Heterosexual Fetishization of Female Virginity and the Hymen

It’s Not the LGBTQ or Drag Queens Obsessed with Sexual Purity.

If there’s one thing that entirely too many major religions agree on, it’s that people identified as female need to be sexually pure until a man in a position of authority grants them permission or commands them to be otherwise. This has resulted in a nearly endless assortment of punitive measures for any female who has fallen short, whether through acts of actual fornication or a natural physical state that suggests fornication has occurred. The deciding factor? The condition of what has long been called the hymen.

Renamed the “vaginal corona” in 2009 in an attempt to avoid some of the misconceptions that have grown up around the word “hymen,” it is a piece of tissue developed during fetal growth that covers or surrounds part of the vaginal opening. As women age or engage in penetration for the first time, the membrane tends to thin and sometimes tear, which can cause pain or bleeding but does not always do so.

Alas for women and girls, the mythology of virginity and the hymen/vaginal corona has been more than merely inconvenient. In some cases, it has been an excuse for medical assault and even death. In 2019, American rapper TI revealed that he had been accompanying his then 18-year-old daughter to the gynecologist since she was 14 with the intention of confirming from the doctor that her vaginal corona was still intact.

On the other extreme are honor killings, which can be traced to at least the Roman Empire, and a desire by men to assure that any child their wife bore was their own. In 2017, it was estimated that nearly 30 women were murdered in the United States based on the condition of their hymen. Globally, that number is closer to 5,000.

Like the appendix, the vaginal corona serves no real purpose that can be discerned. Further, hymen come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some easily survive penetration and some are long gone before any sexual activity ever takes place. Some female babies are born without them entirely. That hasn’t stopped men in power from claiming expertise in an area they have historically been ignorant about. For instance, during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the absence of a hymen was declared evidence of “womb-fury.” When left untreated, “womb-fury” was believed to lead to death.

“Virginity testing” continues in spite of the World Health Organization calling for its elimination. According to the agency, “Virginity testing is a violation of the human rights of girls and women and can be detrimental to women’s and girl’s physical, psychological, and social well-being. Virginity testing reinforces stereotyped notions of female sexuality and gender inequality.” Further, it concluded that the procedure is, “a painful, humiliating, and traumatic practice constituting violence against women.”

The utter ignorance that most people have concerning the vagina corona and its relationship to sexual activity has long led to the belief that when a virgin has her first experience with insertive, vaginal sex, “proof” of her innocence is blood on the wedding night sheets. This myth has led to some fairly weird, and extremely profitable, ways to enforce or replicate a state of virginity. Or at least vaginal intercourse.

Since the 1990s, the double standard that proclaims a sexually active young man a “stud” or “Alpha male,” deems sexually active women as “stained,” “fallen,” “damaged,” and worse. In order to avoid such a fate, “Virginity Pledges” and “Purity Rings” have made untold amounts of money while simultaneously being part of a complex system of sexual misinformation designed to frighten young people into chastity compliance. More than $2 million of taxpayer money has been invested in abstinence-only “education.”

This government investment has resulted in young people being told that condoms fail more often than work, that condom use leads to cancer, that the intrinsic value and beauty of females are fouled by sexual experience, that chemical birth control methods are “poison,” and that IUDs result in physical damage and infertility. In many pro-virginity circles, the very concept of reliable contraception is not merely rejected, it is vilified.

All of this ultimately relies upon patriarchal and religiously fundamentalist ideologies. I know those words have been used a lot, but there’s truth in the statement. The state of virginity is not one that has any basis in medicine or science. It is a purely religious and cultural concept that relies upon the belief that females should be obsessively modest and pure. Catholic saints have died rather than sacrifice their virginity to their husbands.

Why? Because, historically their market value dropped when they were traded among men as property. In order to keep one’s daughter’s loins off limits until the highest bidder could be found, restrictions have been placed on them including no jumping, no riding horses, no running, no vigorous exercise, no tampons, limited interactions with boys and men. Those who fall short of the traditionally strict social constraints fall into the deep end of the “virgin/whore” dichotomy. A female is either pure or she is defiled. Chewed up and useless like spat-out gum. If the latter, then she is deemed morally inferior, unmarriageable, a threat to society at large, and appropriate for abuse, marginalization, shunning, and shaming.

Even today, when most women throughout the world have more freedom to move about, socialize, share power, and choose when and whether to have children, the outdated concepts of slut-shaming and purity prevail. Hymen surgery still exists. Also known as a hymenoplasty, “hymen restoration surgery,” and even “revirgination,” this procedure manipulates the vagina so that it is smaller and will bleed upon post-operative intercourse. Recovery is about two weeks and sometimes it results in blood during every act of intercourse. How sexy is that?

In addition to the sheer social imprisonment of female people, all humans suffer as a result of this obsession with the condition of a mucus membrane in another person’s genitals. These ignorant and dehumanizing attitudes steal the joy of sexual exploration, enjoyment, and intimacy from us all. If penis-in-vagina penetration is the only sanctioned form of sexual expression, then every other form is invalidated or demonized. Usually both.

Not only does this ignore and negate the existence of LGBTQA individuals and those with disabilities, but it also drastically limits the way any adult can enjoy their own and their partner’s bodies. Oral sex? Anal sex? Same-sex? Mutual masturbation? Asexuality without clergy membership and regardless of parental preference?

Unauthorized! Selfish! Unnatural! Immoral! Against God!

I realize that some porn scenes and stories have historically relied upon the fetishization of female virginity and its associated naïve innocence and the thrill of being the man to end it. Some of it has creeped me out, to be honest. But fantasy is fantasy and porn allows us to explore the forbidden without non-consensually indulging in it.

Meanwhile, many who cloak themselves in the flag or claim directives from a deity can’t stop thinking about the genitals of any girl close to the age of her first menstruation. Frankly, that’s not just creepy, it’s dangerous.