norm for female sexuality. According to Wekker (2006: 5) black women’s sexuality is represented in Euro-American history as ‘excessive, insatiable, the epitome of animal lust, and always already pathological’. Thus through Christianity, this supposedly deviant and pagan sexuality was abolished in many colonies including Lesotho. As recorded by Kendall (1999) Basotho women enjoyed woman–woman relationships which were neither immoral nor suspect within communities. Thus it could be argued that the homo-erotic experience of assisted inner labia pulling is not deviant but reclamation of what has naturally been part of Basotho female sexuality.

Bourdieu (1993) argues that agents in any field conform to norms or prescribed rituals depending on their interests. He argues that people, as actors in the field, are not rule followers or norm conformers but strategic improvisers who respond to the opportunities and constraints offered by various situations in accordance with their dispositions. Basotho women as players in the field of ‘becoming a woman’ (Butler, 1990: 33) seem to have a vested interest in labial elongation despite its drawbacks on female sexual pleasure. Women’s performance of this normalised womanhood corresponds to their formative socialisation and thus legitimates the sexual inequality between men and women. Basotho women are strategically complicit in the symbolic violence or ‘othering’ directed at those without the elongated labia because they stand to gain from this practice. Those women with elongated labia, as existing holders of power, use labial elongation as an entry fee into the field of womanhood for young girls as new players, or a way of blocking or excluding ‘unfit’ players in the game of being a woman.

Labial elongation forms part of becoming a Mosotho woman and thus an integral part of sexual identity formation. However, the hegemony enjoyed by this practice excludes resistant ways of sexual identity formation, which could be available for Basotho girls and women. The question of who benefits from labial elongation requires further research within the context of Lesotho. From the discussions in this article, it can be argued that while it was good to use labial elongation as a contraceptive measure, it denied young women the full extent of sexual pleasuring that their bodies could attain. Should women continue to form their sexual identities around labial elongation?

Conclusion

This article has discussed the practice of labial elongation among the Basotho and how it is implicated in the constructions of female sexual identity. The policing and control of female sexuality within hetero-patriarchal contexts remains one of the major drivers of violence against women. Significantly, most societies privilege heterosexual male desire, either by enacting prohibitive laws on other groups or by promoting social mores and cultural observances that tend to circumscribe the sexual desire of the others. Because of the small sample size, this article provides only a glimpse into the violation of women and girls’ rights to sexual autonomy and pleasure and the mechanisms of blame and shame that perpetuate women’s silence in the face of violence. However, it gives important insights into women’s lived experiences of labial elongation which could be a starting point for further research and sexual health policy evaluation.

Thanks to the taboo nature of sex talk, inner labia elongation is hardly talked about within the public sphere except in cases of blaming and shaming deviant women and girls. With the majority of Basotho women still being economically dependent on men, there is little likelihood for them to stand up for their sexual rights. There are therefore few individuals within Lesotho, mostly women science teachers, who are standing up against the practice of inner labia elongation as there are hardly any organizations or movements against this practice within communities. However, these women teachers are only able to teach a few girls about their bodies in relation to sexual pleasure without any support from the wider community. As Petchesky (2000: 12) rightly points out, ‘sexual rights for women will remain unachievable if they are not connected to a strong campaign for economic justice and an end to poverty’. Thus campaigns for women’s sexual rights in Lesotho would have to tie in with strategies for economic independence to enhance women’s decision-making powers.

However, without the support of men who currently are still the decision makers in relationships and families, there would be minimal progress. Thus it is important for re-education programmes to target men to stand against this practice. With the understanding that a woman who enjoys sex makes it more pleasurable for her partner, it would be easier to persuade Basotho that it is for the good of all if women and girls stopped labial elongation. With buy-in from the men, women would be released from the fear of not being marriageable and pleasurable and thus the shame and blaming placed on women and girls would stop thereby creating spaces for a society that values and enjoys pleasurable and healthy sexuality.