Moroccan Author Exposes Cultural Obsession with Female Virginity

"Virginity is an obsession in Morocco and in the Arab world. Whether you are liberal or not, religious or not, it is impossible to escape this obsession," says Leïla Slimani. She explains that a woman is supposed to provide a "certificate of celibacy" before getting married. Also, she must keep her virginity until marriage. The writer points out that "the virginity of the man, impossible to prove, and which is not requested anyway, does not concern anyone".

"Idealized and mythified, virginity has become a coercive instrument intended to keep women at home and justify their surveillance at all times. Much more than a personal matter, it is the subject of collective anxiety," she denounces. This situation pushes Moroccan women to have their hymen reconstructed or to obtain artificial hymens from laboratories in order to bleed on the first day of sexual intercourse.

The issue of virginity is taken seriously in the kingdom, to the point that unmarried people have difficulty seeing each other. According to Slimani, those who have the means to meet in a hotel cannot do so, as hotels require a marriage certificate for couples.

These people end up meeting in cars, in forests, on the edge of beaches, on construction sites... Not to mention the fear of being discovered and then arrested by the police. "I don’t know if a 16-year-old European girl can really imagine the stress that such a situation can represent," wonders the one who also hid in a car with her boyfriend in the last year of her studies in Morocco.