Western women and their vaginas
Ok, this post isn't even close to as dirty as the title makes it out to be, but it's a way of grabbing your attention regardless. Basically I wanted to bring your attention to this piece in the NYTimes titled Our Vaginas, our selves that is supposed to lament the way western women feel about their ..ehhh...vaginas in this crazy modern world we live in. While it's kind of a funny read, there is something in it that caught my attention as slightly distrubing, And if you are familair with the middle-east, you know what I am talking about : the hymenoplasty. But wait, there's more. The future as I see it is also - how to put this? - reforested. Hymen-reattachment surgery, once a desperate stratagem undertaken by young women from Muslim, Asian and Latin American cultures that demonized the loss of virginity before marriage, is now being hawked as a way to enjoy a second honeymoon. If it's unclear whom this procedure is meant for - aging women hoping to catch a flagging penis with the semblance of undeflowered innocence? - it's even more ontologically ungraspable how stitching a hymen back together vitiates the psychological experience of having already lost your virginity. But it is being advertised heavily in print as well as online, and one enterprising doctor who trained with Matlock says he performs about a dozen such operations a month and fields voluminous amounts of e-mail inquiries. So this humiliating medical procedure that girls from muslim/middle-eastern cultures have to go through if they had sex, got raped or broke their hymen while exercising so that their husbands don't call them whores on their wedding nights and/or their family kills them in an honor crime is actually being marketed as a cool hip thing to do for some aging western ladies with too much money to spend? Are you kidding me? I am sorry, but that's pretty messed up right there.
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 1/03/2006 06:59:00 PM
7 Comments:
Dude, I absolutely agree, this is completely messed up.
I can't even imagine why anyone would
a) want to go through the humiliation of re-attaching the hymen, or
b) go through the pain and (sometimes) humiliation of having it breached again.
uuughhh!
Luckily...I've never heard of anybody doing this. Its crazy!
I think most of the people taking advantage of this "medical procedure" are Middle Eastern wealthy ones, not Western ones. At least, I also cannot imagine why a Western woman to whom virginity is not synonymous with "honor" to want the procedure for any reason.
Caroline said: (meanwhile, men are encouraged or expected to have sexual encounters)
Who said so?? In this society men who fornicate would be "condemned" just like their female counterparts. The thing is, there is no indication whether a man had sex or not (Men don't have hymens and they definitely don't get pregnant). I can't imagine that anyone (yes, even the most medieval-minded in this country) would encourage men to have sex, and denounce women who had sex as whores.
Sand Monkey you missed the best part of this whole deal. The author's name. Daphne MERKIN! BWAHAWHAWHAW! Look that up in your fave online dictionary.
Caroline, how about this: Men/boys like to show off and want to appear as "studs" in front of their male counterparts, that's probably the reason why they're more open about their sexual encounters, etc.. Also it's also very unlikely for a man to show off about having sex in front of a woman (I'll exclude the internet here, because people tend to be more open due to the anonymity). And it's even less likely that a man boasts about his sexual experience in front of his family.
Imagine this scenario for a moment: 19 year old egyptian male just comes home late at night. His parents ask him where he's been and he says he was "spending the evening at his girlfriend's house having sex with her". Do they:
a) Nod in approval?
b) Scold him for coming home so late?
or c) Unleash raging hell fires onto the guy?
About this poll you're telling me about, I'm sorry but I don't believe it'll have that result. Find me one Female that requests here future husband be a fully fledged adulterer. After all, a man who has been in bed with other women before is likely to do it again, even after marriage. Is there any woman around that wants her husband to betray her? I think not..
Something else that occured to me just now: In this society women tend to be overprotected by the families, more than men, because the families believe that men can take care of themselves to some extent. So if a girl has sex with someone in spite of all that protection it has a stronger impact onto the family.
And yes, I was saying that men can get away with it easier than women. But now as there is a possibility for women to get away with it too, they will definitely grasp the chance. And I personally think that a person's "fear of God and one's own set of values" should be the ONLY motivator for chastity. If it's only fear of this society then the person probably didn't give a crap in the first place..
What I noticed is that lots of people keep saying: In this society men are allowed to do what they want, women on the other hand are condemned once they step out of the line. And sorry to say, I think that idea is dumb. When I hear that I get the impression that families will let their male members do whatever they feel like without any disapproval. And that's very untrue (as shown here by my example of the 19-year old)
Most male people here do what they want to do.. It doesn't make them allowed to do it. It's just that people here don't get themselves caught by their families, otherwise they'd be into deep, deep trouble, right?
And if you read my post you'll see that I said "because the families believe that men can take care of themselves to some extent". I wasn't saying that that really is the case.
Actually our whole life is based on personal choice. Even in Islam, God showed humanity the right way and the wrong way very clearly and showed what consequences lie behind each way. People with their God-given minds and thinking should choose their own way and accept the consequences that they should be VERY WELL AWARE OF. Our society here is a bit different. It's not based on personal choice but on conformity..
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