Secular, Muslim Culture Clash Ensnares French Doctors (Hymenoplasty)

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Secular, Muslim Culture Clash Ensnares French Doctors
Hymenoplasty Spotlights Debate Over Repression
By STACY MEICHTRY and MAX COLCHESTER
June 10, 2008; Page A11

PARIS -- The office of Bernard Paniel on the outskirts of Paris has for years been a mandatory stop for many Muslim women nervous about getting married. An obstetrician-gynecologist for France's public health system, Dr. Paniel performs an operation to reattach the hymens of women who want to appear as virgins. For such patients, virginity is a prerequisite for marriage. The 68-year-old surgeon is among a number of physicians who help members of France's large Muslim population try to meet the demands of their religious traditions even when, by engaging in premarital sex, they have lifestyles more consistent with the modern secular culture in which they live.

A recent court ruling has exposed the tensions inherent in that culture clash. A court in the northern city of Lille in April annulled a marriage between a French engineer who had converted to Islam and a French woman of North African origins, after the husband discovered on their wedding night that his bride wasn't a virgin. The verdict unleashed a torrent of denunciations after it was made public a week ago. Women's rights groups hit the streets of Paris and Marseille on Saturday to protest the decision on the grounds that it supported what they see as a tradition intended to subjugate women. Justice Minister Rachida Dati, the daughter of North African immigrants, who had her own arranged marriage annulled, filed an appeal of the ruling last week. Some 150 members of the European Parliament denounced the ruling as an act of "serious regression" because they considered it to be gender-biased.

(snip)

Hymenoplasty has been practiced for decades in the Middle East and Latin America because of social and religious customs that stress virginity. The procedure can vary: In France, it requires a local anesthetic and no hospitalization. Doctors use stitches to repair the broken membrane so that it partially covers the opening of the vagina... The procedure is controversial in the medical community, however, over the question of whether surgeons should be involved in misleading family members of patients, and whether doctors are ultimately reinforcing a gender bias... Women's rights groups are among the biggest critics of hymen repair. Paris-based Muslim women's rights group "Ni Putes Ni Soumises," or "Neither Prostitutes, Nor Submissive," says surgeons who perform hymenoplasty are overstepping the bounds of their profession.

(snip)

Dr. Paniel first came across the procedure in Tunisia in the 1960s. There, physicians practiced a version of hymenoplasty that produced considerable pain and bleeding in patients once they had sex with their husbands. "One woman told me she'd rather have her eye burst," Dr. Paniel recalled... As the number of hymenoplasty requests multiplied, including those from second- and third-generation French Muslims, Dr. Paniel developed a less-invasive procedure. Still, even the newer technique has its drawbacks. Because it causes less bleeding, Dr. Paniel provides his patients with vials of blood that can be spilled on wedding-night bed sheets. The single thread will only hold for twenty days, giving the bride-to-be little time to marry and consummate the union.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121304726195558635.html (subscription)

[BlooInBloo]

1. I'm not touching this

said the good doctor.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hekate]

3. There are modern, 21st century, Muslim men and women.Oppression is cultural, not necessarily part...

...of Islam itself. In the other two branches of the Abrahamic religions, there are plenty of Christians and Jews who are also not oppressive of women.

That said, dealing with the clash of cultures is tricky. I think hymenoplasty is just one part of it, and they should leave this compassionate doctor alone.

My best friend from college married an Afghan in 1971. After trying to live in Kabul for awhile they returned to the US and started bringing his immediate family over, including one sister who had been married off at 16 (and her husband and kids of course) and one who was still in middle school. I remember one of the conversations I had with the younger one when she was about 15 y.o. herself. She said that when her older sister got married in Kabul, a blood-stained cloth from her wedding night was put in a plastic bag and available for inspection in their mother's parlor to various visitors who felt it was their business to inquire. I was aghast and asked what if there had been no blood? The girl was shocked right back at me, and said the family actually knew a young woman who was immediately sent back to her parents in disgrace for that reason. This was all pre-Taliban.

Much later, the younger sister married another Afghan immigrant in the US. This was not an arranged marriage, and she was in her 20's. Their marriage got off to a rocky start because on the wedding night he suspected she was not a virgin. They got back together, had kids, but ultimately divorced. My old friend suspected that a misadventure she had in high school might have been to blame, but in American culture this young woman would have been considered as pure as the driven snow. I don't know if her husband was such a jerk they would have divorced anyway, but I think that if she had known her hymen was not intact and if she had had the option of a hymenoplasty, a lot of initial heartache could have been avoided.

Life is a series of compromises, is what I've come to believe.

Hekate

[question everything]

6. Isn't it intersting that we do not require to "inspect the sheet"

of the so-called "daddy's girls" (or whatever they are called) who promised to "remain pure" until their marriage?

And the obvious question, of course, is why are only women expected to be virgin (and to prove it).

[Fleshdancer]

4. My heart aches when reading this

I wish better for the women of this world.

[Selatius]

5. France has desperately got to come to grips with whether they want to keep a secular society or...

allow the existence of a culture that is inherently gender-biased and unequal in nature in the name of accomodation.