Yep, apparently for a few hundred bucks a woman can have her hymen replaced. Called an hymenorraphy, it seems this procedure is more popular than you might think.
Personally, I think it is wrong on several levels. Wrong for the woman to keep her past from her future husband, wrong that she would feel the need to. Virginity is more than physical, it is spiritual. Of course my view is purely my own, in no way am I saying this operation should not be available to women, I just don’t get it.
Yeah, this sounds to me like a type of cosmetic surgery specifically devised for the purpose of deception. I seriously hope there isn’t a big market for this kind of thing.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of cultural pressure which tells a woman that if she isn’t a virgin (or, at least, doesn’t have a hymen) on her wedding night, she’s “damaged goods.”
Looking at the website, it appears to me that this is not intended for Western society and culture. It would be a mistake, then, to look at it from that perspective.
Actually, this is performed in the US. Particularly in larger cities such as New York, where there are large populations of Middle-Eastern and Latina women. I found several sites, including one in Los Angeles featuring “Designer Vaginoplasty” that offered this operation.
Personally, I wish I could have my virginity back. Surgery might be able to create a reasonable facsimile of an unruptured hymen, but it cannot alter the fact that you have had sex. I personally can’t see doing it. When Mr. Right finally shows up in my life, he gets me as is, no deceptions.
Of course, if you’re from a culture that prizes virginity that highly, likely to wind up in an arranged marriage with someone you might not feel you can trust enough to let them know that you’ve, uh, been in other relationships, and likely to find yourself beaten up and out on the streets if you don’t bleed on the sheets on your wedding night, I can’t condemn you for having the operation.
Rather than faulting the woman for wanting this kind of operation, I would fault the culture that makes this kind of procedure look attractive.
To really restore virginity is to restore the mind to that state of wonder of the ‘first time’. What one should do is to resolve herself to never to make the mistakes made, or, that is wasn’t her fault the encounter happened. Vow to wait for sometone special to befriend before she engages again. Meanwhile, take a a long period time off from having sex, and concentrate on being a whole person in other aspects. Then one can say that she is a ‘born again’ virgin (you may substitute the phrase if you find it not to your liking). This technique is used for victims of rape.
This artificial hymen, bah!! Though I’m a virgin, I have second-hand knowledge to probably tell that the woman was experienced, extra skin to penetrate or not. It doesn’t really matter to me, as long as she doesn’t use the megaphone to shout ‘Stroke’! However, jokes aside, it is unfortunate that even today such deception is necessary in some cultures.
Um, it may interest you to know that there are ways to destroy the hymen other than to have sex. While I think it’s silly that a woman couldn’t get married because she already had sex, I think it’s downright unfair that she couldn’t get married because she fell off a horse, for example.
capacitor wrote:
For rape victims, that makes sense – but for women who have had voluntary sex?!
Just what we need. Another “sex makes you dirty” society. :rolleyes:
Yeah, tracer, but I say we give him a pass for the sake of the crew joke. 
(typing carefully on account of the oar blisters)
Well there are all sorts of odd people in this world. There are several men’s groups that work to restore their foreskin, don’t ask.
Marc
It is ok if you no longer have your cherry. Just so long as you have the box it came in.
One of the problems here is that the presence of a hyman is not a reliable test for virginity. Some women are born without a hyman, some women lose their hyman in ways other than their first sexual intercorse, and in still other cases women can retain their hyman even after they have sex for the first time.
Yeah, Dr. Lao, but in the last instance, I can’t imagine that the retention of the hymen would get anyone worked up. At least, not in the cultures that prize virginity on the wedding night.
Waste
Flick Lives!
GLWasteful I think they would be more concerened with the last instance than the first two. If only the first two examples were true, but not the last one you could accurately state that all women with intact hymans are virgins even if not all virgins have intact hymans. The last instance, and the surgury mentioned in the OP, cast doubt upon the viriginity of women with intact hymans. So now, (1) the existace of an intact hyman cannot be considered evidence of virginity and (2) the lack of an intact hyman cannot be considered evidence of lost virginity. I think, among cultures that prize virginity, (1) would be more troubling than (2). If within those cultures that prize virginity on the wedding night (for the woman, of course) the hymenorraphy surgury becomes popular, I’m sure tests of the blood on the wedding sheets won’t be far behind. Even if that happens, it doesn’t change the reality. Women who break their hyman on their wedding night are not necessarily virgins. That fact alone should throw a wrench into the certinity of virginity on the wedding night within those cultures.
I guess what I’m trying to say, even if for some reason virginity on the wedding night is important the only way to know the truth is to have a partner you trust and believe him/her. All these tests of virginity don’t amount to anything and I think the practice is silly.
GLWasteful wrote:
Except Orthodox believers in Deuteronomy chapter 22:
This is from the NIV translation. It’s not very obvious in this translation, but the “cloth” in verse 17 means the bedsheets that were supposed to get stained with the blood from the de-virginized woman’s hymen on her wedding night.
Kudos to all the people in this thread who were paying attention (IzzyR, Tzel, PL), and shame on those who evidently weren’t (including the OP–didn’t you read your entire article? Maybe if you’d read it, you’d get it.) Sometimes it pays to go read the link, folks.
Here’s a definitive quote:
I’m sure all those Third World re-made virgins would be real interested to hear that some people in this thread don’t understand why they’d want to have this procedure done.
Actually, as far as reasons go for women in other countries, I can’t say I blame them. But, like I said, this is occuring here in the US, that is the part I don’t understand. I thought woman had come so far here, to feel the need to deceive in such a way kind of astounded me.
I have a friend named John Hymen. I felt the need to share that.
When I was drunk last night, I asked him if he was broken.
–Tim
Don’t call someone a non-virgin in Florida unless you have proof.