Kunyaza

Kunyaza is a Rwandan sexual technique that encourages and aims to achieve ‘ejaculation’ from people with clitorises. While the practice is said to have originated in Rwanda, it is popular across East Africa and is also called Kachabali in Uganda and Kenya.

Also known as the act of ‘pouring rivers’, Kunyaza considers squirting as not just a normal part of sexual activity, but also a milestone in a couple’s sex life. While resources online primarily portray it to be an act performed by cis men on their cis women partners, the primary focus of Kunyaza is on pleasuring bodies with clitorises as a display of connection and intimacy, and a desire to be a good partner.

How is it done?

Kunyaza involves a combination of penetrative and non-penetrative stimulus for the vulva and vagina. The person with the penis (or a strap on!) begins by tapping and grazing their partner’s clitoris and simultaneously stimulating the labia minora with their penis or strap on.

They then penetrate their partner slowly, providing a mix of shallow thrusts to stimulate the G Spot, and deeper thrusts for the A Spot and cervical region. The motion is mainly circular, with the partner on top supporting their p*n!s or strap on between the index and middle fingers.

Why would this work?

The focus on the clitoris, labia minora, vulval vestibule, and urethral opening allows the recipient of Kunyaza to experience heightened pleasure and produce more lubrication before penetrative play.

Many people who have experienced squirting have also found the chances of ejaculation to be higher when they were given more time, more play, and more of a sexual build-up.

The circular, alternating, and somewhat hypnotic penetrative play also allows both partners to experience a variety of sensations and stimulus, turning sex and orgasms into less of an act of friction and speed, and more of a mindful and patient art form.

Imagine that scene. No hectic creaking from your bed frame, no muscle pulls, so much more eye contact and silence to hear each other moan, feel each other’s sweat dripping down you, nails digging into their arms, and that maddeningly slow build-up to orgasms.

You know why we love the sound of Kunyaza?

Besides the high eroticism, obviously. For people with erectile dysfunction or vaginismus, Kunyaza normalises pleasure and sensual play without penetration being the end goal.

For people with traumas, Kunyaza can be a lovely way to slow things down, experience more mindful communication and presence, and to feel more in control.

Kunyaza also puts the pace and sensory aspects of sexual play above the pursuit for orgasms. You’re not bad for not orgasming or for fumbling your way through your partner’s body. But if/when you do make your partner clim@x and ejaculate, it is absolutely a cause for celebration!

We also love that Kunyaza reinforces the idea of pleasure equality. It defines pleasure as an experience that both partners build together, even if one might take lead in the session. It does not neglect the pleasure of one partner but merely encourages you to think about giving pleasure before you receive it.

It also reminds us that people with vulvas do not merely orgasm from thrusting, pounding, ass-smacking sex. There are plenty of pleasure centers in the vulva itself, with the clitoris and labia minora often being champions of our orgasms.

So why is Kunyaza not more mainstream?

In a 2017 piece for New Internationalist titled ‘The Joy of Kunyaza’, Simba, a herbal doctor from Western Uganda, states, “It goes back to colonial times.

In order to control us, the white people brought new ideals and new systems to derail African culture. Some practices were actually discarded because the missionaries thought they were dirty, that it was a sin to keep practicing Kunyaza… all because the white man didn’t know about it.”

That’s not farfetched. For decades, academic research has been and continues to be influenced by religious and cultural biases of those who are willing to fund projects. So if you are working in the sex and sexual wellness space, funding comes faster to those who want to study STIs or sexual disorders.

And innate racism and bias also ensure that researchers naturally gravitate towards studying disorders and infections in Africa and Asia. There is more money in studying HIV and other STIs, thus allowing pharmaceuticals and pro-abstinence groups to benefit off of your research, than you would find in studying pleasure.

Academics who focus on decolonising culture and policy often outline the clear links between colonial oppression and sexual stigmatization. Simply put, white colonizers deemed their own sexual norms and practices as ‘civilized behavior’ while writing off the fluidity and liberation of non-white and indigenous communities as barbaric, primitive, perverse, and uncivilized.

In a 2018 piece for Feminism in India, founder of Hoe Talks Briana Powell speaks of her time in Ghana and says, “White culture is the most sexually oppressive. Indigenous cultures are very sexual but post-colonisation they are very repressed. Sexual repression was a colonizing tool to suppress the colonized.

They are ‘heathens’ and need to be ‘tamed’. This is why numerous colonized countries continue to play into Anglo-Saxon morals of chastity in order to gain respectability.”

Who said sex was not political?