Virginity as an example
If we accept that living things are products of nature through evolution, we must also accept that everything that makes up these living things is natural too. And since human societies are made of humans, living beings born of nature, they too are natural products. So the way they are organised should follow the laws of nature and nothing else.
A simple look at the history of human societies shows that they were organised by different sets of laws, none of them natural: all were made by humans, under different names such as religion, man-made law, customs and traditions, and morality. But nature has gradually reasserted its rhythm and laws on these societies, thanks to science. The more secrets nature reveals to science, the more loyal science becomes to it and the more it works to impose nature's will on its children. History has many examples of science reshaping society by changing or abolishing laws that rested only on human myths and illusions: the laws of medieval Europe that branded anyone who contradicted the Church's teaching that the Earth was the centre of the universe a heretic and sentenced them to death; the laws that accused the mentally ill and people with epilepsy and leprosy of being possessed by evil forces and ordered them isolated, sometimes killed; the laws that banned abortion, and others.
So today, at the start of the third millennium, we must stop running away from nature and hiding behind human laws written by our whims and inclinations, and replace those worn-out laws with laws drawn from our growing understanding of nature, which science, and nothing else, provides. Science may not yet be able to give definite answers to every question about some of society's prevailing laws, but it can refute the arguments on which those laws were built, which is reason enough to get rid of them. Where science can't explain something or refute the existing explanations, it may be acceptable for things to stay as they are, or to be opened for debate. One of the most important social problems whose understanding, and so regulation, rests on unscientific grounds is the question of female virginity.
Many societies, including of course our Arab societies, are organised today on the assumption that a girl's virginity measures her morals and upbringing, and so her fitness to be a wife and mother. They impose harsh punishments on a girl who loses her virginity, from public shaming and social rejection to being denied marriage, all the way to killing, protected by law as an "honour crime". If we look for the foundations of these laws, we find a mix of misunderstood religious teachings and customs of unknown origin. This is not the place to explore them, important as that would be.
How does science approach the subject? A girl's virginity means she still has her hymen: a thin membrane that partly covers the opening of the vagina, with openings that let menstrual blood out after puberty. It may stretch or tear at a girl's first intercourse, sometimes with slight pain and light bleeding, although many women don't bleed at all, and the hymen can also stretch through other activities. It then shrinks over time.
Why did nature create this membrane? Before trying to answer, it is worth noting that the common explanation (unscientific, of course) is that it exists to police a woman's sex life, so that its absence proves she has had sex. Whatever its origin, this explanation is clearly male-centred, first, and moral in character, second (given the strange link our societies make between morality and sex, for women only!). In both respects nature is not to blame, because nature doesn't favour males over females and doesn't care about morals: its law is the survival of the strongest, male or female, moral or not.
In fact there is no definite scientific explanation for why the hymen exists. Biologically it is useless, like some other human organs with no known function, such as the appendix, wisdom teeth and the foreskin, and its absence affects no human function. Still, in his book The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris offers an evolutionary explanation that may be convincing. He suggests that by creating this membrane, nature makes a female's first intercourse difficult and even painful, to make sure it isn't taken lightly, so that a young female doesn't find herself pregnant and about to become a mother without a suitable partner to share that huge responsibility. She therefore needs a deep emotional bond, strong enough to overcome the physical distress of the torn membrane, before taking that step.
But this theory has been strongly criticised, because the hymen is not unique to humans. Some other mammals have one, such as horses, whales, moles, African rats, hyenas, chimpanzees, elephants and llamas, and the females of these animals don't need to take their time choosing a partner, if only because raising young is not a huge responsibility for them: their young need their mother's care for a much shorter time than human children.
So far, then, all we can say with complete certainty is that, scientifically, the hymen is a redundant organ: whether it is there or not doesn't matter, so there is no natural reason to prefer virgins to non-virgins. Even if we accept Morris's theory, the conclusion is that nature gave the female this "evolutionary advantage" to help her choose the most suitable male, not to help the male choose the most "chaste" female. It is the female who is responsible before nature for the survival and evolution of the species, and she has the right to choose and to sort males into suitable and unsuitable. This is plain to see in all living species, humans included (despite males' constant attempts to change it).
So human society has no right to rank women by their hymen. To anyone still determined to use this measure, we can only point out that, functionally, the hymen is no more important than the appendix or wisdom teeth. Why not make those organs a measure too?!
By Dr Ayham Ahmad
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