THE FEMALE BODY AS A DEVICE OF TRUTH - Elhem Beddouda - ETHICA SOCIETAS-Rivista di scienze umane e sociali

Biopolitics of Virginity Between Symbolic Rituality, Criminal Law, and Contemporary Medicalization

Abstract: This contribution offers a genealogical reading of virginity as a regime of truth inscribed in the female body through ritual, disciplinary, and medical practices. Female genital mutilation, tasfīḥ, and hymenoplasty are examined not as ethically or medically equivalent phenomena, but as different expressions of the same rationality governing the body. Through the integration of Foucauldian theory, the sociology of the symbolic, and legal analysis, the article demonstrates how virginity is transformed into a certifiable fact through ritual or clinical technologies. The study distinguishes between religious norm and social practice in the Islamic context, as well as between the criminal prohibition of female genital mutilation and the legal permissibility of hymenoplasty within the Italian legal system. Overcoming the issue does not lie in abolishing a single practice, but in deconstructing the very idea that the female body must provide proof of its own morality.

Keywords: #RegimeOfTruth #Ethics #Biopolitics #HonorDevice #Medicalization #Virginity #SymbolicViolence #SelfDetermination #FGM #Islam #SociologyOfTheBody #MichelFoucault #ElhemBeddouda #ethicasocietas #ethicasocietasjournal #scientificjournal #humanities #socialsciences #ethicasocietasupli #italianlocalpoliceunion

Elhem Beddouda, professional educator with a degree in Sciences of Education and Training Processes from the University of Parma, with a thesis entitled “Islam and the Educational Function. Perspectives on Religious Assistance in Prison”. She is currently enrolled in the degree programme “Global Studies for Sustainable Local and International Development and Cooperation” at the same university.

versione italiana

Introduction: Virginity as a Regime of Truth

Practices of modification (female genital mutilation – FGM), protection (tasfīḥ), or surgical reconstruction of the female genitalia (hymenoplasty) may be understood as variants of a single device of truth: the social production of virginity as a condition certifiable through bodily inscription.

According to Michel Foucault (1976), modernity does not merely repress sexuality; rather, it constitutes it as an object of knowledge, classification, and control within a specific regime of truth. From this perspective, virginity assumes the form of a normative and discursive category rather than a simple biological condition.

From an anatomical standpoint, the hymen does not constitute a scientifically reliable indicator of sexual activity; nevertheless, in social representations it is invested with evidentiary value that exceeds clinical literature and is rooted in cultural and moral expectations.

The Honor Device and Colonial Biopolitical Rationality

Within the honor device, deeply rooted in many traditional societies, female virginity functions as symbolic capital: it guarantees paternity, stabilizes lineage, and safeguards family reputation. According to Bourdieu (2003, 1998), this mechanism is based on the regulation of female sexuality as an expression of collective honor and the reproduction of male symbolic order. Female sexuality thus becomes a privileged site for the exercise of symbolic violence, insofar as it internalizes and naturalizes a principle of subordination.

European colonial rationality subsequently transformed such practices into objects of classification and administrative regulation. Imperial administrations did not merely condemn or abolish certain customs; they inscribed them within systems of statistical and medical knowledge, producing hygienic, demographic, and moral categories through which colonized bodies were governed (Stoler, 2006). From this perspective, the modern medicalization of the hymen — and of virginity as a demonstrable fact — may be understood as part of a broader biopolitical rationality aimed at rendering life legible, documentable, and administrable.

The issue, therefore, is not to oppose an “archaic tradition” to a “liberating modernity,” but to recognize a structural homology between different regimes of control: both ritual and medical registers operate toward making the female body verifiable, manipulable, and certifiable within a normative system of truth production.

Female Genital Mutilation: Preventive Discipline and Criminal Protection

Female genital mutilation may be interpreted as a preventive disciplinary technology. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1976) describes discipline as a form of power that shapes bodies and organizes behavior through anticipatory and capillary intervention. FGM does not presuppose the commission of an act; rather, it aims to prevent its possibility by inscribing a permanent limitation upon the body, functioning as a preventive normalization of future sexuality.

From a legal standpoint, in numerous jurisdictions — including Italy — such practices are explicitly prohibited. Italian Law No. 7 of January 9, 2006 introduced Articles 583-bis and 583-ter into the Criminal Code, defining female genital mutilation as a specific criminal offense, punishable even when committed abroad against Italian citizens or residents under the principle of extraterritoriality.

This criminal qualification distinguishes genital mutilation from voluntary surgical interventions performed on consenting adults, such as hymenoplasty, which — although subject to significant ethical and bio-legal debate — does not fall within the scope of the criminal prohibition applicable to FGM.

Tasfīḥ: Symbolic Rituality and the Imaginary Production of the Seal

Tasfīḥ is a symbolic ritual documented in specific contexts of North Africa, particularly in certain rural areas of Tunisia (Boddy, 1989; Gruenbaum, 2001). Ethnographic research indicates that it is performed prior to puberty and involves superficial incisions on the thigh or knee, accompanied by ritual formulas and performative acts intended to symbolically “seal” the young woman’s virginity until marriage.

Anthropological studies suggest that, although the practice persists in traditional contexts, it finds no foundation in Islamic religious doctrine and appears instead rooted in cultural representations of purity and the protection of family honor (Ahmed, 1992).

From a Foucauldian perspective, tasfīḥ demonstrates that power does not operate exclusively through material intervention upon the body, but also through the production of shared beliefs and imaginaries. The body is narrated as closed and protected not because of anatomical reality, but through a collective ritual discourse that produces psychological and behavioral effects.

Hymenoplasty and Legality in the Italian Legal System

Hymenoplasty, understood as surgical reconstruction of the hymen, may be interpreted as a form of retroactive medicalization of virginity. In the Italian legal system, there is no provision explicitly prohibiting this procedure. Unlike female genital mutilation — criminally sanctioned under Law No. 7 of January 9, 2006 — hymenal reconstruction, when requested by a legally competent adult, falls within the scope of permissible surgical interventions performed with valid informed consent, pursuant to constitutional principles of self-determination (Article 32 of the Italian Constitution) and legislation on informed consent and advance treatment directives (Law No. 219/2017).

The normative distinction between prohibited mutilation and voluntary reconstruction reflects a different medico-legal qualification: in the first case, a criminally relevant bodily injury is configured, often linked to the protection of minors; in the second, the intervention is framed within the sphere of individual liberty, similarly to other forms of aesthetic surgery.

Nevertheless, significant ethical and feminist debate persists, highlighting how the decision to undergo hymenoplasty may be influenced by familial or communal pressures, raising questions about the authenticity of consent.

From a sociological perspective, hymenal surgery fits within contemporary biopolitical rationality: medical knowledge produces a retroactive bodily truth and a symbolic certification of purity capable of satisfying the honor device and normative social expectations.

The Honor Device and Medicalization: Shared Nodes

Mutilation, tasfīḥ, and hymenoplasty are not equivalent in ethical, medical, or legal terms; however, they reveal a common rationality of governing the female body: the production of verifiable truth through social, ritual, or medical technologies.

From a biopolitical perspective, these practices illustrate how biological life becomes an object of management, control, and administration. Within the honor device, such administration assumes the form of preventive discipline of female sexuality; in modernity, it translates into clinical practices and medical certification mechanisms that transform anatomical integrity into a criterion of moral legitimacy.

Islam, Sexuality, and the Symbolic Violence of the Virginity Certificate

In classical Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), sexuality is legitimized within marriage, and guilt is addressed through rigorous evidentiary standards and an interior ethical dimension (Qurʾān 24:2–4). Religious doctrine does not require anatomical documentation of female purity: concepts such as repentance (tawba) and modesty (ḥayāʾ) belong to the moral and spiritual sphere rather than to bodily measurement (Al-Ġazālī, 1983; Ibn Ḥazm, 1997).

The demand for a virginity certificate — whether through gynecological examination or hymenoplasty — therefore constitutes a social and medico-biopolitical overlay upon religious normativity. From a Foucauldian perspective, the virginity certificate operates as a technology of power that produces truth and disciplines bodies within a specific normative regime (Foucault, 1976).

Such practice may amount to symbolic and material violence. Physically, examinations or surgical interventions involve exposure, pain, and clinical risk; psychologically, they may generate humiliation and objectification; socially, they reinforce the idea that female sexuality must be verified and certified, subordinating individual self-determination to an external evidentiary criterion.

The analysis thus allows a distinction between religious norm and social practice: within doctrinal Islam, female sexuality is not subject to anatomical documentation; it becomes so through communal pressures that transform morality into material proof, producing tension between individual dignity and collective control.

Conclusion: Beyond Proof

From a genealogical perspective, the central question is not which practice is more archaic or more modern, but why female sexuality continues to be constructed as an object requiring proof.

As long as virginity is configured as a measurable social value within a given regime of truth (Foucault, 1976), power will continue to develop ritual, surgical, or symbolic techniques capable of producing its evidence. Overcoming the issue does not lie in abolishing a single practice, but in deconstructing the very idea that the female body must certify its morality through anatomical inscription.

REFERENCES

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine domination (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1998)

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1972)

Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Volume I: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1976)

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1975)

Stoler, A. L. (2002). Carnal knowledge and imperial power: Race and the intimate in colonial rule. University of California Press.

Al-Ghazālī. (1995). The revival of the religious sciences (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn) (Partial English translations available). Islamic Texts Society.

Ibn Ḥazm. (2007). The ring of the dove: A treatise on the art and practice of Arab love (A. J. Arberry, Trans.). Luzac Oriental. (Original work 11th century)

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and gender in Islam: Historical roots of a modern debate. Yale University Press.

Ali, K. (2006). Sexual ethics and Islam: Feminist reflections on Qur’an, hadith, and jurisprudence. Oneworld Publications.

Boddy, J. (1989). Wombs and alien spirits: Women, men, and the Zar cult in northern Sudan. University of Wisconsin Press.

Cook, R. J., & Dickens, B. M. (2009). Hymen reconstruction: Ethical and legal issues. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 107(3), 266–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgo.2009.06.033

Gruenbaum, E. (2001). The female circumcision controversy: An anthropological perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Shell-Duncan, B., & Hernlund, Y. (Eds.). (2000). Female “circumcision” in Africa: Culture, controversy, and change. Lynne Rienner Publishers.