Author: /Yasmin Bahrami/

 

“When you have sex for the first time, you’ll feel something tear. How much it hurts depends on the person, but you’ll probably notice some blood on the sheets after.”

Health was a one-semester course during my freshman year of high school, where sex-ed was tiptoed around and rushed through within an abstinence-only curriculum. Hearing my teacher direct this message to the girls in my class left me with many fears, including the impression that sex was a displeasing and painful experience for women. Like many people, sex-ed was one of the only places I learned about sex, aside from movies and TV shows, and maybe the occasional Cosmopolitan article.

As she was describing what is commonly known as ‘cherry-popping,’ I recalled a summer day when I was 11 years old. I’d gone on a bike ride, got home, and saw a blood stain on my underwear. I told my mom, and she explained to me that I’d gotten my period. I waited and stocked up on pads and tampons so I’d be prepared for the next time—but it didn’t return the next day or month after. Assuming it was another odd quirk of puberty, I shrugged it off until I got my period a year and a half later.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was likely when my hymen had “broken,” and virginity loss played no role in it whatsoever.

After reflecting on my personal experience, I found countless stories similar to mine: women had ruptured their hymen after using a tampon, playing sports, and to my surprise, many said they hadn’t experienced any ‘tearing’ or pain after having sex for the first time. Despite mine and many other people’s experiences with their hymens rupturing before sexual intercourse, educational platforms still teach that the membrane is a determining factor of virginity loss.

Historically, the image of ‘blood on the sheets’ represented a woman who had saved herself for marriage. In a certain countries throughout history, if there is no blood present on the wedding night, the bride would face trial and possible execution. It was another misogynistic approach to promote monogamy among women and therefore suppress their sexuality. This legend is carried on today by a lack of education regarding female anatomy. 

Women’s sexuality has been historically oppressed and understudied. Even biological aspects, like the hymen, have been misinterpreted. This misinformation has been incorporated into mainstream sexual education and rarely questioned, inhibiting women from fully understanding their anatomy.

Human sexuality cannot be understood by the presence or absence of biological features, as commonly taught in mainstream sex-ed. The hymen is a membrane that ‘breaks’ from any form of penetration, including tampons, or can simply ‘rub off’ in physical activity in the course of a woman’s life, which is not necessarily during her first sexual encounter. Some women report never even experiencing the ‘breaking’ of their hymen. Though there is anatomical evidence that supports those claims, many cultures still value the preservation of the tissue because it is viewed as a symbol of a woman’s virginity.

Some women go as far as getting a surgical procedure, known as hymenoplasty, to give the illusion of virginity because of the cultural agreement that the feature is sacred and determines a woman’s status. Some women seek out this surgery in pursuit of their partner’s respect, and others out of fear for their lives that it’d be discovered, or even falsely perceived, that they had participated in premarital sex.

The hymen has and is being used to define something that is undefinable: virginity. As long as this social construct is being measured by a physical feature, its presence or absence can be used by patriarchal biases to judge a woman’s identity based on sexual experience.

Additionally, when virginity loss is defined by a female membrane, the notion fails to include those who explore alternative methods of intercourse as well as those with different sexual orientations that don’t practice or involve penis-vagina penetration. This definition excludes the LGBTQ+ community and, by assigning a thin membrane such a high status—women’s identities are minimized.

A person’s sexuality is as individual and unique as their biological features, and there is no universal feature from which it can be determined. By educating ourselves about our sexual organs outside of heteronormative and sexist perspectives, we can fully understand our sexualities aside from these commonly fed deceptions.