Hymenoplasty in India and Other Cultures
by kalyani10
Virginity is differently evaluated in different cultures. In some it merely refers to a state of never having sexual intercourse while in others it may be inseparable from notions of purity and honor. At its simplest as in western cultures, losing one’s virginity implies having sex for the first time but in India and similar traditional societies, there are a whole of complex issues like gender, sexual politics, history, religion and culture associated with the subject. It is here that hymenoplasty – or the reattachment of the hymen - assumes different degrees of implication in different cultural contexts.
Virginity and the hymen
Most virginity tests for girls depend on the presence of an intact hymen in her body. The hymen is a thin membrane that covers the opening of a girl’s vagina and usually tears upon the first sexual intercourse. Thus if a girl bleeds after an intercourse it is assumed that she was a virgin and likewise the absence of bleeding is construed as a sign that she has prior sexual experience. Virginity tests based on gynecological examination of a woman’s body also depend on the presence of an intact hymen for determining whether or not a girl has had prior sexual intercourse.
What is hymenoplasty?
Also known as hymenorrhaphy, hymenoplasty, this is a kind of cosmetic procedure which surgically restores the hymen in a woman’s body. The new hymen can be a membrane without blood supply like a gelatin capsule or a vaginal flap with blood supply and hence capable of bleeding after the next episode of vaginal sexual intercourse.
Hymenoplasty in India
Though vastly differentiated by religion, ethnicity and geography, India and other cultures in most parts of South and South-East Asia share similar attitudes towards a girl’s virginity. Sexual experience is absolutely barred before marriage and thus virginity is eulogized in religion, mythology, popular culture like movies and also enforced by lack of advanced education, awareness and economic disempowerment. In some Asian societies, virginity is not only important as a form of sexual control but also as a business asset. Some families may wish to move upwards in society by alliance to a family with higher status or to keep their caste status high and for these purposes they use the daughter’s virginity as a bargaining chip since a virgin bride would definitely fetch a higher price in the marriage market as opposed to a sexually-experienced one.
Because of the desirability of virgins, in India and other traditional cultures, hymenoplasty is a growing trend. Girls who may have engaged in pre-marital sex or even worked as sex workers are ready to come under the surgeon’s knife to eliminate suspicions about their sexual past from their future marital partners. Hymenoplasty is in fact one more instance where newer technology has been appropriated to continue and even reinforce traditional norms and sexual codes. Another is the proliferation of Ultra-sound diagnostic clinics to facilitate female feticide as a way of perpetuating the long-held preference of the male child. Though there is no doubt about the fact that hymenoplasty is increasingly becoming a popular cosmetic procedure – as evident from the plethora of internet advertising – there are still no official statistics on the number of hymenplasty procedures performed in India. This is a direct result of the secrecy associated with the procedure since women who undergo it are unwilling to share details for fear of it getting to the ears of potential marital partners.
Like India, there are many other societies where virginity is associated with purity and a coveted trait in a bride – these include many African cultures, some orthodox Catholic cultures and certainly all Islamic cultures. That hymenoplasty is performed to restore the virginity of women in order to better their marital prospects in other cultures too is evident from news reports1 like the one which talks about the trend in Georgia, an East European country. Though here too no official numbers exist, top doctors say that they perform five to seven such operations per month.
In modern cultures
The long separation of religion and sexuality in modern western culture has meant that virginity is no longer idolized in religious terms. Also greater female emancipation has put sexual choices firmly in the hands of women themselves. As a result of all this, in countries like US, Canada, Australia, Scandinavian and other West European regions, the notion of virginity as supreme virtue of a bride is thus no longer relevant and even men do not expect their marital partners to be virgins. Indeed in many of these societies, a girl or guy who is a virgin till marriage is sees as somewhat of an oddity, perhaps as a person with some sexual or personal issues which have prevented him/her from engaging in something as normal as sex. Thus hymenoplasty in these countries is not as common a cosmetic procedure as breast augmentation or rhinoplasty, but still more instances of surgical restoration of hymen are being reported. Most of these are women from traditional cultures in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. An increasing number of Muslim women in Europe are undergoing hymenoplasty2 so that their future marital partners are not able to detect that they have had sex in the past. As Europe’s Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women are caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the strict morality of their traditional culture. Even in western countries like France no reliable statistics on the number of hymenoplasty surgeries are available, because the procedure is mostly done in private clinics and in most cases not covered by tax-financed insurance plans.
The issue has been particularly charged in France, where a renewed and fierce debate emerged around the importance of a woman’s virginity in the aftermath of the revelation in 2008 that a court in Lille, in northern France, had annulled the 2006 marriage of two French Muslims because the groom found his bride was not the virgin she had claimed to be.
While feminists as well as some lawyers and doctors warned that the court’s acceptance of the centrality of virginity in marriage would encourage more Frenchwomen from Arab and African Muslim backgrounds to have their hymens restored, those advocating multiculturalism say it is a matter of individual choice. What is certain that procedures like hymenoplasty and related issues like virginity, have become part of larger discourse on culture and freedom.
At the same time, women of African and Arab origin are not the only ones going for hymenoplasty in the West. On the opposite spectrum of social mores are those who wish to go under the surgeon’s knife as a way of gifting their virginity to their partners on wedding anniversaries and Valentine’s Days. Indeed these women are coming back to countries where hymenoplasty is performed chiefly to save an unmarried woman’s and her family’s honor. A recent news report3 notes the trend in medical tourism; “ With more and more women from US and UK shopping for cosmetic procedures in Indian hospitals, along with breast upliftment and liposuction, we are now increasingly getting inquiries about hymenoplasty which tops the list as a unique anniversary gift," says Dr Bijal Parikh, consultant cosmetic surgeon in Apollo. Apparently the choice makes financial sense too since a Hymenoplasty costs anywhere between $2000 and $6000 in US and UK while the same is done in India for $200 and $400.
So whether for cultural or financial reasons, hymenoplasty is definitely making its presence felt in India as well as in other parts of the world.
References:
- Log in to post comments
