Tag Archives: women

December 7, 2011 · 8:22 am

My first time was not my first time

For as long as I can recall I’ve never been a virgin. I remember in my teen years, when my peers were proud of their virginity and spoke about it often. At the time I was fortunate not to be asked blatantly whether I was still a virgin, I’m not sure if I would have been honest. Even more importantly, I remember being grateful that it was not part of my culture to be tested for virginity. I would have disgraced my family, and would have had to explain myself. So I hid my virginity status, mostly helped by assumptions that I must be a virgin since I’m such an introvert.

The question came up with my boyfriend years later though and I couldn’t run away from it, this time it was blatantly asked and required an answer. He did everything right this one evening, got me to the point where my mind was begging him to enter me. Unlike the other times, I let him go all the way, as they say. Suddenly he was huge on top of me, heavy; I disconnected. I opened my eyes and looked at him intensely, no longer feeling the pleasure of the thrust, gentle as he was, but terror of being pressed down. Moans and groans of pleasure turned into winces of pain and panic.

There was something painfully familiar with picture. Me vulnerable. Him powerful. Me the victim, he the perpetrator. He was my unknowing rapist. He was enjoying a moment that brought me pain and displeasure and fear and vulnerability and hatred…I willed him to stop, my mind screamed, but my mouth did not cooperate. Here I was again, helpless, pressed down, small. The object of this man’s pleasure.

He must have felt the disconnection, rather delayed but felt it nonetheless. I would be grateful later for his recognition of my displeasure, for his attentiveness to my responses. At the moment though, he was that perpetrator and I hated him. He stopped, pulled away slightly, I took a deep quivering breath. He looked at me, “are you okay?” he asked and hugged me tightly.  I cried in his arms, realising our special moment had been haunted. Something good came out of this experience though: I am unshaken in the belief that not all men are the same.

He asked much later in our lives, ‘when we made love for the first time, was it your first time?” I responded, “voluntarily, yes.” My first time- and second, and third and fourth were in fact at the age of five, with a sixteen-year-old uncle.

I’m not fond of sharing stories about my first time; it was anything but special and loving. Every day is yet another struggle to lock it away  into the deepest part of my unconscious mind.

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November 29, 2011 · 9:26 am

The first time I realised I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was

I have always been seen as the strong one. The woman who doesn’t put up with the usual rubbish, who stands up for herself. I have always proudly called myself a feminist and condemned men who couldn’t respect that as idiots. I have always known my rights and been lucky enough to be raised in an environment where my rights were just as important as any man’s. I believed these things. I thought I knew how to react when push came to shove.

But for the first 25 years of my life, push never really came to shove. Sure, I encountered assholes, chauvinism and general horrible people. But I was lucky enough never to be forced to do something I didn’t want to do, or to be touched inappropriately or to be made to feel awful or uncomfortable in a situation. And even if I were, I believed I knew what to do. I had an unfailing confidence in myself. I never ever questioned that someone like me, someone strong, feminist and educated, might not be able to do this.

And then one day, it happened. And I failed myself. Typing those words still makes me feel sick.

It all started when I flight I took was delayed. I sat in the departure lounge watching the end of the Egyptian revolution on TV when the man next to me started making small talk. He was well dressed and much older. He spoke to me in a fatherly way. I chatted back and he offered me one of his chocolates, which I accepted. We walked to the plane together and were seated apart. To be honest, I was a little relieved. I like travelling alone, and I don’t like making awkward small talk for 9 hours, so it suited me just fine. Besides, some of the stories he’d told me had been a little off colour. I had a row to myself on the plan and drifted happily off to sleep.

I woke up four hours later to find him sitting at the end of my row watching me. As soon as I woke up he moved into the seat next to me and started chatting again. I was uncomfortable. He was in my space and I was trapped between him and the window. But I didn’t do anything.

As he talked, his stories got creepier. He started telling me strange things about prostitutes and massages he’d gotten in China. I started to squirm inside. When would he leave me alone? But I still didn’t say anything. The polite girl I’d been raised to be overtook the strong woman I thought I was inside. I figured he didn’t realise how he was making me feel. I rubbed my neck trying to get some of the tension out of it.

He noticed and offered to rub it for me. By this point I felt frozen inside. I didn’t want him to touch me. Every fibre of my being wanted to scream out loudly and have him removed. But somehow, I just couldn’t do it. I begged myself to kick into action but nothing happened. He started massaging my neck, before starting to move his hands downwards. I stared out of the window and tried to ignore him. I wanted to evaporate more than anything in the world. I couldn’t move, I felt like my voice had been stolen from me. I wanted to use it but I just couldn’t do it. I moved away. He kept pushing. Suddenly, he grabbed my face, turned it towards him and started kissing me, moving his disgusting tongue all over my mouth and caressing my back.

I finally kicked into action. I pushed him away and said no. But I didn’t shout or scream or attract attention as I should have. I was so mortally embarrassed and humiliated that I wanted to sink into the ground. The plane began to descend and he began apologizing. He thought I was interested, he thought we had a connection. I ignored him. He rested his hand on my knee and before I could shake it off, he grabbed me and kissed me again as the plane touched ground. Again, I pushed him away, this time more strongly and said no a little more loudly. He looked around to make sure no one had heard and then told me I shouldn’t have been so friendly. He apologized again, but somehow made it sound like it was my fault. I pushed myself as far away from his as possible, closed my eyes and prayed for it all to be over. I felt like I would never be clean again.

After what felt like forever, the cabin lights came on and passengers stood up to get their bags. He moved off quickly and I stood. Tears of anger, frustration and humiliation burned my eyes. It was over, but inside, I felt like the worst person alive. I was so upset about what had happened and so angry that he had taken advantage of the situation like that but more than that I was furious at myself. How could I have let myself down like that? Why didn’t I do something? Why did I freeze? As I felt my inside slowly unclenching, the reality of what had happened hit me and I started to feel the worst thing of all: guilt. I started to think it was my fault. If I was such a strong woman then what the hell had I just allowed to happen? Not only had I let myself down but I’d let the next woman he tried to do that to down. I’d let all the other women fighting against this crap down.

It’s been a few months since that flight now. I still feel my heart sink every time I think of that incident. I still feel the burn of shame and humiliation. I still feel the intense disappointment in myself for letting it happen. But I’ve also started to realise that no matter what happened, it wasn’t my fault. That lecherous old man was disgusting no matter what. And no matter what I did, he took advantage of the situation. His actions are the revolting ones, not mine. But even though I know this in my head though, it doesn’t change how I feel in my heart sometimes. I still sometimes feel like the biggest traitor to womankind in the world.

I wish I could end this story more positively but it’s an ongoing battle. I wish that man knew how much he’d changed my life and how much he’d shaken my core. He’s probably totally forgotten it ever happened. So, for now, there’s just one thing I hope and pray: that if something like this ever happens again, I’ll react. I’ll scream, I’ll shout, I’ll kick, I’ll punch. I may have let myself down once but I’m hoping this means I’ll never do it again. I just wish I could guarantee that I’ll actually be able to do it…

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November 21, 2011 · 12:19 pm

The first time I used a menstrual cup

I first heard about the m-cup (menstrual/moon cups) last year over dinner conversation. I was enthralled by the idea of environmentally friendly and safer methods of menstrual health and I seriously started wondering about all the waste products such as tampons and pads…where do they all go? It also made me wonder about women’s menstrual health and how warped it is considering the adverts on TV (especially for women who cannot afford the expense of tampons and pads).

So I went and bought a moon cup soon after the conversation. I Googled more information and read anything and everything. Like most women growing up in conservative families with a mother who taught me “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and all things about sexuality were makings of the devil, my vagina was mostly invisible. The biology lessons at school (with male teachers) showed me cross-sections of tubes and balls that made little sense to me except when I had to label the image during a test. Apart from the monthly bleed and gevoevelling with curious boys in my teens, I knew little about my vagina. And I decided to abstain from sex when I was 15 which meant the vagina was officially silenced.

Watching the Vagina Monologues is where it all began. I hate to be so typical but until that point, I couldn’t really say the word vagina aloud. And to say it in isiXhosa was close to blasphemy. Friends and I tried to find Xhosa words for vagina: usisi, igusha, isinene/inenene, ikuku (sister, sheep, no translation, cookie respectively). But I still couldn’t say much about the vagina. Watching the monologues I realised I related with “My vagina is angry…pissed off!” and much to my dismay, I also related with the old woman who spoke about “down there”.

So when I finally heard about the moon cup and decided to buy it, my mind and heart had to make peace with the fact that my vagina is a real part of my body. When talking about menstrual health and vaginas the conversation mostly becomes about sexuality. I have no regrets about abstaining from sex, but this has meant that I have experienced my vagina as purely a biological process and a no go zone at any other time thus far in my life (which is a conversation for another day). And yes, conversations with girlfriends who are comfortable with their sex lives are becoming a tad awkward because as a growing woman of 24 I’m an anomaly.

And so the day of reckoning arrived when I was going to trial the m-cup. My body balked. Nothing seemed to work and I didn’t seem to know what I was trying to do. Instead I ended up in pain and exasperated. The websites I read seemed to assume that every woman wanting to use the cup has a sense of what the vagina was REALLY like. And I realised I didn’t and I wasn’t keen to have a conversation with my vagina at the time. So I put the cup away and much to my chagrin, returned to the hard, bleached cotton wool: tampons.

Fast foward: a year later and I decided to revisit the idea of using my m-cup. Part of the motivation has been watching the price of tampons and pads escalate every time I buy them. Not only has this been denting my budget, but again, the thought about the environment surfaced (I have similar questions about disposable nappies, where do they go?). Conversations with more friends who have been evangelising the gospel of the m-cup also helped so the process didn’t seem so daunting anymore. And this time I had a conversation with my vagina every time I had a bath before my cycle began.

It wasn’t dirty or disgusting, but a simple feeling for what it really means to have a vagina. I’m not surprised people who KNOW vaginas love them. They’re soft, warm, welcoming and great muscles. So when I used the cup, it was a simple process and my instant reaction was “WOW!”. When I told a friend, her response included the word “intense”. It doesn’t have to be. Vaginas and women’s sexuality are a beautiful thing and I wish we allowed ourselves more time to appreciate our bodies for what they are not purely as a means to an end for sex, but for the pleasure of what they are…beautiful and blossoming.

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