Request from a Middle Eastern Bride

Abstract

a vaginoplasty, the surgical repair of her torn hymen. Having an intact hymen and bleeding on the wedding night are very important signs of virginity in her culture. The absence of either sign could cause a great deal of marital and family strife and even lead to ostracism from her family. In some cases, a woman of doubtful virginity has been the subject of physical violence. Her physician is not sure how to respond to her request. He feels that the practice of vaginoplasty is demeaning to women, but he realizes that Western culture condones other practices equally demeaning. He also wonders if helping her deceive her husband might somehow undermine their shared cultural values. He calls for a consultation with the ethics committee to ask how he should respond to her request. Commentary: Loane Skene a right to determine what shall be done with his own body/' 1 However, the In considering whether to repair this principle that patients are entitled to patient's hymen, the physician might make their own decisions about treatrecall the much-quoted statement of ment extends only to agreeing to, or Justice Cardozo, that"every human be-refusing, procedures recommended by ing of adult years and sound mind has a doctor. It does not mean that patients

Like a Virgin…Again?: Secondary Virginity as an Ongoing Gendered Social Construction

“…15 The two sides of this debate map onto the prototypically (if contradictory) American 13 Because most people who believed that virginity could be regained explicitly stated that this was not true of physiological virginity, I assume that virtually everyone who did not explicitly distinguish physiological virginity from mental, emotional, spiritual, or experiential virginity, believed that it is impossible to regain virginity in a strictly physical sense. 14 Surgical restoration of the hymen is not uncommon in societies where women's premarital virginity is highly valued (e.g., Egypt, Turkey, Mexico) (see González-López 2005;Kandela 1996;Skene et al 1994); it was performed by U.S. physicians as late as the early twentieth century (Brumberg 1997). On artificial hymens historically, see Gwilliam (1996).…”