The Myth and Why I Believed It
I can’t really condemn the quality of sex education in my home state. Maybe this topic was covered but I missed that week in elementary school because I was in the hospital. And I missed it in middle school because I was home schooled. And I missed it in high school because my teacher wanted to talk about alcohol instead. (He was later fired for failing to follow the curriculum.)
The vast majority of my knowledge about sex (prior to having any) came from online sex stories. I thought the hymen was deep in the vagina and that inserting a penis for the first time would cause sharp pain, tearing, and bleeding. I shouldn’t be surprised that online sex stories have gotten female anatomy wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve also read stories that located the clitoris deep in the vagina and the g-spot in a variety of strange places. And I’ve read a surprising number of stories where women pee out of their vaginas. But this business with the hymen is so much more ubiquitous. Every scene that features a woman’s first time is painful. And it isn’t just amateur fiction. I’ve only read a handful of romance novels, but it’s there too. I just recently read 50 Shades of Grey and her first time had the same sharp pinching pain and bloodied the sheets.
It made sense to me that the hymen must be inside the vagina deeper than my fingers could reach. I could put my fingers in with no trouble at all. And I thought an intact hymen must be a reasonably good metric for virginity otherwise no one would ever think to use it as a test. Hanging out bloody sheets the next morning wouldn’t be a thing. I had heard that certain physical activities like horseback riding could break the hymen, but I’d never done anything like that. And the sharp pain and bleeding seemed like something I would have noticed. So as far as I knew, I had an intact hymen, deep in my vagina, that would be torn when I had sex for the first time.
The vast majority of my knowledge about sex (prior to having any) came from online sex stories. I thought the hymen was deep in the vagina and that inserting a penis for the first time would cause sharp pain, tearing, and bleeding. I shouldn’t be surprised that online sex stories have gotten female anatomy wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve also read stories that located the clitoris deep in the vagina and the g-spot in a variety of strange places. And I’ve read a surprising number of stories where women pee out of their vaginas. But this business with the hymen is so much more ubiquitous. Every scene that features a woman’s first time is painful. And it isn’t just amateur fiction. I’ve only read a handful of romance novels, but it’s there too. I just recently read 50 Shades of Grey and her first time had the same sharp pinching pain and bloodied the sheets.
It made sense to me that the hymen must be inside the vagina deeper than my fingers could reach. I could put my fingers in with no trouble at all. And I thought an intact hymen must be a reasonably good metric for virginity otherwise no one would ever think to use it as a test. Hanging out bloody sheets the next morning wouldn’t be a thing. I had heard that certain physical activities like horseback riding could break the hymen, but I’d never done anything like that. And the sharp pain and bleeding seemed like something I would have noticed. So as far as I knew, I had an intact hymen, deep in my vagina, that would be torn when I had sex for the first time.
Sigh. This is one more reason I feel my sex ed failed. I didn't know hymens weren't automatically broken during sex... That explains what I went through the 3rd time I had sex.
My school's sex ed (granted it was a private Christian school in the Bible Belt) consisted of the teacher saying keep your legs shut and your cloths on and you'll be fine and throwing the "Miracle of Life" VHS into an old school tv. I was lucky, most of my friends didn't even get that much in the way of Sex Ed (they were at a much more strict school that I left by the ninth grade). The only thing these schools cared about was trying to scare kids away from sex, not explaining the truth. Thanks for this article! This basically describes what my beliefs were for far too long!
My first time wasn't painful in any way, and there was certainly no bleeding.