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Virginity Testing: A Global Crisis

For centuries, the state of a girl’s or woman’s hymen has been used, unscientifically, to determine virginity. The fact is, there is simply no physical way to test if a woman, or a man, has had sex. Despite that, every year, thousands of women around the world endure invasive virginity tests, which are often sanctioned by doctors, hospitals, courts, and governments and carry tremendous and sometimes fatal punishments for women. A year ago this month, the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Human Rights, and UN Women called on governments to ban virginity testing globally because it “violates several human rights and ethical standards including the fundamental principle in medicine to do no harm.”…

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Featured

 A Test With No Answer

No procedure exists that can prove virginity, yet dangerously unscientific virginity tests occur regularly—even in the United States. Marie Claire, in partnership with the Fuller Project, investigates the controversial exams and the gray area surrounding them that endangers both patients and medical professionals.

 It’s Time to Retire the Concept of ‘Losing Your Virginity’

Virginity has always been bound up with the oppression of women, a tool for controlling our bodies, sexuality, and fertility. It has also, therefore, always been a label imposed on women’s bodies from without, part of a language of commodification and objectification, rather than a term developed to describe a subjective, internal experience.

 Top Health Organizations Call for an End to Virginity Testing

“Virginity testing is and has always been a violation of human rights and a form of gender-based violence."

 Virginity testing and hymen repair surgery are set to be banned in the UK

These procedures are based on “repressive and inaccurate views about female virginity”.

Articles of Interest

'Now I have to check your hymen': the shocking persistence of virginity tests

Despite years of research dispelling the long-held myth surrounding the hymen – that it breaks after a woman’s first vaginal penetration – its power pertains. Its power remains even after a study from 1906 showed that a sex-worker’s hymen was still intact – which should have been enough to dispel the myth. So too, should have been a 2004 study, which studied 36 pregnant women, 34 of which still had an intact hymen. Still, the myth is so compelling that people would rather believe in virgin pregnancies than facts.

Breakthrough made in fight to end virginity testing in Afghanistan

Breakthrough made in fight to end virginity testing in Afghanistan.

Girls traumatised by parents who force them to have virginity tests

Virginity testing is indeed completely legal in Romania, despite the World Health Organisation and UN calling it a violation of human rights in 2018. There is also growing anger that the such tests are still available within the European Union, where Romania plays an increasingly pivotal role in the east.

Indonesia army signals end to ‘virginity test’ for female recruits

Human rights groups welcome chief of staff’s apparent decision to end the decades-long, ‘abusive’ practice

Indonesia’s ‘Virginity Tests’ Obsession Highlights Its Truly Rotten Armed Forces

For decades, Indonesian women wishing to join the armed forces and police force, and also those planning to marry military officers, have had to quietly undergo a humiliating procedure known as the “virginity test.” It’s a dirty secret that wasn’t made public — until Human Rights Watch began highlighting the practice. In a report released last week, the New York City–based advocacy group called for Indonesia’s military to stop imposing virginity tests on female recruits and fiancées of military officers — six months after revealing that Indonesia female police candidates were required to take the test.

Rollback of Women's Rights: Not Just in Afghanistan

Polygamy, stoning of adulterers, virginity testing, and laws that protect batterers are on the rise in increasingly conservative nations.

The Controversy Around Virginity Testing

It was really difficult to get women to open up and talk about this issue because it's incredibly private. And of the women that I did interview, there was a handful that had undergone this procedure as children, in their teen years around puberty. And all of them said that they found it incredibly traumatizing. And some said that they considered it to be sexual assault or rape.

Virginity testing: a systematic review

So-called virginity testing, also referred to as hymen, two-finger, or per vaginal examination, is the inspection of the female genitalia to assess if the examinee has had or has been habituated to sexual intercourse. This paper is the first systematic review of available evidence on the medical utility of virginity testing by hymen examination and its potential impacts on the examinee.

Why are virginity tests still legal across America in 2020?

Reminder: the state of your hymen is not an indicator of whether you’ve had sex. Yet there are no laws banning exams

Women suffer the myths of the hymen and the virginity test

No matter the method, there are two aspects often used to determine a woman’s virginity: an intact hymen and a tight vaginal opening. Both are still widely believed to signify virginity in women; neither is a reliable basis for such a conclusion.

‘Virginity testing’: a human rights violation, with no scientific basis - UN

The statement, which was issued during the World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) in Rio de Janeiro, stresses that such tests are both unscientific, and a violation of human rights. So-called “virginity testing” – also often referred to as hymen, “two-finger” or per vaginal examination – is a gynecological inspection of female genitalia carried out in the false belief that it can reliably determine whether a woman or girl has had vaginal intercourse.

‘Virginity tests’ are violent, unnecessary, and without medical merit

There are much better ways to support teen health and safety than hymen checks and two-finger tests.