Beyond Virginity: Rethinking Purity, Power, and Gender Ethics

Consider two women. The first is cherished in a hospital in Kathmandu: she has just given birth through in vitro fertilization (IVF), a medically advanced procedure that involved her ovum, a biological material science regards as precious and irreplaceable. Doctors, families, and society gather to hail her as the miracle of life personified. The second woman lives in a village in the Far Western hills. She is menstruating, and so she is sent to a cold, dark shed outside her home, considered impure, untouchable, a source of misfortune. Both women are Nepali. Both are human. And in a deeply troubling sense, both are defined entirely by their bodies — one exalted for what her body can produce, the other punished for what her body naturally does. This is the paradox at the heart of gender ethics in Nepal today: a society that simultaneously worships and degrades the female body, celebrating its biological function while denying its owner the most basic dignity.