All of them have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), a procedure that usually causes the victim to take little if any pleasure in sexual intercourse. The group organizes performances in areas where the practice is common.And many report a familiar problem in the bedroom: “borouda” — a word that translates to the English “frigidity” in bed. “It makes women bored in intimate relationships,” says Hamdeya Ahmed, from Assiut in Upper Egypt, a mother of three, two boys and a girl. I hate it,” says another woman in the room, talking about sexual relations with her husband.

But over 90 per cent of married women in Egypt have been cut.

Nada Sabet, the group’s artistic director, says that one of the issues is that most women who have had FGM do not enjoy intimate relations with their spouses.

“They didn’t have any sexual contact before circumcision [the procedure is performed on girls as young as eight] so there’s nothing to compare it to, so this idea that things could or should be pleasurable doesn’t exist,” she says.

Some women who have undergone FGM report that they feel a lot of pain during intercourse.

Some don’t feel pain but simply find it boring or mildly unpleasant. In one scene, a husband comes home from work and attempts to romance his wife and take her to the bedroom, saying, “Come on, darling, I’m your lawful husband, there’s no shame.” To which she replies, “but we already have two children.” The implication: why do we have to keep doing this?

There are other ways One of the things Sabet talks to the women about is ways for FGM survivors to enjoy sex.

“We talk about the idea of sexual pleasure and everyone shares,” she says, and the fact that “there are other ways of stimulating pleasure in the female body.” A 2007 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests that in many women who have been cut, some of the fundamental structures needed for orgasm remain intact and that most women in the study reported being able to achieve orgasm as well as arousal and sexual satisfaction.

Sometimes this involves talking to their partners about what works, and what doesn’t.

One woman recounts a story about how, after talking to the staff at an anti-FGM organization, she explained to her husband how she felt and why she doesn’t enjoy sex.

Tags: Adult Dating, affair dating, sex dating