Virginity for Sale

In many societies, and especially among Muslims, women are supposed to be virgins until the day they get married. This issue has come to the forefront in a case in France where a groom, on his wedding night, found out that his bride was not a virgin.

Upon discovering the truth he left the bedroom and reported to the wedding guests, who were still partying, that his bride had lied to him about being a virgin. That very night the bride was delivered to her parents' doorstep and the next morning he consulted a lawyer about having the marriage annulled. The court granted him the annulment. This has prompted a furious debate in France, with the government requesting that the case be appealed against the wishes of the couple. For complete details click here.

If the unfortunate bride had only known that a simple 30-minute procedure called a hymenoplasty was available for about $2,900, she may well have saved her marriage and her honor. The procedure has become popular with an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe.

For a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, this procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

“In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.”

Hymenoplasty is the restoration of the hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse. Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity. That in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night.

“If you’re a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage,” said Dr. Hicham Mouallem, who is based in London and performs the operation. “So if you’re looking to marry a Muslim and don’t want to have problems, you’ll try to recapture your virginity.”

Even though the hymen can be ruptured by non-sexual means, an intact hymen is an indicator of virginity in many cultures.

The popularity of hymenoplasty is fueled by the reality of living in a secular society where sex before marriage is not uncommon and the traditional, cultural values that expect a bride to be a virgin. It is a way for young women who have hopes of being married to satisfy their partners and their families expectations. Those who perform the procedure say they are empowering patients by giving them a viable future and preventing them from being abused — or even killed — by their fathers or brothers.

In the case of the 23-year-old French student from Montpellier, she insists that she is still a virgin and discovered her hymen was torn only when she tried to obtain a certificate of virginity to present to her boyfriend and his family. She believes it may have been torn in an accident on a horse when she was 10 years old which caused some bleeding. However, the trauma from realizing that she could not prove her virginity was so intense, she said, that she quietly borrowed money to pay for the procedure.

“Who am I to judge?” asked Dr. Marc Abecassis, who restored the Montpellier student’s hymen. “I have colleagues in the United States whose patients do this as a Valentine’s present to their husbands. What I do is different. This is not for amusement. My patients don’t have a choice if they want to find serenity — and husbands.”

For those who would rather not go through the embarrassment or expense of seeing a plastic surgeon, there is an alternative. There is the "Jade Lady Membrane Man-Made Hymen" manufactured by Wan Li Hong Corporation in China. The contraption, as described on the Portland Mercury website, is:

"Basically a plug filled with powdered glue that seals the vagina in as little as 20 minutes prior to penile insertion. When the powders mix with female secretions, they not only create a puncture barrier, but also discharge a blood-like fluid to convince the most 'jaded' male vaginal conqueror." Since penetration will be painless, users are encouraged to increase the product's efficacy by "accompanying its rupture with the moans and groans that typically accompany the rupture of a real hymen."

What will they think of next!?!? :)

Marriage Annulled: Wife not a Virgin

A Muslim couple's marriage was annulled by a French court on the grounds that the woman had lied and told her husband that she was a virgin. In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin and that, in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite.

In its judgment, the tribunal said the 2006 marriage had been ended based on "an error in the essential qualities" of the bride, "who had presented herself as single and chaste."

The French daily newspaper Liberation made public the April closed-door trial in Lille, causing such an uproar that, against the wishes of both the man and woman involved, the case will be appealed. Critics of the court saw the decision as undermining decades of progress in women's rights by treating the case as a breach of contract. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them. France has a Muslim population of about 5 million, out of a country of 64 million, the largest of any Western European country, but has fought to maintain strong secular traditions in the face of changing demographics. Critics see the ruling as condoning the custom of requiring a woman to enter marriage as a virgin, and prove it with bloodstained sheets on her wedding night.

The court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women. We are returning to the past," said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, the daughter of immigrants from Muslim North Africa, using the Arabic term for a religious decree.

Justice Minister Rachida Dati, whose parents also were born in North Africa, initially shrugged off the ruling but the public clamor reached such a pitch that she asked the prosecutor's office this week to lodge an appeal. What began as a private matter "concerns all the citizens of our country and notably women," a statement from her ministry said.

The irony is that the unnamed couple involved, both the man and the woman, were satisfied with the court's ruling. Neither of them want the case to be appealed. The woman is a student in her 20's and the man is an engineer in his 30's.

The young woman's lawyer, Charles-Edouard Mauger, said she was distraught by the dragging out of the humiliating case and he quoted her as saying:

"I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything. ... I wasn't the one who asked for the media attention, for people to talk about it, and for this to last so long."

Xavier Labbee, the lawyer for the bridegroom in question, says it was not the young woman's virginity that was at issue.

"The question is not one of virginity. The question is one of lying," he said. "In the ruling, there is no word 'Muslim,' there is no word 'religion,' there is no word 'custom.' And if one speaks of virginity it is with the term 'a lie."

Although divorce was also an option, annulling the marriage is preferable because it wipes the slate clean for both parties. Divorced Muslim women are allowed to remarry, but they are expected to be forthcoming with their new husband about the previous marriage, and divorce can carry a cultural stigma for women.

Article 180 of the Civil Code states that when a couple enters into a marriage, if the "essential qualities" of a spouse are misrepresented, then "the other spouse can seek the nullity of the marriage." Past examples of marriages that were annulled include a husband found to be impotent and a wife who was a prostitute, according to attorney Xavier Labbee.

However, in a rare show of agreement, politicians on the left and right said the court's action does not reflect French values. "In a democratic and secular country, we cannot consider virginity as an essential quality of marriage," said an expert on French secularism, Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon said an appeal must be lodged "so this ruling does not set a judicial precedent." The appeal was filed and three judges could hear the case sometime this month, said Eric Vaillant of the appeals court in Douai, near Lille.

Personal Opinion:

Maybe its just me, but I have difficulty seeing how a request to nullify a marriage becomes a national debate on French values and women's rights. Even the parties involved are content with the court's ruling and are against any further appeals. To me this is just a case of the government butting into the private lives of private citizens who would rather put an unfortunate situation behind them.