Women still believe in being the 'virgin offering' for men

Women propagate the virginity myth more than men Whoever came up with this theory on the virginity of a woman clearly has not been paying attention to his/her biology lessons in school

Women, I ask you, are you some oil who can be tagged using the words virgin and extra virgin to emphasise your purity?

Every once in a while there comes a report from one of the Indian states with a headline that goes  something like ‘Women go under the knife to become a virgin or restore virginity’. This headline came accompanied by a story in Hyderabad where women are approaching doctors to get their hymen restructured so that in future their husbands do not doubt their chastity.

Every time it comes, it makes me pause and sigh deeply at the state of women’s affairs.

Who is a Virgin?

In a book titled Willful Virgin, an American philosopher and radical feminist theorist, Marilyn Frye cites the original meaning of being a virgin. The book says, “The word 'virgin' did not originally mean a woman who was untouched, but a free woman, one not betrothed, not married, not bound to, not possessed by any man. It meant a female who is sexually and hence socially her own person. In any universe of patriarchy, there are no Virgins in this sense.”

In India being a virgin is literally taken by its biological meaning where a woman’s purity, chastity and honour is associating with the rupturing of the hymen and whether a woman’s vagina has been penetrated by a penis. Despite the fact that the two are different things.

No vaginal blood on the bedsheet on the first night of intercourse after marriage, in India, means – (insert shocked expression)- the bride is not a pure, she has been deflowered, has been touched by some other male and put in three, four colourful adjectives to describe a fallen woman.

Whoever came up with this theory on the virginity of a woman clearly has not been paying attention to his/her biology lessons in school.  A ruptured hymen can be caused by various things unrelated to sexual intercourse. Little did it occur to women who are worried about being termed as a promiscuous that the virginity tag was only a ploy to gain the upper hand.

That is not all, the bit that surprises me is how women propagate this myth more than men. Mothers are the ones rushing their daughters to these clinics hoping this sewing job will make matters right for girl since she is about to be married; educated women are the ones seeking hymenoplasty and labioplasty to appear attractive to their husbands after giving birth to a child.

You cannot also forget the time when in India some company had the guts to launch a vaginal whitening cream! There was a  25-second TV advertisement for Clean & Dry Intimate Wash which showed  woman using the product to lighten her sexual organs to please her man.

Then you have this Explore 18 Again a site which runs with the claim that it is a new name in true woman empowerment. 18 Again is India's first and most advanced feminity restoring gel. I cannot tell how it is reads and is wrong on so many different levels.

Such ads tackle two birds with one stone – the Indian fixation with fairness and the pressure for every Indian woman to be a virgin.

Women, I ask you, are you some oil who can be tagged using the words virgin and extra virgin to emphasise your purity? Or do you repeatedly feel the need to be described according to someone else's notions of  purity and chastity?

Dear Indian women, I have this one thing  to say to you. Claim for equality and claim for sexual emancipation when you truly believe in it yourselves. If you associate your sense of being a woman with adjectives like 'virgin' 'pretty' 'fair' 'thin' then you have years to grow before you can truly understand what it means to be a woman. 

What Frye says in the last line of the quote holds true for Indian women.

                           In any universe of patriarchy, there are no Virgins in this sense.