Virginity Testing Research Articles

A Word from the President

The Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) is honored to cosponsor and participate in a celebration of the life and work of Nawal El Saadawi, who died on March 21, 2021, at the age of eighty-nine.El Saadawi’s life and legacy are at the heart of what AMEWS stands for. Whether writing about medicine or women-related issues in politics, religion, and sexuality, El Saadawi had addressed topics central to the AMEWS mission since the organization’s inception in 1985.Generations of AMEWS members have been inspired by El Saadawi’s life and writings. She broke taboos and linked the liberation of women with the political and cultural liberation of the nation—topics that so many AMEWS members wrote about and discussed in dozens of panels, hence transmitting her legacy from generation to generation.Inside the MENA region, El Saadawi’s writings shocked governments, religious scholars, and intellectuals and subjected her to accusations of blasphemy. Her books were banned, and she herself was imprisoned for her fearless writings and spent years in exile for saying, “I speak the truth, and truth is dangerous.”El Saadawi condemned anything she considered a tool of women’s oppression. In The Hidden Face of Eve she describes the physical and psychological trauma of female circumcision; the practice was criminalized in Egypt in 2008. She denounced virginity tests sold in British clinics. “Circumcision was not my choice, but now I have the choice to say what I think of it.” She never turned her back on any form of women’s oppression.El Saadawi addressed women’s issues throughout the modern history of the MENA region. Her thought evolved with the evolution of the phases, but one message remained consistent: women have brains that some religious people (whom she qualified as “traders of religion”) want to veil. This is a message she repeated endlessly to the youth during and after the Arab Spring. When asked by a CNN journalist on August 17, 2016, whether she was pessimistic about the future of the region, she replied in Arabic: I am always optimistic; I even obtained an Award of Optimism from Spain recently. Optimism and hope extend my life. I transform every negative thing into a positive one; I transformed my prison experience into a positive experience, and any attack on me becomes a positive thing because I turn the attack back against the attacker. All pioneers of this world were attacked, imprisoned and even killed, and I am not different. Attacks do not depress me because they make me more influential. I don’t know why people are afraid of attacks.These positive words are what the youth of the MENA region need. They are words that future generations of AMEWS and JMEWS need to hear.

Seismic behavior of hybrid coupled shear wall with replaceable U-shape steel coupling beam using terrestrial laser scanning

The hybrid coupled shear wall (HCW) with replaceable coupling beam (CB) is an optimal component to recover buildings promptly after a severe earthquake. However, the reinstallation may be difficult or impossible with an identical CB because of the inelastic relative dislocation between two wall piers. This study proposes a novel HCW with different reinforcement ratios in the connection, which was tested under cyclic loading. After the test, the bolt holes can be located through terrestrial scanning, which is then utilized to fabricate a new CB that can accommodate the deformation between two wall piers. The newly replaced HCW system was also tested. As a result, all virgin test specimens fail in web fracture and show a significant inelastic chord rotation of 0.2 rad, exhibiting an excellent energy dissipation capacity. Meanwhile, the new method to locate the bolt holes after the test is feasible. The replaced HCW fails in the pull-off of anchor bars and shows poor seismic behavior due to the unpatched concrete cover in the connection. To improve the energy dissipation for the replaced HCW, high-strength grouting in the connection can be used and high-strength material can be used to replace the usual anchor bolts.

Hymen and virginity: What every paediatrician should know.

Paediatricians may face the notion of ‘virginity’ in various situations while caring for children and adolescents, but are often poorly prepared to address this sensitive topic. Virginity is a social construct. Despite medical evidence that there is no scientifically reliable way to determine virginity, misconceptions about the hymen and its supposed association with sexual history persist and lead to unethical practices like virginity testing, certificate of virginity or hymenoplasty, which can be detrimental to the health and well‐being of females of all ages. The paediatrician has a crucial role in providing evidence‐based information and promoting positive sexual education to children, adolescents and parents. Improving knowledge can help counter misconceptions and reduce harms to girls and women.

Corporate social responsibility and traditional practices recognised as violence against women in Nigeria’s oil region

ABSTRACT We examine the impact of multinational oil companies’ (MOCs’) corporate social responsibility (CSR) on traditional practices recognised as violence against women and girls (VAWG) in Nigeria’s oil region. Results from a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that MOCs’ CSR plays a significant role in empowering women and girls with information and education to protect their human rights. It is implied that CSR offers an opportunity for MOCs to help address the prevalence of child early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, sex trafficking, virginity testing, and taboos through a business case for stakeholders’ human rights protection.

Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon (by Nicola Pratt)

Reviewed by: Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women's Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon by Nicola Pratt Sher Afgan Tareen Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women's Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon Nicola Pratt University of California Press, 2020, 224 pages In 2011, people across North Africa and the Middle East (MENA) region gathered in public spaces to denounce tyranny. The filming of a crowd gathered around the burning body of Mohammed Bouzizi, a young Tunisian man who set himself on fire in late 2010 in retaliation against the police seizing his scales for working as a street vendor without a permit, is routinely attributed for triggering the uproar. But the profile of Arab women protesters has received far more extensive coverage than the tragic death of Bouzizi might suggest. Western media accounts framed women who had gathered at Tahrir Square as pioneers in speaking out against male aggressors. According to Nicola Pratt, Arab women activists not only predate the 2010 uprisings but have also routinely both upheld and upended the geopolitical order through cultivating a feeling of "respectability." Her book Embodied Geopolitics: Generations of Women's Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon traces the recurrence of respectability in the geopolitics of these three countries over the course of the 20th century with particular focus on the following key moments: the late-19th and early 20th-century decolonization movement, the 1967 Six Day War (remembered as a catastrophy or a Nakba) and ensuing student-led Palestinian Movement, the proliferation of NGOs and advocacy for women's rights during the late 1980s and '90s, and lastly the restoration of military rule in the fallout after the Arab uprisings. "Respectability" is a feminine virtue that defines itself against the specter of a repressed woman living under the scrutiny of a male kin within the confines of the home. But during the early 20th century, the daughters, wives, and sisters of Arab nationalist leaders leveraged the expansion of higher education and emergence of women's clubs to cultivate respectability, thereby transforming it from a gift of the colonizer to an indigenous attribute of Al-mar'a al-jadida, "the new woman." This new woman dissolved polygamy and reformed marriage from an obligatory to an intimate relationship that avails opportunities for extending educational opportunities to the poor as well as nurturing children into civic-minded citizens. As the reproductive powers of women enveloped child-rearing into a larger project of giving birth to the nascent nation-state, the older [End Page 123] hierarchy between the colonizer and the colonized collapsed while a newer hierarchy between national/natural and foreign/unnatural women arose. The latter includes a large number of women who are ineligible to pass on their national identity to their children, due to marrying a man with a different nationality, instilling in these women a feeling of foreignness created by personal status laws. Personal status laws in Lebanon, for instance, create equality between the various sectarian groups that make up the national assembly on the basis of a consensus among its members of women's subordination to their male kin. Since the decolonization of Arab nation-states, women have continued to enact competing visions of female "respectability" amid an ongoing struggle against personal status laws. At moments of disillusionment with the existing regime, female respectability conveys disrespect for the male elders in the family. But when unrest descends into chaos, hastening calls for a return to order, female respectability restores the family and by extension the nation. During the fallout of the Arab uprisings, for instance, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hailed the Egyptian daughter who fights for women's rights while his regime jailed female protesters and subjugated them to forced virginity tests inside the prison cells. The suspicion that they had slept with male protesters in outdoor tents not only made their bodies uncouth, but more importantly a threat to national security. By studying the geopolitics of the MENA region through the frame of female respectability, Pratt reveals that the seemingly abstract ideas such as colonialism, decolonization, neoliberalism, and martial law are in fact gendered practices waged over women's bodies. While conventional studies are replete with maps charting the influence of...

VIRGINITY TESTING IN THE UNITED STATES: PREVALENCE AND EFFECTS

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of virginity testing in the United States and its effects on the psychosocial wellbeing of young girls and women. The test has proven unreliable and might have adverse psychosocial effects on patients, but most medical societies do not provide guidance about virginity testing to healthcare providers.

“If we didn't talk, we would be like ostriches burying our heads in the sand”: Attitudes toward sexuality, gender, and sex education among child protection social workers in Egypt

The incidence of sexual and gender-based violence, including child marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, virginity testing, sexual harassment, and child sexual abuse, is high in Egypt. Child protection social workers must deal with children who have been victims of such practices and must provide the sex education that is necessary for its prevention, but the “culture of silence” that surrounds sexuality in Egypt may make this difficult. A survey of 86 child protection social workers and 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to better understand how they viewed and dealt with sexuality, sexual and reproductive health education, gender roles, and sexual and gender-based violence. Analysis of both the survey and interviews revealed that most of the research participants strongly believed in the importance of sexuality education. However, they also held misconceptions about masturbation, menstruation, men’s ability to control sexual desire, virginity and sensitivity of female reproductive organs, as well as gender stereotypes that supported gender-based violence and gender inequality. Based on these results, recommendations are made for culturally appropriate training to build social workers’ capacity for addressing sexuality and gender issues in their child protection practice.

The ‘Virtue’ Vertigo: Case of the Paradoxical Virginity Test in Rape Cases

The social concerns attributed to a woman’s bodily autonomy to date stand the test of reason. The recent judgment of the Lahore High Court deeming the derisive ‘virginity test’ on grounds of ‘invasion and infringement on the privacy of a woman to her body has been lauded by women and gender activists across jurisdictions. However, the narrative of crimes against women paints a grim picture. The very existence of the test has garnered much attention and ridicule on account of the malignant impact on the physical, psychological and social well-being of a victim of crime, as abominable as rape. A specimen is the test of virginity, which though now stands unconstitutional in India, yet was prevalent up until 2013. What needs to be noted in this context is that the said test instead of corroborating evidence to the crime of rape places the victim on trial. Needless to say that the dynamics of the virginity test is highly invasive2, having no scientific or medical requirement3, yet carried out garbed under the demands of medical protocols in sexual violence cases4. Needless to say, it is a humiliating practice, which is employed as an instrument of casting suspicion on the victim, more so her character, as opposed to focusing on the accused and the incident of sexual violence5. The current symbolism around the sexual autonomy of women and the construction of gender remain facile, more so fictive6. In this paper, I argue how the standard protocol of collection of medical evidence in trials of sexual crimes, is influenced by social constructs leading to perpetuation attached to coloring a woman’s chastity through the determination of her woman’s sexual history.

Analysis of fracture energy in drop weight tear testing of API X65 gas pipeline steel

In this research, the effect of low velocity impact (LVI) on different components of fracture energy of API X65 gas pipeline steel is investigated using drop weight tear test (DWTT) specimens. For this purpose, twenty one test specimens (arranged in seven similar test groups) were used. The LVI tests were carried out first on six test groups by releasing the machine hammer from different heights from 0.05 m to 0.3 m. Then, full fracture DWTTs were conducted on all seven test groups using 2 m drop height. The fracture energy of tested specimens and its different components were calculated from test data using an instrumented hammer. These were compared to similar energies of virgin test specimens. It was found that by increasing LVI energy, yield energy increased up to 26% due to work hardening. However, crack initiation energy decreased significantly (down to 48%) due to plastic deformation at crack tip and crack tip blunting. By considering energy consumption, a novel test technique was presented for exact determination of crack initiation point.

Virginity Test in Police Recruitment System: Evidence from Indonesia

It is difficult for women to become police officers in Indonesia. One of the mandatory requirements is to become a virgin. Women who are no longer virgins cannot pass the selection. However, if the woman's hymen is damaged not because of sexual intercourse but because of an accident, she still hopes to become a police officer. This study aims to examine the virgin criteria as a requirement to become a policewoman in Indonesia. This quantitative study examines the virginity for police admission based on virginity requirements from a human rights perspective and the concept of innocence. Inspired by the idea of purity from Hanne Blank that celibacy does not reflect a known biological necessity and provides no demonstrable evolutionary advantage. This article says that police virginity testing is not essential and makes up discrimination of women's opportunity to become a police officer because there is no correlation between virginity and police duty. This article evaluates this activity performed Indonesian police force from the lights of human rights. It criticizes the policy development specification of Indonesia which is even poor than India and Muslim countries as even in this country women empowerment is prioritized and respected. This country is needed to incorporate changes in this policy.

African Traditional Religion Encounters Christianity: The Resilience of a Demonized Religion

African Traditional Religion Encounters Christianity: The Resilience of a Demonized Religion

Gendered Protests Projecting Women’s Voices of ‘Otherness’ through Songs of [i]ukuthombisa[/i] in Zulu Social Discourse

In the Zulu patriarchal society, women have always found ways to express themselves in song. The language used in ukuthombisa songs mainly addresses the issues of gender and power in traditional society. Young maidens use these songs to negotiate their ethnic and gender identities. They forge their cultural roles as they reach puberty, when making the transition from childhood to adulthood. This article examines the power of song and the effectiveness of the choice by young maidens to use profanity and linguistic taboos to navigate their way in this discourse. These songs denounce promiscuous male behavior and the way it destroys the innocence of young virgins. In attempting to take back power from men, young maidens hurl insults at the penis for what it does to destroy the purity of the vagina. This article investigates how sexual morality in Zulu social discourse, and the negotiation of cultural and gender identities, has become an affirmation of womanhood and of the purity of virginal bodies. Keywords: Ukuthombisa songs, Language, Scatology, Performance, Virginity testing, Gender

Corporate Social Responsibility and Traditional Practices Recognized as Violence Against Women in Nigeria’s Oil Region

We examine the impact of multinational oil companies’ (MOCs’) corporate social responsibility (CSR) on traditional practices recognized as violence against women and girls (VAWG) in Nigeria’s oil region. Results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that MOCs’ CSR play a significant role in empowering women and girls with information and education to protect their human rights. This implies that CSR offers an opportunity for MOCs to help address prevalence of child early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, sex trafficking, virginity testing, and taboos through a business case for stakeholders’ human right protection.

Girls and women speak out from Afghan moral prisons: Tackling extremism and violence against women in a conflict environment

ABSTRACT This empirical research documented voices of women and girls in female shelters and prisons in Samangan, Laghman and Wardak provinces who experienced systematic sexual and gender based violence before and after they escaped forced marriages, forced virginity tests, physical and sexual violence. Women who challenged the status quo, fundamentalism and extremism faced imprisonment for up to five years. The research interviewed primary, secondary and territory health care professionals, who carried out or witnessed invasive virginity tests. The evidence suggests that women are being deprived of basic human rights of exercising autonomy and freedom. It shows difficulties some health professionals’ encounter in documenting, reporting and treating cases of violence against women and girls. The research concludes that a survivor-centered approach, and secular framework is required against tyranny, misogyny and oppression. Instead of imposing moral arguments and harmful laws that undermine women’s rights, brave leadership at many levels is required to tackle health inequities, dismantle patriarchy, counter fundamentalism and other entrenched systems of inequality. A new kind of feminist citizenship is needed not based on identity but political values.

Traditional Practices and Human Rights: An Insight on a Traditional Practice in Inchanga Village of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

After falling into absolute dereliction in the Zulu community, the traditional practice of virginity inspection made a retaliation some 10 years ago, after the country’s first democratic elections. This study investigates the perceptions and experiences of virginity inspection of female adolescents in Inchanga village, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A focus group interview was conducted with 10 Zulu maidens for qualitative data collection. Proponents of virginity inspection believe that virginity inspection is a traditional practice that can assist in reducing HIV infection and teenage pregnancy among the youth, and in the detection of children who are sexually abused by adults. Opponents of virginity testing, such as several human rights groups in South Africa, as well as the South African Human Rights Commission of virginity inspection, strongly believe that the practice of virginity inspection interferes with human rights and constitutional prescripts that protect the rights to equality, privacy, bodily integrity, and sexual autonomy of young women. The study found that the participants have only positive experiences of the practice of virginity inspection, and the only negative experiences they encounter are negative responses from community members who do not support the practice. The findings also confirmed that virginity inspection is being done irrespective of different opinions from different scholars and experts on the subject, and most of the time, the age of the children is not considered.

Statement of the Independent Forensic Expert Group on Conversion Therapy

Conversion therapy is a set of practices that aim to change or alter an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity. It is premised on a belief that an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed and that doing so is a desirable outcome for the individual, family, or community. Other terms used to describe this practice include sexual orientation change effort (SOCE), reparative therapy, reintegrative therapy, reorientation therapy, ex-gay therapy, and gay cure. Conversion therapy is practiced in every region of the world. We have identified sources confirming or indicating that conversion therapy is performed in over 60 countries. In those countries where it is performed, a wide and variable range of practices are believed to create change in an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity. Some examples of these include: talk therapy or psychotherapy (e.g., exploring life events to identify the cause); group therapy; medication (including anti-psychotics, anti- depressants, anti-anxiety, and psychoactive drugs, and hormone injections); Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (where an individual focuses on a traumatic memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation); electroshock or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) (where electrodes are attached to the head and electric current is passed between them to induce seizure); aversive treatments (including electric shock to the hands and/or genitals or nausea-inducing medication administered with presentation of homoerotic stimuli); exorcism or ritual cleansing (e.g., beating the individual with a broomstick while reading holy verses or burning the individual's head, back, and palms); force-feeding or food deprivation; forced nudity; behavioural conditioning (e.g., being forced to dress or walk in a particular way); isolation (sometimes for long periods of time, which may include solitary confinement or being kept from interacting with the outside world); verbal abuse; humiliation; hypnosis; hospital confinement; beatings; and "corrective" rape. Conversion therapy appears to be performed widely by health professionals, including medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, sexologists, and therapists. It is also conducted by spiritual leaders, religious practitioners, traditional healers, and community or family members. Conversion therapy is undertaken both in contexts under state control, e.g., hospitals, schools, and juvenile detention facilities, as well as in private settings like homes, religious institutions, or youth camps and retreats. In some countries, conversion therapy is imposed by the order or instructions of public officials, judges, or the police. The practice is undertaken with both adults and minors who may be lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or gender diverse. Parents are also known to send their children back to their country of origin to receive it. The practice supports the belief that non-heterosexual orientations are deviations from the norm, reflecting a disease, disorder, or sin. The practitioner conveys the message that heterosexuality is the normal and healthy sexual orientation and gender identity. The purpose of this medico-legal statement is to provide legal experts, adjudicators, health care professionals, and policy makers, among others, with an understanding of: 1) the lack of medical and scientific validity of conversion therapy; 2) the likely physical and psychological consequences of undergoing conversion therapy; and 3) whether, based on these effects, conversion therapy constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or torture when individuals are subjected to it forcibly2 or without their consent. This medico-legal statement also addresses the responsibility of states in regulating this practice, the ethical implications of offering or performing it, and the role that health professionals and medical and mental health organisations should play with regards to this practice. Definitions of conversion therapy vary. Some include any attempt to change, suppress, or divert an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. This medico-legal statement only addresses those practices that practitioners believe can effect a genuine change in an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity. Acts of physical and psychological violence or discrimination that aim solely to inflict pain and suffering or punish individuals due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, are not addressed, but are wholly condemned. This medico-legal statement follows along the lines of our previous publications on Anal Examinations in Cases of Alleged Homosexuality1 and on Forced Virginity Testing.2 In those statements, we opposed attempts to minimise the severity of physical and psychological pain and suffering caused by these examinations by qualifying them as medical in nature. There is no medical justification for inflicting on individuals torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. In addition, these statements reaffirmed that health professionals should take no role in attempting to control sexuality and knowingly or unknowingly supporting state-sponsored policing and punishing of individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Virginity testing: recommendations for primary care physicians in Europe and North America

Virginity testing is a complex, culturally mediated practice that is poorly understood by Western clinicians. While advocating for global elimination of the practice of virginity testing as a human rights...

The travesty of virginity testing: A jurisprudential review

The term “Virginity” has been defined in two senses: being ‘chaste’1, that is, not having had sexual intercourse; and the other definition pertaining to the presence of hymen-a piece of tissue surrounding the vagina. For a thin, (barely 1mm thick)1 piece of tissue, a lot of faith is vested in the hymen. While there is a plethora of known methods currently in practice to test the virginity of a woman, there might be more, existing in remote communities that we are yet unaware of. This article deals with the credibility of virginity testing and the impact it has on the examinee.

The contribution of harmful traditional practices to HIV transmission among adolescent and adult females in Sub-Saharan Africa: a victimological approach

Harmful traditional practices are manifestations of gender-based discrimination caused by rooted unequal power relations between females and males and also represent a serious human rights violation affecting the rights of girls and women to health and safety. Although they are as diverse as the culture in which they occur, a common attribute of these practices is that they are related to female sexuality and are often enforced as a way of strengthening male domination. This study analyses the potential association between the harmful aspects of widow inheritance, virginity testing, female genital mutilation, and HIV transmission in adolescent and adult females. The main results of this analysis show how harmful traditional practices are mostly carried out without the consent of the victims involved and thus constitute a violation of international human rights laws. In general, this article significantly contributes to the multifaceted field of the victimology of human rights.

Statement on Virginity Testing

Virginity examinations are practiced in many countries, and often forcibly, in a number of contexts, including in detention places; on women who allege rape; on women who are accused by authorities of prostitution; and as part of public or social policies to control sexuality. In other states, the practice is illegal.
 The purpose of this medico-legal statement is to provide legal experts, adjudicators, healthcare professionals, and policymakers, among others, with an understanding of the physical and psychological effects of forcibly conducting virginity examinations on females and to assess whether, based on these effects, forcibly conducted virginity examinations constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or torture. This medico-legal statement also addresses the medical interpretation and relevance of such examinations and the ethical implications. This opinion considers an examination to be ‘forcibly conducted’ when it is “committed by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person incapable of giving genuine consent.”
 
 For full details about the Independent Forensic Expert Group please visit http://www.irct.org/our-support/ medical-and-psychological-case-support/forensic-expertgroup.aspx.