In this disturbing article from BBC News, British-Asian women (re: Indian-British) are desperately seeking methods to fake their virginity to conceal their sexual activity to their families and future husbands. Some simply lie while others use fake blood or even resort to hymen restoration surgery (!!!) to “prove” their virginity.
When Kully (name changed), now a mother of two, got married, she knew there was no way she could have told her husband she was not a virgin. She simply lied. “I did worry the first time we were going to have sex, what would happen? What if he said ‘you’re not a virgin’?”
Yeah, what would happen if Kully’s husband found out she wasn’t a virgin? Would the walls of their house come falling down? Would Brahma or Allah send thunderbolts of lightening down to castrate her husband? Would she all of a sudden develop vagina dentata? I’ll tell you what SHOULD happen: Absolutely nothing. In this day and age, a woman’s virginity or lack there of should have no bearing on her “worth” as an individual.
The fact that this sort of cultural misogyny is allowed to survive with narily a raised eyebrow within the Asian community is both frustrating and confounding. One would hope and think that women and men, raised and schooled in the British social tradition, would seek to abandon old world gender stereotypes and instead embrace more progressive views on gender relations and marriage.
And people wonder why Asian women are increasingly willing to date and marry outside of their racial and ethnic groups…
