Like a virgin....AGAIN!

Virginity…a women’s assertion of chastity and the family pride in many Muslim and some non-Muslim cultures.

This Chastity is becoming a liability and comes at a high price financially and psychologically for a lot of Muslim girls around the world. These girls who for the most part are educated, emancipated young women but still living under rigid family and religious rules that force them into taking desperate measures to conceal their non-virginity for fear of being outcast and in many cases fear for their lives.

The hymen reconstruction (Hymenorrhaphy) or revirginisation of women, a surgical procedure that is practiced by many gynaecologists throughout the world to reverse the actions and conceal the secret of so many desperate young women from their husbands to be, families and future families-in-law who put high pressure and a higher prize on this membrane that will go on to represent the pride of the whole family and the groom as they declare the bride a maiden with celebrations, firing of gunpowder and displaying the blood stained bed sheet from the wedding night.

Some of you might argue that such traditions are archaic and no long in practice but the truth is; they are very much alive and conventional in many parts of Africa; the Arab world, Sudan, and South Africa …et cetera

A practice of demanding virginity certificates is not rare in many Arab and /or Muslim cultures, girls as young as 13 can be suspected and made to take a spontaneous virginity test on the whim of one of her relatives who might have seen her talking to a young man outside of school or in other cases a man might demand this certificate prior to the marriage deal is closed. A very strict watch is placed upon the girls' virginity, especially after puberty and until the day she is married.

The concept of virginity and hymen protection engenders such pressure on women, from the mothers who are the guardians of the family’s honour and from the men in the family by a simple matter of imposing curfews and disallowing mixing with cousins and other males in the family or society, pressure from the future husband who puts such a prize on his future wife’s chastity that he would send her back to her family should she not be “intact”.

This pressure clashes with the pressure these same girls receive from their boyfriends, secret boyfriend nonetheless, to give in to their desires and consummate their relationship, any refusal or hesitation would be labelled “uncool” and cowardly pushing the girl to give up her most prized possession to this very same man who would later on demand virginity from her or any woman he intends to marry.

In this day and age, virgin girls are as common as the elves in Finland (a myth), in Algeria’s major cities, virginity doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore, for girls or for boys, the taboo attached to sexual intercourse seems to have been lifted and sex has become the new favourite past time for many Algerians as young as 16, virginity is no longer questionable or at least the loss of it not feared, this could be due to two reasons; emancipation of the new generation of young men and the hypocrisy around the one way virginity road has dissipated or the new age revirginisation methods have become mainstream and readily available to young women everywhere, across the Arab world and in Europe as well, especially in France and the UK where a large population of Muslims in Europe is concentrated, where routine Hymenorrhaphies(1) are performed on the NHS(2) to protect young British women from their religious families and prevent the so called “shotgun weddings” where the man is forced to marry the woman he “stole” virginity from.

Some might argue that these “repair” manoeuvres are nothing short of deceptive and in effect encourage Muslim women to be promiscuous and sexually active knowing that there is a remedy should they face a problem later in the future, but isn’t this very male behaviour what drives women to promiscuity and deception through their (men) hypocrisy and double standards of accepting promiscuity from men but not from women. After all pre-marital sex is disallowed for both men and women and in all known religions. 
If men’s virginity was not so ephemeral and unquestioned, If women’s virginity wasn’t so tangible and verifiable, how will men try to monitor it? And will it remain the taboo that it is in many cultures and countries around the world today?

I leave you with a song....Like a virgin....touched for the 1000th time!

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(1) The term comes from the Greek words hymen meaning membrane, and raphe meaning suture

(2) UK National Health Service