#hymen

"On high the roof — Hymen (Hymenaeus)! — rise up, you carpenters! — the bridegroom is coming."

— Sappho, Fragment 111

Let's talk about the whole "hymen as a freshness seal" myth. You wanna know how much of a lie the "you’re supposed to bleed your first time" or "the hymen is proof of virginity" is?

I had something called an imperforated hymen. Yup, it's a real condition. Look it up. Mine wasn’t completely sealed (i can't believe some people still think this is the norm like, how would we even menstruate. Anyway), it was "microperforated," but it still made my periods super painful and sex unbelievably worse. I bled, like, a lot the first times i had penetration, until I finally went to a gynecologist and learnt what was actually going on :') I had to get surgery. Yeah, SURGERY. General anesthesia, an incision, sutures, antibiotics—the whole deal. Apparently, it’s not even that uncommon of a procedure (nowadays obvs), they told me it's totally routine.

What’s actually supposed to happen is that as you grow older, your hymen becomes more elastic as you reach FULL —focus on COMPLETE– sexual maturity. And once you body is ready, you should be able to have pain-free sex. Easy peasy.

Here’s the thing: the hymen is elastic. Its purpose is NOT to be "broken" (seriously, how impractical would that be?), but to prevent infections during infancy. This means that, in my case, it could even 1 stretch every time, which was what originated the pain or 2 yeah, be torn by force. During history, as you can probably guess, option number 2 was the most common one, with its consequential bleeding.

So, if it is obviously not the norm, where does the idea of "bleeding during your first time" come from? Well, mostly rape. Women were routinely raped their first time, which lead to tearing and, thus, bleeding. (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2007.00818_7.x thanks @deadfish-inabarrel for the link, super interesting article)

So, if something hurts during penetration, INCLUDING YOUR FIRST TIME, stop immediately. Something’s wrong!!! You don’t have to endure it. Even if it were natural (spoiler: it’s not), you don’t have to go through it if you don’t want to.

Allegory of the Alliance of France and Bavaria through the Marriage of the Grand Dauphin

Artist: Arnould of Vuez (French, 1644-1720)

Date: 1681

Medium: Oil on canvas

Medical illustration of an intersex vulva below the cut, from 1896.

So, you know what a lot of people are calling "sleeve" hymens?

Um.....yeah. Might be that. Might also mean you have a doubled vagina, at least as far as this gynecology textbook from 1986 was concerned. (It has a lot of problems, including pretty blatant white supremacist / antiblack racial phrenology, but it's one of the only things I've found mentioning "female" hypo- and epi- spadias aside from random posts by other intersex people.)

What y'all know about the Erotes?? 🗣🩷

[divine beloveds] "Of Mount Oeta; Oetaean, a mountain in central Greece, where a cult of Hesperus, who loved Hymen, is said to have existed."

— Oetaeus, Maurus Servius Honoratus, in his commentaries on Virgil's Eclogues