When I was about eight, I was invited to a friend’s house after school. We had dinner, and after finishing our homework, her mom took us to the park as she had promised. There were a couple of slides and other metal structures. We were enrolled in the same gymnastics class after school, so we tried to show the kids at the park our newest achievements. After some time playing we were chatting on one of the structures made with tubes; we sat on the thickest tubes as if we were riding a horse. Suddenly, her mother ran towards us shouting and asking us to get down immediately. Perplexed by her reaction, my friend asked her what was the problem. Her mother said we could not just sit like that, that we were going to damage ourselves. Honestly, I didn’t understand what she meant and I just ignored her, thinking she was just exaggerating.
Years later, when I was in middle school, we went to a water park on a school trip. I was about 14 and one of my friends (not the same one) had the bad luck of starting her period exactly on that day (tell me about bad timing). Her mom, (thankfully not that crazy) ran to the drugstore and bought her a package of pads and tampons. When she arrived, she taught her exactly how they worked and how she had to insert them. When we were already on the bus, she told me and another friend about the tampons, and that second friend repeated the words I had forgotten for years. It’s not that I hadn’t heard about virginity. I mean, we were teenagers who thought we were no longer children, but when she mentioned the word “damaged”, I felt really confused, so I asked her what she meant. Her answer was what millions of girls grow up listening: that we shouldn’t do anything that risks the integrity of our hymen. Or in other words, don’t do anything that can “damage” your value as a woman: your virginity.
But why do we have this conception? According to Nina Brochmann and Ellen Støkken Dahl, two sex educators in Norway, our whole understanding of the hymen is based on two huge anatomical myths. On the one hand, there is the belief that the hymen’s purpose is completely related to virginity and so, once a woman experiences her first sexual relationship (involving penetration, of course), it breaks and bleeds. The other myth is that once this happens, the hymen disappears, just as the idea of virginity.
Now, as they mention, more than anatomical myths, these are related to the cultural beliefs that the reputation of a woman depends on this ‘fragile and destructible’ membrane. That cultural concept, accepted by many ,and used to control women, has actually nothing to do with the real anatomy of the hymen.
The hymen, also called “virgin membrane” in Norway, is thought to be some sort of seal covering the entrance of the vagina. As the myth claims, once broken, it disappears, taking with it our dignity and value, but this couldn’t be farther from reality. In fact, the hymen is more like a thick circular membrane with one or more holes, fringes, and loops. Moreover, it’s an elastic organ that in about 50% of the cases never bleeds. So, while it’s true that some hymens bleed with the first penetration, this doesn’t mean that a seal has been broken or, more importantly, that this determines the sexual history of a woman.
Now, how can that tiny part of our anatomy be used to control women and their sexuality? Just think about the millions of examples of women fallen into disgrace for not bleeding in their wedding night, or how hymens were a sort of seal of guarantee when parents “sold” their daughters to a suitor, or even the new inventions of “revirgination” to recreate this membrane and have their “honor” back. Just think about the crazy woman worried about two eight-year-old girls damaging their worth while playing at the park.
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You might be interested in:
The Female Nightmare Of Having 100 Orgasms A Day
Vaginismus: The Painful Sexual Condition For Women That No One Is Talking About
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Sources:
Ted Talk
Everyday Feminism
