Thomas Riggins
The never ending struggle for equal rights for women is not only a concern of human rights activists, but it could provide a boon for the capitalist market economy as well.
Enterprising Chinese capitalists have come up with The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit for mass marketing in the Middle East where, in many countries, it is de rigeuer for a woman to be a virgin when she is married. Virgins and non virgins can now be on an equal footing.
The kit has a device with artificial blood which is inserted during the honeymoon and allows its contents to leak out after consummation of the marriage, thus allowing the husband the satisfaction of seeing stained sheets and thinking he is the first to have gone where no man has gone before.
There is, however, a movement in Egypt, according to the New York Times, to ban this innovative capitalist product. One would hope on the grounds that it is demeaning and degrading to force women to have to resort to this subterfuge in order to satisfy the adolescent vanities of the adult males.
That would be a vain hope. The Times reports that Sheik Sayed Askar of the parliamentary committee on religious affairs is demanding the Egyptian government ban the product because he thinks it "would make it easier for women to give in to temptation."
The Gigimo Company, which sells the AVH, should consider the American market as an alternative. Our belief in the Free Enterprise System, which trumps common sense and human rights at every turn, would, I am sure, provide a fertile market with the abstinence until marriage crowd and the many young people who have realized the impracticality of upholding such a difficult commitment. [New York Times 10-6-09]
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