“A customary Zulu practice of identifying young maidens who are virgins by placing distinctive marks on their faces has been set aside by many virginity testers in reaction to complaints that maidens were being raped and attacked. Several women involved in the tradition of virginity testing said the girls became targets when it was known, through the markings on their faces, that they were virgins… Virginity testers said that the myth that having sex with a virgin would cure HIV/Aids had also forced them to protect the identity of the girls.” — Sunday Times (South Africa)

Apparently it used to be the custom to put white dots on virgins’ foreheads, but in an attempt to lower the rape rate they’re now handing out certificates instead. Certainly this ought to be effective: the forehead dot was appealing in itself, like a target or a focal point for violent sexual urges, whereas even if a horny Zulu finds a girl with a certificate it must not be as intrinsically stimulating. It’s like raping a CPA or a grad student. Where’s the fun — in ripping up the paper afterward?

It’s hard not to think that the Zulus are missing a tremendous opportunity to take virgin marking into the future. Certificates are pretty much useless, but imagine the possibilities that open up if you do virgin marking with barcodes or perhaps implanted chips. You could use global satellite technology to track the movement of virgins, just like biologists do with tagged animals. You could transmit body information — temperature, blood pressure, or if you installed the chip in the right place, hymeneal integreity — back to a laboratory where scientists could study and analyze it. You could probably even put a little camera in there, a hymen cam, and stream it to the internet. You could develop the world’s largest database of vaginal statistics. Why not? Certainly it would be a socially significant research enterprise, given that the virgin, like many a tagged animal, seems bound for extinction.

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