‘Women don't own sexuality'

Female sexuality and sexual pleasure are rarely researched and barely discussed in South Africa. While (gendered) social issues, such as HIV/Aids, teenage pregnancy, and gender-based violence (GBV) are abundantly researched, far less is known about women’s lived experiences of sex and sexual pleasure, including the sociocultural factors that influence their sexual experiences. For my research project in anthropology, I set out to collect ‘pleasure narratives’ from (self-identified) ‘coloured’ women between the ages of 18 and 40 from Cape Town. In this chapter, I draw upon the pleasure narrative collected from one research participant to demonstrate how young ‘coloured’ women’s beliefs and experiences of sex and sexuality are influenced by the cultural ideology of ordentlikheid (an Afrikaans term for ‘decency’ or ‘respectability’). I outline how ordentlikheid silences (female) sexualities, perpetuates sexual shame that hinders women’s sexual experiences, and justifies the regulation of female bodies. While this results in women feeling as though their sexualities are not theirs to ‘own’, some find ways to navigate and even resist the internalised sexual shame produced under ordentlikheid.