The UK is banning virginity tests and surgery to recreate a woman’s hymen, criminalising these procedures or bringing women abroad to have them. A necessary step to end some of the endless ways in which a woman’s body is controlled by everyone but herself. A plastic surgeon in the high end medical market in London stated that it is wrong to criminalise reconstructive hymen surgery and that it should be regulated as it otherwise would drive these procedures underground and put women at risk. He claimed that women are pressured but not forced into having these procedures as they want to be accepted by their society. A medical examination and procedure in the most intimate part of a woman’s body to make sure that her husband-to-be and the whole community is satisfied that she is a certified virgin on the wedding night is degrading and humiliating. It’s not about choice.
I doubt there is a woman on earth who would say ‘Let’s recreate my hymen because I am really concerned about it’, voluntarily. Women don’t care about their hymen, it’s everyone else who does. Surrounded by family, the wider community, religious indoctrination and even laws that are all about controlling the most private parts of a woman, she is expected to follow the rules that have been laid out for her. But women have had enough of obeying the rules of their oppression. It is a very slow-moving avalanche that is coming down the mountain crushing misogyny, but it is coming nevertheless. Be sure to not stand in its way.
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