Natalie Lue writes...
There are millions of women out there that wouldn't mind erasing some or all of their sexual history. Look at the notches on your bedpost and you're probably wondering why you didn't stay home watching TV and stuffing bicccies into you instead of having crap sex or being dragged into the mindfield of "Hmmm, I wonder if I'll ever see this guy again...". If you had the opportunity to start over again and be a virgin, would you?
The Daily Mail is outraged that twenty-four (yes it is a two digit number) women have had their hymen reconstructed or what they call "virginity repair" on the NHS between 2005 and 2006. These operations have apparently been done primarily for women of "immigrants and British women of ethnic origin" which has translated in their minds to Muslim women. Is it just me that remembers that you didn't need to lose your virginity to break your hymen? More importantly, you can put the hymen back in the woman but you can't take away the memories....
Hymen talk was all the rage when I was a teenager and sports or a tampon could break that hymen quicker than you can say "Give me my virginity back". As a result most girls I knew didn't have a hymen to speak of by the time their virginity said farewell and to be honest, you didn't really give it a second thought once it was gone. Until I read the Daily Mail article this morning, I don't think I had thought of my hymen for about fifteen years and as a result I have been forced to remember the trauma of a nightmare incident with a tampon and a still intact hymen... Anyway...
The hymen agenda does illustrate in itself a cultural difference. I'm sure that these women do play sports but for them, the hymen represents their virtue, their intactness, and the difference between getting married and bringing shame on the family. Their virginity becomes collateral.
I recognise that it is hard for me to imagine the type of pressure and mental strain you must go through to feel you need to do this, but don't these women realise that you can put the hymen back in the woman but you can't erase the memories?
My biggest concern about these operations is this idea that getting your hymen back gives you back your virginity. It doesn't. You had a bit of membrane put in, not a lobotomy, so you can be damn sure that the mental part is still coming along for the ride. Yes there are some women who can have "sex like men" and shag without a conscience or a mind that lingers on the occasion, but sex is not just a physical act, it's a mental thing too. Virginity is not just a physical thing and there are already a lot of blurred lines about what constitutes sex.
I think that these operations happening when there is a clear cut moral case, such as when the person has been a victim of sexual assault is one thing, but I have to wonder why these operations are being done for women as a way to give them back some supposed virtue so that they can be married?
These operations are demeaning and it is shocking that we (the NHS) are engaging in something that drags our cultural beliefs and the progress that women have made, right back into the dark ages. It’s actually not the money that bothers me. Yes the NHS is strapped and no it's not ideal for the money to be spent in this manner but much like anything associated with women, the financial implication has been totally blown out of proportion. If I do the math, it costs £4K for this operation to be done privately and with 24 done in that year that equates to £96K. That is a drop in the frigging ocean in the super stressed NHS budget. Their fat cat lunch bills are a hell of a lot more than that....
My issue with the NHS is that by catering to this demeaning, archaic attitude that isn’t representative of the system beliefs in this country, that it actually demeans and devalues the great majority of women. Considering that these operations are banned in many countries, how on earth have these managed to make it onto the ‘free’ menu? If people want to pay the £4K then that’s their thang but the NHS getting involved in the bargaining process of virginity should be avoided.
At the end of the day, where do we draw the line? If half the women in this country decide they want to turn back time a la Cher and demand that they get a hymen back, will they be told their hymens aren’t in the budget or will we become a nanny state chock full of new virgins?
Read via The Daily Mail
Natalie Lue thinks it's to late for her to get her virginity back...she's had a baby...the cats out of the bag...
