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virginity testing is considered assault. yet, we still do it.
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it’s february 24, 2020 and you can buy a fake hymen kit on amazon. for $102, you’ll receive a simulated hymen that will leak ‘blood’ and a gel that can tighten your vagina in preparation for the big event.
why? because virginity testing is still a thing.
last november, u.s. rapper ti announced to a shocked population that his daughter annually undergoes virginity testing. and it became very clear that despite all the progress women have made, there’s still an exceedingly long way to go.
virginity testing, for the uninitiated, is an examination of a woman’s hymen, the membrane that covers the entrance to the vagina. if the hymen is broken, goes the thinking, sexual activity has occurred and the woman (or girl) is not a virgin. the vagina itself is also examined. a doctor inserts two fingers into the vagina to see how tight it is as vaginal laxity is also seen as a sign of intercourse.
and if the woman is deemed not a virgin, bad things tend to happen. she may be deemed impure and ineligible for marriage. or she may be socially shunned. in some cultures, the stigma is so pronounced that women have been known to harm themselves after a failed virginity test.
worse, there’s no definitive way of establishing virginity anyway. a 2017 review of 17 studies found that it’s impossible to discern whether a woman had had sexual intercourse during a pelvic exam. in the studies, researchers found that some women had hymens, while others had been born without them. others had had sex and their hymens had remained intact.
“there is no scientific way to discern if someone is a virgin or not,†says dr. sandra crosby, professor of medicine at boston university and a faculty member of the health law, bioethics, and human rights department at the boston university school of public health.
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dr. crosby was so appalled by ti’s statements that she and her colleagues penned recommendations for doctors in the british medical journal global health. “this has been something that has troubled me for many years,†says dr. crosby, who, as a practising physician, often gets requests for virginity tests from patients. “it doesn’t just happen in other countries. it happens here.â€
she adds that the practice is essentially a form of sexual assault.
“in some countries, virginity tests are forced on women,†she says. “ [they] should not be performed on a minor who cannot give consent.â€
the world health organization agrees. in 2018, it issued the following statement: “the practice is a violation of the victim’s human rights and is associated with both immediate and long-term consequences that are detrimental to her physical, psychological and social well-being.â€
in canada, virginity tests are not banned, though quebec’s college of physicians ordered doctors to stop performing them in 2013. dr. charles bernard, president of the province’s collã¨ge des mã©decins du quã©bec, said in a national post article at the time that the practice was “outrageous, repugnant, irrelevant and unacceptable.â€
but when an adult patient requests a virginity test, dr. crosby doesn’t shut it down — she thinks of how best to serve her patient.
“some women will be harmed if they don’t have a virginity test,†she says. she believes that discussing the imperfect nature of virginity testing can be an opportunity to educate the patient and the family — and ideally prevent it from occurring.
she doesn’t support an all-out ban on the practice for those reasons. while new york and california recently submitted bills calling for legislation to end to the practice, she believes women who ‘need’ a virginity test to satisfy their family’s desires will simply be forced to obtain one clandestinely, potentially putting them at risk. “it’s about a harm-reduction approach,†says dr. crosby.
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