Another Import

Honour most certainly means different things to different cultures. In most cultures familiar to the West, and practised in the West, honour relates to certain behaviours like honesty and trustworthiness, the manner in which we relate in character to the challenges of life and happenstance, whether we behave in a manner that demonstrates the courage of our convictions and the willingness to be decent human beings, above all.

In cultures rooted in a heritage born of tribal societies honour may have different connotations, inspirations and draws upon the conscience of people who must prove they cleave to concepts beyond the ethics and moralities recognized in the West. Their level of self-respect is more deeply inclined toward conforming to social mores which would seem repugnant to enlightened, socially aware societies for whom egalitarianism is a core value.

In cultures seen as socially backward by a socially-and-humanely-enlightened West, the place of women seems that of a chattel, hugely inferior in quality and expectations and opportunities to that of men within the culture. Where women are seen as possessions. Possessions esteemed for the quality of their functionality as bearers of children and the comfort of sexual satisfaction and little else.

Those women living within those cultures are taught from birth to be modest and unassuming, biddable to the instructions of the males among them be they fathers, brothers, uncles, husbands, sons. Women within such cultures are held to be temptresses by inclination and biology, and as such must be severely and strictly kept in the background, meek in presentation, their physical form completely enveloped lest their very presence disturb the minds of men by their carnal presence.

Honour among such societies is related to the chasteness of women, the expectation that women must always adhere to the command of a male relative, and that a woman must never venture into the public sphere revealing her face, her essence, her voice and desires to any man not of her immediate family. The consequences for spurning tradition are dramatic in their punishing discipline.

For a girl or a woman who is disobedient and chooses to surrender to her human desires, or even one who has suffered the misfortune to be abused is held to be guilty of whatever has befallen her, and therefore any punishment that is meted out to her in a restoration of family honour that her behaviour has besmirched is deserved. If that punishment results in her death in that society it is not a crime but a logical conclusion to an unfortunate lapse.

Honour killings now occur not only where religions like Islam and Hinduism originate from, but also where their faithful migrate to. In Europe and North America such honour killings now occur as a result of the tribal/religious/cultural concept of family honour being practised by those who have emigrated from their place of birth to geographies where honour is represented by integrity and principle.

Now, in North America and Europe, pregnant women use amniocentesis as a method of identifying the gender of the foetus. Since male children are held to be more desirable than females within imported cultures it has become distressingly common for female foetuses to be aborted in favour of male children for a family.

And now, virginity tests involving gynecological examinations to determine whether a young woman is of marriageable quality has entered the lexicon of tribal/religious/cultural practises seen as repugnant in the West. The physical examination to determine whether tissue over the vaginal opening is intact is of vital importance to the marriageable fate of a young woman of that culture.

Physician-performed virginity tests represent a breach of professional ethics within Western society. Its intimate intrusion, and the purpose for which it is performed relates directly to the view of women as possessions whose virtue must be controlled and ensured. The problem is that some doctors agree to perform the tests with the knowledge that if they do not, other means will be found to ascertain whether a young woman's hymen remains intact rendering her suitable for marriage.

Doctors have been known to issue false statements of virginity in a bid to protect their patients knowing they would face violence as a result of a 'failed' test. Families within that religious culture are determined to have confirmation of their daughters' "purity" and if medical practitioners refuse to lend themselves to the enterprise, it is known that they will enlist male family members to initiate that intrusive examination.

The medical community within Canada now offers hymen restoration surgeries costing thousands per procedure to repair or replace a woman's hymen so that during the first attempted intercourse following marriage the prized bleeding, proof of virginity, will result. The regressive religious-cultural underpinnings that keep women enslaved to a reprehensible social backwardness remains in full flush.

The Quebec college of physicians recently issued a warning to doctors to stop performing virginity tests. It is the right thing to do, needless to say, since it supports an intolerable infringement on the human rights of girls and women. On the other hand, cutting off this access to assistance from sympathetic doctors who are capable of providing fake statements of intact hymens would result in abandoning vulnerable women to a cultural fate that demeans and victimizes them.

The alternative is that the women may themselves see the feasibility of wrenching themselves away from the orbit of their backward families' beliefs and customs. To enter the world of gender equality on their own, and to further their aspirations from there. If, that is, they are able to escape the hostile anger of family members inclined to pursue them to restore family honour.