If there is a novel about the Biafran war and ensuing genocide that more people need to read then it is Roses and Bullets which was written by Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo.
It is a novel that speaks on the effects of the war on Biafran women and the often erased contributions of women in the war effort.
Without giving too many spoilers in the novel, it is also a book that showed how violating the practice of virginity testing is.
Before reading the novel, I had also read about virginity testing but Roses and Bullets was the first novel I read to show how deeply violating it can be.
In it, the main character’s father checked her vagina after she came back late from a party. His argument was that he was doing it to protect her from dangerous men but he did not care how it made her feel. She would describe later on how she felt like someone who had been sexually assaulted by her own father.
I have provided this backdrop to ask why there is not enough discussion on how dangerous virginity testing is on the psyche of women who encounter it.
Virginity testing is the act of checking a woman’s vagina to know if she has been penetrated by a penis. What this does is expose women to humiliation and ignores how women’s vaginas vary in shape and size, some women are born without hymens and even more, some women’s hymens thin out as they grow and engage in sports.
Even if all the aforementioned three were not the case, virginity testing reduces women to the inhumane idea that the presence of a hymen is an indicator of our worth as humans. Virginity testing can see incidents of honor killings if the lady in question did not have a visible enough hymen.
I would argue that virginity testing and female genital mutilation are both brainchildren of a society that is both afraid and obsessed with women’s sexuality.
Both of them are the result of sexual purity doctrines which preach that sex is dirty and something that stains women when done outside marriage and yet is not to be openly talked about by even a married woman.
And why does any of this exist? Why have we failed to classify virginity testing as a form of sexual abuse? Where are the awareness campaigns that link the presence of virginity testing to women engaging in anal sex so as to keep boyfriends even when they have no interest in anal sex?
How do we make progress if misogynistic practices like bride price at the core view women who are single mums or sexually active as those whose worth goes down? Even more, how do we ever make progress if sex is seen as something that diminishes what should be a woman’s intrinsic inviolable worth?
Speaking with Debby, a writer and beauty enthusiast, she explains that virginity testing is not even an accurate way of knowing if a woman is a virgin.
She said: “Besides the fact that it’s inhumane, it also isn’t entirely accurate… so there’s that too. When you speak with medical professionals, one gets the understanding that it’s not a foolproof way of knowing if someone has had sex or not. Imagine someone having an accident and it affects them in a way that they would fail a virginity test whereas they have literally never had sex.”
Debby also went on to say that virginity testing and invariably purity culture are both inhumane as they do not take into consideration women who were violated. She also mentioned that it can push women to fake that they are virgins in order to escape ridicule.
The words of Debby on how virginity testing ignores women who have been violated, were echoed by Jemimah*, a writer, when she shared how shortly after being sexually assaulted she began to undergo a series of mandatory virginity tests.
In her words: “I think when I was very much younger, I had this boyfriend and one time, I think during Christmas I was outside chilling. Then he told me to come to his house and so I was like okay let me go and then we had our first kiss. From there he started touching me and he forced me; like he put me on the ground and he was forcefully putting his hands inside my vagina.
I was telling him to stop and he didn’t and he was doing it over and over again. When he finally stopped I was so angry and I left the house.
So he sent me a letter telling me that he was sorry for not listening and for making me do things I didn’t want to do. I don’t know how; I thought I tore the letter but I didn’t tear it. I put it in my bag and then my parents found the letter.
Growing up I didn’t use to share things with my mum so she was always snooping around looking for things about me and so she saw the letter. It was really a chaotic experience for me in the house. So I think I ran away from the house and then when I got back, they took me to do a virginity test. They started virginity testing every time; I think every three months or so. I can’t remember. When we went for the first testing it felt really invasive. Somebody opening my vagina and trying to put her fingers inside to see if I was a virgin or not.”
In discussing women’s right to freedom, it is important that we discuss and interrogate the cultures and practices that impede women’s sense of humanity.
Virginity testing and indeed purity culture must be questioned as they ultimately reduce women’s human worth to if an organ is visibly present.
*Name changed to protect identity.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.