Myth About Hymen

Jared Potts
Ms. Waters
Human Anatomy & Physiology
15 January 2013
The “Myth” About Hymen Cultures around the world define the way people live. In many cultures, especially when it comes to religion, a woman’s sexual status is very important. In all religions alike, it is important that women maintain their virginity until their wedding. In stricter religions, breaking this vow can be considered serious. Old ideas use hymen to prove that women are virgins until their wedding night. The theory is that the hymen bleeds when broken by sexual intercourse.
Hymen is a membrane that completely surrounds or covers part of the external vaginal opening, forming part of the vulva. Sexual intercourse and other contact can affect the condition of
hymen. This led to the cultural myth about hymen, which is that it will bleed on the woman’s wedding night, proving that they are a virgin. There are many facts that disprove this theory, but yet many Muslim people still strongly believe in that theory and will take different measures, and different countries also use hymen methods to test virginity. It is a strong myth in human culture that only if the hymen breaks and bleeds on a woman’s wedding night, that she is a virgin. But there are many physical factors that the medical field has proven over the past century that make this hymen theory untrue and unreliable. First of all, some girls are born with no hymen. That means that there would be nothing to bleed on a woman’s wedding night. Also, hymen is known to be a very sensitive tissue in some women, meaning that it can break and bleed due to other types of contact before a woman’s first time having sexual intercourse. This can involve from a woman using tampons. If the hymen is sensitive enough, it can tear when a woman is doing heavy physical activity, even doing gymnastics and other types of sports. The hymen can also be perforated, and these perforations can increase in size over time. This could lead to the hymen breaking when a girl menstruates. At the same time, when some hymens break, it doesn’t bleed at all. On the other end, the hymen could be so strong that it does not break at all. This would mean that the hymen is very small in total size and elastic that no contact with it, involving sexual intercourse, could break it. Doctors have discovered that some women have intact and unbroken hymen while they are pregnant. Seeing that the medical field has proven all of this, our common sense from seeing these facts should tell us that a woman shouldn’t be expected to bleed the first time she has sexual intercourse. Unfortunately, not all people listen to these facts and expect a woman to bleed her first time having sex. This theory plays a large part in the Muslim religion, where young women are expected to bleed on their wedding night. If they don’t, they can face scorn among their people. This has become largely known to the public about the Muslim people in Europe. Although they live in freer countries, they still face the code of their religion and their families that honor those codes. In order to be sure to bleed one their wedding nights, many Muslim women have turned to surgery. In these surgeries, hymen gets repaired so that it can bleed on the woman’s wedding night. In this sense, there were some Muslim women who were not virgins when they got this surgery. Through these surgeries, they passed themselves as virgins. Basically, there are many doctors in Europe helping non-virgin women fake their virginity. Another doctor in Paris, Dr. Emmanuelle Piet, suggests less extreme solutions, like spilling blood on the bed sheet, on her wedding night. Many people who don’t believe in the hymen myth have protested against these surgeries. Liberals have said that these surgeries, along with the hymen myth itself, are a violation of human rights. But in other parts of the world, the hymen still plays an important role in a woman’s virginity. The Muslim countries use the theory of a woman’s hymen breaking on her wedding night. Other countries have different methods of testing the hymen. India is a primary example. The people of India use a method called “Kukari ki Rasam”, which is a thread test. In this method, a skein of thread is used to detect intact hymen. This method is practiced primarily among families so they can make money off of non virgin brides. Usually, if this thread test says that the bride is impure, the bride is beaten as a means of torture so that she will tell them the names of the men that she had an affair with. Since scientific facts have proven that the hymen is not a reliable source to prove virginity, many of these women under torture are virgins. In such cases, many of these women have named any men that they knew, whether it was a neighbor or a man working at a store she went to, just to end the torture. After these men are identified, they are forced to pay large amounts of money to these families.
The police often refer to this method as immoral, but out of their hands because it is not illegal. In recent times, women's organizations have protested against these methods of virginity testing, but their movement is still small. Other countries like South Africa try to use these virginity tests for a better purpose. AIDs is a major problem in Africa, and one of the ways it can be spread is through sexual contact. So these tests will be used to identify who is a virgin and who is not a virgin, since a virgin is much less likely to have AIDs. Still, the hymen method is still not a reliable method based on the scientific facts mentioned earlier. Overall, many Muslim women have gone to extremities to meet the hymen myth about a woman bleeding on her wedding night, while other countries use methods pertaining to hymen to torture impure women, even though many medical facts prove that the hymen is not a reliable source for proving virginity.
Virginity is an important thing in culture, mainly religion. Women who are seen as impure can be scorned heavily, like the method in India. Many families still rely on the status of a woman’s hymen to determine if she is a virgin or not. If the hymen breaks and bleeds on a woman’s wedding night, then she is a virgin. If it doesn’t, then she is not a virgin. Medical science has shown that, based on the status of a woman’s hymen, it can break from other activity previous to sexual intercourse, like the use of tampons, heavy physical activity, and even masturbation, or it can remain so strong that it doesn’t break during sexual intercourse and even remain intact during pregnancy. The hymen in the culture of a woman’s virginity has a very strong presence. But when it has come to fact, the hymen has just been proved over and over again throughout the twentieth century, by medical science, to be an unreliable source. When it comes to a woman’s status of being a virgin, we are just going to have to take her word for
it.