Talk:Hymenorrhaphy

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[edit] Fact tag

Someone slapped a fact tag on the statement In France, the cost can be covered by state if the patient claims that she has been raped. There's exactly one external link referring to France, and it's an article on Reuters that says Surprisingly, French social security reimburses some of the cost of the operation in cases of rape or trauma. Seems an adequate citation to me. Maybe the format could be improved, but that's not what a fact tag is supposed to be about. Andrewa 12:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

And they just put it back again, with no comment here as to why they are unable to follow the citation. A footnote isn't hard to create, it would have taken little extra time than slapping on the fact tag. Frankly it seems overkill to me on an article of this length, with only three citations in all, but I guess that's what they want. Done. Andrewa (talk) 12:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Mostly Arab"

The article currently says, "The normal aim is to cause bleeding during the wedding night, which in some cultures, mostly Arab but not exclusively, is a required proof of virginity. It is becoming slightly more common in the United States of America." Is there any source for the claim that this requirement is "mostly Arab"? What does "mostly" even mean in this context? Honestly this sounds like someone's ethnic bias got in there, so I'm taking it out. If anyone has a problem with that, we should discuss it here. 67.172.93.9 06:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... perhaps mostly Muslim is not a lot better. This edit by an IP with no other edits added it. IMO it's unsourced speculation and should be removed. Andrewa (talk) 08:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some of the suspects

Wow, there's an incredible amount of misinformation on this topic on the web! The article is a little light on citations at present, but more to follow.

The problem is, there are several lobby groups wanting to suppress this information (it's a strange coalition):

  • The religious right, both Christian and Muslim, who want to deny a woman the option of restoring her hymen because they think virginity is too important to fake.
  • The liberated left, who want to similarly deny a woman this right because they think that nobody should value virginity anyway.
  • The medical old guard, who don't approve of this sort of thing at all.
  • The misguided idealists who confuse the more modern options with infibulation.

And against this, you have the boutique clinics, who are making a lot of money out of this and so promote the obvious and opposite POV.

There's a restricted-access site which advises NSW GPs not to offer the option of sutures to the relatives of a rape victim. I'm looking for more public-access information to back this one up, but it more or less implies that such operations are secretly available. And let's not be too hard on this approach, note that what it says is that the relatives shouldn't be offered this option. It says nothing about what the victim should be offered herself (that's too hard perhaps, so the poor GP has to work it out as they go).

There are also some revolting accounts of operations in Egypt (where all hymen restoration is illegal) and of victims being advised to tell their new husbands to use a cutting implement. I'm looking for some more objective accounts of this. Andrewa 21:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalised link restored

One of the external links was vandalised to point instead to a commercial clinic site. I've restored the link to the article. Andrewa (talk) 07:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's a (presumably commercial) link site, dealing mainly in pornography websites. The IP who performed the vandalisation has made no other edits, and one guesses they're associated with the link site in some way. I thought of dropping a line to each of the clinics who (seemingly) choose to advertise on the site, saying that IMO their credibility is damaged by the association, but maybe not this time. And we should not even assume the nature of this association; Porn merchants often link to unrelated sites to try to establish their own credibility. And nor should we assume any arm's length between the link site and the porn sites it promotes; Often the same provider owns hundreds of seemingly unrelated sites, including link sites such as this, and one suspects that if you are silly enough to pay for more than one of them, you just get two accounts to access the same content. Andrewa (talk) 15:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)