FGM and Sex: Does sex ever become pleasurable?

I am so thrilled! I just read in Pambazuka of the first hospital in Burkina Faso, “The Pleasure Hospital” that is reconstructing clitorises for women who have been subjected to female genital mutilation. Since I started thinking seriously about women’s rights to pleasurable sex and sexuality I have always wondered about women who have been FGM’d. Do they have pleasurable sex?

I have read a few books by African women who have suffered from the practice. Those that readily come to mind include Aman’s autobiography, Aryan Hirsi’s Infidel and Waris Dirie’s Desert Flower. If I remember correctly Dirie is critical of the practice, Hirsi wrote eloquently about the torture she and her sister underwent in the name of culture and Aman refused to criticise or condone FGM. These books informed me about the pain that women who have suffered FGM go through during menstruation, intercourse and childbirth yet still let me wondering, “Do they ever get to a stage where sex becomes pleasurable?”

Does anyone know whether sex can be pleasurable if your clitoris has been cut off/excised/infibulated? I am very conscious that I am at this point thinking of vaginal/clitoral sex and not much broader…