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My family had to stay silent to save my sister, who was married to my aunt's son. Under such circumstances, it's no surprise that many young women see preserving their virginity as a matter of life and death. Mahtab Mehraban, a medical student at Kabul university, said, "Being a virgin is very important for me because this is our society's only criteria for modesty and goodness.
Our people are ignorant and consider girls who have lost their virginity to be immoral. Elderly female relatives of a bridegroom often demand to see a bloody cloth on the wedding night as proof of the bride's purity.
In the absence of blood, the bride is beaten and sent back to her father's house immediately. However, doctors note that a failure to bleed the first time a woman had sex revealed nothing about her past sexual history.
Mozhgan, an obstetrician, said that hymens were frequently torn during childhood as a result of boisterous play. Some girls were born without a hymen while others just did not bleed the first time they had sex. Young women do sometimes seek medical intervention to ensure that they bled on their wedding night. Hamkar, another gynecologist, said, "I repair three to four hymens each month. There are some girls who don't have the money to pay me, but I still carry out the repair to save them from disgrace.
Quite apart from social prejudice, activists argue that laws governing co-called moral crimes are an abuse of women's rights and needed to be changed. Women were often forced to take multiple virginity tests, even referred for the procedure by organisations they approached for help. Jamshid Rasooli, the spokesman of the Attorney General, confirmed that women could be sent for up to four tests to determine whether or not they were virgins. These examinations usually took place in the presence of the police, the accused's lawyer, clinic staff and sometimes even medical students.
Because of these contradictory opinions, the accused was examined again in front of four doctors, the lawyer, and a policewoman. Only after that was she given a document affirming that she was a virgin and should not be examined again.
Rasooli acknowledged that the process was extremely distressing and intrusive, and had little evidentiary value. However, those responsible for carrying out the tests deny that women are examined in the presence of others without their permission, or that any internal examination was carried out.
Tarina Yadgari, the head examiner at Kabul's main forensic medical centre, said that her department had carried out virginity tests in the past eight months, 70 of which had been requested by the women's families via a formal letter from the ministry of public health. Yadgari said, "When the one being examined agrees, then the medical and law students can witness it, but it is not a digital examination and nothing is allowed to be inserted. However, others have highlighted the empowering aspects of this global female icon and regard Mary as the mother of the poor and suffering and her womb as a place which brings new life and hope.
Celibacy or sexual abstinence has been practiced and valued by women and men within many religious traditions. What do you think? Why has such a big deal been made about virginity? Vote in our poll and share your views here. If you enjoyed this, why not follow a feed to find out when we have new things like it?
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All rights reserved. The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in relation to its secondary activity of credit broking. Skip to content Study with The Open University. Search for free courses, interactives, videos and more! It has been with us for thousands of years and it is almost as strong today as it was during the cloistered middle ages.
While the legal, social, and financial value of virginity have somewhat declined in modernity despite a slight jump in importance over the last 30 odd years , the underlying myth has been strangely persistent. Even sexually knowledgeable modern pundits still float the concept in their writing.
One young woman, whose blog I follow, wrote recently that a girl should expect her first time to hurt, stating, "that's just how your vagina works.
I was shocked by her warning given that it is completely without scientific support. How could someone who is otherwise well educated sexually remain so miss-informed on this issue? And what does this kind of misinformation do for our culture of sexual violence? Broadly defined, many people conceive of virginity as the coin of sexual purity.
This coin has two sides, physical virginity and "emotional" virginity. You can trade the coin, give the coin away, have it stolen from you, or simply lose it, but you'll never get another one so barter carefully.
While both sexes are taught the virginity myth, it is girls who bear the brunt of this culture of misinformation — sometimes to dire consequence. For a girl, the physical side of the virginity coin is thought to be the hymen which, when torn, is said to provide irreparable evidence that she has lost her coin.
Once a girl allows her vagina to be penetrated she becomes less valuable to society, a fact she will be unable to hide because her hymen will permanently tear, forever testifying of the penetration — or so the tale goes. On the spiritual side both guys and girls are told that they will undergo permanent, albeit less noticeable, change. The idea is that the sex act often defined exclusively as penis in vagina penetration will psychologically alter the participants to reflect their new status as non-virgins and if this change happens under the wrong circumstances i.
We are told that no amount of piety will ever allow illicit participants in the sex act to reclaim their former purer condition.
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