William Saletan’s blog about artificial hymens is an interesting mix of dark humor and insanity. The basic idea is that the Chinese have invented a neat little $30 bag of fake blood that lets a woman bleed like she is a virgin. In some countries, that’s a neat little kinky sex toy. In some countries, it can be the difference between life and death, due to certain religions’ belief that a woman must bleed on her wedding night. Either from sex or from a rock, either one will do.
The Egyptian piece comes from the following quotes from an Associated Press piece, “Sheik Sayed Askar, a member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who is on the parliamentary committee on religious affairs, said the kit will make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation. He demanded the government take responsibility for fighting the product. … Prominent Egyptian religious scholar Abdel Moati Bayoumi said anyone who imports the artificial hymen should be punished. “This product encourages illicit sexual relations. Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage,” Bayoumi said. … “If this thing enters Egypt, the country is going to go to waste. God protect us,” commented a reader on the Web site of Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabie.”
Normally, it is multi-million dollar American movies that are threatening to destroy civilization. I can understand feelings of imminent cultural collapse when they are directed at Tom Cruise. But any country that can be brought down by a $30 Chinese sex toy really ought to go ahead and collapse now, so we can go on with life in the rest of the world.
This is also a great reminder of how moral relativism can fall really, really short. Cultural norms such as an afternoon siesta are fine. I’ve got no problem with a culture that naps. But beating and killing women on their wedding nights should be universally condemned. But it’s not, because the UN human rights council is a complete farce and nobody wants to tell another culture that their practices are barbaric, primitive, and unacceptable in the civilized world. (They have feelings. They are sensitive. They have such a long and proud history of killing women. We need to support them and nurture them until they learn better. Plus they sell us oil.) It’s also another issue that all those millions of peaceful, law-abiding moderate Moslems that we are always hearing about never stand up and address. We have plenty of wacko Christians around also but we also have no problem calling them wacko. And we certainly don’t let them kill their spouses on their honeymoons.
It is also a reminder that Egypt is one of the US’ best allies in that part of the world. With friends like these …