Hymen Restoration, 'Purity Balls' Examples Of Efforts To Keep Sexuality Out Of Women's Control, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 23 Jun 2008 - 9:00 PST

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Physicians advertising hymenoplasties to Muslim women in an effort to prove virginity prior to marriage are not only "accomplices in private deceptions, they are accomplices of those who keep the reins of sexuality out of women's own hands," syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman writes in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opinion piece.

According to Goodman, European physicians and some U.S. physicians are offering the procedure to restore the hymen, the vaginal membrane that often breaks during the first act of intercourse, which has led to an "outrag[e]" in France. In addition, a new Italian movie features an immigrant who received the procedure. "All this is happening despite the fact -- Biology 101 -- that the presence of or absence of a hymen may be unrelated to sexual experience," Goodman writes, adding, "This has led to a controversy not just over sex and equality but the ethics of a surgery that's designed to retrofit a woman to a rigid culture."

The "fear" and "fraud" exemplified in hymenoplasties conducted in Europe "resonates with the darker side of the abstinence-only education movement" in the U.S., Goodman writes. The "deeply creepy" father-daughter "Purity Balls" across the country, in which fathers promise to "cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity," emphasizes the "convention that sex -- and the girls who have it -- is dirty," according to Goodman. "How far" are purity balls "from the protection racket where fathers oversee their female property until it's passed on -- intact or else -- to a husband?" Goodman asks.

"Government-promoted virginity lessons" are "not simply an attempt to protect our daughters -- and, oh yeah, sure, sons -- from a culture that sells sex like Pop tarts," Goodman writes, adding that such lessons are not just about having girls "delay or think twice about hooking up." She writes that like hymenoplasties, the abstinence lessons are "based on fear and control" (Goodman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/20).

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