Chrisanthi* describes the first time she had sex as one of the “most terrorising” moments of her life.
She was 24 and it was the night of her engagement party. The sexual encounter was consensual and her partner was respectful, but in her mind, it broke all the rules.
Chrisanthi was born into a conservative Greek Orthodox family, that first arrived in Australia in the 1970s. Her parents had their three daughters' virginity tested as teenagers.
“It wasn’t something that was discussed or explained, it was just done without any consultation with us,” she told The Feed.
Chrisanthi said her first sexual experience left her with traumatic memories and psychological wounds, and felt it went on to obscure her self-perception well into her adult life.
"The worst part was that there was also almost a forlorn sense of loss. Like my value had somehow diminished because of what I’d just done.
“Instead of having a beautiful and fulfilling sexual experience, I ended up laying there and grappling with this toxic belief that because my hymen had been broken, I would have to say goodbye to my innocence. I was now somehow sullied and undesirable... It was like this bizarre sense of shame, a tragic mourning of my own identity,” she said.
She told The Feed the trauma of her experience is something she still grapples with today.
Prisha underwent hymenoplasty to ‘reinstate’ her virginity two years ago.
However, there are a number of GPs and plastic surgeons who offer virginity testing while some also perform hymenoplasty (the surgical restoration of the hymen). As such, Chrisanthi’s story is not isolated.
‘Not being a virgin consumed my life for years’
Like Chrisanthi, Prisha’s* first encounter with sexual intercourse went against her family's cultural ideals.
After surviving sexual abuse between the ages of 11 and 16 years old, she secretly underwent hymenoplasty to ‘reinstate’ her virginity two years ago at the age of 20.
“Not being a virgin consumed my life for years. It terrified me,” she told The Feed.
“Because I knew my hymen wasn’t intact, I felt sick with concern almost daily about what would happen to me once I reached that marital age. I come from a good family so the most frightening thing was considering what people would think and say about us.”
Prisha’s parents migrated to Australia from rural India, and she said her deepest concerns were rooted in the formidable reputational damage she felt would be caused to her family if the details of her abuse came to light.
“I just saw myself as dirty, a liability to the good name of my family...And I would have done anything to fix that, so when I discovered a surgery could fix this problem, I didn’t hesitate."
'Weaponising sex against women'
Suzie Tuckwell, a sex and relationship counsellor with 27 years' experience in the field, told The Feed that any obsession with virginity and the notion that it has links to strong moral character had ‘horrendous’ impacts on young women.
“It comes back to weaponising sex against women,” she said.
“This very traditional idea of virginity and its sentiment has very long legs, and it still exists, mostly to uphold patriarchy. Beyond excluding sexual assault victims or women who are not heterosexual, it also implies that women are not allowed or supposed to enjoy sex and that their value is solely in their reproductive ability.
“It all ties into the idea of ownership, and women being property... The unspoken rules for women in society universally, in most cases at least, is that they are not to be seen as being hypersexual,” Ms Tuckwell said.
Ms Tuckwell said virginity is a symbolic concept with little medical reliability but emphasised the significance of the powerful message it ingrains in young women about their sexuality.
“It leads to great dishonesty, stress and a lack of pride in sexual pleasure. It might be a symbolic concept, but the message it carries is so strong for so many girls, that it can turn into a fear of sex.
“And it is something many girls don't ever really recover from. Even in the supposed safety of marriage, they find it extremely hard to relax and find pleasure, putting aside the deep-rooted message of how ‘naughty’ sex is perceived to be, rather than a very natural act” Ms Tuckwell said.
Professor Juliet Richters, an expert in sexual health research and education at the University of NSW, told The Feed that experiences such as Prisha’s and Chrisanthi’s were distressing but said they were “extreme” scenarios, that not reflective of the experiences of the majority of women in Australia.
Ms Richters was surprised that women would still see their sexual debut as a “loss”, having assumed a more progressive perspective of female sexuality had been adopted decades ago.
“The very word ‘virginity’ implies that it only applies to women, and it was regarded, certainly up until the last century, as something that was maybe bad if girls ‘lost’,” Ms Richters said.
And the idea that a woman’s virginity must be ‘broken’, ‘taken’, or ‘lost’ could be problematic, too – fuelling the power imbalance between men and women, by suggesting a need for violence.
Getting tested for virginity
Chrisanthi says she was subjected to the invasive practice of virginity testing twice in her life: the first time was when she reached menstruation age, and the second time was when her father noticed she had bruises on her thighs through her school uniform when she was 16.
“The bruises were from soccer training I remember ... he was screaming that he was going to ‘take me to the doctors to get checked again’ because he had also caught me walking home from school with a boy, it was a little bit daunting, but it just felt normal because my sisters had been before too,” she told The Feed.
The very word ‘virginity’ implies that it only applies to women, and it was regarded, certainly up until the last century, as something that was maybe bad if girls ‘lost’.Professor Juliet Richters
She says she can still visualise dim lighting and hardwood floors in the doctor's clinic and the low pitch of his voice as he spoke to her mother in language.
“That would have been in the early 2000’s, " she said. Looking back I can’t believe something like that was still happening, and commonplace, in the 21st century when the world was seemingly becoming so progressive.
“When I actually got there, I was so humiliated that I just wanted to slip through the cracks of the timber floors...It was so uncomfortable, I felt defenceless and exposed in this bizarre ‘innocent until proven guilty’ type scenario.
“Because virginity testing is not really customary in Greek Orthodox culture, purity until marriage is more of an expectation than something you have to prove,” Christanthi said, adding the tests left her feeling “a complete lack of ownership over my body.”
Chrisanthi says the experience left her with emotional trauma, and “this unforgettable, sick to the stomach feeling of being rattled to the very core.”
“It was much more cultural than religious, too … my parents had this fear that living in Australia, we would become too modern and sexualised.”
Virginity testing under scrutiny internationally
Prisha says she knew she would be virginity tested before marriage to prove her sexual purity with the view to 'award' a certificate to present to her groom's family.
“Failure to provide this certificate is basically akin to failing to prove that you’re fit and suitable for marriage,” she said.
‘Virginity testing’ has come under scrutiny internationally and the UN has reported this taking place in some parts of India, Pakistan, Iraq, Brazil, and more recently reported in Belgium, Canada and Spain. In 2018, a WhatsApp campaign dubbed ‘Stop the V-Ritual’ led to authorities in the Indian state of Maharashtra making forced virginity tests illegal.
Kanjarbhat community members, in support of the virginity ritual, hold placards and march in 2018 in Pune, India. Credit: Hindustan Times/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Under the knife: hymenoplasty
The value attached to the idea of an intact hymen still persists for some.
In some cases, in a quest to ‘revirginise,’ women are opting to undergo hymenoplasty.
Dr Jassim Daood, a cosmetic surgeon in Sydney, told The Feed that hymenoplasty was a “very simple procedure” which he performs approximately 10 to 12 times per year on women from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds.
He states on his website, “the procedure is generally safe with a high chance of success. Patients can already return to work the next day, although there will still be swelling and mild discomfort.”
The procedure itself involves the repair of any tears in the hymen membrane via the removal of a wedge of tissue which is sewn back to repair a torn hymen or build a hymen that is not present. This means a woman is likely to bleed the first time she engages in sex after the surgery.
“Some of the women that have it done have probably been tricked into having sex, for instance, a young girl gets a boyfriend and in a lot of cultures and religions, they should not have sex before marriage... Down the track, they may have a new proposal and they want to be a virgin again," Dr Daood told The Feed.
“But religion is not the only reason women have it, it’s mostly cultural. I have girls coming in with their mothers, sisters, and fathers too.
“While the success rate isn’t 100 per cent, it is quite high and ideally, once complete a girl should be able to pass a virginity test, but the most important thing is that a few drops of blood will appear when she has sex again because it’s mostly for the future husband or his family who will usually inspect after,” Dr Daood said.
As the calls to ban the procedure grow, some of its practitioners cite other reasons for women seeking it out.
Dr Sonya Jessup, a female surgical gynecologist also based in Sydney, told The Feed that while women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are the most common recipients, women of Anglo-Saxon background and victims of sexual assault from differing backgrounds have also approached her for hymenoplasty.
“There are four to five different reasons a woman may want this procedure done, it is not just those who want or need to be virgins for marriage...It could be for a religious or cultural reason, she could be a victim of sexual assault or there could be a medical reason that her hymen is stretched or not intact despite not having had sexual intercourse.”
“I am not ethically opposed to conducting this surgery, I don’t think women should be disempowered by things that have happened beyond their control,” Dr Jessup said.
In a statement, The Australian Medical Association said:
"The AMA recognises that there are a range of health conditions that may merit surgery. These include genital prolapse, reconstructive surgery for female genital mutilation, labiaplasties with clinical indications, and trauma and excision of tumours.
"There is a lack of data supporting the benefits of genital surgery undertaken for cosmetic reasons, and a range of potential complications and adverse outcomes have been associated with these procedures."
While there is a lack of data about the procedure, as well as its effectiveness and complication rate, .
Leading medical specialist of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the College of Medicine at James Cook University and author of book ‘The Women’s Doc’, Professor Caroline De Costa, expressed concerns about double standards being perpetuated by the notion of virginity as a woman’s asset.
She said she has never performed hymenoplasty surgery and questioned medical professionals handing out virginity certificates after successful examinations.
“If these men are expecting that they can have sex with other women before marriage or long-term partnership and then still have a virgin on their wedding night, that is certainly inappropriate, ‘’ she said.
Professor De Costa also labeled the performance of hymenoplasty as unethical, for several reasons.
“For starters, it is almost duping the future husband or partner and perpetuating mistruths, but there are also risks that come with all procedures like bleeding, infection, and a chance that it could make future sexual intercourse painful.
“There is an industry charging a lot of money for this – and you just go on perpetuating what is potentially a lie. A woman should be making her decisions. If she has been raped, that could be a different scenario,” Professor De Costa said.
But not all opinions align.
Many have expressed fears that the banning of hymenoplasty will drive it underground, with the deregulation prompting heightened risks for the women undertaking the surgery.
Prisha told The Feed that for her, and many other women, hymenoplasty provided a life-changing opportunity to rewrite their narratives.
“In my parents' home country, a bride found not to be a virgin could be killed on her wedding night. When I consulted with a doctor, the implication was basically that I should be grateful that this was not the case here...And honestly, I was.
“During the consultation I told him that I had not chosen to bring disgrace to my family, he was more understanding than I thought he would be, he seemed to hear stories just like mine a lot, that’s when I realised they were much more common than I had thought.
“Knowing I wasn’t the only woman in this position was comforting and sad at once. It shows that the honor of a girls’ family is still very much dependent on the protection of her purity and that comes with so much pressure, my story is just one tiny example,” Prisha said.
Chrisanthi told The Feed she regrets how much value she placed on her sexual debut in hindsight but acknowledges the role that virginity plays in rewarding women who remain “pure” with greater social currency in certain cultural and religious settings.
Likewise, Prisha says she would like to see ideas around female sexuality change.
“When someone isn’t seen as valuable, when they’re told not to see themselves as valuable, it becomes easy to justify harm against them."
- Names have been changed to protect identity
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