Adventures from the bedrooms of African Women: An Introduction

I hope you are intrigued by the name of our spanking new blog, ‘Adventures from the bedroom of African women’. I am too, even though I am a co-author for this blog.

So what is this blog about? This blog is simply about the diverse sexualities of African women. I have found myself becoming interestingly interested in women’s sexuality the older I have got. (I am all of 31 years old in case you are wondering) I am interested in knowing what brings women pleasure, how women negotiate pleasureable sex with their partners, why women put up with ‘bad sex’.

I have had conversations with friends who have ‘confessed’ to faking orgasms in order to be over and done with sex. I always thought ‘Surely that is counter productive. How do you then get to the stage where you start to have open dialogue with your partner about what pleases you?’. In the same vein I have had the most open conversations with female friends about sex and sexuality. On a recent beach holiday I found myself skinny dipping with 3 other friends chatting about sex…

So why the focus on African women’s sexuality? I think there is a huge gap of knowledge about the sexuality of African women. There is probably a huge gap on women’s sexuality in general. Apart from the oft sited Shere Hite Report on Sexuality nothing much springs to mind. So the question remains ‘How do you learn about sex?’. The Ghanaian blogger Esi Cleland, http://maameous.blogspot.com/ posed this question some time ago. In the context of ‘traditional culture’ where sex is often not discussed except to say ‘Good girls don’t do that’ or ‘ Don’t have sex until you’re married’ when and where do you learn about sex?

This blog hopes to answer some of the questions raised above. I am hoping our readers will be active contributors to this blog. I think as women we need to empower ourselves sexually, learn about our own sexualities and what brings us pleasure. We need to be able to negotiate safe and enjoyable sex. I get so distressed when I read of statistics like ‘70 % of women have never had an orgasm‘. I almost feel like that is a crime. Well, we need to learn from the other 30% what they do, and how they do it. I look forward to sharing my personal experiences with you all and I hope you will reciprocate generously.

Nana Darkoa