Why is virginity a reason to humiliate a woman after rape?

I’ve never really understood why Indians are so obsessed with a woman's virginity. If a man views sex as a conquest over an untouched, "innocent" woman, why can’t we too feel the same? Why are the two terms constantly confused – virginity and chastity?

This morning, news of the Delhi government’s latest advisory to hospitalsstated that Per Vaginal (PV) examination, also referred to as "two-finger test", for rape survivors can be conducted with their consent. The advisory, based on a 14-page document made by an expert panel, claimed doctors can’t be made to function under the constraint of a complete ban of this examination.

However, within a few hours, as activists and women’s rights groups began to raise their voice, those guidelines were hastily withdrawn by the AAP government. They also promised action against the officials who issued them.

Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain convened a press conference to clarify that the circular had been "misinterpreted" and that the test wouldn’t be used for sexual harassment cases. However, carefully adding, the circular wouldn’t be withdrawn, instead the ministry would issue a clarification on the same…

I have questions for Satyendra Jain.

Can a man ever know what it feels to be penetrated forcefully? Will those who formulated the sexist report now agree that a raped woman is also violated when hospital staff shove their two fingers inside her? Do you realise a woman’s humiliation when she’s asked to strip in front of a bunch of strangers?

Let me get personal.

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by 20-year-old Ria from Siliguri who was gang-raped and then faced the brunt end of an MMS scandal. The FIR she filed charging her ex with making a fake MMS, blackmailing her with the same, sexual assault, and also insulting and damaging her reputation in public, naturally catapulted in a medical examination.

This is what she had to say about the experience:

"The doctor at North Bengal Medical College who examined me sniggered, ‘Firstly, you enjoyed the sex. Now you are either complaining because the MMS has leaked or because they couldn’t satisfy you enough.’ Eventually, he couldn’t even conduct the examination as I was menstruating. I had to plead for a woman doctor."

What was the three-member committee of doctors trying to decipher by issuing this guideline on May 31, before the government faced flak? Is it that women are habituated to sexual intercourse?

Does losing her virginity make her any less of a woman? Is it to make the perpetrators of the heinous crime feel better they punished her? Made her pay?

Have we forgotten Aruna Shanbaug's case already? The 25-year-old nurse who was attacked by a ward boy Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, while she was changing clothes in the hospital basement, on November 27, 1973. Walmiki had first choked her with a dog collar, then raped and robbed her. The asphyxiation cut the oxygen supply to her brain, as a result of which she became cortically blind and was also diagnosed with brain stem contusion injury and cervical cord injury. Shanbaug, for 42 long years lived in a vegetative existence, even as Walmiki was convicted only for six years for attempt to murder and robbery. Journalist and writer Pinki Virani, who penned Aruna's Story, wrote, "The worst part: he was not sentenced for rape because he had not committed the rape vaginally; it was anal." The irony being that upon Aruna’s examination, the doctors conducted the same test that is now being sought to validate, to ascertain whether a woman's virginity was intact.

Who failed Aruna Shanbaug – us, the society, or us, the system?

A woman’s vagina needs permission and is not just an organ to be subjugated, treated as a second-class sexual citizen. A woman has every right to say no to the pill and insist on her partner opting for a condom.

What's the big deal if I don’t bleed during sex with my husband? Why is the projection of pain synonymous with sexual stimulation - in books, in daily soaps, in films? A fuss made about suhaag raat, the bride always shown as nubile, blushing, biting her lower lip nervously, accompanied to the bedroom door by a bunch of giggling married female relatives, whispering to her about how she should hold the glass of warm milk, right for her spouse. Demeaning jokes about palang thod and nath utarna that reinstate a woman’s place as a lifeless, dumb sexual recipient - a mute spectator in bed. As, in the kitchen. Years later, perhaps.

I mean does a man ever go suffer a painful trans-vaginal ultrasounds and face embarrassing questions by a grim-looking gynecologist, who in most cases happens to be another opinionated member of her own sex? Do you know just how excruciating a vaginal examination or pap smear is?

What women suffer to reproduce?

How the PMS syndrome is a reality, not just the butt of male jibes at our monthly moodiness. Has a man ever worn a sanitary napkin, bled heavily and dealt with severe cramps during a critical work meeting? Have you ever had people ask you not to do something as simple as enter a kitchen/ temple, on certain days of the month? Or sit through silly commercials that reduce our menstrual cycle to its lowest common denominator - smell, stains, and embarrassment at the hands of the opposite sex, not participating in beauty contests?

But, who’s listening? Who cares?

Is the AAP now conveniently backtracking just to avoid political flak?

Another C-word…

Controversy.