Etymologically, the hymen is an elastic skin tissue that partially surrounds the vaginal opening, for this reason it is also referred to as the hymenal ring. The hymen’s shape, colour, and size varies significantly from person to person and is frequently nonexistent(1). If present, the hymen is rarely an intact membrane. It is typically torn in different patterns, and consists of various folds of skin, which in turn allow for the outflow of menstrual blood. In rare cases the hymen can have a shape that prevents the outflow of menstrual blood, which may then require medical intervention. Biologically, the hymen does not serve any known or vital purpose for the body(2).

Because of its partial tears and elasticity, the hymen can allow for the insertion of tampons or menstrual cups without necessarily causing major changes to its structure (this differs from person to person). The hymen changes shape during puberty and can become weaker, stretched or worn out with activities such as exercise, masturbation, sexual intercourse and childbirth. Yet, its elasticity can also allow it to retain its shape even after penetrative activities, depending, again, on the person’s body. Thus, the lack of an identifiable hymen is just as inaccurate of a signifier of penetrative sexual intercourse’s occurance as the presence of a hymen, and it cannot determine whether a person is or has been sexually active(3).

Despite this inconsistency, the hymen has been and continues to be considered as the physical representative of virginity for women socially. In patriarchal societies, its presence is required as proof of a woman’s abstinence from sexual intercourse with men, which is thereby used to represent her purity and suitability for marriage, as well as her family’s honour. In some cases women seek out “restorative surgeries”(4) through which they “re-sew” the hymenal folds to regain their “virginity”. Clearly then, the hymen has become a powerful tool to discredit women socially and politically. For example, the Egyptian regime performed “virginity tests” on women protesters during the Egyptian revolution to discredit them and their families as dishonorable persons(5).

Patriarchal legislators continue to implement laws that reaffirm the hymen’s centrality to women’s virginity and serve to police their bodies and sexuality. For example, the Lebanese penal code differentiates between women rape survivors and the penalty for their rapists on the basis of their virginity. According to article 512, the man who rapes a virgin woman receives a higher penalty than the man who rapes a non-virgin woman(6). In order to determine the survivor’s virginal status when applying this article, the courts usually order or require the performance of medical virginity tests and do not rely on the survivor’s testimony. Other articles, such as 518 which handles rape by deceit (the false promise of marriage which serves as lack of consent) explicitly link the proof of virginity with an admission from the man that he did indeed deceive a virgin woman and lured her into sex under the false promise of marriage, and not the woman’s words(7). Thus, such articles not only legally allocate access and knowledge over women’s bodies to men (both, the rapist or the doctor can prove a woman’s virginity, but not her) but they also limit the survivor’s capacity to prove the crime or have it be taken seriously.

The patriarchal myth that every female is born with an intact hymen is also often accompanied with the myth that a woman’s first penetrative vaginal intercourse necessarily leads to bleeding due to the “rupturing” of the hymen. While bleeding can occur as a result of tears in the hymenal tissue’s stretching, it is also often caused by trauma to the vaginal opening and walls, due to being tense (out of fear of painful intercourse), lack of lubrication, or too forceful or early penetration(8). Therefore, the anticipation that the “first time will hurt” (in the case of penile-vaginal intercourse) leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy of painful sex.

Some feminist health practitioners have challenged the medicalised notion of the hymen’s breaking, which aims to constitute a single moment of “rupture” after which the hymen is referred to as “hymenal remnants”(9). By emphasizing a singular moment of hymenal rupture, the mainstream medical view – despite its quest for accuracy – complements the social view which establishes penile heterosexual penetration as the singular socially acceptable method of “accessing” the vagina. Such a view contributes to alienating women from their own bodies, causing fear and worry that they may “rupture” their own hymen, and denying them their right of control over their bodies and sexual pleasure and handing this right to men. In response, some groups such as the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education, renamed the hymen as the “vaginal corona” and emphasized as facts the tissue’s elasticity, various shapes, and the multiplicity of ways it can or cannot alter its form(10).