myths and metaphors of Arab women's sexuality 

by Her

written in retaliation to Cairo’s masturbating taxi drivers and other urban perverts

How can you ask the Arab woman to celebrate her body? Will an Arab sexual revolution ever occur? Can the current pantheon of Arab feminists address the sexual curiosities of present and forthcoming generations of Arab adolescents? Or shall the prurient continue to seek sexual education in the pages of foreign magazines that adorn their local newsstands, boldly advisory on matters of sensual pleasures that neither haboba nor imam can answer? Isn’t Cosmopolitan more resourceful to the sexually speculative Arab girl than Sayidati? Is Arabo-medical feminism explicit enough regarding women’s sexual health issues? These are but some of the modern conundrums that occupy relative space in every-day Arab feminist rhetoric, but are hardly ever effectively answered nor given significant attention.           

With the explosive advent of tech-revolutions and their global imports, the influences on women’s bodies multiply. Wombs are made and sold, and genetic engineering is brewed in foreign laboratories. Before a rapid advancement of science and technology reveals itself to Middle Eastern feminist discourse, one must remind oneself that the Arab woman is still not familiar with the machinations of her own carnal design and the uniquely feminine elements of her body. Her procreative functions are celebrated as the only characteristic defining her role as female, shaping her formative years. All other bodily possibilities are postponed until her wedding night. This space between puberty and the wedding night is gray, complex and coy, garnished with unanswered questions. 

Three uniquely feminine experiences take on subterranean notoriety during this space in the Arab adolescent’s formative years: female genital mutilation (FGM), abortion and hymenorraphy. The three topics still require vast study and public awareness in the Arab milieu,  and can offer a plenitude of insight into gender sexual dynamics of the changing Arab world today. The topics are ripe for public attention in both media and academy. The former continues to be notoriously under investigation by both international feminist and human rights groups, the latter two remain concealed behind taboos. I do not aspire to reasoning with obscurantists in this essay, and when I refer to Arab women’s sexuality, my focus is heavily laden with inquiries of identity. Of which type of Arab woman am I refering to? The economically self-sufficient? The scholar? The Helwan production-line worker? The elitist descendant of pre-Nasserite Cairo society? The bent al-balad who has never seen a world beyond the confines of her quarters? Or the Yale graduate who was fortunate to retain her freedom of mobility and travel, granted the opportunity of a foreign education but always with the knowledge of her ensuing return to the homeland?

Regardless of differences in class, education, language or religion, I shall treat the Arab woman’s body and the various influences inflincted upon her as a collective whole. Regardless of external forces and conditions that shape her identity, the Arab woman shares a common socio-biological motif with her sisters, namely the fragile status of her body prior to marriage with the absence or presence of a hymen, and the stigmatized concept of shame surrounding the maintenance of her sexual health.

Absent from contemporary Arabic feminist discourse is the direct approach towards the woman’s body as a source of social conflict . Scholarly feminist jargon is in limbo,  lingering on debates of post-harem, post-veiled realities, regurgitating the same oppressions and inequalities, waiting for some political or literary breakthrough. A new-’er’ revamped Arab women’s manifesto perhaps, or a revolutionary charismatic personage to consolidate a movement. Many young women today are waiting for their hidden voices, concerns and questions to surface.

Arab women should be made aware of their sexual entitlements, and continue developing conscious standpoints towards interpreting sacred texts that have been falsely misinterpreted to serve masculine fantasies, as powerfuly argued by Muslim feminists such as Fatima Mernissi. As within any ideologically inclined social group, cleavages abound and interests differ. The Arab women’s feminist movement needs to return to the original roots of its cause, namely the total liberation of its sisterhood in a highly patriarchal society. At the core of such an endeavour, is the reinterpretation of our carnal functions as women. This essay deals with the need to return to rigorous re-interpretations not only of sacred texts, but of the medical sciences that have influenced socieities in defining conceptions of femininity and womanhood, that have in turn produced grave differences between women themselves.

The bedroom is an extremely private space for the Arab husband and wife, respectively, therefore it is difficult to demystify the processes that occur therein in a public sphere of discourse. Yet again, Arab society is defined by its contradictory whims and paradoxes.  It is deemed commonplace for a half-naked belly dancer to perform her seductive numbers on her audiences, which include veiled women who salute the upholding of a cultural heritage, and the aroused male who is transported to fantasy. Arab sexuality is characterized by its encouragement to arouse, seduce and tease with sexual innuendo. But to conceive of sensual contact is forbidden.  

For example, it is ordinary to the local eye, to view shop windows at downtown Cairo’s commercial districts, exhibiting flamboyantly risque lingerie. A kind that can only be found in specialized sex shops in the Western world. I recently walked by a collection of black lace lingerie with minute colorful lights attached at the crotch flashing WELCOME and HELLO. To the foreign onlooker, such exhibits demonstrate the merchandise of a sexualy tolerant society. Yet again, it is taboo to acknowledge the libido, virgins are advised to avoid tampons, and men seek sexual solace in each other. Arab sexuality is shrouded in mysteries, taboos, and irrationality. 

I once met a young unmarried Sudanese woman who told me her adolescent fantasy was rape. Accordingly, once raped, she can sleep with whoever and whenever she wants because she will no longer fear the revelation of an absent hymen on her wedding night, Her husband-to-be would be made aware of her tragic history, and not expect first blood. A woman’s hymen is a mischievous little membrane that many cultures believe to symbolize female physical purity and chastity, and has been used to determine a woman’s status in society and her marriage prospects.  The membranes’ presence or absence, regardless of the causes behind its loss prior to marriage, categorizes women and girls into a number of social roles from the much-respected mother figure, lady of her home (sit al-beyt) to the whore (sharmuta). In this tradition, a fraction of Arab woman’s identity can be found between her legs.

At the root of Arabic feminist efforts to end the oppression and cycle of social punishment for personal choice, should be a reinterpretation of the hymen in the female body. The hymen has caused a social hysteria in some Arab societies whose patriarchies go as far to equate the vagina with nationalism. To be loyal to your state, culture, morals, values and maintain your identity, is to possess an intact hymen prior to marriage. The absence of a hymen denotes an embrace of Western values and of the postcolonial proliferation of the promiscuous other. Under the guise of the preservation of morality,  practices such as female genital mutilation, undignified virginity tests, honor killings and others have affected the lives of countless women and their families in the Arab and Muslim World, from Turkish school girls who eat rat poison out of fear of virginity tests to the  more economically privileged who can afford hymenorraphy, the practice of hymen reconstruction as plastic surgery. Our Arab nations are in a rush to  keep up with the rest of the world, making giant leaps into the new age of techno-science, while neglecting fundamental concerns of basic sexual health issues that have been urged by feminists such as the notorious Nawal al-Saadawi.  Science and technology have penetrated social domains to uphold such cultural values. Hymenorraphy is a booming industry in Arab countries today, where for as much as $2000 a woman could avoid social ostracism and ensure marriage prospects.  A continually social obsession with the hymen as indicator of virginity, an ancient and medieval tradition that many cultures have already buried in history, stirs inquiries that address the original function of the hymen in the woman’s body.

The scientific term ‘hymen’ stems from a Greek meaning for membrane, and is known as ghishaa al bakara, the purity of virginity, in Arabic. Ancient anatomy and medical traditions considered this membrane  as a possible harmful abnormality to the female body. Popular science today still cannot determine the actual purpose of the hymen in the female. Many also admit that like the appendix, perhaps the hymen is a vestigial tissue, that once served a specific function during a different evolutionary stage of human life, but is now redundant.1  Darwinian thought is heresy to Islamic conceptions of the origins of life on Earth, therefore to argue the hymen’s function as vestigial tissue is, banal and futile to an Arab-Islamic audience.  Some say that perhaps it protects from infections, and its absence from young girls is an indicator of abuse.

However considering that the hymen appears, or does not appear, in many shapes and forms, this still remains an inaccurate function. Despite its flatulence, the hymen has been subjected to immense societal judgment. Its superfluous value and irreversibility continues to represent  physical evidence of virginity. Attributing bodily qualities to metaphysical behavior and concepts such as honor and chastity can be traced to the religious traditions of female physical ‘purity’ and ‘morality’ in the pan-ultimate archetypal virgin herself, the Virgin Mary, or Maryam in Arab-Islamic and Christian exegesis.

The Virgin Mary glorifies the image of the virgo intacta, the highest ideal for womanhood, with hymen intact before, during and even after childbirth. Art displays the earliest examination of a woman’s bodily purity with The Virgin Mary, as depicted in Roger Campin’s Nativity (c.1420). The midwife Salome can be seen suffering the punishment of a withered hand following her attempt to confirm Mary’s intact hymen. An emulation of the Virgin Mary’s bodily ideal has passed onto thousands of generations, and traversed into non Judeo-Christian societies. Simone de Beauvoir’s popularized statement “One is not born a woman, one becomes a woman” can illustrate practices of infibulation in some contemporary Arab-African cultures, that are a metaphor for Mary’s ‘constant’ virginity. For example, in some parts of The Sudan where the process of ensuring a young girl’s virginity is perceived as tahur, or purification, “Virgins are made, not born” says Janice Boddy, author of Wombs and Alien Spirits, Women and Zar Culture in Northern Sudan. This occurs by the constant demand for the virgin, as “When a woman gives birth the midwife must be present not only to cut through the scar tissue and release the child, but also to reinfibulate her once the baby is born” she adds. This is a social metaphor of the Virgin Mary, demonstrating the fact that the hymen is subjected to socio-cultural definitions of virginity and  does not symbolize a scientific truism.

De Beavoir points to a social malaise that women are ‘made’ to satisfy the male fantasy of ownership. The Sudanese woman is reinfibulated and ‘made’ in order to remain the sole property of her husband.          Evidence of the presence or absence of a hymen, as symbolic of virginity, in the Arab woman’s body is an issue that rests in the back of many minds prior to marriage. Pannum menstruatum prima noche2  (first blood) is the historically traditional method of measuring virginity, as the hymen is popularly meant to tear  and bleed upon first penetration. First blood continues to be cause for jubilation, albeit rarely, as members of the brides family are rest-assured that their honor and pride has been preserved and rewarded with a dutiful daughter.

In fear of an absence of the hymen, women and girls have devised creative ways of feigning virginity throughout different cultures and ages. In medieval English society, chicken blood was inserted inside the vaginal wall. Today in more medically sophisticated times, a gelatin capsule filled with a blood-like substance that bursts with penetration can simulate bleeding. If a girl falls suspect to promiscuity, she is subjected to a ‘virginity’ test. I remember hearing many stories surrounding such feminine anxieties and adolescent gossip. During our freshman year at university, an Egyptian girlfriend once told us of her father’s fury upon finding a box of tampons in her bathroom.  He had whisked her from class during the middle of day, subjected her to a virginity test by asking her to cough as she spread her legs (he is coincidentally, a gynecologist). His worst fears were not confirmed, fortunately for her. Failure to provide evidence of an intact hymen would have resulted in her undergoing hymenorraphy.

Virginity tests, once elevated to medical prominence, were also performed in bogus and ingenious ways. St. Albertus Magnus medieval Book of Secrets prescribes the intake of a powdered stone substance named Pliny, and “If the stone be broken and washed, if she be not a virgin, she will piss soon, if she be a virgin, she will not piss”. Up until 1979, virginity tests were performed on Asian immigrants to the United Kingdom. To distinguish between real fiancees of British citizens and those who were merely trying to evade the quota placed on the number of immigrants applying  from former Asian colonies, immigration authorities assumed that real fiancees would be virgins. Only in February 1979 was this practice banned.  More recently in January 1999, virginity tests were banned in Turkey where girls in state orphanages, foreign tourists and prisoners were subjected against their will.

Does the hymen reduce the female body and virginity to an economic space? Kathryn Schwarz, professor of English at Vanderbilt University, conveniently defines virginity as “A speech act that masquerades as a bodily state, a male fantasy that locates feminine will at the heart of heterosexual production, a licensed performance that incorporates, co-opts and conspires with the body beneath”. The keyword is fantasy. To understand the degree of impact of gender dynamics and their ensuing power relationships from within the Arab family unit, the relationship between the Arab woman and her body, and the economic imagination that is imposed on her bridal value, one must deconstruct the definition of virginity and its implied characteristics. Who does virginity serve? In the Arab condition, it serves all. Mothers and brothers are rest-assured that their daughters and sisters will not tarnish reputations, and fathers relish in the celebration of family honor. One must begin with the standpoint that the “hymen points not to the physical actuality of an organ, but to the social and theoretical utility of a sign imagined as truly present in the female body”. To deconstruct physical virginity, is perhaps to accept that the value of the hymen was enforced by a profit-driven patriarchal society that aims to guarantee the transfer of property and value through the sale and exchange of its virgin sisters and daughters. Rape is an economic crime in this gender dynamic. In some cultures, a virgin’s value is greatly diminished if she is raped. She is damaged goods, per se.

In Middle Eastern traditions, believers are encouraged to marry the chaste, this accounts for both sexes. However, not only is the female virgin financially advantageous, but she will not demand much sexually, because she does not know much.

Prostitution may have been a factor that contributed to the socioeconomic value that society and patriarchy projected upon the hymen and virginity. The earliest forms of hymenorraphy were performed in brothels. As virgins are more in demand, the procedure was at times performed several times a week on professional prostitutes throughout 19th century European brothels.

Not much is known about hymenorraphy in the media, except that it is an illegal medical procedure performed on women in almost all Arab countries (unless the patient is a rape-victim in Egypt, where the Grand Mufti announced in November 1999 that virginity is a fixable commodity).  It occurs as “The epithelial layer that has grown over the ruptured hymen is removed and the hymenal remnants are adapted by a circular running suture or by left to right approximation”. This costly restoration of a biologically insignificant tissue has had profound effects  on Arab women’s bodies, as well as in the lives of Arab immigrant communities in Europe and North America.  If performed in Europe, especially in Denmark, outpatients are provided with the opportunity to eliminate the procedure from their medical records.  This makes it thoroughly difficult to gather statistics and conduct proper research. Although some members of the scientific community object to hymenorraphy under the basis of moral ethics, it is commonly understood that cultural differences make it necessary for some women to undergo the procedure to escape community ostracism and in extreme cases, murder.

Ignorance of the female body and the social miseducation between the genders has resulted in the practice of honor killings, which has been mostly documented in Jordan. Although honor killings is not promoted by Islamic Sharia Law, which stipulates that before a man or woman are punished for adultery or social misconduct four witnesses must be present as they are caught flagrante delicto, i.e. in the act, it is the notorious Article 340 of the Jordanian Criminal Code that allows for men to receive reduced sentencing if the motive behind killings is the preservation of honor.  Execution-style murders  are ignited by as much as a rumor of a daughter, sister or mother’s illicit promiscuity, or even the mere sighting of another man by her side. As evident, Jordanian criminal law is defying Islamic Sharia, and patriarchal law struggles to surmount the Arab woman’s body. Feminist and human rights activists are confronting the Jordanian Criminal Code today, calling for its elimination. Their fiercest opponent is the Islamic Action Front (IAF), a political branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, who consider efforts to delete Article 340 as “A Western plot to destroy and corrupt our society,” according to General Abdul Latif Arabiyat, IAF Secretary General in the Spring 2000 issue of al-Raida. “They have occupied us militarily and politically, and now they want to destroy society. Article 340 upholds our social values, abolishing it means abolishing the last line of defense for our morals.”

This is a paraphrase of an outdated argument pertaining to postcolonial hysteria. Jordanian patriarchy believes that by maintaining the hymen intact, society is protected from Western infiltration. Why is Sharia law not applied instead for a more total return to authentic Arab-Islamic values? The obvious reasons are symptomatic of a gravely sexist misreading and miseducation of women’s bodies. The only Arab Criminal Code that abolished a reduced sentence for the husband in July 1993 is Section 207 of the Tunisian Criminal Code. The Tunisian model for Arab male-female dynamics is generally considered one of highest tolerance and equality in most facets of sociopolitical and religious domains today.  Perhaps Tunis today is the closet model of Arab feminist utopia.              

The popularity of representing  woman’s bodily virginity under the pretext of the hymen is therefore a metaphor symbolic of a larger oppression in Arab society. “The cultural fantasy of virginity renders the body transparent,” says Kathryn Schwarz, “accessible to the processes through which men know. Even as early modern discourses of chastity broaden the terms of virtue, they return repeatedly to the body as a privileged site of information”. Patriarchal power play stipulates that all information pertaining to the Arab woman’s honor can be found in hervagina.

The activity between social metaphors and their consequent symptoms, as manifested in the hymen in our Arab condition, is an enlightening and nascent concept.            Contemporary Arab women’s sexual health is an issue that should re-surface in feminist discourse. It is heavily laden with political thought, and contains many health concerns that should be addressed.  Albeit revolutionary, it is a ripened  topic that has accelerated especially during the period of postcolonial technological domination. Many scholars go so far as to admit, that Arab society has fallen victim to Western technological domination because of its constant quest for the preservation of female ‘purity’ when it should have geared its attention outwards rather than inwards for sustainable development. Many others will argue that an Arabsexual revolution will not take place. But it has already begun in literature and the arts, albeit sensitive to public scrutiny, by the fiction of writers such as Layla Baalbaki, Naguib Mhfouz and the radical views of Nawal al-Saadawi. A new sexual revolution is necessary, and possible with a generation of women and men who will not fear greater depth of inquiry into the woman’s body. The hymen is embedded in the heart of an Arab sexual revolution, since to accept its fallibility  is to denounce a patriarchal paradigm of women’s position in society.

Although hymenorraphy has altered the lives of many women across the Arab world, this medical procedure is symptomatic of a continuos intake of sexist oppression and gender inequality. It re-enforces submission. By ensuring intact hymens with practices such as hymenorraphy, Arab women are accepting oppression. I offer the following demands to our pantheon of Arab feminists, if they aspire to make the lot of our women a happier, and sexually healthier one:  

1. The composition of a universal Arab women’s manifesto for basic social, economic, civic and sexual rights under the banner of a new women’s consciousness. Albeit the Spartan nature of such an endeavor, and the many cleavages within Arab women’s interests, the current generation of women scholars, writers and social workers must continue to ride the waves stirred by their forerunners, and bypass the hazards that hinder revolution and change. Without a contemporary manifesto, the Arab women’s feminist movement remains stagnant.  

2. The call for extensive research and reporting on illegal abortion clinics and gynecologists  performing hymenorraphy and genital mutilation in various Arab cities.  

3. The public advocacy of  effective sexual education in public and private schooling within an Arab-Islamic framework.

4. The establishment of women’s shelters and women’s hotlines offering  cost-free consultation and assistance.

5. Explicit dialogue by removing the veil of shame that shrouds the importance of women’s sexual health.

To speak in a new language of an Arab sexual revolution, is to accept change, progress and achieve higher consciousness of gender inequality. This is a perhaps a menacing concept to obscurantists who fear a potential threat to the moral order of society. As the oppressed are made aware of the sexual entitlements granted to them under the authentic re-interpretation of sacred texts, this undermines the power relationship that is camouflaged as the preservation of a moral order. Yet again, I sternly believe that the moral oder of Arab society has already been tarnished by continuous sexual oppression. For example, consider the Cairiene taxi driver. He is symptomatic of a socio-economic malaise in Arab society today. Others will in turn accuse the woman for being in the taxi and arousing the man with her presence, and not thesexual-economic oppression of the citizen. 

As the biased notion of punishment for sexual activity continues to befall women, not men (to punish the seduced, not the seducer), the Arab women’s feminist movement remains slumped.  A new behavior model is necessary to begin paradigm transformations towards a newer, tolerant, sexually educated Arab society. This must be implemented gradually within a moderate framework that reintegrates sexual education (within an Arab-Islamic framework) into school systems and with a direct analysis of the female body in contemporary Arab feminist debate.