Virtue, Virginity and Marriage: The Triple Play of Control

After reading The New York Times article “In Europe, Debate over Islam and Virginity” for class I found myself thinking about virginity and why it is so important for women to prove that they do or do not have their virtue. In the article, women get hymenoplasty to “recapture” the virginity they have lost, be it through sex, horseback riding, an accident, etc., to protect themselves from the humiliation and/or punishment they would get for not being a virgin before marriage. Why is there so much coverage on this procedure? Hymenoplasties are getting a lot of news coverage because in France a man “left the nuptial bed and announced to the still partying wedding guests that his bride had lied” about her virginity and actually was granted an annulment in 2006. The ruling was for a “breach of contract” and had nothing to do with religion. Many families require the bride to provide either a certificate of virginity from a gynecologist or blood on the bed sheets on the wedding night. With a court ruling such as this people fear that the need for these surgical procedures would grow, especially in Muslim households Europe and North Africa where they are already commonplace.

A TIME Magazine article titled “The Dilemma of ‘Virginity’ Restoration” approaches the same court ruling and the resulting higher trend in hymenoplasties in from a less sensationalist perspective. The article gives a list of various reactions towards the rulings from different groups of people who each have different reasons for being angry. Among the frustrated people are citizens of France who fear their secular state is being “undermined by traditional Arab culture strictures” and Muslim leaders because they feel that people are too quick to point the finger at religion “when Islam does not demand virginity as a precondition for marriage.” The perspective which I relate to the most is the feminist reaction to the ruling’s “acceptance of prior sexual experience as grounds for annulment as tantamount to treating marriage as the equivalent of a commercial transaction in which the buyer had discovered a hidden flaw in his purchase.” It made me think that the virtue, virginity and marriage triple play is only a form of technology to keep women locked into system of oppression.

This is not something that is limited to Muslim households, many women and men both feel a pressure to keep their virginity and virtue before marriage. The difference is that men do not have a hymen which tears during their first sexual intercourse. But there is an all too powerful stigma placed onto virginity. Women feel it everywhere, and if the surgery can mean protection from abuse and from feeling dirty then is it necessarily bad? Virginity is such a tricky term to grasp for women since sex comes in so many forms and the hymen may tear for many reasons besides intercourse. Is virginity being redefined with the hymemoplasty? Because many times I feel that people are mistaking innocence with virginity. A woman can technically not be a virgin and still be sexually innocent. Hymenoplasties create a way for women to be virgins without being innocent.

A friend of mine from Romania told me about a porn star from her country who was planning on getting a hymenoplasty for a role in a film where she plays a virgin. This particularly interesting fact is supplemented by a quote from Dr. Marc Abecassis in The New York Times article who states he has “colleagues in the United States whose patients do this [procedure] as a Valentine’s present to their husbands.” So the legitimate reasons will likely be overpowered by selfish male-dominated fetish for virginity, since so much lime light is on it any way.

Here in the U.S. at the same time this trend is growing, children of both sexes are pledging their virginity to their fathers in purity balls while mothers have no participation whatsoever in the ceremony. TIME Magazine article “The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity” quotes the fathers’ promise their daughters they will “before God to cover [their] daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity” in these so called “purity balls.” After this promise, fathers then proceed to lock their daughters into this commitment of abstinence with a symbolic “purity ring.” Female virginity is apparently only another object men use to control women. One 18-year-old girl is quoted saying, “It’s a symbol of my father giving up the covering of my heart, protecting me, since [marriage] means my husband is now the protector. He becomes like the shield to my heart, to love me as I’m supposed to be loved.” Marriage truly is only a contract of virginity in both the ruling in France in 2006, making it a clause to the woman’s husband and both of their families, and each time a girl makes a vow to remain a virgin to her father.

It seems to me that marriage is the force that creates pressure to women to be virginal. And while men are also recently feeling the same responsibility to remain faithful, since they also wear purity rings, they are not making a promise for themselves but for the protection of women who could potentially be their wives. Why would they want to marry an impure woman, and why would they do that do another man’s future spouse? In the mean time, women will soon be feeling more and more of a need to be a virgin and the hymenoplasty is the ultimate solution to that messy problem. Purity rings and certificates of virginity are the same thing. And as for blood on the nuptial bed’s sheets, well, the article “The Dilemma of ‘Virginity’ Restored” states that “30% to 40% of both original and reconstructed hymens fail to produce the virginity-confirming bleeding when ruptured by penetration.” Perhaps we should move on from these confusing, patriarchal traditions and find a way to demonstrate love without a contract?

Works Cited

Crumly, Bruce. “The Dilemma of ‘Virginity’ Restored.” TIME Magazine 13 July 2008

Gibbs, Nancy. “The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity.” TIME Magazine 17 July 2008

Sciolino, Elaine, Souad Mekhennet. “In Europe, Debate over Islam and Virginity.” New York Times 11
June 2008.