Virginity testing entails a vaginal examination to examine the hymen (Image: Getty Pictures/PhotoAlto)
Let me start by telling you that virginity is a fable.
It’s a patriarchal social assemble promoted by males who thought that their penis was so essential, it had the facility to essentially change who a girl is and the way she must be seen by society.
Virginity isn’t medical, neither is it scientific. It can’t be confirmed nor disproven. But it’s been claimed that 21 clinics in the UK currently offer ‘virginity testing’ for ladies, charging between £150 to £300 for the process.
This week, Richard Holden MP introduced forth a plan for parliament to outlaw ‘medieval’ virginity testing within the UK as a result of – shockingly – it’s nonetheless authorized.
Virginity testing entails a vaginal examination to examine if the hymen (a skinny piece of tissue which surrounds or partially covers the exterior vaginal opening) remains to be intact. Shock, shock the identical clinics don’t supply virginity testing on penises, presumably as a result of a person’s worth in society isn’t diminished by the truth that he has had sexual activity.
Patriarchal, poisonous and misogynistic vitriol would have some folks believing {that a} damaged hymen is proof {that a} girl has had intercourse. It isn’t.
Gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter explains that 50% of sexually active teens do not have a disrupted hymen. There are a lot of issues – aside from intercourse – that may trigger the hymen to interrupt, and it’s not simply horse driving or gymnastics.
I didn’t bleed the primary time I had intercourse and I’d by no means ridden a horse or achieved a lot as a handstand in P.E. class.
The hymen is a physique half that will assist to maintain faeces and urine out of toddler vaginas, in keeping with Gunter – not some form of god-given identifier of a girl’s virginity. It varies vastly from girl to girl: some have a number of holes, some haven’t any hymen in any respect and others may be elastic sufficient to have vaginal intercourse with out breaking.
A damaged hymen is about as dependable an indicator for intercourse as holding a buttercup below your chin to see when you like butter.
Hymenoplasties don’t restore ‘virginity’, so why ought to personal docs be allowed to carry out such a process, thinly veiled as an try guarantee a girl’s security?
Some cultures and religions imagine that if a girl doesn’t bleed after intercourse on her marriage ceremony night time, then she was not a virgin. Scientists imagine that hymens would not have a wealthy blood provide – any blood on the sheets can come from both menstruation or sexual trauma.
The World Well being Organisation (WHO) outlines how assessments are sometimes compelled on girls by order of potential companions for marriage eligibility and even from potential employers. Assessments may be carried out by docs, law enforcement officials, or neighborhood leaders however the objective is all the time the identical: to evaluate the ‘advantage’ and ‘honour’ of ladies and women.
Final 12 months, rapper T.I. faced backlash after proclaiming on a podcast that he takes his 18 12 months previous daughter for an annual ‘virginity check’ on her birthday. He confirmed himself to be one more man who endorsed the sexual abuse of a girl, within the title of ‘defending’ her.
Not solely do clinics within the UK supply virginity testing, some supply hymenoplasty, a process that ‘restores’ the hymen at a value of £1,500 to £3,000.
On the web site of 1 such clinic they state, ‘Many growing nations now enable docs to legally carry out hymen restore – this has diminished the variety of feminine deaths as a consequence of questioning of virginity’, which begs the query – why are medical professionals within the UK benefiting from a process steeped in misogyny as an alternative of reporting the affected person’s vulnerability to femicide?
A physician’s major duty is to the affected person and their welfare. By promoting such a process and failing to recognise the potential risks the girl might face from her companion or household no matter whether or not or not they obtain testing or surgical procedure, certainly they’re forgoing their responsibility of care?
Hymenoplasties don’t restore ‘virginity’, so why ought to personal docs be allowed to carry out such a process, thinly veiled as an try guarantee a girl’s security?
Regency Worldwide Clinic state on their web site that they ‘strongly imagine [they] are giving girls a second likelihood’ by providing hymenoplasty. I strongly imagine that they’re benefiting from poisonous, patriarchal buildings which devalue the lives of ladies they’re supposed to guard.
Merely outlawing virginity testing and hymenoplasties, nevertheless, won’t finish the pervasive subject of misogyny. Making such procedures unlawful is a begin, however we should proceed to problem the idea of virginity itself. How can one ‘lose’ one thing that doesn’t exist?
Folks have intercourse in a number of methods. It’s not all about penis-in-vagina, and but a lot of our sexual discourse revolves round heterosexual, penetrative intercourse.
We reside in a world of scientific development the place folks with uteruses can conceive with out ever having had contact with a penis, so it’s time to diversify the quaint definition of ‘intercourse’ and consign the idea of virginity to the historical past books.
An individual’s worth shouldn’t be decided by whether or not or not they’ve had any type of sexual exercise. You don’t out of the blue grow to be roughly of the individual you had been earlier than, regardless of what number of instances it has or hasn’t occurred.
I want our society was extra within the very actual subject of consent, than the make-believe assemble of virginity.
