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Chinese company Gigimo has created the Artificial Virginity Hymen, which costs around $30.00 and is marketed as a product to "help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins". Male Egyptian politicians are outraged that such a product will make it easier for Egyptian women to "give in to temptation" and are fighting to ban the product to "uphold Egyptian and Arab values" that deem sexual activity acceptable only within the "confines of marriage".
I love the use of the word "confines" and "marriage" seeing as the Egyptian and other Arab states are trying to confine a woman's sexual experience within a strictly regimented social construction that is the institution of marriage. While binary politics does not get us very far, this story begs the question "where is the male equivalent of a so-called virginity test?" The truth is that you can't quite test a man's virginity and yet the truth is that you can't quite test a woman's either. These virginity tests determine a woman's sexual status based on whether or not they bleed when the hymen is penetrated by a penis during sexual intercourse. Such tests are problematic because not all females are born with hymens and hymens can be broken through non-sexual activities (i.e. horseback riding). Additionally, these tests don't account for/are not sympathetic to incidents of rape wherein the hymen (if it did exist) was broken during the act. In essence these virginity tests do nothing more than commodify female bodies and reduce them to products for men- their values increasing or decreasing depending on perceived and "tested" sexual innocence. This is just another form of patriarchal oppression my friends.
For more on the subject:
- In Europe, Debate Over Islam and Virginity, The New York Times
- It's Time to End the Virginity Test, Times Live
- Mass Marriages and Virginity Testing in India, RH Reality Check
