Virginity Restoration: Controversy Surrounding Hymenoplasty

Hymenoplasty is a new cosmetic surgery procedure an ever increasing number of women are going through to restore their physical virginity. The surgical reconstruction of the hymen broken during a women’s first experience of intercourse, or during demanding exercise or as a result of a collision or fall by women who’ve never had sex, has prompted a growing number of young betrothed women to undergo the surgery in an attempt to avoid the humiliation and possible violence that could result from husbands and families.

4VF News reported that the procedure is causing a lot of buzz in France due to a very recent marriage annulment case.

A marriage was annulled on the “basis of a husband’s complaint that his wife had falsely promised that she was a virgin — a confession he obtained after furiously waving the new couple’s spotless bedclothes before still-celebrating wedding guests. Though the decision made no mention of religion, the fact that the couple were Muslim sparked complaints that France’s strictly secular state is being undermined by traditional Arab cultural strictures. The court ruling also infuriated feminists, who saw its 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. Many Muslim leaders were also outraged, insisting that Islam does not demand virginity as a precondition for marriage, and claimed that the ruling belied the judge’s archaic misunderstanding of the faith and its tenets.”

The article goes on to talk about how this requirement of virginity on the wedding day is an idea now slowly beginning to disappear from Muslim culture in the West, due to people waiting longer to be married.

Though hymenoplasty is still increases at a very high rate for fears of humiliation, many are seeing it as a positive change in Western Muslim society. Though the point of view is not agreed with within that society.

The 4VF News goes on to quote a writer as saying, “French Muslim women are increasingly defying the restrictions and repression men try to enforce, and leading full, modern lives — including sexually,” says Dounia Bouzar, whose recent book Allah, My Boss, and Me explores Islam in the French workplace. “The one time they feel obliged to make a concession to outdated attitudes is with the marital requirement of virginity — a purely macho tradition that has no basis in Islam, and is certainly nothing courts should be respecting. This surgery is unfortunate, though it is a way for women who have insisted on living their own lives to avoid punishment under a backward custom.”

France’s Judicial Ministry has repealed the marriage annulment.

Though many feminists and non-muslims may see what is happening here as a good thing. The annulment of the marriage should have remained, in my opinion. The husband in this marriage was lied to. He was told that the wife to be was a virgin and when he discovered she was not, he did not want to be in the marriage any longer. All religious views, and cultural biases put aside, one of the couples was lied to by the other about something that the person that was lied to thought was important.

Last time I checked lying about something big, meaning doing something big then lying about it, caused many divorces, with people usually bad mouthing the liar. In this circumstance many are bad mouthing the person that had been lied to, this seem unfair.

If women are living lives they are proud of and happy with living, they do not need to lie to men they are about to marry. Be proud of what you’ve done and try not to ruin someone’s life by trying to marry them while holding onto secrets you know that person will not like.

Whether or not sex before marriage should be considered a bad thing should not be debated under this circumstance. The topic of discussion should be the lying that caused this humiliation of the bride and family.