Virginity and the Plague of Honor

Mamdouh Bitar, Ruba Mansour

Societies in this region monopolize the practice of preoccupation with what is called female virginity, to the point of obsession. This obsession with preserving the hymen’s integrity is not because the hymen has any organic health value or physiological function, or even because it is congenitally absent in some women. Rather, it is because the hymen is a standard for what is far more important than itself: it is the standard of honor. Losing it is equated in some circles with losing honor, while losing it signifies nothing related to honor in most societies around the world. Practically speaking, honor has nothing to do with virginity, especially when we know that more than half of males have had premarital sex, and less than half of females have had premarital sex. Preserving virginity has provided no benefit, except for stimulating sales of the $15 Chinese hymen and promoting fake surgical repairs (i.e., hymen reconstruction). The entire matter was self-deception, deception, and then complete and utter ignorance. Honor has nothing to do with the condition of the organs. Sexual intercourse. Is a man’s honor linked to the position of his penis?
In rape societies, the raped woman is forced to marry her rapist, because the rape society believes that a woman who has lost her hymen through rape cannot marry, and that she thereby loses her marital life. In rape societies, everything is permitted: theft, cheating, betrayal, lying, fraud, and murder, except for the integrity of the hymen, i.e., what the language of flabby decadence calls “virginity.” This term, which a sound language should have pronounced, has no meaning or significance. Honor is an evaluative quality of an individual in society and a measure of the sociability of a human being and the extent of his humanization. The absence or presence of the hymen is not honor or dishonor. A woman loses nothing by losing the integrity of the hymen, or even its presence or absence. The hymen is like the appendix; a woman has no need for it. The catastrophe is not in it whether it exists or not. The catastrophe is in the mind if it does not exist. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) became aware of the issue of the hymen. Consequently, it banned the so-called “virginity test,” because it is unscientific and unethical, and cannot be used as evidence of sexual activity or non-sexual activity. It considered this test a violation of human rights, a form of terrorism that negatively impacts a woman’s psychological health and even her overall social life. It is, at the very least, detrimental to marital relations for some, especially for most members of the “best nation.” It disrupts understanding between spouses, and can lead to separation. In the worst cases, it can lead to violence, which can even lead to assault on a woman’s life, with murder being no major exception. Even if Middle Eastern societies have not yet reached a high level of awareness, rebellious movements can be observed as an expression of a growing awareness among contemporary women. There are, for example, movements such as “My Vagina Is Mine.” In addition, there are numerous movements and associations that care for abused women who have sought protection from these movements to prevent honor crimes. These movements reject the standards promoted by conservative groups such as religious leaders. As a result, the importance of virginity as a condition for marriage has diminished, and standards that consider virginity a bloody certificate of honor have diminished. The woman’s body has been subjected to a process of domestication and socialization, the essence of which is control and regulation, strict regulation of the woman’s body’s ownership by another owner, thus she has become nationalized and her body is no longer her own, but the property of others, she has become created for others and not for herself, the woman is enslaved by concepts of femininity that do not belong to her and do not pertain to her femininity, concepts that work to domesticate her femininity in the way that her owner wants, her owner wants to curb her sexual desire so he circumcised her, knowing that circumcision increases sexual desire and increases the quest for pleasure, which circumcision thwarts, and practically leads to the unbridled search for pleasure, which was killed by circumcision, so the woman searches for another man and then another and so on to no avail regarding obtaining pleasure  ,In this case, the owner feels his honor has been violated, so he tries to restore his tarnished honor by killing the person he considers a plague on his honor. Therefore, he kills the woman in order to rise socially, i.e., he morally declines in order to rise socially. In addition to what was mentioned, he conceals the woman to confirm his ownership of her because he paid for her with a dowry. This mentally ill male believes that burdening the hymen with the burden of honor and chastity based on virginity elevates his status. Here, we see the owner practicing a combination of contradictions and opposites: the opposition of the woman’s misery with his happiness, the opposition of his attainment of pleasure by depriving the woman of pleasure, the opposition of the woman’s enslavement with his freedom, etc. If a woman has chastity, it must be preserved. Does a man also have chastity? A woman’s chastity is reduced to not having sex before marriage, and the proof of that is the integrity of her hymen, despite the fact that the presence of a hymen is not proof of her having had sexual practices or not having had sexual practices before marriage. Does a man’s having sex before marriage affect his chastity or is it an indication of doubt about his masculinity? Male sexual practices before marriage raise his status! While for a woman, having sex before marriage nullifies her status in societies sick with the disease of the plague of honor, which is represented by ignorance and social quackery, which must end by resolving the conflict between the integrity of honor and the integrity of the hymen. Ownership of the body must be returned to the owner of the body, who must dispose of her body as she wants and have sex with whomever she wants. The fact that that woman is not the first woman in the man’s life is met by the fact that that man is not the first man in that woman’s life.   equality!