Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala
With legislation on the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Bill due to be passed soon, a special parliamentary committee is currently debating whether examples of discrimination should be included in a schedule to be added to the Bill.
Examples suggested to form part of this schedule are discrimination based on gender, virginity testing and exclusion or expulsion of pupils for pregnancy.
Virginity testing has struck a sensitive cultural chord, with some people even arguing it to be a sort of “cultural right”. There is clearly a need to take a closer look at all these notions of culture and cultural practices, values, rituals or whatever people are trying to legislate and justify as sacred “rights” according to custom, in an era keen to revive lost “African traditions”.
Certainly virginity testing has some claim to be a cultural practice inasmuch as it has been documented to have taken place long before today. According to written accounts, it most often occurred in KwaZulu-Natal, as part of Nomkhubulwane festivities.
This was a ritual occasion, usually held in spring, whereby people paid their respects to the goddess of rain and the fertility that rain represented.
While the overriding theme of the festivities was to ask Nomkhubulwane to show her favours in the form of a good crop and plentiful harvest, these fertility rites were also an occasion to ask the goddess to bless her people with lots of children. Various rituals were performed to ensure this end.
Among these was having girls certified to be virgins dig up a patch of land and plant crops specifically for Nomkhubulwane’s consumption and pleasure. This was done as a way to say “thank you” to the benevolent goddess, the idea being that only virgins were pure and good enough to prepare the soil that would usher forth Nomkhubulwane’s garden of delights.
Such were the rituals of a rural, agrarian people whose survival in terms of food and lineage links depended on the generosity and goodwill of Mother Nature.
Today, some self-proclaimed guardians of tradition have honedin on these old rituals in a big way. Like true missionaries with a cause, they are defending the recent resurgence of virginity testing by claiming that it has been reinterpreted, that it actually represents a culturally appropriate way to combat things like teenage pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/Aids.
Virginity testing, unfortunately, represents something emotional in the form of deeply ingrained thought patterns of patriarchal society. I say “unfortunately” because those same thought patterns are framing the debates on tradition in this era of “renaissance”.
In the name of culture, we can expect to hear a lot of confused and convoluted arguments put forth to cloud our thinking as the self-proclaimed guardians of tradition amass their intellectual weapons to defend the cause of patriarchy in the next century. It might become difficult to maintain clarity of thought on these matters, but we must try.
For example, those who support virginity testing say it is a cultural right. This begs several questions: Whose culture is it anyway? Who defines the parameters of that culture? Who takes away a girl’s virginity in the first place? Who is making her pregnant? Who is giving her diseases? Who is transmitting HIV? Who controls her body? Her sexuality? Her reproduction?
And what about the boys? Why are they never part of the picture? Studies have shown that for a vast majority of women in this country their first sexual experience has been one of coerced sex. Losing their virginity has obviously not been their choice.
The same voices that claim virginity testing as a cultural right also claim that a young man’s pursuit of many sexual conquests is a cultural right.
Extramarital girlfriends are also claimed by some to be a cultural right. Some even go so far as to say that wife abuse is a cultural right. Much of the discourse on culture and tradition is bent and shaped to suit individual interests.
It seems that many of these rights are enshrined in some unwritten constitution of what it means to be a man in a male- defined society. Poor woman can claim no such rights.
The assumption of male sexual irresponsibility and female sexual responsibility rings loud and clear in the debates around virginity testing as a cultural right. If she falls pregnant, it’s her fault. The boys just can’t help themselves. They are helpless little prisoners of raging testosterone.
Sadly, rituals like those for Nomkhubulwane that once served to address the challenges of a more simple agricultural way of life are not going to work today.
In a more complex society rife with new diseases and attempts by women to break their multiple chains of oppression new rituals are needed to help equip young people to face the new challenges.
Women need to become the masters of their own bodies. Men need to be made accountable for their role in the spread of unwanted pregnancies and diseases like Aids.
Perhaps there needs to be new rituals of masculinity whereby young men are inculcated with notions of sexual responsibility and personal integrity.
Dumping it on to the shoulders of women is not only unfair and ultimately discriminatory, it just won’t work.
We can beg Nomkhulbulwane and make protestations until the cows come home, but it won’t make a fig of difference.
Teen pregnancies and HIV infection rates will just continue their rapid climb up the statistical charts.
What we need is just one person to suggest that we start to poke and prod male penises to check for signs of intercourse, and defend it as some kind of distant matriarchal cultural right. Then let’s see how quickly the whole sexist debate on virginity testing suddenly disappears.
Let’s get real here, and work on changing the conditions that make virginity for women a near impossibility in South Africa today.
We can no longer afford to ignore men’s role in the problems related to sexuality.
Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala is an anthropologist at the University of Natal’s School of Anthropology and Psychology