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By Everjoice J. Win
The Southern African sub-region is currently devastated by the AIDS pandemic. In search of answers traditional leaders and some health practitioners have reinstalled the practice of virginity testing. This is a practice where young women are tested by older women. These tests are often conducted using very unscientific methods such as mere examination of the calves around the legs, or insertion of fingers or even eggs into the vagina. (If the egg cracks inside the vagina one is not considered a virgin!) Unfortunately, the practice is being viewed by some as a sure way of preventing infection.
This is the 21st century. We have come a long way. Yet, it feels as though we are still standing in the same spot, at least those of us who are African and female. As I was growing up in the 1980s’ struggling to define my own identity and values; the media, teachers, older women, church pastors, peers, literally everyone, told me that I should be a “good girl”. This meant; never allowing males to touch me, (it was not clear whether they meant that literally, or figuratively). Preserving virginity was important because it would increase my “value” as a woman, especially at marriage, when I would fetch a high bride price, or
lobola. My family would be proud of me. If I was not a virgin, my mother would be given a white sheet with a big hole in the center, signifying that I was “damaged goods”.
They warned me however, that the males would chase me with great gusto. The onus was
therefore upon me to preserve men’s morality. The teachers were, more hilarious. They showed us scary movies of sexually transmitted infections. Gaping vaginas, infested with sores, looking terribly unlike what I was familiar with. How this “transformation” occurred we were not told. The underlying message was virginity, virginity, virginity; not for myself, but for the husband who would love me forever and for my parents – read my father – who would make so much money out of the mythical groom. In those happy days we did not have HIV. The worst one had to worry about was an unwanted pregnancy, or maybe a sexually transmitted infection.
Twenty three years later, nothing much seems to have changed except the perspectives and values of hundreds of women like me. Thanks to the feminist movement, we now know better. That is why my 18-year-old daughter needs a different message. Unlike me, she has a lot more choices and a lot more support systems to enable her to make and stick with those empowering choices.
Choice, autonomy and bodily integrity are key principles in women’s rights. Maintaining one’s virginity should be a matter of individual choice. It is my body I do what I want with it. Telling a young woman to maintain her virginity, “because that is what men want”, is not giving her the autonomy to decide and feel good about herself. What does she want? But in order to empower young women, it is important to shatter a few myths about women’s sexuality, reproduction, and culture.
Myth one: men want to marry virgins and they will love them forever; Truth is, many men have abandoned their virgin brides for other women. Virginity does not seem to be a pull factor.
Myth two: Men want women who have boy-children. While this might be true, once a man decides to leave he will, regardless of what sex children she produces.
Myth three: Virginity protects you from HIV/AIDS:
If we define virginity as abstinence that is, then this may be true. But the linkage between HIV and virginity is a myth. While remaining a virgin protects you from HIV up to the point of marriage, it doesn’t protect you once you are married. And that is the biggest truth young girls need in this era. Research has shown that most women got infected with HIV/AIDS from their husbands to whom they were faithful. Literally, married women are much more of sitting ducks when it comes to HIV than single women. The latter have much more ability to negotiate safer sex while the former have very limited choices and autonomy.
A more dangerous fact which none of the promoters of virginity tests are telling girls is that they want to identify virgins so they can sleep with them. In Kwa-Zulu Natal, (South Africa), it has been reported several times that; a few months after handing out the virginity certificates to the girls, the chiefs and their hangers on, prey on the young women. In Zimbabwe too, women’s groups found that the chiefs and headmen behind the practice are the ones who are taking the young virgins as their third or fourth wives.
Stories from Zambia, South Africa and Zimbabwe show, that it is the young virgins who are much more in danger of getting infected by men who already know their HIV+ status. Popular fiction has it, that if you sleep with, (i.e. rape, abuse, marry, whatever, same difference), a virgin, you will be cleansed of HIV. What better way to help these sick men than to advertise who is a virgin in the community, than to give the virgins a certificate? But of course all this is hidden under the myth that having
lobola paid is the most desirable status for a woman.
The myth of what lobola signifies for women is one of the most enduring in Southern Africa, and it needs to be shattered.
Lobola does not benefit the woman. It benefits the men in her family; brothers, father, uncles.
Lobola is paid for a woman’s reproductive capacity or loosely translated, it buys her uterus. The implications of this are quite staggering; in a traditional divorce, the woman has to leave the children, because they are not hers. A wife can be divorced if she doesn’t produce the required “quota” of children, especially sons. If she dies before the quota is fulfilled her niece or young sister is forced into marrying the husband. Never mind that he might have HIV/AIDS, or that he is violent. The quota – which by the way nobody ever expressly outlines – must be fulfilled. A married woman cannot say no to sex - unprotected or even unsafe. In some families she can’t stop breastfeeding a child without consent from the in-laws. Counsellors in violence against women programmes have been told by survivors that one of the main things men say while abusing their wives is, “I paid for you, you must do what I want”. What choices does this leave a woman?
In this era of HIV/AIDS, Southern Africans face the huge challenge of confronting their deeply held beliefs and values. Myths around women’s virginity and the payment of bride price compound the unequal power relations on which HIV/AIDS feeds. Whether the sub-region is ready to take this challenge is yet to be seen.
*Everjoice J. Win is a Zimbabwean feminist and activist.
She currently works for an international NGO based
in Harare.
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