Society’s morals need a 21st century update
These days women do not love just one man and decide to spend their entire lives married to him as previous generations of women did. They have more chances to meet several suitable men that could be their life-partner. Now women may fall in love multiple times before deciding to get married.
Women’s new desires seem to oppose the stubbornness of men who continue to silently follow the old ways. Many men, who have sought out lovers, continue to look for a virgin in the country to take as a wife.
According to a recent on-line newspaper survey, nearly half of Vietnamese men are unhappy if their woman is not a virgin. This means women with experience would not get along well with these men.
Although the statistic was not gained through a scientific survey, it does reflect how some men think.
On the website www.afamily.vn, a man posted his opinion that girls who lost their virginity should not raise their voice about the matter because they are not worthy of doing so. Another man even expressed his opinion that these women should never get married because they could not be good mothers.
While the majority of men continue to want virgins as girlfriends and wives, they are happy to take the virginity of another girl, considering this as protection of the women they love.
A man may consider himself responsible by having sex with women other than his girlfriend and can protect the virginity of his lover by only having oral sex or engaging in heavy petting with her. If they break-up, the girl would still be a virgin for her future husband.
This old thinking is deeply rooted in many men. Psychologist Trinh Trung Hoa in Ha Noi can only advise women to refrain from telling their partners about previous sexual experience because his studies show that more than 80 per cent of the women who revealed the truth either broke-up with their partner or were verbally or physically abused.
He said its difficult for anyone to prove otherwise if a woman insists she is a virgin. The expert also said that 30 per cent of hymens break without sex and that only 5 per cent of men can provide good evidence as to how a woman’s hymen was broken.
Phung Thi Thu said she gave her virginity to her husband but he still looks down on her because he is selfish and believes his first sexual experience with her was too easy, as if he was not the first man to be with her.
"It is funny that people, both men and women, insist that when men ask for sex, and try to have sex, a good girl should try to refuse, leaving her safe and respected," said Thu.
She thinks that those good girls able to continually say no must be robots or have something wrong with their feelings, because they are able to refuse time after time requests from the men they fall in love with.
Thanks to the expectations of such men, special hymen-mending services have become popular and attract many clients. To serve the tastes of these men, many private clinics in Ha Noi and
The price for this service varies. At big and reputed beauty salons, the cost is around VND10 million (US$500), from VND3-5 million ($180-300) at other beauty salons and only VND2 million ($120) at some private obstetric clinics. The difference in price is due to equipment differences and the skills at each place. According to obstetricians, hymen-mending is a simple, minor surgery. Each surgery takes around 30 minutes.
The service is not only used by women who want to reclaim their virginity, but also by prostitutes who wish to cheat rich playboys. After all, prostitutes can earn a lot of money with this procedure.
Nguyen Minh Ngoc, a 24-year-old nurse, said men should ask themselves "who will raise my kids, my wife or her hymen?" before asking a women to have sex, which all humans love to do when they grow-up.
