"some conservative, not to say backward, cultures -- still consider an in-tact hymen the best proof of a woman's virtue"

Wow. I take it Mr. Manjoo is not one for mincing words? All political correctness and walking on semantic eggshells aside, and stressing that I am saddened by the compulsion some women experience to sew their hymens and vaginas up, I have to say that to deem a culture altogether "conservative, not to say backward" because of it's unfortunate affection toward intact hymens is ludicrous. I mean, does that imply that the bourgeoning practice of sewing hymens in the United States is a clear indicator of it's backwardness? How about the staggering instances of eating disorders among the young, boob jobs out the yin yang, and totally unhealthy attitudes and fascinations with celebrity culture and celebrity lifestyles? To imply backwardness in any given culture in the same paragraph where you highlighted olny one small feature if said culture, is tantamount to begging for your reader's dismissal.

"some conservative, not to say backward, cultures -- still consider an in-tact hymen the best proof of a woman's virtue"

That sentence doesn't mean that an emphasis on virginity is the ONLY indicator of a backwards culture, but that it is a common feature of one.

Stupid people with money are going to spend it on something. They could spend it on something better than this. They could also spend it on something worse. This has got to rate pretty far down on the totem pole of societal problems.

residents of them who are doing this to make sure there are no accusations of "fraudulent" marriage

I used to teach at a college that had a sizeable international student population, including many young women from the wealthier strata of various Muslim countries. These young women dressed and acted completely modern -- and this extended to their sex lives, while they were over here. But, the primary reason they were being educated was to attract a good husband at home, and virginity at marriage was absolutely required. The Ob/Gyn at the student health service received several requests each spring from these young women for a referral to a plastic surgeon to restore their virginity. (Their parents usually paid, thinking that their daughters were just getting nose or boob jobs...)

Re-virgination is nothing new among Islamic women. About 30 years ago, I worked on a project involving about 50 Algerian engineers and technicians. The wife of one of them was Canadian, very intelligent and very interesting. She told me that Algerian women who went to France or Canada for their education not uncommonly sought the help of a discreet plastic surgeon in Paris to hide their sexual activity before they returned home.

In my medical experience, hymen surgery is most often done on virginal women prior to a marriage to allow a more pleasurable first sexual experience.

It's a proceedure done quite alot and quietly - often in an office.

In the gynecology practice where i work, there are more virginal women than popular culture would have us believe. they don't all run around yelling for abstinence education for others or protesting at abortion clinics like some of the salon writers would have us believe. Nor are they mentally unstable wackos that are societal rejects that can't have normal relationships.

Many of these women have chosen for their first sexual experience to be with someone they love and have made a lifelong commitment to and someone who loves them and has also made a lifelong commitment to them. that sex can be both pleasurable and spiritual hardly seems backwards to me.

that someone has chosen not to have trivial physical sex, but wait for love and then also has self assuredness to plan for it to be a pleasurable experience for both her and her lover. that's not backward but more like what do you intellectual types call it...self-actualization

Your comments about abstinence are very interesting but this article was about women who have had sex and wish to have their hymens restored. So, your letter is... what do we intellectual types call it... completely off topic.

By the way, do you think this contempt on the part of conservatives for those who are well-educated is related at all to our country's appalling literacy rates?

How exactly does having an 'intact' hymen increase the pleasure of having sexual intercourse for the first time?

"knows" she's a virgin. I guess she would know whether it was her first time or not, regardless of the state of her hymen, unless she "can't remember" in which case the state of her hymen, from her point of view anyway, would seem beside the point.

Actually, miriald, while Manjoo's assumption is that these women have had sex, I see no reason why a woman who is a virgin but whose hymen was damaged in some other way might not want that operation if she's marrying a man who sees an intact hymen as indispensable proof of virtue. Manjoo himself notes that the hymen can be broken or stretched by other means.

In Cary Tennis's recent article "Take my virginity--please!" a respondent noted that in modern Western society most women in effect lose their hymens by their 20s, even if they remain virgins. The responses also noted that some men are freaked out by virgins, so that women who want sex with such men also have an operation of choice: a hymenotomy.

Would the gyno who posted here please be more clear about the procedure he is describing -- it would appear that he is being asked to REMOVE the hymen of young virgins just before their marriage so the first night will not be painful, and that he has misunderstood the article.

Could you please clarify your post, sir?

The article was obviously about the restoration of fake "hymens" to girls from places where honor killings, "I divorce three I divorce thee I divorce thee" instant marriage dissolution and such occur. Places where women are treated like cattle, bought and sold, threatened with violence over any tiny breach of behavior and generally restrained through violence.

Backward? You betcha. Don't PC me on that. Any people which kills girls for sexual misbehavior or allows a divorce or humiliation to come down on a woman who is not a virgin at marriage is just plain BACKWARD, disgusting, sick and dangerous to itself and its neighbors.

If we have become so PC that we can't call the type of treatment these women fear upon returning home sans hymen "backward," -- we deserve to be enslaved by the same controlling scary violence-prone woman-abusing 8-sons-with-no-jobs creeps who are doing this to their women. So we can get the same treatment as their daughters.

Jan VanDenBerg