Mission to Civilize: Revisiting the Dutch Integration Ideal through Hymenoplasty Consultation

Ever since the sexual revolution in the 1960s in the Netherlands, the Dutch have made sexuality an integral aspect of how they define Dutch society. The arrival of the Turkish and the Moroccan workers in the 1970s presents a challenge to this paradigm as they tend to hold different norms of sexuality than that of the “native”. In the light of this, the ever-evolving Dutch integration policy, formulated to deal with the migrants, gradually creates an expectation that these individuals will eventually adopt Dutch ideals, including that of sexuality.

In the present day, this expectation is revisited in the doctor’s room during hymenoplasty consultation. Hymenoplasty is a surgery done to alter the hymen ring, frequently requested by patients who want to be physically virgin again before marriage. In the Netherlands, this procedure is often requested by young women of Turkish or Moroccan background. Since the consulting physicians are almost exclusively of “native” Dutch upbringing, hymenoplasty consultation provides a productive window to observe how different sexual values are evoked, considered, and negotiated between the migrant patient and the “native” doctor.

In this paper, I look at how the interaction between the physician and the hymenoplasty candidate is imbued with the language of “othering” and how the doctor’s goal of the meeting is mainly to correct the patient’s conception of virginity and sexuality in general. This last point, I argue ultimately, is also reminiscent of the colonial’s mission to civilize.