Zimbabwe – Virginity Testing

ZIMBABWE – Imagine being
Rudo (not her real name), a 16-year-old girl living in an area of Zimbabwe where
girls are tested for virginity.

 

Rudo’s turn to be examined comes. An elderly
woman asks her to lie down, opens her legs, and then examines her using a finger
– which has been inserted in other girls’ private parts that day – to see if she
is still a virgin. How does Rudo feel?

Unfortunately, the practice of
virginity testing has been resuscitated over the years, with people claiming
that it preserves African identity and culture. Various groups – sometimes
ethnic groups, churches, or families – perform virginity testing in Malawi,
South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and other African countries.

Girls as
young as five years old may be tested. If a girl is found to be a non-virgin,
the payment for her as a bride will be lower, or a man may refuse to marry her.
Even if the man agrees to marry her, the girl and her family are often shamed
and ridiculed.

Boys, in contrast, are not subjected to such intimate
examinations. Boys and men are not even expected to remain abstinent before or
faithful during marriage. Their sexual “purity” is not questioned. In Zimbabwe,
as in many other places, male sexual experience is often encouraged and male
infidelity tends to be condoned.

Why is virginity testing done? First,
it is meant to ascertain girls’ sexual purity at marriage. Second, it is
intended to discourage girls from engaging in sexual activities prior to
marriage and, thus, may be considered a way to combat the spread of HIV and
AIDS.

This is the case in Zimbabwe, which has one of the highest HIV
infection rates in the world. For example, Chief Naboth Makoni of Makoni
district includes virginity testing as part of his anti-AIDS campaign.

He says virginity testing of girls helps prevent HIV infection in his
district (which, ironically, has the highest rate of HIV infection in the
country) by making premarital sex shameful and thus discouraging it. Thousands
of young girls have been tested in Chief Makoni’s area.

It is true that
– for both girls and boys – abstaining from sex until entering a mutually
monogamous marriage protects against the sexual transmission of HIV. But
virginity testing is not necessarily an effective way to achieve this goal. Nor
is it fair. For example, some girls fail the test because they have been victims
of rape or incest.

When their loss of virginity is discovered during
testing, they become stigmatized while the perpetrators often go unpunished. In
other cases, girls may have had to exchange sex for food just to survive. Also,
a girl’s hymen may have broken naturally. Although she has never had sexual
relations, she may be declared a non-virgin and suffer the consequences.
Finally, the practice of virginity testing implies that girls’ sexuality, but
not that of boys, is the root cause of HIV transmission.

Virginity
testing is likely to be harmful for many girls, regardless of whether they pass
the test. First, this intimate examination strips a girl of her dignity.
Virginity testing is said to be voluntary, but parents under societal pressure
may coerce or persuade their daughters to undergo the practice.

Girls
who fail the test are often stigmatized by their families and the community for
months or years, and their marital value falls. To preserve their virginity,
girls and young women sometimes will resort to other forms of sexual
intercourse, which pose more risks of HIV infection than vaginal sexual
intercourse.

Some girls say that they feel happy when they pass a
virginity test. In a newspaper interview, a young schoolgirl said: “If you are a
virgin, you feel proud and have self-esteem and confidence in what you are
doing.”

However, some girls who pass the test are at risk: They may be
married off to older men whose virginity and HIV status is unknown but may
already be infected with HIV. In fact, HIV-infected men may seek young virgins
for marriage because they believe the myth that having sexual intercourse with a
virgin cures the infection.

Virginity testing in Zimbabwe is
controversial, and people have different opinions about it. But let us ask
ourselves these questions: Is virginity testing really a good way to curb the
spread of HIV and AIDS? Does it not violate young women’s rights and deprive
them of power and control over their bodies and sexuality?

What is being
done to help girls who have lost their virginity due to rape? What are the
health risks posed by using the same gloves or fingers not necessarily washed
well on several girls? To whom are these girls married after being tested? Are
their husbands HIV-negative?

Why is the virginity of boys not being
questioned? Why do these double standards of sexual purity for boys and girls
exist?

 

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