Sick, sad, wrong and maybe a life saver

Sorry to get back on religion’s ass so soon, but I stumbled across this blog post the other day and was horrified by it. I warn, I’m posting something gross looking later in the post, and what I’ll be talking about is disturbing, and I’ll be swearing a bit more than usual. This ain’t some dig at a bad disaster flick (Noah), but a dig at the most twisted aspect of religious ideology: Virginity fetish.

Getting to it…

Gigimo is a Chinese company specializing in sex toys, ya know, rubber genitals and such. But Gigimo is quickly becoming known as a heretical company of epic proportions for selling fake hymen kits in the Middle East. The ideological religious morons (read: fuckheads) in Egypt are going ballistic because in their dim view this product, which spews blood like a Hollywood special effect, will create a world wherein virginity — “provable” with a white sheet catching the blood of a wounded, injured hymen — is obsolete.  Fake blood spews, a non-virgin (or simply a woman who broke her hymen years ago, like by bike riding) is not discovered for her “atrocity.”

Why does this have to be two virgins? Can no one have decent sex on their wedding night?

Of course there need be no proof of the man’s virginity in this whole sordid affair. His is assumed by virtue of being a man, or is all together irrelevant (re: being a man). This hypocrisy matters little in the minds of those with the virgin fetish: the kind of twisted pricks who get off on some perceived innocence about women too which a penis is an unknown anatomical organ. To them it is the woman (Eve, or some other apple eating hussy) who tempts the man, and therefore it is the woman who must be pure. Men, we can’t help but be pure if not for women.

I know that religion — particularly the Catholicism I was raised in — has a deep, and twisted appreciation of virginity, but to reach the point where women feel so worried, and scared of retribution that they are seeking out “fake” virginity…I don’t get how that makes sense in a modern world. I mean, I understand that Muslim women in areas of the Middle East feel pressured to be virgins (even fake virgins) from early childhood, but Christ.

From the original article:

“Bleeding is not the only signal that yes, she’s a virgin,” said Heba Kotb, an observant Muslim woman who hosts a sex talk show on TV in which she fields calls from all over the Middle East.

Kotb noted that … many women still secretly seek out [hymenoplasty] in fear of punishment for pre-marital sex.

Such punishment could include slayings at the hands of relatives, a practice more commonly referred to as honor killings and common in the more conservative tribal areas of the Middle East.” (Italics mine.)

Honor killings? Sick bastards. Here they are saying a bullshit, zombie movie effect like this  may “make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation,” and — just a reminder — if you use it they’ll advocate for your death. If your hymen is not intact, they will advocate for your death. If you’re just being a normal damn human being, these sick individuals will advocate for your death.

Have a look at the product that may lead to some woman being murdered by mindless sadists.

A fake hymen kit. Loaded, and ready to fool an idiot.

A woman places this contraption inside of herself 20 minutes before sex, and then when the moment arrives–BAM!–blood on the dance floor.

But do not dare think that those less “conservative” areas of the Middle East are better. Remember the case of the 8-year-old Liberian girl gang raped in Phoenix earlier this year? Remember it because of what the family did: they disowned her for “shaming” them. I don’t know which is worse: Shunning a raped child or killing for “honor”? I only know that this whole emphasis is backward, archaic, and totally unnecessary.

In my mind I don’t see what the point of lauding virgins. I get at least one spam letter a month about “hot virgins” and I’m always like, “What the hell would be sexy about that?” When I was a teenager most of what I thought about involved sex, and all I wanted was to shed my virginal shame so as to finally understand what all the guys in the locker room were talking about. And having been a virgin, and having been with virgins (in the Biblical sense) I can affirm that it is awkward, frightening, and really not that fun. At all. At least not when compared to later sex when you’re actually good at it. That first time is the worst time.

Most people I know have similar stories. The guys, we came too soon. The gals, they didn’t at all. I remember rolling away from my first girlfriend and knowing full well that that was not a good thing. If there were Olympic judges there I surely would not have gone to the medal round. Virgins are really bad at sex because they’re virgins. That’s the essence of it. I don’t know why we have to give some higher moral standing to virgins, and not simply think of them as “People who have not yet learned to fuck.” There’s no shame in being one, but their shouldn’t be some advantage–holy or otherwise.

Neither I, nor my wife, were “pure” when we exchanged vows. We’d been with other people. It does not in any way reduce our love, or the commitment in our marriage. I did not need a bloody sheet beneath us to know that we were in love, and were fine together. I only needed her with me. John Lennon and Yoko Ono had plenty of partners before each other, and named their avant garde noise album “Two Virgins” because that’s how they felt as they discovered each other. Their “virginity” was one of emotion and feeling, and not the body. When Lennon and Ono got it on there was an innocence, a humble vulnerability. And that virginity says more about two people than a bloody rag.

Above, two non-virgins just after their wedding ceremony. Also pictured: Another non-virgin who just had to be in her own damn photo. Sorry for the douchebag grin on my face. (Photo by Eleena Fikhman)

It depresses me to think that this exulting of virgins exists in 2009. Wouldn’t we all be happier knowing that people are just loving themselves, and others?

Of course, then there’s this fact: this fake hymen is going to save lives. And I guess in a world this backward, that’s a good thing.