Women want a tiny cut of the action
For Thandeka Yasmeen Ndaba, the obstacle to earning her master’s degree was her own conservative religious beliefs — she had to plunge herself into explicit discussion about how circumcision affects a man’s sexual performance.
While wondering what topic to tackle for her gender studies dissertation, the shy University of KwaZulu-Natal student had an epiphany when she overheard a group of women students talking about how they found sex far more enjoyable with a circumcised man than with one who had not had the cut.
Although the hijab-wearing young woman could not contribute “meaningfully” to that discussion, she knew she had stumbled on an important issue for research.
She was intrigued by the uninhibited way the women talked about sex, leading to her graduating cum laude last month on the basis of her dissertation, “Understanding the Sexual Pleasure Perceptions and Preferences of Black African University-Going Women in the Context of Male Circumcision”.
Ndaba, 25, said she had worried when starting on her master’s that her religious values, which encourage modesty and a conservative dress code, “might have presented a conundrum in relation to questions asked on sex, sexual pleasure and enjoyment and male circumcision”.
She feared that the eight Zulu-speaking students in the studywould hold back on details in the belief that she would not “relate to and understand their experiences”.
“I can, with great certainty, say that the completion of this dissertation has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life thus far.”
Her central finding was that the women preferred to have circumcised men as sexual partners, partly because they felt having the procedure showed courage.
Ndaba told the Sunday Times that she hoped her study would show it was a fallacy to assume that Zulu women students find it hard to talk about “their sexual pleasure experiences”.
“This wasmotivated by the understanding that the university was a space for much sexual experimentation due to lack of parental supervision and community judgment.
“Perhaps what I found surprising was their vast sexual knowledge, the ease and boldness with which they articulated views on sex, circumcision and what was sexually gratifying to them on an emotional and physical spectrum,” Ndaba said.
“The clarity with which they distinctly spoke of what exactly pleases them and what doesn’t was a little unexpected; however, it was most welcome.”
Most of the women felt that male circumcision contributed significantly to their sexual pleasure and lessened the risk of contracting HIV. Some said they shunned men who were not circumcised because they seldom fulfilled their sexual expectations.
One woman in the study, a 22-year-old anthropology student, said she had had intercourse with six men, four of whom were circumcised.
“It is a factor because there were two who were uncircumcised and they were my first sexual partners,” the woman said. “Once I saw that they were not doing it right, I let them go and once I got a circumcised man I never looked back.”
Another participant in the study, a 19-year-old woman who has had three different partners, said: “It does matter whether a guy is circumcised or not … Based on what I experienced with an uncircumcised partner, I won’t do it again. I think that it is a very good thing [circumcision] and do not see why there are guys who are still not circumcised.”
Ndaba found in her study that having sex with uncircumcised men made some of her research subjects feel “guilty and regretful, as they view themselves as dishonouring and shaming themselveswith someone who is socially ridiculed as being riddled with and prone to disease and incapable of satisfying a woman”.
Ndaba’s supervising professor, Maheshvari Naidu, said the focus of the dissertation, female sexuality, was “relatively under-researched”.
“It has been a massively challenging process for her in the context of soliciting data, but more in the context of her personal challenges. I am thrilled at the final results.”