Twenty-five years ago, a young professional couple in Toronto visited a plastic surgeon’s office with an unusual request.
She wanted her virginity back.
The pair, born in Iran but raised in Canada, dated through university. She was a lawyer, he, a doctor. They talked often about marriage but a letter from a college in the United States threw a wrench in their plans. He wanted to pursue a medical specialty and that letter was his ticket. She couldn’t dream of leaving the rest of her life behind to follow him to Baltimore.
They agreed to part ways but not before she persuaded him to pay for her revirginization.
Since that day, Dr. Robert Stubbs, a Toronto-based plastic surgeon, has performed the operation on hundreds of other women across Canada. He has won international acclaim for refining the hymenoplasty procedure, which involves cutting away the scarred edge of the membrane broken during intercourse and narrowing the entrance of the vagina, then putting the pieces back together. One hour, $2,500, a few dissolving stitches later and voila : a surgical virgin is made.
“The women came from all backgrounds,” says Stubbs, 59, who closed his Yorkville practice last summer to build his dream home in the Haliburton Highlands.
“They were Coptic Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim. The majority were educated, from upper-status families. In spite of their exposure to Western ways, they still had this need to follow their family’s culture. They said they would not force their daughters to do this but they were caught with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new.”
While women around the world have been secretly reclaiming their virginity for decades, the procedure, and its moral and legal implications, has recently been thrust into the spotlight.
Just a few weeks ago, a court in northern France annulled the marriage of a Muslim couple because the bride had lied about her virginity. The groom reportedly learned of his bride’s deception the night of their wedding and promptly outed her to the guests who were still partying on the dance floor. The annulment sparked a national debate so heated that the justice ministry asked the local public prosecutor to appeal the case. The appeal court is expected to deliver its ruling this fall.
Named after the Greek god of marriage, the hymen has no known biological function. While cultures that highly value virginity believe an intact hymen is the marker of a pure woman, scientific fact shows the hymen can break for reasons that have nothing to do with sex.
In Canada, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons does not keep tabs on who performs hymenoplasty or how many of these surgeries are logged each year. “From the college perspective, it’s not owned by one particular specialty,” says spokesperson Cecily Wallace.
In Toronto, an increasing number of cosmetic surgery clinics, where some doctors may have limited training, seem to be cashing in on hymenoplasty, promoting the service online and in print.
Type “hymenoplasty Toronto” into Google and a tersely worded ad pops up.
“Repair hymen and regain virginity. Lady Doctor. Free consultation.”
The Fairview Cosmetic Surgery Clinic at York Mills would not return calls for this story. The clinic’s lead surgeon, Dr. Padma Jain, is being investigated by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The college alleges Jain refuses to let “a duly qualified medical practitioner” into her practice to watch surgical procedures. According to the college’s website, Jain is not a certified surgeon.
The Toronto Cosmetic Clinic, which is also under investigation by the college and devotes a page on its website to hymenoplasty, did not respond to interview requests.
While hymenoplasty is not a commonly requested procedure in Dr. Sammy Sliwin’s office, he says he has performed just a few a year for the past two decades , the plastic surgeon has only ever heard one reason for the request.
“It’s basically to deceive a husband that a woman is virginal.” Sliwin acknowledges he’s part of a lie.
“I am the mechanism through which this woman can perpetrate a fraud on her husband. Do I really care about it? No. Some of them made a silly mistake when they were younger and they didn’t realize how important it was going to be to their fiancé.”
He typically charges about $2,500, depending on the type of anaesthetic and the woman’s level of anxiety.
When the marriage is consummated, Sliwin tells his patients there will be bleeding “that is the point, after all” and minimal pain.
“The girl will have a tear in her eye if she’s a good actress and that’s it.
“End of story.”
That women living in First World countries even feel the need to fake their virginity appalls Toronto lawyer Zahra Dhanani.
“Today, we have so many ways that women continue to jump hoops just to be lovable to men and acceptable to society,” she says. “Virginity restoration, I think, is a sick, sick, disease that’s linked completely to the larger sickness of male dominance and inequality.”
Dhanani, legal director of The Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children, has recently dealt with clients who were forced into hymenoplasty by men in Toronto.
“It was so much about `Well, now you’re mine. And the only way for me to be clear and claim you’re mine is around this whole virginity thing,’” Dhanani recounts.
In Vancouver, sex therapist Dr. Faizal Sahukhan has counselled Muslim couples dealing with the fallout of faked virginity.
Some clients have taken fake blood capsules into the nuptial bed. “They hold it in their hand upon first intercourse with their husbands. They pop it to try to convince people that they were a virgin on their wedding night,” Sahukhan says.
“The thing is, the truth always comes out. Whether it’s from other people who were previous partners or it’s just the guilt of holding this big secret.”
Sahukhan, an Indo-Canadian raised in Vancouver by traditional Muslim parents, works mainly with patients from strict, religious backgrounds. These days, he is leading some of them through an alternative, holistic way to reclaim their virginity.
“I look at it as more of a psychological process than a physical process.
“You make this contract with your husband, saying, `I’m married to you. I will only be with you.’ I don’t mean a paper-and-pen contract. For the husband, seeing this and hearing this and empathizing with his wife, the past stays the past. That usually does it.”
Of course, the non-surgical “fix” isn’t necessarily any less painful.
Though Dr. Stubbs has been miles removed from the operating room for nearly a year, he still fields regular requests to revirginize women around the world.
When he checked his email recently at his local library in cottage country, he found a note from a woman in the United Arab Emirates, requesting the procedure.
The fact that people are finally talking publicy about hymenoplasty is somewhat validating for the doctor.
“For years, I’ve been telling my colleagues and everyone else, I’m not crazy,” Stubbs says. “Maybe the reality’s settling in.”
Author: Diana Zlomislic
Source: Toronto Star – 12 July 2008
