Posted on 05/06/2007 6:27:51 PM PDT by Pokey78
A debate is raging among doctors over Muslim women who demand operations to reconstitute their hymens before marriage and medical certificates stating that they are virgins.
The controversy has flared in France, where gynaecologists say that they are facing a growing number of requests from women desperate to avoid the repudiation that can follow the loss of chastity.
The phenomenon, which is also dividing doctors in other European countries, America and Africa, is denounced by critics as a sign of social regression driven by Islamic fundamentalists.
Jacques Lansac, Chairman of the French National College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians, is leading the campaign against what he describes as “an attack on the dignity of women”. He has also issued advice against hymenoplasty – a surgical operation that involves reconstructing the membrane usually broken during the first act of sexual intercourse.
Professor Lansac told The Times: “We get more and more women coming in and saying that their brothers or fathers will kill them if they find out they’ve slept with a man. But it’s important to say no, because if we don’t we’re giving in to the fundamentalists.”
However, he said that some doctors were ignoring his advice in the hope of protecting patients from ostracisation or violent beatings.
Isabelle Lévy, an author who studied the issue for her book Religion in the Hospital, said that the search for chastity certificates and hymenoplasties stemmed from conflicting pressures among the five million French Muslims.
“On the one hand, young Muslim girls born in France go out a lot more than they used to. They are modern and they have adventures like other Europeans – which never happened in the past.
“But on the other hand, fundamentalism is spreading and these girls are getting sent back to their countries of origin to marry. And they will be rejected if it is found out that they are not virgins.” The plight was evident from the account of one woman of North African origin on a French internet chat forum.
She slept with her boyfriend because “he said that he was mad about me and wanted to marry me and I believed him because I was madly in love with him”.
But he left her when she fell pregnant. The woman had an abortion, which she kept secret from her family until her mother discovered a letter from the clinic.
“She fainted and afterwards it was total despair – tears, insults, blows, disappointment and finally a dressing down.
“She has asked her gynaecologist to redo my hymen because she says that if not it will ruin my future.”
Several private French clinics carry out hymenoplasties.
But some doctors agree to undertake the operation in public hospitals, where it is funded by the welfare state, a practice that is not in theory authorised by officials.
Dr Stéphane Saint-Léger, head of gynaecology at Aulnay-sous-Bois hospital, outside Paris, refuses virginity certificates because “it’s not a medical problem whether you’re a virgin or not”.
But other doctors are prepared to deliver them. Jacques Milliez, head of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics at Saint-Antoine hospital, Paris, told Le Monde: “I worked in Algeria as a junior doctor and when I was on call at night I saw these young women whose throats had been slit because they were suspected of having lost their virginity. So if someone asks me, I sign the certificate.”
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How does a Muslim, or any man, go about inspecting if a woman has a hymen or not? Is there a class in Islamic instruction that tells a man what a hymen is and how to test for it? All I ever heard on the street corner was talk about breaking her cherry from guys who never broke one.
Make the jihadists eunuchs...problem solved. An A10 could help here as well.
You put too much weight on male domination of women and bloodline and nothing on disease. You don't get syphilis and gonorrhea and the like from virgins.
That's an excellent point; thanks.
It doesn't help explain, however, how a majority of men justified their own "catting around" before marriage, many visiting prostitutes, but still demanding a virgin wife. By the time they marry, they've long since proved that they don't have much regard for their own safety...
True, but we already knew that...
Abstinence education is like trying to argue with water to not run downhill. Human teenagers are biologically programmed to mate and produce offspring -- but unfortunately, they are ready, willing, and able to fornicate, years before they are ready to accept the personal and social responsibility for parenting in modern society.
Abstinence works for preventing pregnancy, 100% of the time. But like Christianity, it has generally been found difficult, and not tried.
When we see that even with death threats, young women are willing to take that chance and love their lovers, yes, as you say, we are helpless in the face of such willingness.
I never heard of a practicing doctor who had too much time on his hands. But apparently, there are some.
Err . . . I wonder how many times it's possible to do this operation over again.
Before the invention of test tube babies, the only way to make babies was through sexual intercourse.
Does that mean we should also give up sexual intercourse in favor of more efficient technological methods?
I think not.
Because our psyches were formed by evolution to desire sex for a fulfilling life.
Just so, the psyches of most men and women would likely have been formed by evolution to place a premium on female chastity.
That is not to say that a culture might not brainwash many of its members into devaluing the chastity of women . . .
But that would be just another kind of repression--the kind of repression the sexual revolution has oppressed us with.
Just curious, but what is the procedure?
What a sick bunch of people the Muslims are.
That does not follow.
Or St. Louis. Here's one the FBI actually caught on tape in 1989.
Once you accept an excuse to break a principle the first time, it’s easier to accept an excuse to break it the second time.
Of course not. I pointed out only that more accurate means of determining pregnancy and paternity were available these days than before, not that screwing had gone out of style.
> Because our psyches were formed by evolution to desire sex for a fulfilling life.
Yes, because desire for sexual activity helps guarantee the continuance of the human species through reproduction. Simple natural selection: those individuals who don't screw, don't reproduce, and their "don't want to screw" genes aren't represented in the next generation. Eventually, the population is comprised of the ones that reproduced successfully. (Which is why homosexuals are selected against naturally, but that's a different point.)
> Just so, the psyches of most men and women would likely have been formed by evolution to place a premium on female chastity.
That's an interesting thesis. I'll have to think about that... offhand, my reaction is this:
Female chastity primarily benefits the male who feels motivated to stick around and provide for "his" family (that way he is putting out his effort in support of his genes instead of some other male's). There's plentiful evidence for this in scores of other species, including of course the primates. Males of some species even kill the offspring of prior male mates of their current female mate, since those earlier offspring compete with their own.
Biologically speaking, chastity only benefits the female indirectly (in that she can convince the male that he's really the father). Mainly she benefits by getting pregnant and bearing offspring successfully, which in humans is helped hugely by the presence of a dedicated male.
Female chastity holds no value to the male who is interested only in screwing and leaving -- indeed, he is a strong force against female chastity. His genes get spread around widely, which benefits him. Until of course, it comes to his own family, at which point he flips 180 degrees and demands chastity from his own mate.
It all makes sense, biologically. It's just that in less civilized societies (I'll include much of the middle East here), it comes out in the violent, abusive, and oppressive forms we normally associate with other "lower" species.
I personally think the psychological and emotional value that we civilized humans place on female chastity is a secondary effect, layered on the biological one. But as I said, you make an interesting thesis and I'll have to give it some thought...
I swear muslim men are the most sexually insecure creatures on the planet....
If you think test tube babies are more effecient than au naturale you are grossly misinformed. Even artificial insemination (turkey baster) is largely more false promise than delivery.
When it comes to becoming pregnant, the undoubtably most effective and efficient method is intercourse, period. None of the "high tech" methods come remotely close.
Whiskey
Tango
Foxtrot
Over
“Once you accept an excuse to break a principle the first time, it’s easier to accept an excuse to break it the second time.”
Because she had pre-marital sex with a guy who she loved and who she thought loved her and who she thought would marry her, that makes it easier for her to have a casual affair while she’s actually married?
That’s some pretty convoluted thinking there.
It benefits the woman too.
Because her sons, carriers of her genes and the genes of her astute husband, will be more likely to produce and raise HER grandchildren, and not those of other men.
So it benefits the woman by enhancing her chances of passing her genes on down through the generatons.
After all, what woman is attracted to a sap, unless she already has children (or a pregnancy or eyes for the milkman on the side) in need of a father?
Which brings me to the alternate female genetic strategy:
Some other women would take a different reproductive strategy: get impregnated by "bad boys" and then find a sucker to marry and raise the "bad boy's" child.
This enhances the chances that any sons the woman may have, will impregnate other round-heeled women, who would raise her grandchildren however they can.
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