Provoking vaginismus on purpose?

[tammyg]

In another thread here on the board someone posted that in certain cultures, females provoke vaginismus to make sex as painful as possible. As far as I understand this is done as a rite of passage.

I know the purpose of this board is to make sure we all can have pain free sex, but this intrigues me. Why/how is this done?

[hellenmia]

It was me who wrote about this.

In certain African cultures, sand is indeed inserted in the vagina when a couple gets married. This is done by friends and relatives of the bride as a “rite of passage” and its purpose is indeed to make sex dry/painful for BOTH partners. In males, the foreskin will be pulled back by the dry sand and the frenulum will tear, which causes bleeding (this is the so-called “male defloration”). In females, the hymen will tear and the sand will cause little scars, adding to the bleeding. The couple has no privacy and needs to have sex in front of their family so they can see the blood. As a researcher, I’ve seen videos of thise rites and the couple is in so much pain the images are difficult to watch.

I wrote about this because afterwards, lots of those young women end up with vaginismus due to their painful first experience.

[recessivegenequeen]

Wow, that’s absolutely horrible. As though there weren’t already enough misinformation and pain around sex for women! Do you know if this practice is changing at all or going out of style? I was just reading that this practice is partly to make the vagina seem “tighter” and thus more virginal. We have these same stigmas in the US but they aren’t embodied in the same way of course. I hope that more education makes this practice more scarce.

[hellenmia]

As far as I know this practice isn’t changing at all.

[rabbit]

At first I thought it couldn’t be true, but it does exist. I’ve even found a few NSFW sites showing the procedure. The couple involved was crying and yelling while they had sex, and their family was dancing/encouraging them while they were standing around the married couple. Hard to watch and it doesn’t surprise me at all most of those women end up with vaginismus after such a terrible experience.

[redrose]

This is a common thing in Central Africa. One of my friends lived there and she had to marry at the age of 16. She told me the sand is mixed with little stones and some water, and inserted into the vagina before having sex. It sounds like a HORRIBLE experience to me. Most males end up with major tears and scars on their penis, and my friend got a severe vaginal infection because of this. Still it’s a practice that is widely spread.