No sex please, we're Ghanaian!

I was reading fellow blogger Esi's post on 'Why do Ghanaian men lie about sex?' and it got me thinking about the lies we tell about sex in general. I've been exposed to distinctly different groups of people in my lifetime and everybody, apart from Ghanaians, seems to be relatively open about sex. Fair enough you have the people who insist on over-sharing all the minutiae of their sex lives with you, leading you to wish you could clean out your ears with some strong bleach, but this is most definitely not the case in Ghanaian circles. I feel that although Ghanaians outside Ghana claim to be a little more liberal, we're still very much bound by our "Ghanaianess" when it comes to sex. So why do we make it so difficult to talk about sex?

For me, I think this all stems from religion. Ghanaians, in general, are a pretty religious bunch and our good Lord tells us that sex before marriage is wrong. I'm not disputing this but why pretend that we all follow this rule? People will happily put up their hands and admit to other sins but as for sex? We've become amazingly adept at adopting the "What you talking 'bout Willis?" stance whenever the topic comes up.

If it's to be believed, Ghana is the only country that can claim that all her unmarried women are virgins! A "fallen woman" (haaaaaaate that term) is apparently not far removed from robbers, rapists, and others making up the dregs of society. However, is it too much to accept being religious without being a complete hypocrite? We're expected to sit at weddings where everybody (including the pastor) will pretend that he is marrying two virgins who will now go forth and multiply (in a sanctified manner of course!). Everybody can happily know about the time the couple broke up because the groom slept with her (now former) best friend, about the time she got drunk and kissed his brother, etc. etc. but we will still expect her to don the whitest of white gowns and everybody will happily go along with the charade. Now I ask you, what kind of fuckeries is that?!

Aside from the people straight up lying that they're virgins, you get the "everything but" people. These are the ones that will still claim they're virgins when they've done everything in each and every way aside from actual vaginal penetration. Now does that truly qualify one to claim the "virgin" tag? And it always seems to be these very same people that will jump up and claim that so and so has has slept with this and that person. These same ones that judge other people about what they like to pretend they're not doing.

Now I'm a firm believer in the whole "what you do is your business" spiel but why lie about sex and then proceed to judge other people for it? I felt this keenly when reading Nana Darkoa's blog Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. African (particularly Ghanaian) women are just as interested in sex as anybody else but why don't we seem to talk about it beyond the relative anonymity of the computer screen. I think I can be somewhat guilty of this because even though I can be pretty open with certain friends about sex, I have other close friendships that happily perpetuate the pretense of "No sex please, we're Ghanaian"! Whether or not we're having sex, the topic will be happily glossed over and everybody remains content in the belief that as long as we don't talk about it, we can pretend it doesn't exist. However, this could all just be in my experience but I strongly suspect that this is not the case. So what say you? Why do Ghanaian women pretend that they're not having sex? And if they are, they damn well better not be enjoying it too! The cheek....

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