Stupidity knows no boundaries. Look what Atheist Republic is publishing to illustrate “retarded idiocy from religious nuts” (this is a direct quote from comment #1 in the ensuing discussion):
The move to make virginity testing of high school girl students in Indonesia mandatory has drawn flak from activists, arguing it as discrimination against women and violation of human rights.
Muhammad Rasyid, chief of education in south Sumatra’s Prabumulih district . . . was quoted as saying that the virginity test was proposed for the good of the children. He also added that virginity is a right of every woman and students are not expected to commit negative acts.
As per the requirement of the test, female school students in the age group of 16 to 19 years would have to undergo hymen examination every year till they completed their graduation. On the other hand, boys would not be examined to know whether they had sex or not.
Yes, this is barbarity, and I’m more appalled by it than you can ever be because I was subjected to this kind of practice starting at an age younger than 16. Care to guess where that happened? Yes, in the completely and officially atheist USSR.
It would be really cool if, before pointing fingers, atheists learned at least some very basic facts about the history of atheism. Of course, religions often control and persecute women. But the removal of religion does not automatically cancel woman-hating practices. The hatred of women is not caused by religion. It exists in and of itself and will use any means, including religion, atheism, agnosticism, or anything else, to self-perpetuate.
Clarissa's Blog 
Are there any good books to learn about the history of atheism?
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Why did they do it in the USSR?
And what happened to the girls who refused it or those who weren’t virgins?
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I don’t think refusing it was really an option. As to what happened to non-virgins, I don’t know (I haven’t lived in the USSR, nor has my family), but in communist Romania, schoolgirls who had children (aka many sexually active schoolgirls, since abortion was illegal and contraception wasn’t available) would be kicked out of school (well, theoretically, they’d be switched to night classes, but night classes were a sorry excuse for education), so it was probably something along those lines.
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Exactly. 😦
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Oh, it wasn’t just girls. This continued even after one went to college. If you refused, you’d be denied further education. Lists of non-virgins were made public and they were subjected to public vituperation.
Also, fake diagnoses were invented and given out during these obligatory gynecological exams and we were subjected to very painful “treatments”. I was subjected to such a “treatment” for a non-existent condition and it was extremely painful. If I had refused it, I wouldn’t have been able to continue my studies.
The USSR waged its own war on women.
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And what sucks is that this suffering-doesn’t-matter mentality has stayed with gynecologists in ex-communist countries. I’ve had a very painful condition go untreated* for 5 years, by 2 different and highly-praised gynecologists, because the only symptom I had was pain. They both worried quite a bit about extra body hair that might have meant I’d have a tougher time conceiving, never mind that I have no intention of having children, but the issue I was actually complaining about (and that was diagnosed through a simple ultrasound by gynecologist #3, who wasn’t educated in the communist system) was ignored. I know I’m ranting about this, and I know I had it *way* less worse than many other women, especially in my mother’s generation, but gah, this sucked.
*Except for birth control, which doesn’t treat it as much as it mitigates the symptoms
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Yes, this sounds very recognizable! In my country gynecologists also think their job isn’t to treat but to bully women into giving birth before the age of 25. For years after we moved to Canada, my mother couldn’t understand why the doctors were not trying to talk me into conceiving.
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College graduates are usually 22-23 year-olds. So, women were supposed to stay virgins that long?
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Yep. Unless they were married.
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The whole virgin-until-marriage thing does not only happen in fundamentalist Christian or Muslim countries. Of course, being a married college student in my country during communist times wouldn’t get you out of the mandatory ob/gyn exams, it’d just switch you to the check-if-she’s-pregnant ones.
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As long as they weren’t married, even if they were 40.
My grandfather was completely consumed with terror that one of his daughters would conceive outside of marriage. He heard a rumor that his daughter who was in her twenties might have a boyfriend who might have spent the night. She wasn’t pregnant or anything, it was just a rumor.
So he came over and beat her to a bloody pulp. He was a Communist, a WWII veteran, and of course an atheist.
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Bataille’s father was a similar kind of atheist, however my father was/is an extreme Christian and he also treated me very viciously on the basis of his imaginings and perhaps other people’s fantasies. This, too, is in my memoir — and yet I have never had a feminist comment on the weirdness, presumably because their own assumptions are also patriarchal.
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If a woman is already married, then why government or university would care whether she is pregnant or not?
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Because if she is pregnant, you can subject her to some really painful tests and procedures.
A real war on women that was.
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Personally, I would probably think less of a person if I found out they were still a virgin in their twenties. Most likely, it would mean that person was very repressed, had not interest in sex etc. but it would of course depend on the situation.
But regardless of what I would think, it is none of my business unless the person wants to tell me. That is what religions do. Stick their noses and their values (often primitive values of backwards, uneducated people) in the business of others.
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You will not find anybody who hates religious fanatics more than I do. But I personally was subjected to so many nasty things because I chose not to preserve my virginity and none of the people who abused me because of that were religious or even knew anybody who was religious.
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Clarissa, I thought your grandfather was kind and caring doctor. How could he do that?
And, anyway, why he didn’t beat up a boyfriend?
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That’s the other grandfather. The doctor only had a son and was actually the most sexually liberated person among all the generations. He was always there to answer my questions and was never judgmental.
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He probably feared a young man would not be as easy to beat.
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I think some people have a puritanical view about the necessity of atheism. They think that if they purge themselves of all religiosity they will automatically become ethical — as though being ethical were a question of reduction, not critical thinking.
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Clarissa, I have a strong suspicion that this aunt of yours stayed single or married an abuser thanks to her father.
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Yes, you are absolutely right. 😦 😦 She ended up marrying a violent drunk. This is tragic because she is a really great person and this is how her life turned out. 😦
I actually look more like her than any other family member.
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This is so sad. Is she living in Canada now?
I also look exactly like my aunt, my father’s sister.
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// Lists of non-virgins were made public and they were subjected to public vituperation.
Where this happened? At your university?
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