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I Need A New Hymen, STAT! |
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| Faking virginity is a crappy solution to a dumb problem | ||
 by Tamar Fox, June 11, 2008 |
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The most popular article at the NYTimes.com right now is about Muslim women in Europe getting their hymens surgically re-stitched so as to simulate virginity.
Why Go Under the Knife: when you can be a born again virgin?
Gynecologists say that in the past few years, more Muslim women are seeking certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is less expensive.
“If you’re a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage,” said Dr. Hicham Mouallem, who is based in London and performs the operation. “So if you’re looking to marry a Muslim and don’t want to have problems, you’ll try to recapture your virginity.”
First of all, the idea of “recapturing” virginity is a little silly. Makes it sound like the virginity ran away of its own accord, which is clearly not the case.
Beyond semantics, the whole idea is depressing. Is faking virginity really the best way to deal with a young woman’s sexuality? And perhaps more importantly, why are Muslims placing such a high price on virginity? Not that this issue is a particularly Muslim one—an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago addressed the procedure in the context of a spa and cosmetic-surgery center in Queens. That article talks about New Yorkers getting the procedure to spice up their sex lives (doctors say it probably won’t work), and women from South America getting it because their Catholic upbringing places a high premium on marriage to a virgin.
Traditionally, virginity is associated with virtue and modesty, though I can name twenty friends who are virtuous, modest, and sexually active, and I know more than a few virgins who are horrible and slutty. In Jewish law, being a virgin means you’re worth more in your ketubah, but the text of a ketubah generally refers to the woman as a betulah, a virgin, unless she has been previously married. And since ketubot are rarely—if ever—used to sue for money, it’s a moot point.
I know of at least one Jewish text that seems to separate sexual experience and a broken hymen. There is a question as to whether one can have sex with a virgin on Shabbat, because it is assumed that during the act of sex the hymen will be torn, and it is forbidden to tear on Shabbat. The rabbis mention that there are some who are “precise in their positioning.” That is, they can have sex with a woman without breaking her hymen. These people, in theory at least, can have sex with virgins on Shabbat. (Ketubot 6b) This implies that an intact hymen wouldn’t necessarily mean that the girl in question is a virgin. Which makes the whole idea of hymen replacement pointless in the eyes of Jewish law.
Nishmat, the Jerusalem Center for Advanced Jewish Study for Women, addresses the issue of hymen replacement and Jewish law more fully here. A nice highlight:
On a purely theoretical level, it would also seem that a return to virginity is not to be strived for. Breaking of the hymen within the framework of marriage is viewed as a completion of the woman and the contract between the husband and wife, not a detraction (see for example, Encyclopedia Talmudit sv Be'ilat Mitzvah).
It’s frustrating that some women see lying to their communities and spouses at great personal expense as the only way to deal with their pasts. If only we spent more time teaching people to make good choices, and value honesty, and less time coming up with ways to get around the rules. In that vein, evangelical Christians may have beat us to the punch—they’ve been promoting a kind of mental revirginization for a while. Instead of a surgical procedure, one just re-declares him or herself a virgin. It’s a little flimsy, but somehow better than needlessly going under the knife.
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ThorsProvoni
Es Nisht di Khale far a-Moytse!
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)
Is an article like Muslim Women and Virginity: 2 Worlds Collide, which also appeared on the NY Times web site today under the titles In Europe, Debate Over Islam and Virginity and Surgery Offers Muslim Women Illusion of Virginity, really news, and did it belong on the front page?
I do not follow the Times as I do the Boston Globe, but the Times has also put MEMRI propaganda on the front page. Is there an ongoing propaganda effort to marginalize Muslims as exotic Orientals alien to American norms?
Tamar Fox at Jewcy.Com pounced on the article to give the real dope about revirginization among Catholics without bothering to point out that Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish circles generally place at least as much importance on virginity as Muslims.
She asks: "Is faking virginity really the best way to deal with a young woman's sexuality?," but do all groups in modern society have to approach sexuality in exactly the same way?
Do all Muslims from Lithuania to South Africa or from Mauritania to Indonesia have exactly the same sexual morality? Or were Lithuanian Muslims traditionally like Lithuanian Christians and Jews, and is there perhaps a common Balkan or Arabic sexuality that correlates more with regional than with religious culture?
Because the Times article provides no contextualization, its purpose seems more to inculcate prejudice -- perhaps on the basis of superior American sexual practices -- than to provide any real information.
[Emancipation of Jews and Women discusses the connection between sexuality and a sense of superiority. Note that when Harvard Graduate Masoko Owada married Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993, and she had to be certified for virginity, the NY Times did not run a front page story on Japanese sexual morality.]
Maayan
ThorsProvoni
I ran into a case with an FFB Lubovitcher gal, who strayed. She was willing to live with the consequences of her indiscretion, but because she did not want to hurt her family, she had an hymenoplasty.
In any case, the article definitely did not belong on the front page of the Times, and I suspect an Islamophobic agenda.
Maayan
grazavi
where an intact hymen makes a difference. you know, like a world where it's impossible to break your hymen playing sports or even riding a bike, or a world that's not diseased by a throwback from the old pagan "cult of virginity" so prevalent among ancient patriarchical societies. if only...
Miri
Tamar, I agree with you that surgical "rehymenization" is a tremendously bad idea for reasons both physical and existential, but you demonstrate a lack of understanding of a lot of entrenched cultural norms by referring to non-virginity as a "dumb problem" for (in this case, primarily) Muslim women.
Yes, it certainly would be good (in my opinion) if we "spent more time teaching people to make good choices, and value honesty, and less time coming up with ways to get around the rules." But guess what? The women we're talking about are coming from communities which have traditionally understood the importance of virginity in ways very different from you; these are women for whom the consequences of non-virginity could be substantial. This isn't a case of a bunch of dumb kids who don't want their mommies to find out that they had sex; these are women who are afraid (often, I think, quite legitimately) of the serious repercussions which could follow if their husbands or families found out that they weren't virgins.
When you post about a topic like this as though the whole world just needed to get over their hangups and embrace less "crappy" solutions, you're failing to attempt to understand the deep commitments of some religious/cultural communities and the complications involved in cultural clashes, which makes your ruminations on this particular topic both unhelpful and irrelevant.
davidbruce
hymen has always been a good friend to me,
david
Anonymous
A lightbulb can be unscrewed. Seriously though, it sounds like some people have significant problems trying to separate the spiritual from the physical. Having paid a doctor to perform a vajuvination does nothing to address previous shagging. A lost hymen does not equate to sexual experience.
tellner
Thors, you can't wiggle out by saying it's prejudiced towards Muslims. This is a serious, deadly serious, issue in Muslim communities from Cairo to Chicago. Where the conservatives are strong the absence of a hymen means a lucky girl can't get married. The unlucky ones are thrown out. The really unlucky ones are slaughtered. The murders are hushed up. The killers - fathers, brothers and uncles - seldom meet justice.
Zeevico
Can't we just all agree on ignoring Thors?
That aside, I think the more interesting aspect of this story is that so many people are placing honesty in their relationships above some idealised and/or religious conception of virginity. Or the miracles of modern science, depending on your perspective.
tomaska
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