Red Apples in Armenia

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard a lot about marriage traditions and gender roles in Armenia.  A lot of these topics are intimate, so getting people to open up isn’t always the easiest.  Slowly, certain things have come to light. 

The culture here appears to be fairly traditional, and views on marriage and sex are different than in most developed countries.  Many girls here remain virgins until marriage.  In fact, men seemingly prefer virgins.  At first glance, this seems to be a tradition that exists throughout the world.    However, the great importance placed on a woman’s virginity in Armenian society has some consequences that concern women’s rights activists. 

First, it interferes with the woman’s personal and intimate right to choose what she wants to do with her own body.  In a related matter, I have been told that a bride’s future in-laws sometimes review her medical records before the ceremony to ensure her “purity.”  As a result, girls will ask doctors not to make notes on their medical charts for fear that the future in-laws will find something unacceptable and interfere with the marriage.  This is a blatant human rights violation, and laws in developed countries would never allow such an invasion of privacy.  Without proper and enforceable privacy laws, anyone can bribe a doctor and receive another’s medical records.  Imagine the most intimate details of your life available for the entire world to scrutinize.

Second, since virginity is so important, rape victims often do not report sexual abuse.  Rape is still taboo in Armenia; the fact that a woman lost her virginity unwillingly will bring shame to her family.  Furthermore, victims of abuse are often blamed for wearing provocative clothing or accused of “asking for it.”  As such, these women are left without proper treatment and counseling and their abusers continue to evade the law.

I recently learned of an ancient tradition that is still alive in some parts of Armenia: red apples.  Apparently, the day after the wedding, the groom’s relatives bring the bride’s parents red apples after they check the bed sheets and are satisfied that their son’s new bride was, in fact, a virgin.  As such, the red apples symbolize the new bride’s virginity.

Last year, in celebration of International Women’s Day, a local women’s rights group in Yerevan helped stage a protest/march followed by a symbolic burial of red apples in its backyard.  It seems the reaction was negative, and people accused the organization of trying to destroy Armenian traditions with Western values.   Despite what onlookers thought, the organizers were not encouraging women to go out and have sex with multiple partners.  Rather, they were merely trying to reduce the importance placed on a woman’s virginity in the hopes of reducing the negative consequences discussed above.