EXCLUSIVE | Taslima Nasrin writes: SC bans two-finger test, but testing women’s chastity remains a patriarchal reality

Testing a woman’s chastity is a terrifyingly patriarchal act. It is nothing sort of sexual abuse. There should not be any uncertainty regarding this viewpoint in the mind of any rational and humane individual. Only those who have been born as women in an uncivilised society can vouch for the sheer mental stress that such an examination causes.

The curse of ‘chastity belt’

There was a time when there existed a device called a ‘chastity belt’. A circular belt made of iron-studded with spikes in the front, in the middle of which was a small slit with a jagged teeth-like edge. This belt-like device used to be put on women. It has never been conclusively deduced exactly which countries in the world had such a practice and exactly when such a practice began, although there’s enough evidence to say for sure that it was fairly widely used in Europe.

The Crusaders, before going off to war in the Middle East, would put this device on their wives. Not that this practice was limited to just those who went off to the Crusades since even ordinary men were known to have made their wives put on chastity belts before travelling anywhere. Women had to put on chastity belts not just to satisfy their husbands but to also adhere to social directives. Whether it was in Italy, in its extensive use in China or even, as some say, in Thailand. In 1889 a German anthropologist was said to have visited a city in Austria to oversee the restoration of a fifteenth-century church. When the wooden floor of the church was stripped a hole was found underneath with a coffin inside. As the rotten planks of the coffin crumbled at the slightest touch a skeleton was revealed within, the long hair making it clear it was that of a woman. With the few remains of clothing found inside it could be estimated to be from the seventeenth century and when these strips were removed the German anthropologist discovered an iron belt wrapped around the waist of the skeleton.

Made around the beginning of the seventeenth century this particular chastity belt with the slit in the centre had twenty-one metal spikes on it. One cannot say if the sight of this contraption surprised the anthropologist, but what never fails to surprise me is the degree of ingenuity that men are capable of. They would lock the chastity belt around the waists of their wives and leave with the key safely in their pockets, with their own special organs unfettered. There was no injunction against them using said organs wherever they pleased either. But they did not hesitate in the slightest in dressing their wives in iron just to ensure fidelity on their part. Can there be a bigger example of the cruelty men are capable of?

Men of this world have built armour to protect a woman’s virtue, put women on the burning pyres of their husbands for the same, and continue to cook up the most heinous ways to safeguard a woman’s purity. They write numerous laws that they impose on women just so they can exploit women’s bodies for themselves. Previously they used iron belts, now social directives do all the work. Society tells women to stay home, to seek their husbands’ permission before going out, and never mix with other men, often at the risk of divorce or death.

While women are not made to wear chastity belts anymore, an invisible restraint still remains around them, to conceal their private parts because there is no end to men’s suspicions, no limit to their mistrust. But why is it that only women have to protect their honour? No epoch, primitive, medieval or modern, has had any objections against a man’s sexual infidelity. And yet it is men who have invented the notion of protecting a woman’s purity and even made belts to ensure the same. Would men ever concede to anything so insulting and uncomfortable? Obviously not. All such insults, discomforts, pains and hurts are reserved for women alone; it is they who must endure such oppression.

Women’s bodies belong to women

Many are of the opinion that all such strictures were meant to ensure that there would be no doubt regarding the paternity of a woman’s children. It did not matter if the man were to impregnate ten other women, his sole interest lay in the children of just one particular womb. The reason for this, as people have noted, was to ensure the passing of property to the rightful heirs. If the paternity of said heirs was called into question it was considered a grave dishonour to the patriarch’s masculinity. What masculinity! Masculinity under which generations of women have been crushed, and their personalities and all that belongs to them have been snuffed out. Have women been born only to safeguard someone’s manhood? Are they not separate entities themselves? No, women were not born just to ensure the legitimacy of a man’s heirs.

Women’s lives are not at the disposal of men so why must women adhere to their dictums of what is legitimate and what is not? These are rules of a rotting society whose fetters women have not yet managed to extricate themselves from. But extricate themselves they must, and they must prove that their lives belong solely to them. No man possesses the right to shackle them in the name of protecting their innocence and the keys to their own bodies belong only to them. Without acknowledging this there will be no freedom for women. Just as economic independence is necessary, women must also have autonomy over their own bodies because without this no kind of freedom, economic, political or social, amounts to anything. Perhaps many will recoil at the very thought of a woman’s autonomy over her own body.

‘What do you mean a woman’s right to her own body? She must be a whore!’ If total autonomy translates to believing a woman is ruined, then that is a fate far more desirable than remaining a man’s slave. The fact of the matter is that a woman’s bodily autonomy is as important as all other kinds of freedoms. Whenever a woman gains some freedom they try to scare her with the threat of being ‘ruined’. If women are to overcome such masculine ploys and attain their true human potential then they must strive for complete autonomy, physical as well psychological. A woman’s autonomy over her body does not just mean saying yes, the freedom to say no is just as much a part of it.

India wakes up to triple talaq malaise

On rare occasions, Bangladesh and Pakistan do manage to attain some remarkable milestones well before India. Like over the triple talaq issue for instance. Afghanistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, Malaysia, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait and numerous other Muslim countries had banned the practice well before India. Usually with a larger population one might expect stronger currents of progressive thought but despite having the second largest Muslim population in the world the state of the Indian Muslim hardly evolves.

Absolute no to hymen harassment

Tests to ascertain a woman’s virginity are prohibited in other countries already, even in the neighbouring nations of Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Supreme Court of India has just passed an order barring the use of this test in this country. This sort of test is nothing short of sexual harassment, a practice from a barbaric time that has been passed down since antiquity. It has been used to furnish a kind of certificate assuring the unbroken virginity of the girl being brought home as a bride. In parts of Africa, the custom of ensuring a woman’s virginity is so extreme that young girls’ genitalia are sewn up until it’s time for them to get married. Even those who do not undergo this procedure as children have to ensure their maidenhood is intact in order to find a suitable match and often, right after their marriages are fixed, many girls secretly visit doctors to reconstruct their torn hymen.

Most doctors examine a woman’s virginity by inserting two fingers up inside her vagina, hence the name ‘two-finger test’. This test is also conducted during medical tests to ascertain rape. The doctors check if an assaulted woman is virgin or not; if she is one then that proves there has been no rape and vice-versa. It’s all very straightforward. The test is also meant to check if the walls of the vagina are soft, that is, whether the woman is sexually active and has been so for long. If a victim of sexual assault is found to have a sexual history of her own, then her accusations against her abuser are immediately called into question. If an unmarried woman is sexually abused then they check what her character is like, whether is a ‘good’ woman or a ‘bad’ one. Virginity obviously implies the former; its absence means the woman is immediately branded ‘bad’, nothing better than a whore.

However, the definition of rape has now undergone many changes. Sexual relationships with minors, even with their consent, have now been deemed as rape. While any sort of penetrative sexual act without consent is obviously rape, even undressing someone without their consent, touching someone’s genitalia or making someone else do so, a lot of such abuses have now been brought under the purview of rape. Thus, even with an unbroken hymen there can be instances of sexual abuse. At the same time a young woman’s hymen may rupture due to a variety of non-sexual reasons as well. Due to a series of such factors the two-finger test has been repeatedly dubbed illogical, unethical and unscientific.

No man ever has to prove his chastity to anyone. Only women are subjected to such disrespect. A woman, sexually abused once by her harasser, is subjected to abuse yet again at the hands of her doctor. What is this if not yet another instance of rape? Why does no one ever consider the dignity and self-respect of the survivor? A woman has to go through sexual violence, then face the disgust of people around them, forced to go into hiding, into utter isolation and depression, only to go through the further humiliation of a doctor’s intrusive fingers inside her body or attacks on her person otherwise. What other ways will society device to persecute women?

While the 2011 Egyptian revolution for democracy was unfolding in Tahrir Square it was reported that members of the armed forces had abducted numerous women and conducted virginity tests on them. The entire world is aware of the treatment that was meted out to these women. In uncivilised societies these tests exist just as much to harass women into submission.

One can’t help but be amazed that even in the 21st century such a practice still enjoys legitimacy in numerous countries. This ancient custom had made a comeback in England in the 1970s, especially for unmarried women immigrating there who had to undergo tests to prove to the immigration whether they were virgins or not. Even in America there have been instances of this barbaric practice.

Even if it has been a long time coming, on behalf of all women who have undergone sexual abuse I am grateful to the Supreme Court of India for finally having ruled in favour of prohibiting the two-finger chastity test.

The writer is a renowned author, a secular humanist and a feminist. Views expressed are personal.

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