Elnathan John

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What struck me about this video of “fake virginity blood” being sold in Northern Nigeria is not the product itself, but the moral education that makes such a product necessary. Deception does not appear out of nowhere. It is learned. And as bell hooks reminds us, patriarchy is one of the most effective schools of deception we have. When a society places impossible and one-sided moral demands on women, while demanding almost nothing from men, it does not produce virtue. It produces performance. Virginity here is not really about sex. It is about proof. About a woman’s body being turned into evidence. The hymen becomes a certificate of value. Blood becomes currency. Honour becomes something that must be staged convincingly enough to satisfy male judgment. Growing up in Northern Nigeria, many of us heard the stories in whispers. Rumours about the lengths people went to preserve the myth of virginity. Women avoiding vaginal penetration entirely. Anal sex used as a workaround, so that on the wedding night the illusion could be completed. Blood shown. Husband reassured. Honour “intact.” Everyone colluding in a lie that everyone knows is a lie. This is not moral decay. It is moral absolutism doing what it always does. It teaches people how to deceive in order to survive. bell hooks writes that patriarchy teaches men and women to lie in different ways. Men learn to lie about vulnerability. They are trained to suppress fear, tenderness, emotional need, because honesty would cost them power or status. Women, on the other hand, learn to lie to stay safe. They learn that telling the truth about their bodies, desires, or histories can bring punishment, abandonment, or violence. So women learn concealment. Performance. Strategic silence. Seen this way, fake virginity blood is not shocking. It is logical. It is a market solution to a moral contradiction. If a woman’s worth is reduced to an anatomical fiction, she will find a way to manufacture that fiction. And we must ask the obvious question: where is the demand for virginity from men? Where is the obsession with their bodies as proof of moral worth? Where are the rituals, the products, the inspections? Men are assumed whole by default. Women must prove themselves worthy. The tragedy is not that women deceive. The tragedy is that honesty is made dangerous for them. A society that truly cared about morality would start with symmetry. It would care less about blood on bedsheets and more about kindness, responsibility, and mutual respect. Until then, deception will continue to flourish. Not because women are immoral, but because patriarchy demands purity while rewarding power. And whenever purity is demanded without justice, lies will follow.

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