;D

LOL believe me the entire family of the girl (specially dad and brothers) run background checks on the dude she decides to marry... They find out more about him than he knows about himself before they give their approval! =P Guys are lucky it's not easy to figure out if he's done anything with another girl before, otherwise no one would ever get married around here! :P

Dude! That's insane! Oh my goodness, I'm way too rebellious to live in such a society haha.

Haha good thing you were born on the right side of the world for you then =P It's not that bad really... For us people living here it's just the norm. We feel all important when the family makes the guy prove himself worthy of us XD

Yeah I guess it's just what you're used to!

lol...so the view isn't so hard pressed on the males? They can have had sex and still not muddy thier family's name?

No it IS hard pressed on the males too. It's just that you can't easily find out if the guy had sex or not. They're just harder to detect that's all lol They do shame their families just the same.

see. I'm happy you cleared this up for me.

Call me weird, but I want this surgery. My virginity was taken when I was raped at the age of three, I didnt expierence the whole thing, and I sure as hell dont remember it. I honestly didnt know what a hymen was for a while, even now that I know what it is, I dont ever remember having it intact. I will never have the surgery, but I never even knew about it until this thread, thanks for that!

Hmm I could see why you'd want it, but still, would it change anything? Like I said earlier, most girls break it by using a tampon and stuff. And anyway it HURTS having it broken lol.

Haha, I know it hurts I guess it is just one thing I missed out on in life, and I cannot get it back. I am sure I bled during my rape, but when I willingly lost my virginity, I didnt bleed, it didnt hurt, it didnt even feel special to me, I guess because I had the mindset that I was already not a virgin so why save something that I dont have.

There is no way I would pay 2 grand for it, but its a nice thought haha.

Hang on - your pic says you're 5 months pregnant! It would be a virgin birth if you had your hymen put back now!

Hahaha I AM 5 months pregnant, but thats a really good idea, I could be like the virgin Mary haha.

I don't agree with this. Whoever said that you still aren't a virgin is correct; just because you bleed (again or not again) doesn't mean you haven't had sex. So than you begin a marriage with a lie; and what a horrible way to start!

I'm the survivor of childhood sexual assault and was raped, and you know what? God has purified me and made me whole, so who cares if I bleed or not!

i wouldnt wanna do it.. i wouldnt pay $2000.

this is gonna sound weird but i had 2 boyfriends before my husband and my husband made me bleed. i hardly had sex with my 1st 2 boyfriends. my husband and i had sex a whole lot resulting in him *breakin me*.

This tradition is not exclusive to one area, or culture, or even race.

(and sort of off topic, but not, this topic reminds me of this song: The Tale of Miss Virginia Epitome

Hearing stuff like this sickens me. We are in the year 2010 and we still have countries treating women like they did in the past. Who cares if a woman had sex. Men have sex all the time and probably slept with tons of women but it's not looked at as shameful? Men can be whores too. Too bad we can't force them to see it that way. I like to add that not everyone is born with a hymen or bleeds after their first time.

I know! It makes me wonder what they do to a woman if she DOESN'T bleed after their first time, even if she truly is a virgin? I didn't...

I think people are being quite biased about this. Just because certain cultures don't follow a primarily American or European way of thinking does not make them wrong. It does not make them backward or behind in the times. It's different, yes. And it could be normal according to your culture or horrifying according to your culture, but it doesn't make anyone right. It's just how it is.

Ever since I started my anthropology degree and discovered how hard it is for people (including me, of course) to acknowledge the differences in cultures without assumptions or ridicule, I've believed that everyone should have to take a cultural anthropology course in college (or even in high school). Too many people think with a bias, as in them-against-us, foreigners-against-wewhoareright. As a feminist American woman, I would expect myself to have a feminist American feeling about it, but I've spent four years learning NOT to think as an American and instead as an anthropologist (granted my focus is archaeology and not cultural anthropology and certainly do not consider myself an anthropologist... not with only a bachelor's degree!), and I don't understand how this is negative if it's good for the women in this culture. It's so easy to say "If this were me, I wouldn't..." or so on, but the fact is that you're thinking about this from an American/European perspective, not the perspective of this culture.

That's just my two-cents, of course. :)

Yeah but surely you can't condone that women not being treated as equal to men is right? Yes cultures are different but I'd have thought that in 2010, as we become a more global society, we must strive towards similar ideals, especially when it comes to stuff like this. How about stuff like child marriage? A 12 year old bride in Yemen died recently from internal bleeding following intercourse... surely you must draw a line somewhere and say that this shit is wrong.

The article didn't say it was good for the women... these women are scared to fucking death of being found out. They will be ostracised and cast out of their families. That's not good!

Oh my god, did she really? That's absolutely terrible :(
That poor little girl.

We do have equality between men and women here. What women can't do men can't do either. It IS looked down upon and considered a taboo that a man has sex before marriage too. Yes the reaction to doing the wrong thing is way over the top but it goes for both males and females.

Child marriage is a completely different issue! It's just a minority of retarded people that still do that. I'm sure such things happen in America, UK, and anywhere in the world but we just don't hear much about it. The vast majority of Arabs are completely against child marriage of course! We are appalled by that happening just like you guys are.

omg.. that is so sad. poor LITTLE GIRL.

Exactly... I mean come sit between Arab women and listen to a conversation about women of the west. Everyone is so appalled by the way they live their lives and how they expose themselves! It goes both ways... If you as Americans or Europeans think that the fact that women aren't allowed to have sex before marriage is sickening women around here think that the fact that you're allowed to do it is sickening. If you wanna argue about equality guys here aren't allowed to have sex before marriage either! It is extremely looked down upon just like it is with women...

But some women/men in the Eastern world will have sex before marriage. That is their choice and I don't see why it should be looked down upon, or make them any less of a good candidate for marriage. We have women/men here who want to wait until marriage to have sex. They will probably have the piss taken out of them by their friends, but they won't be looked down upon.

I guess I'm just all for freedom of choice and I don't believe in adhering to traditions, or going along with something to make your family happy. And I am a big fan of the saying, 'You wouldn't buy a car without test driving it first' ;D