How to Have Sex Like a Virgin for Only 30 Bucks

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted October 16, 2009.

And the toy fits neatly within our culture's bizarre relationship with gender and sexuality. Women's purity and virginity are fetishized (see: purity balls, promise rings, the fact that abstinence education was promoted by a presidential adminstration ... ) at the same time that porny, oversexualized images seep into every pocket of our culture. What better way to combine those two things than sexualized virginity? (See also: Natalie Dylan, the 22-year-old woman who received million-dollar bids when she auctioned her "virginity" online.)

Not to knock people's fetishes. But as the site's marketing spiel makes clear, the product is marketed to tap into a preoccupation with female sexual purity; one obviously tied to conservative ideas about women's proper roles and hinging on extreme double standards about sex. 

Or, as Jessica Valenti has argued, our culture's tendency to place womens' value in what does or doesn't happen between their legs.  

The marketing of the product -- which is brilliantly vague enough to be potentially directed at varied potential users -- also points to another, much more disturbing fact: sadly, what would be used as a fetish or solution to weird hang-ups in the U.S. may have life-or-death consequences in other parts of the world.

For women whose virginity is valued more than their lives, artificial "revirginators" like Gigimo's could serve as life-savers (if, that is, they are even remotely convincing).

And while the 30 bucks and Internet access required to obtain the product probably puts it outside the reach of many women around the world, it's undoubtedly cheaper than the hymenoplasties some are forced to seek out to avoid potential ostracization or death.

According to Time, in places like Tunisia, Algeria or Morocco -- popular destinations for the procedure for conservative Muslims who live in Europe -- the procedure costs $300.

A recent uproar in Egypt shows how the product, an absurd oddity when viewed from a Western perspective, threatens oppressive sexual and gender mores in that country.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that a Gigimo ad prompted conservative Egyptian parliamentarians to call for a ban on the product, following general wailing about the concurrent destruction of the country's social and moral fabrics.

An Egyptian author and blogger quoted by the AP says the product empowers women. "It sticks it in the face of every male hypocrite," she said.

A strange destiny for a product that seems to impose sexist notions of purity in a Western context. 

See more stories tagged with: sex, sex, women, men, egypt, sex toys, virginity, purity, gigimo

Tana Ganeva is an associate editor at AlterNet.

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