Let me begin by telling you that virginity is a myth.
It is a patriarchal social construct promoted by men who thought that their penis was so important, it had the power to fundamentally change who a woman is and how she should be viewed by society.
Virginity is not medical, nor is it scientific. It cannot be proven nor disproven. Yet it’s been claimed that 21 clinics in the UK currently offer ‘virginity testing’ for women, charging between £150 to £300 for the procedure.
This week, Richard Holden MP brought forth a plan for parliament to outlaw ‘medieval’ virginity testing in the UK because – shockingly – it is still legal.
Virginity testing involves a vaginal examination to check if the hymen (a thin piece of tissue which surrounds or partially covers the external vaginal opening) is still intact. Surprise, surprise the same clinics do not offer virginity testing on penises, presumably because a man’s value in society is not diminished by the fact that he has had sexual intercourse.
Patriarchal, toxic and misogynistic vitriol would have some people believing that a broken hymen is evidence that a woman has had sex. It is not.
Gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter explains that 50% of sexually active teens do not have a disrupted hymen. There are many things – other than sex – that can cause the hymen to break, and it’s not just horse riding or gymnastics.
I didn’t bleed the first time I had sex and I’d never ridden a horse or done so much as a handstand in P.E. class.
The hymen is a body part that may help to keep faeces and urine out of infant vaginas, according to Gunter – not some sort of god-given identifier of a woman’s virginity. It varies vastly from woman to woman: some have several holes, some have no hymen at all and others can be elastic enough to have vaginal intercourse without breaking.
A broken hymen is about as reliable an indicator for sex as holding a buttercup under your chin to see if you like butter.
Hymenoplasties do not restore ‘virginity’, so why should private doctors be allowed to perform such a procedure, thinly veiled as an attempt ensure a woman’s safety?
Some cultures and religions believe that if a woman doesn’t bleed after sex on her wedding night, then she was not a virgin. Scientists believe that hymens do not have a rich blood supply – any blood on the sheets can come from either menstruation or sexual trauma.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) outlines how tests are often forced on women by order of potential partners for marriage eligibility or even from prospective employers. Tests can be performed by doctors, police officers, or community leaders but the purpose is always the same: to assess the ‘virtue’ and ‘honour’ of women and girls.
Last year, rapper T.I. faced backlash after proclaiming on a podcast that he takes his 18 year old daughter for an annual ‘virginity test’ on her birthday. He showed himself to be yet another man who endorsed the sexual abuse of a woman, in the name of ‘protecting’ her.
Not only do clinics in the UK offer virginity testing, some offer hymenoplasty, a procedure that ‘restores’ the hymen at a cost of £1,500 to £3,000.
On the website of one such clinic they state, ‘Many developing countries now allow doctors to legally perform hymen repair – this has reduced the number of female deaths due to questioning of virginity’, which begs the question – why are medical professionals in the UK profiting from a procedure steeped in misogyny instead of reporting the patient’s vulnerability to femicide?
A doctor’s primary responsibility is to the patient and their welfare. By advertising such a procedure and failing to recognise the potential dangers the woman could face from her partner or family regardless of whether or not they receive testing or surgery, surely they are forgoing their duty of care?
Hymenoplasties do not restore ‘virginity’, so why should private doctors be allowed to perform such a procedure, thinly veiled as an attempt ensure a woman’s safety?
Regency International Clinic state on their website that they ‘strongly believe [they] are giving women a second chance’ by offering hymenoplasty. I strongly believe that they are profiting from toxic, patriarchal structures which devalue the lives of women they are supposed to protect.
Simply outlawing virginity testing and hymenoplasties, however, will not end the pervasive issue of misogyny. Making such procedures illegal is a start, but we must continue to challenge the concept of virginity itself. How can one ‘lose’ something that doesn’t exist?
People have sex in multiple ways. It’s not all about penis-in-vagina, and yet so much of our sexual discourse revolves around heterosexual, penetrative sex.
We live in a world of scientific advancement where people with uteruses can conceive without ever having had contact with a penis, so it’s time to diversify the old fashioned definition of ‘sex’ and consign the concept of virginity to the history books.
A person’s value shouldn’t be determined by whether or not they’ve had any form of sexual activity. You don’t suddenly become more or less of the person you were before, no matter how many times it has or hasn’t happened.
I wish our society was more interested in the very real issue of consent, than the make-believe construct of virginity.
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