English Committee for Dialogue and Communication

Though culture changes through time, norms may not. They drive us to behave this way and not that one. Our behaviour, then, is cultural but not necessarily a correct one. Virginity of woman, for instance, is necessary, otherwise society would reject her; even it was the force of circumstance that was the cause behind losing it. What about man, doesn't he have virginity to keep? We're still in a society in which woman has to be judged but not man. A man may have more than a relationship before, and even after, he gets married, yet his first condition, after beauty, is to marry a woman who had no relationship with another man, forgetting that he was the reason behind losing the virginity of a woman or two. The virility of man is completed only if his wife is still virgin till the night of marriage. This, too, represents the nobility/sharaf of the family, and it is complete only when parents, in some areas of Morocco, announce their daughter's virginity in public. So, if norms may help in building a strong society, they may help in its destruction, too.