“Shame lasts longer than peoples’ lives,” said Yusur, a young woman from northwesten Tunisia, wrought with regret from her ruined wedding day. “If I had paid US $500, my life would have turned out much better and I wouldn’t have to worry about the shame, which will chase me to the last day of my life. I had the white dress, the symbol of joy and songs were present, but the small drops of the ‘honour’ blood were absent,” she said.
“Shame lasts longer than peoples’ lives,” said Yusur, a young woman from northwesten Tunisia, wrought with regret from her ruined wedding day. “If I had paid US $500, my life would have turned out much better and I wouldn’t have to worry about the shame, which will chase me to the last day of my life. I had the white dress, the symbol of joy and songs were present, but the small drops of the ‘honour’ blood were absent,” she said.
On her wedding night, Yusur’s husband discovered that she had lost her virginity to another man. He told Yusur that his manhood would not allow him to be the husband of a woman who was abandoned by another man. Yusur cried and begged him to keep it a secret, but soon everyone learned of her story when her husband filed for divorce.
Yusur, however, does not regret that she had sex before marriage, rather she laments that she had not gone to a doctor to have her hymen, a membrane that surrounds or partially covers the external vaginal opening until it is penetrated, restored beforehand.
“My friend told me to get the surgery and if I had listened to her and paid the US $500, I wouldn’t have suffered this scandalous situation for three long years,” she said. “There was an easy solution to the problem. I could have paid double and triple this amount to avoid this scandalous situation, prevent putting my father in such an embarrassing position, and avoid hearing women’s gossiping every time I visit my village,” she said.
US $400: A price for restoring virginity and “honor”
Unlike Yusur, many young women have resorted to doctors restoring their virginity, regardless of the price, to avoid the very heavy social and legal consequences imposed on them by Tunisian society. For this reason, many women have been overcharged by doctors aware of their desperation, for a simple operation.
Twenty-six-year-old Hanan, who underwent hymen reconstruction surgery, said the operation liberated her from the burdens of norms and traditions, which restrict women’s freedoms in eastern societies. “If honour lies in virginity, I am today a virgin and the daughter of an honourable man’ (a Tunisian slogan which describes virtuous girls) and no one can deny this fact.”
Hanan had paid only US $400 for her virginity surgery in one of the private clinics in Tunis, the capital city, where a friend works so she is considered one of the lucky women. Usually, doctors take good advantage of women’s fear of scandals and their keenness to hide their previous sexual relations through the hymen reconstruction surgery. In some extreme cases, doctors charge more than US $9000. Normally, the cost ranges between US $400 and US $500.
Hymen reconstruction surgeries are considered plastic surgery and are performed by specialized obstetricians and only in private clinics.
The absence of studies on this phenomenon in Tunisia does not mean that it is not a widely spread one. While a segment of society tends to ignore this taboo issue, there is another segment that even refuses to admit that it exists. However, doctors specialized in performing such surgeries say there is a large increase in the number of women undergoing this surgery. According to these doctors, there has been an increase of 80% compared to the last ten years, which is consistent with figures from the National Family Health Survey, a government institution, which issued a report in 2007, showing that 80% of young men and 68% of young women engage in sex outside of marriage.
The number of hymen reconstruction surgeries per day ranges between two to four during the spring and summer seasons, according to sources in a private hospital. These sources said the number drops to 3 operations per week during the autumn and winter seasons because most of the weddings are often held in the spring and summer.
In order to assess the extent to which the prices offered by doctors for such operations vary, we pretended to come from different classes of society when we inquired about prices.
The social class of women plays a role in determining the price charged by doctors
Each time we tried to make doctors believe that we belong to a certain class of the society or that we came from a certain area in Tunisia, the prices offered differed accordingly. It should be noted that initially, doctors refused to tell us a price, claiming that they first needed to carry out diagnostic tests. However, with our insistence on knowing the price, they finally agreed to tell us.
In our first contact with a doctor, we told him that we needed to undergo the hymen reconstruction surgery for a wedding in the coming there months. We tried to make him understand that we are informed about the operations, the time they require, and the time a patient needs to spend at the hospital afterwards. The result of this first contact was an appointment for making the necessary test and a promise that the price would not exceed US $500.
In our second contact with doctors, a friend from southern Tunisia helped us by calling a doctor and telling him that she was “in a big trouble.” She told him that her fiancé, who is now working outside Tunisia, would come back during the coming two weeks and he wants to ask her family for its permission to take her for a medical check in order to prove her virginity and refute the widely spread rumors about her amongst neighbours. Our friend told the doctor that she is ready to pay any price for this operation if the doctor performs it as quickly as possible and she asked him to give her a price for the operation.
The response of the doctor was immediate and positive. He reassured her that no other doctor would discover that she was not a virgin after the surgery and he told her it would cost US $800.
Our last contact was with the same doctor. This time, we told the doctor that our friend wants to undergo the surgery because she was getting married and was frightened because she is from a very conservative area. We also asked the doctor for an urgent appointment and the price he gave us was US $600, but he added that he might charge even more. We told the doctor that we know that he had performed the same operation for one of our friends, but for less money and his reply was that the price depended on the clinic where he performs the operation. He also said that because of the urgency of the operation, the clinic which he deals with may not have a vacant bed in the coming few days.
The virginity stock market
In Tunisia, not only do the same doctors give different prices for different patients, but also the prices differ from one doctor to the next. Most of the obstetricians, who accepted performing hymen reconstruction surgeries in Tunisia (there are those who refuse to perform them), do not give a price for this kind of operation unlike other procedures such as deliveries. In some cases, there can be a US $300 dollar price difference among doctors, 50% higher than the average price for such operations which ranges between US $400-500.
We contacted four doctors in the capital known for performing these surgeries; they all perform the procedure in the same clinic. We requested information about the procedures and were shocked by the huge difference in the prices offered to us. The first doctor said he would perform the operation for US $500; the second quoted a price range between US $700 – 750, while the third doctor reached a ceiling of US $800.
This big difference in prices charged by the three doctors, who deal with the same clinic, confirms that it is the doctors who are fixing higher prices because the clinic where they all work takes the same amount of money for the services it provides to doctors (such as the operation room, the anesthesia doctor and the patients’ rooms).
We asked one of the nurses, who works for one of these doctors, about the reason behind the very high prices charged for these operations, but she believed the prices are fair because there are many factors such as the experience of the doctors, the high rent of the clinics, especially those located in luxury areas, which automatically results in higher expenses.
Doctors should not be blamed for society
Another nurse who worked for a private doctor said he had charged US $600 and even less for a hymen replacement procedure. The nurse confirmed that not all doctors abide by the same price for such operations.
The Ministry of Health has declined to comment on our questions about why there are no fixed prices for such operations, which is allowing doctors to financially exploit women. Dr. “M”, a gynecologist and obstetrician, who refuses to perform such kinds of operations, said that “these are plastic surgeries, which women willfully choose to undergo. They have the right to refuse to pay the amounts which doctors charge, especially because unlike heart and kidney operations, these operations are not urgently needed, or a matter of life and death.” Other doctors concurred, arguing that women are not forced to pay the prices charged.
Double standard
Tunisian men have no problem with practicing sex outside of marriage, yet most of them refuse to marry women who are not virgins, according to an unofficial study entitled ‘The sexuality of Tunisian men.’ The study revealed that 84% of the Tunisian men consider women’s virginity as a precondition for marriage, while only 6% do not consider it a condition for marriage.
This kind of double standard is not limited to Tunisian men. The percentages of women who engage in sex relations before marriage is 68%, but many of them resort to doctors to restore their virginity in order protect themselves.
Yusur, as well as many other young women, have been confronted with society’s rejection when it discovered that they were not virgins before marriage and they were also threatened with divorce after marriage because they did not undergo the hymen reconstruction surgeries. In some cases, women are be forced to pay financial penalties for the damage they have caused to their husbands. Tunisian law does not stipulate that virginity is a condition for marriages, however, there were some court verdicts where husbands were compensated financially for the damage and these have relied on the so-called jurisprudence, which is based on the general prevailing cultural and social norms. In the al-Monastir province, on the Tunisian coast, similar verdicts were issued and a wife was divorced and was forced by law to pay her husband US $1200 for the “moral damage” she inflicted on him because she was not a virgin. This amount is much higher than the price a woman should pay for a hymen reconstruction surgery.
In interpreting this verdict, some of the lawyers, who have their own forum, considered the verdict to be based on a written confession made by the wife stating that she was not a virgin and that she had inflicted damage on her husband. From a legal perspective as well as from the factual one, the court justified its verdict by saying that “the written confession is enough reason for the husband to divorce his wife for the damage she inflicted on him because the marriage contract is a contract based on mutual respect and trust in the actions of each party to the contract.”
Virginity: A condition for a marriage contract
For his part, al-Hadi Hamdouni, a lawyer, disagrees about this verdict: “The divorce based on damage should be filed by one of the spouses for financial or moral damage inflicted by the other. The damage should be proven by all means of legally acknowledged evidence such as testimonies of witnesses, verbal and physical violence, negligence, and unwillingness to provide for the family, or any other kind of damage upon which any party to the marriage contract can ask for a divorce. The damage condition is enough to file for divorce.”
Yusur did not have to pay her husband a fine. Her ex-husband request for a divorce based on “damages” was rejected and the two parties have reached an agreement on their divorce. Still, Yusur “paid” after her divorce in being rejected by society. She was abandoned and condemned by her family, relatives, and many people surrounding her. For this reason and in search of a new life, Yusur escaped from her small village to a coastal city where no one knows her. Today, she is ready to lie and undergo the hymen reconstruction surgery if the man who wants to marry her expects a virgin.
