Be ruptured, hymen!
The first time I masturbated I was thirty years old. Placing my panties just above my knees while gingerly feeling myself, I mustered all the strength I had to be at peace with the act and let my sensations take over. It remains one of the most daring and transgressive things I have ever done. As an unmarried woman, in my own little way, I was giving my Islamic heritage and the values of my upbringing the ultimate middle finger. I was taking ownership of my own body, and relishing in the explosive pleasure it was capable of.
I am a nomadic, Canadian woman of Sudanese heritage who spent my entire childhood hopping from one country to another, trotting off before establishing any roots. It has been difficult to articulate the liminal space I occupy and contextualize all the upheaval I have experienced. At home, our culture was squarely Sudanese. This was always in conversation with the other cultures I was exposed to, be they in the countries I lived in or the diverse backgrounds of my friends.
Except where sex was involved. Sex was the perennial taboo. The repression of my sexuality was a stubborn footnote that ensnared and latched on to me like a leech.
I had been exposed to both open, liberal attitudes towards sex and deeply closeted and restrictive beliefs. I had no trouble connecting with my Western friends, but when it came to sexuality, I often felt like I was walking on wet cement. I could never catch up, and they failed to understand that culture was not a set of rules that I could think myself out of. Culture was alive, a moral compass embedded and weaved into how I was raised and therefore saw the world.
By my mid-twenties I knew where I stood on the topic of female sexuality. Black and Arab feminists such as Mona el Tahawy, Nawal El Saadawi and bell hooks shifted my childhood perspective. Their transgressive thoughts shook me to my bones. Reading Nawal El Saadawi’s quote “A woman’s voice is revolution” instilled feminist fervour that challenged everything I had once taken for granted. Over coffee and baklava with other young women of similar backgrounds, I could not stop talking about the systematic oppression, suppression and control of women.
Why were we conditioned to think of a possessive grip on our sexuality as being “protective” and “caring”? How could we just accept sayings like “Better the shadow of a man than the shadow of a wall?” Why did we continue to listen to those who claimed that most of the inhabitants of hell were women? Women like me were reduced to frail and fragile, shattering, splintering, and never returning to their former state. I was certain that this was a setup where our value was directly correlated to our ability to suppress our sexual instincts. Yet I could not translate my outrage at this predicament into action.
As I entered adulthood, the contrast between what I thought versus how I behaved was significant. I knew that premarital sex meant a social death. The weight of having to forever keep a secret from my family and friends was a rift I could not afford. Every sexual impulse or attempt to unshackle myself was severed by memories of my mother’s fiery tone at the breakfast table when I was fifteen. I don’t remember how she steered the conversation to men and “loose women” but she suddenly interjected, “You know what, if you do that, if someone opens you, you are finished for the rest of your life!” I still remember feeling pierced by the forcefulness in her eyes, and having the words swirl in my brain while I nestled a bowl of runny porridge in both palms. “Any woman that loses her virginity before marriage is the coal that keeps the fires of hell burning,” she added.
The hymen — breaking it and keeping it intact — was a recurring topic among cousins and aunts during scorching summers in Sudan. I listened intently as they whispered in hushed tones, all while concocting images of all the ways these “dirty” women would pay for their feral transgressions in this life and the next.
In my womb circle, I never heard of sexuality as something to explore or savour. The vagina was dirty, a place of potential sin. I sometimes found myself wondering whether many of the women in my extended family (including those that have given birth) knew what a labia or clitoris was, or if they had ever touched themselves for pleasure. I doubt it. Sex was something to endure, not enjoy. A woman was the preserver of her husband’s chastity and a shield from the temptation roving around him. Should she fail in her duty of splaying her legs open when called to, the angels would curse her all night.
As for me, the liberal tendencies of the atmosphere surrounding me began to permeate, especially when I left home at twenty-five to do my Master’s. That year proved to be pivotal. I befriended radical feminists whose ideas and reasoning challenged conventional notions of sexuality. I had always believed that sex was done on to women and dictated by the pleasure of a man. They made me re-evaluate the role of a woman. The vagina was not a passive bystander that was done on to. The deconstruction of all my misguided beliefs prompted me to take a hard look at my behaviour given what I knew and claimed to believe.
I was adamant to wither my conservatism for good. Gradually easing into flirting, I was on a roll and a man undressed me for the first time. As he undid my bra, caressed my neck and reached for my panties, our breathing accelerated and the heat between us grew thick and palpable. I was experiencing first-hand what I had before only imagined. He was naked in an instant, and jumped onto my bed and began to tease me. Even though I was feeling the ecstasy of losing control, there was still a sense of being watched, as if the walls had eyes and the rustling leaves could hear my every moan. When he asked whether he could reach for a condom, I jolted back into reality. “I’m sorry. No, no way.”
Confused, he asked whether he could go down on me, and I agreed. As long as my hymen was intact, I was fine. It turned out to be a level of frustrated stimulation I had never felt or imagined was possible. A titillating current possessed me, and it felt like all the demons that had haunted my relationship with my body were being exorcised. But even in those moments of intense rapture was the undercurrent of God’s wrath and vengeance on me.
I didn’t want to get out of bed the next day. I kept re-running yesterday’s events in my head and relished his lingering scent on my body. Instinctively, I knew it was a step in the right direction, but I still caught myself regressing into fear and suspicion. I would be in the middle of making a meal or chatting with friends when out of nowhere I would feel zapped into fears of getting cursed or being so tortured by guilt that I would tell my mother what had happened.
I graduated six months later, moved to the Middle East, and was plunged in a world with little resemblance to my European university. With the change in environment came a great shift. Surrounded by my parents and their social circle, my feminist rigour began to recoil. My beliefs were not sturdy enough to withstand the condensed and potent drip of conservative beliefs. Within a year I was in an arranged engagement, and resigned myself to a career and life that my father saw fit. An erasure of authentic self which I protected by suppressing every impulse that questioned my predicament. When I look back, I’m astounded by how profoundly I digested the atmosphere in the Islamic world. Its constant calls to prayer, herd culture, conservative clothing, and women who equated virginity with purity and honour.
After an intense year of feeling like my mind was in a tumble dryer, I quit my job, ended my engagement and headed for Central America. In Central America I frolicked with men in an environment that screamed freedom, choice, and above all pleasure. My pact with my hymen came into question with ferocity. I was fuming with anger at myself for still being a virgin at thirty.
Moments of fervour would possess me where I was utterly convinced that I needed to lose it, break it, tear right through it once and for all. But these sentiments would invariably be tempered by uncertainty and withdrawal when I spoke to anyone from home. The sound of their voices, weighted tones of their reactions to “transgressions” secluded me to a bewildering and crippling mental state I could not think myself out of. An enabling environment would ease the strain on my mind and allow me to ruminate the possibilities. Possibilities that are entertained but never enacted. Such is the tenacious grasp of convention and upbringing; and it has anchored me throughout these years.
I often do not really know what to do with myself. How can I know so much, be the first person to pounce when a woman’s sexuality is judged or scrutinized, yet not be able to take the plunge myself? At best, I feel that it really is not about me, rather my experience is a symptom of a much bigger, more sinister problem. At worst, I feel like a pitiful fraud.
The right and imperative of pleasure and free reign of my sexuality could not and still doesn’t measure up. Here I am at 35, utterly convinced of this right that I have to penetrative sex, but unable to exercise it. For now, I transgress through conscious masturbation. It’s a step in the right direction that has allowed me to get to know my body and make peace with discovering my genitalia. I have been on the precipice of having penetrative sex with the few men I have been in bed with. I have gone around in circles for too long — the future must see me go for the home stretch. But I still don’t know whether I’ll be able to part ways with this umbilical cord linking me to the Middle East’s toxic interplay of cultural customs, patriarchy and religion. It may be rank and withered, but it still ensnares.
The author of this work wishes to remain anonymous. To read more, go to paindealheal.com