The issue of women's virginity is still an important factor in many relationships in Turkey, affecting women from all social and economic backgrounds and involving complex intersections of cultural and religious values. The failure to maintain virginity until marriage can for a woman mean social alienation, forced marriage with an inappropriate match, physical abuse and even death in some cases. While there is no true way to ascertain whether or not a woman has had intercourse, modern medicine offers the ability for women to ensure cultural validation of her supposed virginity: hymenoplasty, an increasingly popular elective surgery, the morality of which the medical community is divided on. “The rise in hymenoplasty doesn't mean that the hymen and virginity have gained importance, but indicates that women are increasingly possessed of more spending power and medical knowledge and that physicians are less conservative with regard to these operations,” psychologist Dilek Akıcı Tayanç explained in an interview with Sunday's Zaman. “Women have gained economic strength and knowledge over the years, but this development hasn't enabled them to break the taboos regarding virginity, but to more effectively be able to protect themselves from the results of these taboos.”
A popular İstanbul OB/GYN, agreeing to speak with Sunday's Zaman on the condition that she be identified only as Dr. Ö., performs an average of 10 hymenoplasty operations a month. In addition, she says 20-30 women make their way to her office each month for consultations related to the procedure. The women who eventually elect to undergo the surgery pay Dr. Ö. anywhere from TL 800-3,000 for one of a range of hymenoplasty procedures, which usually lasts 30-40 minutes.
“Most of the women who come here are serious about the procedure, and these stories you hear in the public about women undergoing the option many times -- these mostly aren't true. It does cost a bit of money to have this procedure done, so it's not taken frivolously. I don't ask questions about why women make these choices, I just take their medical histories and present the options to them,” Dr. Ö. says.
‘Spoiled goods’ and matrimonial prospects
Psychologist Tayanç notes that in her clinical experience and that of her colleagues, women having these surgeries are working women with university degrees. “No matter how much the man espouses modern views and says that this [virginity] is not that important to him and not connected to how much he loves his wife, the confession frequently emerges in [couples] therapy sessions in sentences like: ‘I wish she had never told me,' ‘I just wish I didn't know' or ‘I still felt out of sorts when I found out [she wasn't a virgin].' Without knowing it, no matter how much he may seem to hold modern views or how unaffected he may seem, in many instances men change their behavior toward their wives due to this -- they're more distant, less trusting and display passive-aggressive behaviors.”
One of Dr. Ö.'s patients, Elif, is a 28-year-old planning to get married at the end of this month. She says that after carefully weighing her options ahead of her approaching wedding date, she decided that the issue of her lack of virginity would create an impasse with her fiancé and his family and that she felt her only option was to have her hymen -- broken in a high school relationship she terms a “mistake” -- surgically restored. She will pay twice her monthly salary as a customer service representative for the procedure, a total of TL 1,800. A devout Muslim who found religion in college, Elif says she sees no contradiction between her faith and the procedure because she is well intentioned. She says that what her future husband and his family truly value are honorable behavior that is in accord with Islamic and cultural standards -- standards that she says she measures up to.
“Some people view this as hypocrisy, but that's not correct. The same people who say such surgeries are a form of deception would never, ever accept someone who admits to past errors as a wife or daughter-in-law. Islam teaches mercy, and scholars say that is not a form of deception because doing this can protect the status of people who have made mistakes but repented. You shouldn't have to go the rest of your life paying for one sin. Since when is virginity in and of itself a value? Modest behavior -- which can be gained over a lifetime -- is a value for Muslims. If people weren't so cultural but really followed Islamic principles again, this wouldn't be an issue, but it is an issue,” she says. “God is forgiving but people are not.”
Another patient is Ceyda, 24, who is getting her hymen repaired with her mother's encouragement ahead of her wedding. “I'm marrying into a modern family; my boyfriend is not religious or cultural at all, but there is still this mentality to contend with. I'm sure that [my fiancé] would stay with me if he knew I wasn't a virgin; he hasn't even asked about it. But my mother says, and after thinking about it I agreed with her, that men will value you more if they think they are the only ones who have had you. A fresh product is better than a spoiled one. So why not? I know it's not an issue that can ruin my relationship, so I don't feel dishonest about it. My husband should value me, and I don't mind doing something this easy to make him happy; it takes only half an hour,” she said.
Surgery not panacea for women’s psyches, societal pressures
Dr. Ö. weighs in by saying that at the end of the day it is up to her patient to decide what the best course of action for her life is. “My job is to present them with options as a physician, much like a psychiatrist or a plastic surgeon would do. How they handle their own perceptions of truth and justice is their own business. Everyone's truth, everyone's reality is different,” she says.
But Tayanç notes the very serious psychological repercussions that hymenoplasty entails. She says that the psychological benefits of hymenoplasty are short lived and often give way to serious long-term psychological problems. “With the surgery an individual cements alienation from their body, and this can lead to increased denial and repression mechanisms; the result can be a decrease of introspection on the part of the individual, value-related issues, desensitization and even dissociation,” she noted, also emphasizing the strong role of patriarchy in Turkish society and the attitudes ingrained into Turkish women from the time they are children.
“These operations result in an increase of the unequal footing between spouses, because the woman -- by yielding to the wishes of her spouse and society and viewing her own bodily integrity through someone else's eyes to satisfy another person, at a result of which she is willing to go under the knife -- becomes a psychologically self-destructing individual,” Tayanç said.
But the psychologist avoids questioning the integrity of women who undertake the operations or assigning blame to them, noting that each case is different and must be evaluated from a holistic psychosocial standpoint. “The benefits can sometimes prevent women from being executed, beaten, objects of condescension, insulted, marginalized and ill-treated -- in short, protected from being subjected to social, physical or emotional violence and abuse from spouses, family members and others. Essentially, most [Turkish women] are still stuck in a spot between individual freedom, independent conscience and societal conditioning. This sort of an operation ensures the ability for many women to bring that pressure to a minimum. But this can still certainly not be called a ‘benefit',” she concluded.
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