Human culture and religion largely revolve around our perception of gender and sex. It is therefore not surprising that virginity has found its own special niche in our traditions. But here, human anatomy is a disadvantage to women. The presence of a hymen, a thin membrane that partially covers the external vaginal opening and ruptures during a woman’s first sexual encounter, makes her particularly vulnerable to scrutiny by the moralistic eye of patriarchy, as she alone among the two sexes bears evidence to her virginity. Also, civilisation as we know it today had its cornerstones laid when the agrarian way of life had begun to replace the nomadic – when ownership of land had begun to signify a more luxurious and therefore, a more powerful way of life. Patriarchy, the rise of the male sex over the female is largely derived from that idea of ownership, and women like property, are owned by men. Almost automatically, a woman’s virginity becomes the property of that one man, who is meant to ‘own’ her and she is bound to ‘save herself’ for him, while he himself is bound by no such understanding.

Putting women on the block and subjecting them to sexual subordination for any reason is inexcusable. And it’s medieval and feudal to claim you can protect your people (if you can even call what he proposes protection) by putting other people who are not “sisters” in the line of fire.

Our moms were right about what they taught us in kindergarten: don’t show a bully you’re scared. That’s exactly what he wants to see. It was hard to follow, and we all got bullied. But that’s a message for life, a message for dealing with patriarchy.

“When Ana Maria’s parents were young, she says, the forest easily fed them, even though the Zapara were then one of the largest tribes of the Amazon. With some 200000 members living in villages along all the neighbouring rivers. Then something happened far away… and nothing in their world – or anybody’s – was ever [...]