Anonymous
I was at a wedding party with my mother when we saw a beautiful young woman enter the hall. My mother’s eyes immediately began tearing up and she sighed. When I asked her why she was saddened, she said that the woman was once her brother’s wife.
“My brother divorced her on their wedding night, when the family found out that that she was not a virgin,” She said, “This happened after she disclosed that a male relative raped her when she was twelve years old.”
The young woman had not mentioned being raped before because of the stigma and shame attached to sexual violence in our community. My uncle himself had been opposed to the divorce but he gave in to pressures from elders in the families. My mother spoke about how the young woman’s life had been completely changed after this incident.
“She has been married several times since then but has never found happened. Her husbands were addicted to opium and therefore unable to maintain family life and divorced her, or old and passed away leaving her a widow. Your uncle has always told me that he will never forget her innocence and beauty during the wedding night,” my mother said.
Many women and girls in Afghanistan face injustices worse than that of this relative of mine. Just last week, an Afghan woman was killed on her wedding night in Baghlan Province for not being able to “prove her virginity.” Her murder didn’t even make the news. It was reported by some journalists on social media. Stigma and isolation, divorce, physical, verbal and sexual violence are also common “repercussions” for not being able to “prove one’s virginity” in our country. Many women are returned to their parents’ house in shame during the night of their wedding because they don’t have a hymen or didn’t bleed during sexual intercourse with their new husband.
The myth that having a hymen equates purity, virtue and virginity leads to overt violence but it also haunts women and girls emotionally and mentally. Like many other Afghan girls, I grew up fearing losing my virginity. My mother didn’t permit me to ride bikes or climb trees because she didn’t want my “hymen to break.” I didn’t enjoy many of the children’s games that boys did because of the value placed on my virginity from a young age. The first time I had my period, I nearly fainted from fear because I thought my hymen had been broken.
In our country, we, women and girls are reminded from an early age that our only worthy is our virginity, which we equate with having an intact hymen. Regardless of whether it is because of rape or anything else, if a girl “loses her virginity,” she faces violence and even death and is treated as a stain on the family’s honor. This myth has caused all of us to have an unconscious level of stress about virginity and be fearful of our bodies.
It is time to break this taboo. We need to talk openly about this issue before it takes more lives. We have to talk to our communities and families and make them aware that one’s worth shouldn’t be determined by the status of their hymen, but by their character. We should spread awareness about the fact that hymens do not equate virginity or virtue or else men would have a difficult time proving their own virtue. Many girls are born without an intact hymen and “losing” it doesn’t make anyone bad or unworthy. All girls and women, especially those who have experienced sexual violence and rape, do not deserve to be further stigmatized by our inaccurate, sexist, and unscientific standards of virginity and purity. For too many women in our country, their first night of wedding is filled with terror and fear. Isn’t it better to start our marriages with love, understanding and trust?
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Read this piece in Persian here.
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