China's hot new commodity: "Fake virgins" - Broadsheet - Salon.com: hymens can tear for all sorts of reasons, including riding a bike or using tampons -- or just being alive and mobile. As proof of virginity, it is useless. (One might also argue that the concept of virginity is pretty useless -- but that's another post.)
it is largely a means of appeasing men who want "proof" that they have purchased their own holy virgin. "If you go to buy a cellphone, of course you'd want to buy a new cellphone," one man told the Post. "Who would spend the same amount of money to buy an old cellphone that's been used for two years?" (That's almost as priceless as, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?")
I don't agree with this value [placed on virginity]," said Zhou Hong, a physician at a Beijing women's hospital. "It's unfair to the women. The men are not virgins. But we can't change this male-privileged society." Well, you certainly won't by perpetuating the lie of the hymen as proof of purity -- not to mention the value of virginity in the first place.
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