For reasons best known to themselves, though probably having to do with the obsessive valuing of female virginity, the Chinese have been creating fake hymens for years. These hymens allow young ladies to trick their husbands, boyfriends or one imagines, clients, into thinking that they are the very first men to dance the ancient dance of intimate congress with the woman in question.

It makes sense. Fake hymens have been all the rage since hymens were invented. Because many backwards cultures regard women as property and consider fertility something which must be controlled by men, yet they generally tolerate promiscuity among men, there have never been enough hymens to go around. Ancient tricks like keeping a small vial of blood under the bed in order to fake the bloodletting of the breaking of the hymen have been about for centuries, and in more recent times, hymen reconstruction surgery has allowed women to experience all the joys of having delicate tissues torn open more than once. Katie Price aka Jordan had the procedure done as a present to then husband, Peter Andre.

Chinese innovation has meant that you no longer have to go under the knife to pretend to be a virgin. For just $15 you can purchase a thin sheet of plastic that goes inside the woman's vaginal canal and contains a little pocket of blood like material which ruptures upon impact and proclaims the user to be a woman of innovation, if not virtue.

In the West, virginity is no longer so highly prized, in fact, many sadly see it as a burden. However I would rather have virginity seen as an unfortunate burden than a requirement for living as is the case for many Muslim women. It's sad when a teenage girl or guy has sex because 'everyone else is doing it', but it's sadder when a woman is buried up to the neck and stoned to death because she had intercourse outside of marriage.

In a culture where honor killings are routinely conducted and rarely punished, one might think that forward thinking officials would welcome devices which will quite certainly save lives. This has not been the case. Scholars (in the Islamic world, often another word for 'hardline religious nuts') have been especially incensed by the product, with one prominent scholar, Abdel Moati Bayoumi saying, "This product encourages illicit sexual relations. Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage.”

His hypocrisy is intense, but it becomes more pronounced when you realize that many Islamic nations permit temporary marriages of a few hours in order for men and women to be able to mate then walk away with pure souls, though broken hymens.

The real kicker here, aside from all the abuse and killing is the underlying belief that if you don't threaten women with death if they have premarital relations, they'll just go nuts with lust and the entire country will degrade into an orgy. This is truly how the Muslim world sees women. It is no accident that the Arabic word for 'beautiful woman', fitna, is also the word for 'chaos.' Islam fears women and treats its men like little children with no self control. It's insulting for men and lethal for women.

Sources:

Fake Hymens

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/28/artificia...

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20051012_1.htm

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/05/world/main5364468.s...

Honor Killings

http://www.honorkillings.org/

http://vitalvoicesonline.org/blog/2009/07/30/unfpa-5000-women...