Virgin? News U Use

Some Asian women in Britain are faking their virginity, driven to desperation by concepts of ‘honour’ in a community where myths about their first sexual experience is still widely held, an Asian radio station reported.If found to have sex before marriage, the lives of some young Asian women can be at risk and they can be driven away from their homes, experts and community workers told the BBC Asian Network documentary Like a Virgin.
As a result, desperate young women are using fake blood and even going in for reconstructive surgery to fake their virginity.In an echo of social attitudes held in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, the program found that most of the 17 to 21-year-old men interviewed in the region of West Midlands — home to a large number of Asians — preferred women to be virgins at marriage.
Concepts of ‘izzat’ — or honour — are strongly held among some conservative Asian communities in Britain and have been linked not only to the practice of forced marriage but also, in some cases, the murder of young women.An adviser formerly with the national sexual health charity Brook said she personally received requests for information on faking virginity on a daily basis from young Asian women — and that she provided the information because she feared for the safety of these women.
She said: They would sometimes come in to the centre because they were concerned about the fact that maybe they had had unprotected sex with a boyfriend and they were concerned about whether other men would know they had had sex before and were not a virgin.The discussions would then go around some of the myths around virginity . . . that girls bleed on the first time of having sexual intercourse. The problem is that lots of men and lots of people within the (Asian) community believe that that is true, and therefore they (young women) are very concerned that they will get married and they won’t bleed and their husband will believe they weren’t a virgin at marriage and all the problems that that would cause them in life.She said women were using red dye and mock blood that can be bought from novelty shops that they inserted into their vaginas or spread on the bed sheet after having sex.
Underlining the seriousness of the issue, the adviser said she agreed to provide information on how to fake virginity because for some young women the risks to them and their personal safety were so great that if they were not able to fake it then the consequences could have been dire.