Vaginismus: When a woman’s body does, in fact, “shut down”

A SYTYCB entry

Chloe and Jen as well as many other women in the Feministing community have  spoken about their struggles with vaginismus and I feel compelled to do the same. I discovered I had vaginismus when I was unable to have penetrative sex with my long-term boyfriend. In this political flurry about what is considered “legitimate” and the sexual choices of women being constantly called into question, I find it ironic that I am in my twenties and still a virgin but not by choice. Akin’s heinous comment about how female bodies have a way to “shut” pregnancy by rape down was incredibly idiotic and insensitive yet I felt compelled to address another side of the dialogue he’s introduced. Despite his comments about rape/pregnancy having no rational basis and being quite unrelated to my own post (it pains me to write that as much it pains you to see this uncomfortable transition), there IS a way in which female bodies do “shut down” and the fact that it’s not being given enough air time pushes me to write about it today.

It’s hard enough when Republican GOP candidates attempt to police our bodies, but what happens when I am my own perpetrator? Am I to blame for my vaginismus? Of course not, I tell myself. This condition is involuntary although thankfully, treatable. But it’s harder to believe you’re not at fault. It’s much easier to fall into the trap of thinking that I should be more liberated, more whole, more willing to have sex somehow. That the fact that my friends are having great sex and I am not is somehow a defect on my part is a more natural reaction for me than to think, wow, it’s terrible that I have to experience this.  I feel powerless in my own body when I want to take the next crucial step. I feel “shut down” or closed as soon as I want to complete a normal human function. I struggle with these notions of “legitimate” sex and “virginity” and to a deeper extent, the fucked-up concept of “purity” as defined by both my culture as well as American culture, versus defined by badass feminists versus defined by me. The impossibility of having sex has made me feel less functional then other women who are enjoying their sex lives.   There were all sorts of questions and subsequently little information about where the “blame” should lie, if anywhere at all. I recognized where my vaginismus may stem from, psychologically– growing up in a strict religious household entrenched in cultural backwardness about women and sex certainly may have led to my anxiety about sex and having it for the first time even if it was with someone I loved. But it made my boyfriend question his own responsibility and accountability as well. He wondered if he was a contributing factor. The truth is, I don’t know. I haven’t had the fortune to date someone yet who hasn’t to some extent pressured me about sex, a clear indication of how patriarchy conditions men to feel entitled to sex. I wouldn’t dismiss this as a component of my anxiety, but I definitely am not quick to point fingers.

From a young age I had always been sexual and aware of my sexual desires; I quickly overcame many of the restrictive sexual standards my culture had and through my different relationships was able to explore that desire in a healthy manner even though intercourse hadn’t been a part of it. It felt strange to have my own body betray me when I finally made the decision to attempt to have sex. My feeling of failure was and is tied to many defective aspects of our culture and society however; the rigid pigeonholing of sex as heterosexual, penetrative—what it “ought” to be rather than what it is—beautiful, diverse and reflecting a range of different experiences; the social bullshit we feed to men which overvalues sex and undervalues a woman’s consent; and more importantly the social bullshit we feed to women –and to some extent ourselves–about the importance of virginity and the meaning of sexual experiences in somehow defining a woman’s integrity, intelligence, and worth.

An imposed virginity is a double-edged sword for me because not only am I expected to be a virgin in my culture’s eyes, not only am I condemned for engaging in sex or wanting to have it in American society, I am simultaneously judged and judge myself for not having had it in a society that values sex as a rite of passage as well as a source of condemnation. Do I shut down, do I open up, how do I do both? Unfortunately for me it’s an even more complicated “choice” for me than I’d like to think.