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Virginity: Is it only for women?
- -- by Sunada Khadka
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It is the orthodoxy of the human mind to have compared virginity with virtue.- Voltaire
Our society considers virginity of a “woman” as a must virtue and thus reckons it as the only basis with which a girl can be classified as a pure one. A woman becomes a “slut”, a “whore” in the eyes of a society if she is found to be not-a-virgin before she is married. But if there is a man who sleeps around with women, “manly” is what people tag him as. But all the women who he slept with are tagged as characterless, though it is in everyone’s knowledge that both man and woman have an equal share in committing the sin.( if sin is what society names it as). People say ‘Men are Men’.
Unfair isn’t it?
This patriarchal society of ours is a misogynic hypocrite. Men can do the same thing which our society considers immoral and yet feel no remorse for their acts but expect a woman to bear a bigger curse for doing the same. Nature favors men in biological endowments. Men do not carry a baby but woman do. Thus it is nature’s attempt at protecting women that made virginity more confined to women, but not men. Just because women have a complicated biological make up doesn’t mean we do not have the right to live a social life of dignity and respect as men do. It is always a woman who has to bear injustice even when both woman and man have equal share in this comic ‘crime’ of losing virginity before marriage.
We have been brainwashed. Our culture, society, norms and values have blindfolded us. A woman is always expected to bear a tag “I am a virgin” till she marries but for a man his virginity, whether he loses or retains it; it never affects his social life. Consider a girl who has been raped by a man. The society will always consider the girl impure; no one will be ready to marry her and thus she has to live her life dreading her past; but the man he- gets slightly punished and in some years he regains his social status and can live his life like everyone else. Men always want to marry virgin girls. Why? They say- every man would want to settle down with a girl who doesn’t have a nasty past; if you fall in love with her, you will realize that you are the only man of her life- No secrets, No past- Her intimate life begins from you; wouldn’t that be the best thing that could possibly happen to you?
But I wonder why the men who boast about their manhood do not bother to think it the other way round? Wouldn’t a girl, who like a man, is a human, expect her partner to be the same? But no, there is hardly any man in this world who respects women and their feelings.
Is getting to marry a virgin the best thing that can ever happen to a man? Senseless as it sounds, what if the virgin girl turns out to be a real wicked person and makes the man’s life worse than it could possibly be? So is virginity a virtue? Past is always good enough for reference but never a yardstick because what is important is the future and one’s past cannot solely determine his/her future. One should also keep in mind that virginity doesn’t always guarantee faithfulness. Honesty, trust and love between partners strengthen the bonds between them and that is what people should look for in their partners.
The context is even more sympathetic in Muslim communities. If a Muslim girl fails to prove that she is a virgin on the night of her wedding, the only option for her is to either commit suicide or live a life of disgrace and disrespect. And in most cases, the girls choose the former. In the past, in some conservative societies, the government would do a virginity test on unmarried girls and would punish them if they were found to be not virgin. In some severe cases, the girls would be stoned to death. Could anything be cruel and unfair than this? How appalling is it to see a woman being tortured by her husband for not being a virgin when he himself frequents brothel to satisfy his lusts as in the case of Muslim countries? Human rights have been violated in the name of virginity all around world, and women have been majorly victimized- another way this patriarchal society has found to suppress and torture women.
Our society believes that a girl who has her hymen intact is a virgin. Hymen is a thin membrane that may partially or completely cover the vaginal opening; which gets torn off during the first sexual intercourse. Researchers have proved that some girls are born without hymen; some athletes may have their hymen ruptured without them knowing about it; some strenuous exercises may also tear hymen. But our society turns a deaf ear even when people are aware of the fact that there is no absolute way to determine a girl’s virginity. And this makes the situation even more deplorable. Muslim girls are compelled to do expensive hymen surgery just because their culture demands it. And it is possible for only those who can afford it. But for the rest, suicide is the only alternative. A book can never be judged by its cover. Though it sounds like a cliché, what we need to know is that people should never be judged by their façade or here in this case, the virginity should never be the ground for a woman or a man to be judged. It’s the character and the virtues of humans that determine what they really are from inside. It’s our duty to our sisters and mothers who have lost their lives to this misogynic concept to speak out against this lethal atrocity. It is now time for people to judge their partners on their virtues rather than virginity. An orthodox person who judges you by your virginity will seldom keep you happy.
One of my friends was quoted as saying:
If you are given a brand new Toyota Corolla and a badly battered hummer jeep with a good body but a nearly dead engine, which would you prefer?
I would consider this statement from an educated person like him to be very pathetic, because it is very cruel of a person to personify vehicles as women. To those who hold this belief I would rather say, If you are given a Toyota Corolla without brakes and a hummer jeep that guarantees you a safe and a happy journey, which one would you choose? Over to you!
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