How Is The Hymen Repaired
Women Accept Surgery to 'Restore' Virginity
June 20, 2003 -- In a earth of extreme makeovers where human bodies are now fashioned to guild, this may be the ultimate plastic surgery. It is for women only. It is veiled in secrecy. And it fixes a tiny part of the beefcake rarely mentioned in polite company.
You may know it by a diverseness of slang terms. Technically, it'due south the hymen, a thin membrane that partially covers the opening of the vagina. A girl who has never had sexual intercourse is supposed to have her hymen intact.
Now, a new surgical technique is giving girls with a past a new future.
"The hymen'due south a delicate membrane that separates girls from women," said Dr. Robert Stubbs, who runs the Corrective Surgicentre in Toronto, where, in a simple, half-60 minutes operation, he turns sexually experienced women into surgical virgins.
The surgery is chosen hymen restoration — a relatively simple procedure that stitches dorsum together what a moment of passion might have shattered.
'Queen of Virginity'
In New York City, the operation has created a new grade of royalty: "They call me the Queen of the Virginity, " says Cuban-born Esmeralda Venegas, who runs the Ridgewood Health and Dazzler Center in Queens.
Here, lath-certified plastic surgeons repair the thin membrane, either by stitching the frayed ends together or past adding a patch of tissue from the vaginal walls. Either way, it's a procedure that'due south a lot easier and less dangerous than the usual nips and tucks women come here for.
Merely the psychic pain associated with the determination to undergo the surgery is immense. Nosotros met ane immature woman, a 17-yr-old nosotros'll phone call Rosalita, who — forced by centuries of tradition — traveled incognito to Venegas' clinic.
"I heard when I was young that all the girls that become married, they bled for the first time," Rosalita said.
For Rosalita, the idea that brides should drain on their wedding ceremony night was very of import.
"Yep, that'southward of import, because they know that you are a virgin," she said.
But Rosalita is non a virgin. She's come to the clinic to regain what she lost during a recent holiday — a moment of lust, she says, non love.
Rosalita is from the Dominican Republic and lives in New Jersey with her mother. She doesn't accept a boyfriend right now, but believes she'll never go married without at least the illusion of virginity.
Catering to a Culture of Adulthood
She's not alone. Venegas says several hundred scared young women from many cultures — Latinas, Mideasterners, Chinese, Koreans — have paid her $ii,500 each to have their hymens restored. Certain, it'due south a business, she says, but what's backside the practice makes Venegas angry.
"It's nigh adulthood, 100 percent," she said.
In fact, the hymen is non a reliable marking of virginity. In many girls, it is torn or destroyed during active sports. Merely that hasn't tarnished its allure. And even if it'south fake, Stubbs is willing to go on with the ruse.
When asked whether he believed that by restoring a woman's hymen he was restoring her virginity, Stubbs said: "Well, what is virginity? Virginity is non well divers."
Necessary Deception?
But, in fact, a adult female who'southward had sexual relations is non a virgin, and by restoring the hymen Stubbs and other surgeons are allowing patients to be deceptive.
"Yes. Oh, I concord. I mean, I'chiliad not saying it's not deceptive," he said. "Just at that place are little white lies and big lies."
That deception is acceptable, says Stubbs, for patients whose civilisation makes this surgery far more serious … perhaps a matter of life and death.
A immature woman nosotros'll call Fatima has gone to Stubbs' dispensary. She says she doesn't like the thought of deceiving a future husband, but says she feels she must.
"I'yard not going to experience comfortable to prevarication to him. But I guess I have to prevarication to protect the relationship," she said.
Fatima, 20 or and so, is from the Middle Eastward and came to the Toronto area with her family unit as a teenager. A Muslim, she says her family unit is not observant, simply is very traditional. And then every time she met with her ex-boyfriend she had to sneak out of the business firm and lie to her parents.
Her parents likewise don't know that she'due south come to Stubbs' dispensary. "I could never always tell them that, never. I would tell them annihilation, but not this," she said.
Fatima says if she is non a virgin when she gets married she would be humiliated — and maybe killed, perchance even by her parents.
Accolade Killing
Fatima is talking nearly honor killing … a ghastly, aboriginal ritual in the Middle East. We traveled to Cairo, Arab republic of egypt, to learn nearly the roots of the practice, and were told it rarely happens today, just is always a possibility in a civilization where the virginity of a bride belongs to the whole family unit.
"For them, if she loses her virginity, that ways she has disgraced the whole family," co-ordinate to Iman Bibars, a adult female who has long fought to raise the status of Egyptian women — peculiarly poor women, for whom, Bibars says, "virginity is their well-nigh valuable possession."
Simply astoundingly, this precious item doesn't even vest to the women themselves.
"It is something that belongs to their father and their brother and their uncle that they have to continue in a safe place until the family approves of how they give it abroad," she said.
Put another mode, "The honor of the family and of the men are in between the legs of the woman," Bibars said.
Equality — Except When It Comes to Sex
To illustrate merely how ingrained this notion is in traditional Arabic cultures, consider this: In Arabic, the hymen is referred to colloquially as "wish al-aptitude," or "face of the girl." In other words, without it, you have no identity, you are no one.
Even very hip, well-off university students in Cairo agree this conventionalities.
Students we spoke with agreed that is very important for women to remain virgins before marriage. They said that among their friends, girls don't have sex before they become married.
"Information technology's the notion that women are a very pure thing, very pure creatures that, men shouldn't touch women out of anything only a sacred relationship that is marriage," one female student said.
The immature men — who study and work with the women as equals — heartily agreed. They all expected that the women they marry will be virgins.
Yet they don't have to be virgin grooms, nor does any other human being in this supposed equal society.
The male students acknowledged that there is equality in many aspects of their lodge — except in the surface area of virginity.
In fact, the female students said they thought information technology was unlikely that the men they marry will be virgins.
These students said they'd heard well-nigh hymen restoration for women, but don't really approve of it. I pupil said she'd live alone rather than live a prevarication.
Just other female person students said that if a woman who has had sexual activity really wants to become married, she should go ahead and accept the performance.
In Cairo, as in much of the Middle East, the operation is a secret, not just for the patients, but for the doctors as well. There is no law against hymen reconstruction, merely it carries such a stigma that no physician twenty/20 contacted there would either acknowledge it was being washed or fifty-fifty talk about it.
Nevertheless, Stubbs says he's received e-mails from doctors in Egypt and all effectually the world request him to explain how to do the surgery. He is the acknowledged expert.
Some of these women accept to be examined by a gynecologist before their hymeneals night, so the surgery has got to be convincing. But Stubbs says he thinks he can fool even a gynecologist.
And all-time of all, says Stubbs, he can fool the family on the wedding night, when the bride will, as required, drain.
Caught Between Tradition and a New Reality
Back in New York, that's Rosalita's goal for the procedure.
Like all the women nosotros talked to, she knows that a few sutures don't really make her a virgin again. And that simple surgery doesn't close the civilisation gap. But for a generation defenseless between the traditions of their past and the reality of their lives today, this little functioning at least offers an alternative to dishonor, or even the possibility of death.
Fatima, who underwent the procedure at Stubbs' dispensary, wants people in her culture to empathize what she'due south going through and perhaps reconsider their long-held behavior.
"I'm trying to give them a message; maybe they would effort to modify a bit — and forget about the old fashion and move on to more important things in life."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/WomensHealth/story?id=123701&page=1
Posted by: reedfreyed.blogspot.com
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