London's Evening Standard reports that the National Health Service pays for surgery to repair hymens, and increasing numbers of woman are paying for the fix in private clinics. The trend is condemned as a sign of social regression driven by Islamic fundamentalists. Some countries have made hymen reconstruction operations illegal.
The operation can involve suturing of a tear in the hymen, such as can be caused by sexual or normal activity. A membrane is constructed, sometimes including a capsule of an artificial blood-like substance. How utterly medieval. A gynecologist at the London's Regency Clinic who started hymen reconstruction more than 18 years ago in the Middle East, said: "In some cultures they like to see that the women will bleed on the wedding night. If the bride is not a virgin, it is a big shame on the family."
Labor MP Ann Cryer said she was "absolutely horrified" to learn of the practice. "We should be trying to protect girls from this. It is a form of abuse... and it may be that the woman who is asking for the operation to be done does not recognize the abuse that is taking place against her, but in later life she certainly will. We have to also ask whether our National Health Service should be providing this... I don't think it should be available on the NHS."
Isabelle Levy, who studied the issue for her book Religion in the Hospital, said young Muslim girls “have adventures like other Europeans - which never happened in the past. But... fundamentalism is spreading and these girls are getting sent back to their countries of origin to marry. And they will be rejected if it is found out that they are not virgins."
This idiocy may have made sense to somebody in a seventh century tribal existence where virginity was important because women were regarded as property, people screwed like bunnies and establishing parentage was an issue. Today this kind of fossilized gender apartheid is important only to insecure male culture. Perhaps they fear comparison.
In other Islamic gender news, Breitbart reports that a court in Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail. The sentence was originally for 90 lashes, but in a verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court more than doubled the count, punishing the victim further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media." The court banned her lawyer from handling the case and withdrew his license to practice law because he challenged the initial verdict.
Her crime? "Being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported. The six men who raped her received between two and nine years in prison. The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia's Shiite community. Are they angry that she was raped? Who knows? The woman was Shiite. The convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state. Their honor was violated.
What's wrong with these people?
Stumble it!
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