mental health. And thus, it denies them their basic human rights!
35% of women worldwide suffer from gender-based violence — due to the prejudice arising from our often subconscious, yet taught, conceptions of virginity. Most of these violent infractions happen inside the walls of our own homes and communities. Some of these are explicit actions of harassment, while some are disguised as helicopter parenting to “protect” children (girls) from supposed sexual threats and abomination.
However, the veracity of this is that virginity testing is already an indirect assault on a woman’s right to govern her own sexuality. If you’re reading this and think that virginity testing must be an archaic notion, you are correct. However, if you think it’s not still a very much relevant issue nowadays — you are wrong! Virginity testing is happening everywhere and it crosses cultural, socioeconomic, religious and racial lines!
One of the proofs of this ongoing cultural travesty is the news that broke last Tuesday, when internationally well known American rapper, T.I., proudly declared in a podcast interview that he escorts his teen daughter to a gynecologist, every year, to “check her hymen” to make sure it’s “still intact.” Expectedly, the news proliferated like a wildfire; sparking appropriate backlash and criticisms, with many people, including me, expressing shock and revulsion. My shock was not just that a parent would even consider subjecting their daughter to this form of dare I say ‘abuse’ but that a medical provider felt compelled to go along with it.
If you thought the world couldn’t get any more problematic, when the interview shifted to his parenting dynamics, T.I., in an all too detailed manner, revealed that his daughter — who recently turned 18 and just began her first year of college — is still a virgin because he had her checked. Confidently, he discussed, in detail, the yearly routine of