Hymenoplasty and Constructions of Gender

Despite the more or less universal stereotype of the single “female” gender as woman, different cultures have very different ideas and strict guidelines which the idea of the singular female gender strains to fulfill. This strain is visible when comparing the expected gender roles and performances of different women within very different cultures. For example, the treatment, expectations, and performances involved in the ideas of the “liberated” European woman, the aging grandmother, the woman who sells her body, and the traditional Muslim virgin. Looking further into the dichotomy that is the “liberated” European woman and the traditional Muslim virgin, roles that often overlap within the confines of a single individual, the difficulty between performing and living these two different roles is starkly apparent. The traditional, Muslim virgin is expected to abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage at the risk of losing honor and all prospects that might have been obtained through the performance of that role including, at times, life itself. On the other hand, “liberated” European women are expected to be beyond the traditional roles of women and are often expected to act as such in many ways, including an open mind towards sex.

In the New York Times article titled “In Europe, Debate over Islam and Virginity” by Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet, these two often conflicting roles come to a head in a discussion of the increasing prevalence of hymenoplasty, the process of surgically reconstructing the hymen. While some women use this surgery as a frivolity to entertain their husbands, the women bridging the gap between the traditional Muslim society and European ideas of the liberation of women use this technology to navigate both worlds without having to either. This article highlights an important aspect of technology that many people are up in arms about: the intersection of gender and technology. The combatants are doctors, feminists, traditionalists, husbands, brides-to-be, religious figures, societal norms, women, men, and everyone in between who have a stake in the world of the interception between technology and gender. The debate that has arisen out of hymenoplasty is centers on this cosmetic surgery which ties sex, gender, and technology close together in a tangled knot which is not easy to unravel. I decided to look further into the debate myself to better understand this knot.

Hymenoplasty, in effect, reconstructs this traditional, virgin gender. With this technology the women involved are able to reconstruct their virginity, enabling them to pass as virgins (or individuals with unbroken hymen since the breaking of the hymen does not have to occur from a sexual event) with a certificate from the doctor upholding their role in society. Having literally reconstructed this little portion of tissue, the doctor has also reconstructed the woman’s virginity, role, gender, opportunities, rights, level of attraction, honor, family-ties, culture, and value. Without this certificate of authentication these women could be tossed away from everything that they knew, denied the life role assigned to them by their culture or even, in more extreme cases, life itself.

However, this action in itself deconstructs that same gender role. The biological evidence and parts no longer necessarily indicate or justify the assumption of the role. This deconstruction of the biological and supposedly unchangeable and unredeemable nature of virginity shows the essential fluidity in the whole system. It blurs the boundaries between who may claim the title of virgin and who may not. Now, similar to males in Muslim culture, only the individual can truly say whether or not they are a virgin or not. The argument, then, is how can virginity be such a necessary characteristic if it can be reclaimed after the initial breech of performance.

Although this may arguably even the playing fields a bit for the women and men involved, the doctor’s note, a technology in itself, is often still a necessity. This reinforces the gender role, constructing it once more as the standard to which other women in the same situation are expected to live up to.

While searching online for further research on the subject I came upon a website titled revirgination.net. Online, the website describes and offers several different services including hymen repair, vaginal rejuvenation, liposuction, and designer vagina. One testimony from the main page states “‘It’s the ultimate gift for the man who has everything,’ says Yarborough, 40 years old, a medical assistant from San Antonio.” Elsewhere (on the hymen repair page), the website mentions “However, the result is not meant to last long so it is best to perform in less than a month before your next intercourse.” This is an interesting aspect of the technology that I was not previously made aware of. After all, this is merely a performance, but all that matters is that it lasts long enough for the certification.

Some other interesting information that I stumbled on in my research was the demographics that a service called Quantcast (quantcast.com) shows for the revirgination.net page. Their estimate suggests that this site attracts 20, 191 visitors from the US a month. According to this service, the visitors are “a younger, slightly male slanted crowd.” This is something that I did not expect. I would expect more women to be accessing this website since a good portion of its traffic is supposed to be women looking to recreate their virginity in order to mislead their male relatives and/or fiancées.

Hymenoplasty seems to challenge more things than I thought at first. These articles, web sites, and debates challenge gender roles, the nature of fact, the power of biology, technology, and our perceptions. This surgery allows women to perform their gender/themselves in two different and often completely exclusive ways, but technology blurs the line and challenges our definitions of gender roles and assumed biological facts on which large societal, cultural, familial, and personal importance is placed. More than that, with the confusions and complications involved in any debate on the subject, this might suggest that there is no simple answer to whether technology constructs, deconstructs, or reconstructs gender. I would argue that this technology has just done all three.