‘Smoking Hot’: The use of Ntsu as a vaginal sexual stimulant among women at kwaDabeka township (Durban, South Africa)

Abstract

This study probed the cultural influences on how women construct their femininity in society and examined sexuality through women’s perceptions of their body, sex, and sexual pleasure using an African Feminist lens. The complexities of women’s desire to assert an identity combined with the contestation of normative femininity, sex, gender, and power relations in a culturally saturated township community were unbundled. Hence, the study focused on the constructions of sexuality amongst young Zulu women who use ntsu (snuff) as a sexual vaginal stimulant at KwaDabeka, a township in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa). Data was obtained from 18 women aged between 18-25 in various occupations. The study employed a qualitative, interpretive design. The numerous signals arising from the women's expressions of their sexuality, encompassing their acts of resistance, cooperation, mixed feelings, and advocacy in challenging and deconstructing male heterosexual dominance through vaginal practices, were scrutinised. Findings depict how these women contended with and contested social constructions of female sexuality, often disregarding the realities of their sexual lives and experiences. In the study, sexuality was a construct simultaneously being challenged and fashioned through the vaginal enhancement practices of ntsu (snuff).