Where Is the Hymen?

I thought we'd gone over this in the past few years enough times that folks knew this information already. But it seems like we need a review because authors still don't seem to know where the hell the hymen is.

We went over this in the Bosoms for about six pages, and we've joked about it here for pages and pages more.

But it seems that the hymen still eludes us, specifically WHERE IT IS.

It is NOT Up the vaginal canal by a few inches.

IT IS NOT INTERNAL.

IT IS EXTERNAL.

Here is a professor of anatomy, someone whose JOB it is to KNOW the HUMAN BODY, who has an advanced degree or two in Where Things Are In or On Your Body:

Speaking as you were on the blog of virgins, I have a long standing smart bitch bitch with writers who have no idea where the hymen is located. This is amazing to me, as most romance authors are female and should have a better knowledge of their own anatomy.

Some have it placed correctly and as the act BEGINS, the virgin feels stretching and pain. The hymen, if present, is a curtain or ring of tissue at the entrance of the vagina. This is how the British medical people could verify by sight, that the intended royal bride was a virgin.

It is not, as some authors repeatedly write in book after book, located somewhere in the middle of the vagina, causing discomfort halfway through depth of penetration during the act.

How, oh how, can we make writers aware so I don't end up throwing books across the room and screaming out loud????
 
JL
Disgruntled Romance Reader and Anatomy Professor


Let's talk about it scientifically. The hymen is a “membrane that surrounds or partially covers the EXTERNAL VAGINAL OPENING.”

Even Lance Goddam Armstrong's LIVESTRONG website knows this: “A common misconception about the hymen is that it is inside the vagina. It is actually a mucous membrane that is part of the vulva, the external genital organs.”

How is it that freaking LIVESTRONG can get this right, and we can't? I am so baffled why this anatomical fallacy remains part of the genre. You'd think we'd know all this by now but NO. I get scenes like this one:


He guided himself into the slick heat between her thighs. But despite her apparent readiness, his entry wasn’t easy. He gritted his teeth and fisted his hands in the quilt, forcing himself to go slow, to give her time to adjust to his size. His muscles ached with the effort of holding back and his heart pounded against his ribs as he inched a little farther, swallowing her soft sighs of acceptance, of pleasure.

He frowned when he felt an unexpected resistance, but before he could begin to comprehend what it might mean, her legs lifted to lock behind his hips, pulling him deeper so that he pushed through the barrier of her innocence.

Royal Holiday Bride, Brenda Harlen, December 2011


He inches along, like you do, and feels some barrier? COME ON NOW. He wouldn't be able to inch into anything, much less feel a barrier of any sort once he was partially in because….

THE HYMEN IS EXTERNAL.

Say it with me here. IT IS OUTSIDE THE BODY.

(Also: not only did this scene follow with the obligatory “If I'd known you were a virgin I'd have done it differently” scene, but the hero says that he “should have realized” [because virginity has a scent?] AND that he “had a right to know.” ON WHAT GODDAM PLANET is her sexual experience within his rights of knowledge or any of his business at all?)

Anyway, back to the hymen. 

I think I need to tell everyone again where it is. 

It is not up the canal by any means! It's not a portcullis halfway to the cervix! It's not a barrier up the valley, a logjam obstructing the path of the river of love, a dam in the reservoir of passion. IT IS NOT INSIDE ANYTHING. 

THE HYMEN IS EXTERNAL.

I don't know why this myth is allowed to propagate but it does, like binder clips in a desk drawer.

DON'T MAKE ME START POSTING PICTURES, PEOPLE. Neither of us wants that.

I've read one of these scenes every time there's a virgin becoming devirginized, and it has to stop. There's too many. This has to stop. It's ridiculous. It's embarrassing. It's biologically incorrect, and insulting to boot. If romance is supposed to depict the female experience in every variety, and if we are supposed to believe these are, you know, HUMANS, everyone needs to quit getting basic biology so very, very wrong. 

I think I'm going to start tagging books I read and review with the words “does not know where hymen is” to create a record of which books contain this biological inaccuracy.

What about you? Does this drive you batty? Have you read a scene like this recently?

 

 

 

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Ranty McRant

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  1. KellianneRumsey says:

    that is totally awesome. own it!

  2. kkw says:

    @Amitatuq, yeah, primrose means yellow, although modern varietals do come in many colors.

    @BrooklynShoeBabe my 7th grade health teacher (who was trying very hard, poor thing) did explain that the urethra and the vagina were different openings, and got very upset because a couple of the boys in the class insisted that this must mean there was another orifice for them to penetrate.  She got very flustered and said it would probably hurt the girl a good deal if it were even possible. I remember thinking that there were a bunch of girls with a lot of discomfort in their future, and a better deterrent would be saying that it would only be possible for a dude with an abnormally tiny penis.  Anyway, that teacher didn’t last long, and we wound up basically with the gym teacher on glee (I think it was glee?) “if you have sex you will get the aids and die.”

  3. kkw says:

    oh, and in response to the horseback/hymen issue, I don’t know a thing about it really, but I always assumed the theory that you would lose your hymen riding aside was an old wives tale. It makes me think of that Cruikshank caricature, with the lady riding (scandalously) astride asking the way to Stretchit, and the sailor assuring her she’s doing a great job.  Let’s see if it exists in cyperreality… OK, I don’t understand how the internets work, but this might be a link to the picture: http://www.google.com/imgres?q…
    although it seems unlikely.

  4. snarkhunter says:

    Actually, I really don’t have one. I asked a doctor during an exam a few years ago if there was one there, b/c I’d realized there didn’t seem to be anything where it should be, and she said all I had was a “hymenal ring.” There’s no hymen—just a small ring of tissue where one used to be b/c I tore it, or never was b/c I was born without it. (as I was also born without several of my wisdom teeth, I figure I’m just evolutionarily blessed in some ways :D)

    As I said, I’m far more inclined to believe the testimony of many, many women over a handful of medical texts.

  5. The Other Susan says:

    You have a point.  For example, my stomach is higher than normal.  I found this out during an upper GI procedure to confirm my acid reflux. 

    Acid reflux runs in my family…and I bet some of my family members also have higher than normal stomachs.

  6. Ros Clarke says:

    Primroses are always yellow.  Primulas are a related flower and can be many colours.

  7. Anjasa says:

    To be fair, most of us probably lost or hymen’s so long ago, it’s hard to remember the exact positioning.

  8. Laura says:

    Funniest post ever! Love the comments here, too.  totally agree with commenter #9, keri.  same here.  VERY inadequate sex ed from school or ANYWHERE, Catholic upbringing that made me think Sex Was Dirty.  Most girls don’t have a CLUE what their vulva looks like, never mind a hymen.

  9. Kristie Jenner says:

    you know NOW, I won’t be able to read a deflowering scene anymore without first repeating over and over and over:

    THE HYMEN IS EXTERNAL, THE HYMEN IS EXTERNAL, THE HYMEN IS EXTERNAL

    It will become a chant, getting consecutively louder, ending in a roar of outrage if the author makes THE HYMEN INTERNAL

  10. I was reading romance for like…6 years before I had sex, so I was comparing that first time to what I had read about. Verdict? I had no romance novel devirginizing. No pain, no resistance, no blood – dude would not have known if I had not told him I’d never done it before. Of the friends close enough to compare notes on such matters, only one had a really painful first time. So my take on the deflowering = pain and blood and internal hymen is, most women DON’T have that kind of experience so if they feel they need to write it into a romance, then they are guessing about how it would feel.

    That being said, the comment threads on posts like this also convince me that women have widely varied experiences from one another! So what one person thinks “yes, that, that was me” another will think “that was the most unrealistic scene i have ever read.”  Maybe the key to success is just variety of experience across different characters?

    Great post, great comments. Lots of giggles tonight!

  11. AimeeWrites says:

    Okay, honestly??  I had NO IDEA.  Mine broke spontaneously when I was a child (as did my mom’s, maybe it’s a genetic tendency?), so I’ve never seen one!  I always assumed it was inside.  And now I’m all curious – if it’s outside, how do tampons work when it’s intact?  And gynecological exams?

    Now I have to go look at diagrams or something.  Gah.

  12. Anonymoose says:

    There is a second problem with “inching,” as exhibited by Julia Quinn’s Everything and the Moon excerpt, posted below. Don’t get me wrong, I love Julia Quinn. But…

    He positioned himself at the edge of her womanhood. “This may hurt a little,” he said.

    She touched his cheek. “You won’t hurt me.” I don’t want to, but I—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He’d pushed forward into her—just an inch, but it felt so perfect that he lost the power of speech.

    “Oh, my,” Victoria breathed.

    Robert just grunted. It was all he could manage. Intelligent speech was clearly beyond his capabilities. He forced himself to hold still, waiting to feel her muscles relax around him before sinking himself deeper into her. It was damned near impossible to hold himself back; every nerve in his body was screaming for release. It took clenched teeth, clenched muscles, clenched everything to keep his passion in check, but he did it.

    All because he loved her. It was an awesome feeling, that.

    Finally he moved that last inch and let out a shudder of complete and total pleasure.

    Let’s go back over that, shall we? He pushed one inch into her. He gritted his teeth and didn’t move. Then he moved that last inch.

    Ladies…and ladies, I submit to you the only romance hero with a two-inch schlong.

  13. Wanderer says:

    Ha! This reminds me of something I saw a couple years ago on TV. I was channel surfing and caught a segment on the Dr Phil or Dr Oz show (probably Oz because I can’t stand Phil). Anyway, there was a guest doctor who compared the hymen to a turtleneck. Something about if you’re trying a new turtleneck on at a store and how it stretches after you try it on. So the more people that try it on…….you get the idea. I always heard those turtlenecks got around 😀

    Anyway, I haven’t worn a turtleneck since I was a kid but now I could never wear one again because it’d remind me of a hymen. LOL

  14. Sybylla says:

    I guess I’m in-between on my outrage: it doesn’t bother me if the scene is written from the woman’s POV, because there are so many things that could influence how/when/where she begins to feel pain, but it makes me insane if the scene is written from the man’s, because it always comes across as if he suddenly butts up against it.  If it were described in a way that suggested a sudden tightening or something like that, it wouldn’t bother me, since that would go along with the idea that the external hymen had some elasticity that he had reached the end of. 

    What a terribly written sentence.

    <overshare> When I had sex for the first time, it hurt like a sonuvabitch, mostly, I think, because we were both virgins and both way too nervous to figure out that we really needed to take our time before trying for penetration.  The hell of it was, though, that I don’t think mine ever “popped”: it hurt – and I bled – probably the first four or five times we had sex. </overshare>

    Because of that, I constantly have to remind myself that every woman’s body is different, or else I’d go completely around the bend at the number of enthusiastic no-longer-virgins who eagerly have sex three or four times during their first night of activity.

    Unrelatedly, on the subject of health/sex-ed classes: dear god, could we please get school districts to allow teachers to teach the actual anatomy?  As a hs freshman, I was informed by one of my friends that she would never use tampons because she was so disgusted at the prospect of “peeing them out” whenever she had to go to the bathroom.  When I was a hs senior, one of my male friends very seriously asked me, “what hole do girls pee out of?”

  15. Ninjasuffragette says:

    LMFA! “Drop the portcullis! The Normans are at the gates of her Castle of Love!” Do you mind if I steal this line? Friggin’ hilarious. Awesome thread.

  16. Marypres says:

    BEST THING I READ TODAY THANK YOU!!!

  17. I think I’ve been guilty of the “a few inches in” thing, though not in any of my published stories (my heroines in the published ones aren’t virgins).

    I had no idea where my hymen was. When I lost my virginity, all I knew was that it hurt; I didn’t notice when/where it started hurting. I was brought up in a household where sex was dirty and evil and wrong, and was sexually assaulted several times from age 3-17. I had no knowledge of my own body, and didn’t want to know anything about it. I didn’t know where my clitoris was—or if I even actually had one—until I was 25, and I figured it out by accident then, thanks in part to The Color Purple. I was married to a man who hated sex and hated me if I showed any interest in it, so until I was 36 and left the guy, I really had no clue whatsoever about what might or might not feel good, what was or wasn’t supposed to happen, or where anything other than my vagina was located. I’ve learned a lot from reading romances since then.

    That’s actually why I started writing erotic romance; a friend challenged me, right around the time I left my first husband, to put my writing skills to use and write something showing sex as positive and beautiful. It was a stretch for me, because I didn’t believe it could be that, but I gave it a try and did pretty well with it. I do try to teach my daughters to have a positive—and educated—view of sex and their own bodies and sexuality, because I don’t want them to grow up like I did. I’ll be passing along the Scarleteen link to them.

  18. barbarienne says:

    OMG YES. I noticed this phenomenon about fifteen years ago (I was working for a prominent romance publisher at the time) and my reaction, being not yet thirty years old, was, “Wait, what? Did I miss something?” I mean, I hadn’t had lots of sex in my life, but I’d had enough and but I was pretty sure I knew where everything was. But I kept seeing this meme over and over and over again, and I thought, “Wouldn’t romance novelists have a professional obligation to get it right?”

    I really suffered a bout of wonder if I were wrong. Thank Crom for having friends. They assured me that no, I was right and these particular novelists were on crack, and I could just relax.

    ——-

    While we’re on it, I also want romance novelists to stop using “fisted” to mean “made fists.” First, because it just makes me think of the movie Caligula.

    Second, because only romance novelists do it. It’s very obviously a cliche that has propagated through the community of romance writers. You do not find this use in SF/F or CF (unless the writer has gotten there by way of being a romance novelist or fan). Like a single person making a “concerted effort,” it reveals that the author picked up this phrase but never stopped to think about what it means and how it’s used. That’s my definition of bad writing.

  19. maddiemom says:

    YES. exactly!  This has always bugged the hell out of me, especially since I lost my “virginity” by leaping on a horse, bareback, from above. (Don’t ask, I think I was about fourteen.)  And all that riding astride, back in the days of sidesaddle, sidesaddles existing for that very reason, I have always assumed.

  20. Guest says:

    some modern doctors don’t even recognize that it exists as a MEMBRANE, as most fic writers seem to think. AND we need to remember that this is extremely individual – some women just don’t have anything in the way as it were. Some have a corona that is very developed. Go figure! pics and info below!
    http://www.rfsu.se/en/Engelska&#8230;

  21. Usually the hole is big enough that a tampon can get into it without breaking it. Though sometimes a girl loses her hymen to a tampon.

  22. Jenny Lyn says:

    Well, they’re romance novels.  Most deflowerings in real life are in no way romantic or pleasant in the least. I guess for some they might be, but speaking from personal experience, mine was NOT. It hurt – pretty much the entire time, I did not have an orgasm because all I could think about was please get his over with now, now, now, and I was sore on both ends the next day! The other end being the top of my head because we were in the back seat of a car. Head + armrest = owie. *sigh* So romantic.

    So the gradual pushing or inching forward doesn’t bother me either. What does bother me is those pesky, orgasmic virgins. Those are some lucky bitches.

  23. Dani A. says:

    The hole in mine was big enough to get a tampon IN… unfortunately, if I left it a little too long, I sometimes had a hell of a time getting the damn thing back OUT.

    It was maddening inconveniences and discomforts like that which eventually led me to perform a DIY hymenectomy. I wanted to use dildoes and divacups and other neat things, and I was sick to death of not having full access to a part of my own body. Damned if I was going to wait around for a dude to give it to me.

  24. CharliDenae says:

    I knew it was somewhere near the entrance but, when I experienced my first time, there was some penetration BEFORE he hit the hymen. Surely not inches, but some. It also hurt like hell and I bled like a stuck pig and no, I did not enjoy it at all. Some of these stories where the girl is all hot and bothered immediately afterward? Ridiculous!! Oh well, they don’t call it ‘fiction’ for nothing. 😀

  25. Wendy Cheairs says:

    I am with several other people- I thought it was internal, hell it felt internal the first time for me which for all intents and purposes was terrible. It was the next person I had sex with the the hymen (The Portcullis- so calling it this for awhile) fully broke. So I can see where the confusion happened. Along with Sex-Ed classes that basically told us sex gets you pregnant or diseases (gotta love being raised in a Catholic centered state.) I figured out where my clitoris was after reading a romance novel where the main hero had our heroine climax with playing with her clitoris. Being curious I had to figure out how the heck that happened.

    By the way this has got to be one of the best posts, even my husband thinks this is great too.

  26. Destudio30 says:

    Thank u for this info. It’s sad to say that I am 43 and totally unaware of this! Being raised catholicand from european mom, information was SO NOT agiven out. I didn’t even get the talk about periods! I don’t remember any feeling of tearing or such my first time. And the first time I masterbated was in my late 20’s…goes back to the catholic thing…“you’ll go blind”…so needless to say I thought nothing of these virgin scenes…you are a very unlightened woman to have found info on the hymen…this is not something discussed by other women in previous generations…I know for myself it took a few sexual Relationships (yes! Relationships) before I was curios enough to touch myself!….whether its sad or a pity is irrelevent….I assume most authors have similar situations and write what they know or if not know they write what they were told (by other authors) and so the stories continue being told! Zo thank you for the info

  27. Freyathorn says:

    Most jaw-dropping description in a novel:

    ‘. . . he thrust deep inside her . . . She was held in place by the unrelenting pressure of his cock against the door to her womb . . . “Take all of me!  Open for me!” . . .And he bore down so hard upon her and drove up so fiercely that {heroine} broke. The resisting opening to her womb lifted . . .’

    Passion, by Lisa Valdez

    Were her pieces held together by mucous membranes?  (OK, that sounds ickier than I intended)

  28. Sarah H says:

    Now could someone please do a rant on how men and women are THE SAME SPECIES? I have seen “the male species” used in way too many romances. If men and women were different species, they would not be able to have children (or at least not fertile children).

    I’d like to note that I saw an author (I believe it was either Nahlini Singh or Loretta Chase; oddly i forget which) use the phrase “the male of the species” which is perfectly acceptable and ought to be put out there as a good alternative. Good job, scientifically correct authors!

  29. Brooklyn Ann says:

    Thanks so much for this post! I blogged about the hymen after discovering the website, THE_Clitoris.com (http://www.the-clitoris.com/n_&#8230; and learned a lot. Here’s a nifty highlight: “Contrary to popular myth, the presence or absence of a hymen in no way indicates that a girl or women has or has not had vaginal intercourse. The hymen of some girls totally disappears prior to birth. The tissue of the hymen is very thin, it does not take much tension on the surrounding tissues to cause it to stretch open. Normal childhood activities like spreading the legs widely during gymnastics, riding a bicycle, playing on the jungle gym, and masturbating can result in the hymen disappearing prior to puberty. Later usage of tampons, and the insertion of fingers into the vagina may also stretch the hymen. Some hymen are elastic enough that when a penis is inserted slowly and gently, it may stretch versus tear, so that when the penis is removed, the hymen returns to it prior shape. It appears that about 50% of women experience bleeding when they first have intercourse. This explains the common practices of getting married while a girl is menstruating, inserting a fertilized bird’s egg into the vagina, and the staining of the bed sheets with the blood from a chicken when proof of virginity was required.”

    The huge point of relief for me was the proof against the concept of “A girl always bleeds after her first time.” I didn’t (though there was excruciating pain) and for awhile was convinced I was raped as a child or something…since I didn’t do gymnastics or ride horses.

    So, many girls don’t even have hymens. YAY! And that’s why when I have virgin heroines, I don’t mention a “barrier.” I just stick to the discomfort factor because hell, even without a hymen, “going where no man has gone before” is a painful experience.

  30. Brooklyn Ann says:

    ….Oh, and a tiny defense to the authors writing from the hero’s POV. Most men are even more ignorant than we are on female anatomy. Proof lies with the previous comment mentioning the dumbass males Gynos, and the one about males being unaware that the urethra and vagina are separate holes. My husband is in his 40’s and didn’t know… and my 1st boyfriend scratched his head after we did it and said, “Weren’t you supposed to bleed n’ stuff?”

    That said, though I still wouldn’t write a “deflowering” scene from the man’s POV, I understand why many authors have done so and the way they did it.

  31. OCD says:

    wow, I’m always surprised how OCD romance readers can be in a genre that’s based on passion and emotion. I’m sure the busting of a hymen feels different to just about everyone, male and female, and I’m sure “external” and “internal” is relative when you’re talking about male and female genitalia coming together. I honestly don’t think about anatomy so specifically when I’m reading a cherry-popping scene (and I looove cherry popping scenes). As long as it’s hot and passionate and awkward and delicious, who cares?

  32. Limecello says:

    Lucy Monroe’s last Scorsolini book features a heroine with endometriosis. Also it’s a great story with a lot of hero prince groveling. 😉

  33. LG says:

    Actually, I’m female, and I still found this post helpful. It’s amazing, I took a sex ed class in high school that I KNOW lasted more than just a few days, and all I remember is some vague mention about birth control methods (nothing about how to actually use or obtain them, mind you) and lots and lots and lots of information, complete with detailed presentations and readings, about STDs. That there is how you preach abstinence while still talking about sex (sort of) and without ever using the word “abstinence.” I did not come away from that class knowing anything more about my own body, and I only learned slightly more about male bodies than I already knew.

  34. LG says:

    1) Perpetuating bad information should be frowned upon. 2) When you know something about a topic, it’s annoying when you’re reading and something comes up that shows the author has no idea what they’re talking about. It’s why you find comments made by people in particular professions saying they tend to hate books starring people in their profession, because the details are so often wrong and it grates. Lawyers, doctors, cops, etc. As a librarian, I’d hate to read a book in which the librarian main character did nothing but shelve books or sit around and read. I might still enjoy the rest of the story, but the utter lack of research shown in the parts I know something about could easily bring the book down a few notches in my estimation.

  35. I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve never had one. Or possibly I just rid myself of it in a mad onanistic moment. So consequently, I never know if anyone’s description of breaking the hymen is right or wrong. Personally, I don’t write about virgins. They’re boring.

  36. Wilhelmina Brown says:

    Maybe the problem is that too many romance writers lost their hymens before they had a chance to look at it. I never saw mine – and I can’t remember how it actually felt when it broke.

  37. Gillian says:

    I am mortified! horrified! And ashamed beyond belief.

    You see, I write fanfiction. Most of the time I write mature-age “what happened afterwards” fic, and even the raciest thing I write is of the “fade to black – wake in bed later” variety.

    But I got dared a couple of years ago to write a first-time fic and … yes, you’ve guessed it, I got it wrong.

    Dammit. I’m going to have to rewrite two chapters! Serves me right.

    (And yes, two chapters. It’s about a fairly callous youth who has a practice run with another young lass before giving his girlfriend what-for, and while it was a good stretch to write, I still find reading that almost like reading someone else’s work).

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