JOS JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

The paper analysed the ethical evaluation of female virginity practices in contemporary Africa. It is observed in the recent past that virginity was highly prized in traditional Africa. But in the current civilisation of African humanism, the values of virginity have been very debatable, as the social and emotional values of it as a criterion for marriage and for married life are not highly valued. As it is observed, in the past, the virginity practices were based on the need to sustain family ethics for the validation of culture in the development of the female marrying adult as a person. In such communities, it was an ethical imperative for women to marry in their state of virginity and then give some encomiums to their parents for their proper upbringing before their families as married women. Adopting the phenomenological method of analysis, the paper clarified with logical critiques of the practices surrounding female virginity in reference to the values of African humanism in our contemporary times. Hence, the paper found that the ethical logic of virginity practices is heavily weakened or fading away because of imposing contemporary sexual orientation and challenging the values of marriage. Therefore, the paper concluded that the virginity practices will socially and necessarily limit how the young female and marriageable individuals, as ethical and cultural agents, view the workings of human nature (their biological and physiological maturities) to adapt to the growing nature of contemporary values relating to their virginity. It recommends that young female persons should assess some epistemic events, situations, and practices in societies in relation to their development as persons who desire to enjoy their sexual lives adequately and naturally without being influenced by some baseless cultural constraints and regulations.

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