Virginity Test is a Result of Strength Uncontested

Virginity Test is a Result of Strength Uncontested

By Khalilah Sabra

          A virginity test is the practice and process of determining whether a female is a virgin, i.e., whether she has engaged in sexual intercourse. The test involves an inspection of a female's hymen, on the assumption that her hymen can only be torn as a result of sexual intercourse; many people believe that a girl is only a virgin if she still has an intact hymen. The hymen is a thin membrane of skin that partially covers the entrance to the female private part. This membrane can rupture from intercourse, but that is not the only scenario that causes a disruption. In addition, neither the presence of the hymen nor bleeding during intercourse can truly indicate virginity. Some girls are born without hymens, others will have hymens that stretch and don’t break during sex, and some will have torn their hymens during sports or when inserting tampons. But this isn’t really the point, is it? It’s not of the government’s business to determine if a woman is a virgin or not, but the ultimate test of its superior strength. There has been no eradication of this kind of violence and no real response whatsoever because the sexual degradation of women is consistently papered over and archived by the media, causing us to be far removed from the actual situation. The events in Egypt will be forgotten and we will move past dealing with such “complex emotions.”

Although Egypt and many Middle Eastern and African countries are joined in spirit through the Islamic and Christian faith, the pull of traditional values remains strong in many of these lands, several amounting to pure cultural transgressions. Several cultural expectations in some countries are vastly different from the others, but sexual discrimination and pattern biases dominate the two regions. While some governments have allowed humanitarian gains for their female populations, others have regressed and gender biases greatly influence how women are perceived and labeled. Picking a lifetime partner is still a family affair. Personal choice, at times, is irrelevant. Marriages are still arranged by parents, with the union considered to be a part of family matters, rather than a relationship between one man and one woman.

The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the violence in Libya, have not really enhanced the movement for gender justice and are far from challenging politically sanctioned sexual assault (PSSA). Any speculation that the liberation of women may follow appears to my mind as unrealistic. As long as men believe that they can forcibly control women, they will proceed to do it. In the violent landscape of conflict, it seems inevitable. Sexual abuse seems to be part of the “fallout”  of political conflict and is equally as savage as the other actions of the oppressive class. 

Societies that reprimand women who are “not found to be virgins” and threaten to charge them with prostitution are sanctioning assaults on citizens based on gender and vulnerability. It is more than degrading - it is criminal and an extreme act of perversion.  A woman can kicked, hit, pushed and may attempt to run, but she cannot retaliate in kind.

Human Rights Watch criticized the virginity test as “degrading and unscientific” and a second assault on traumatized women. In its report it raised concerns about Indian courts bringing views of rape victims’ general moral character into their rulings. It is more than “degrading and unscientific.” It is an appalling loss of control over justice and a symptom of an unhealthy society, in which men display contempt for women. It is an ugly characteristic of unnatural behavior that has nothing to do with sex.

Cultural environments, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have erected invisible barriers and act as anchors in the sand when it comes to advancing new ideas about gender equality. Equal rights for women do not fit the existing pattern so it is dismissed, filtered to generalized legal attachments, or subjected to the corners of the parking lot where it will be ignored and unrecognized. Men are bred to be conditioned into recognizing this pattern and advancing the norm, which is usually what has been traditionally defined as conventional behavior of women, or ideas about womanhood, likely to be embraced. 

Amnesty International reports about how women protesters being subject to virginity checks is not uncommon. That they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then threatened with prostitution charges is another atrocity that follows a history to gender violence following political violence.  Throughout history it has not only been a male prerogative, but man's basic weapon of force women into submission - the primary tool being his will and her fear.

Understanding the anatomy of the opposite sex can help eliminate confusion, stop harassment, and challenge misconceptions, but it won’t make government empowered handlers obtain a moral look at their own attitudes toward this devastating crime unless they are punished for it. Without enforced penalties, these “lawmen” are unless likely to succumb to pressure to do something which they should naturally have the wherewithal to oppose. Man's structural capacity to abuse women has been long ignored and nations have not supported the fact enough that a woman’s body is her own.

Frankness about the subject matter will rankle some people.  Stories of men committing assault against women reveal the darkest side of the social and biological differences as well as the potential conflicts between men and women. This type of behavior evokes the worst aspects of gender and racial stereotyping for both males and females. 

While sexual abusers may have a variety of motivations and those who participate in politically sanctioned sexual assault will vehemently disagree with being labeled as a sexual assailant, this kind of biological warfare should be acknowledged for what it is.  Females will continue to be kept tightly under the rule of men as long as men are not held accountable under the rule of law. 

Women should not fear being grope while traveling, on-route to work or the weekly trip to the marketplace without their husbands or a male escort. Egyptian, Tunisian and Syrian women stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their men when their nations called out for democracy. They have also died in furtherance of the cause. Now that the constitutional mandates are being re-written, will women be left out of the process?

Khalilah Sabra, is Executive director of MAS-Immigrant Justice Center and has provided decision makers, the general public, and members of the legal profession around the world with brief, balanced accounts and analyses of significant social developments and newsworthy events that are typically ignored, involving women’s rights and gender equality and other issues that are critical to understanding and enforcement of foreign judgments, child custody, consular relations, female asylum issues and legal assistance for refugee women. Author of  An Unordinary Death, the Life of a Palestinian” and  “Cleansed: Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia- Herzegovina” were testimonies of women forced to endure rape and, in many cases, give birth to the children of their abusers.