By David Futrelle
Ordinary science-believing idiot: The hymen doesn’t seem to perform any biological function and it’s not altogether clear why humans and some other mammals have it.
Incel genius: The hymen is a human “freshness seal” designed by evolution to reassure new husbands that their brides are virgins.
Once again, it’s time for a DUDE SCIENCE MOMENT, this one starring some guy in the Braincels subreddit who has some very strong feelings about the hymen — backed up by what he jokingly claims is a PhD in gynecology (there is no such thing).
According to incel Redditor CANNOT__BE__STOPPED,
The foid [female] hymen exists for one purpose only – to ensure the future husband that he is the first to fuck her and therefore she is likely disease free and any children are his biological children. …
The simple fact is that the hymen evolved specifically because men who married women with intact hymens were more likely to care for the children and thus they were more successful.
I’m going to have to bring out the “that’s not how any of this works” lady once again.
The hymen predates the institution of marriage, and that’s not how evolution works anyway. Also, there are other mammals with hymens, including elephants, llamas and whales, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a llama marriage ceremony. (Although that would admittedly be pretty cute.)
The one who cannot be stopped, naturally, continued:
Deep down the soy brain knows no hymen = whore. This cannot be debated.
But, alas, CANNOT_BE_STOPPED complained,
Unfortunately there seems to be a push these days from foids to try to dispel this truth. And the soy brain seems to be falling for it. I’ve seen all sorts of nonsense excuses from foids trying to claim why they don’t have a hymen. Horse riding, skateboarding accidents, sneezing too hard and gymnastics are just some of the stupid excuses foids claim.
Incel dudes, the hymen isn’t some magic penis-detecting organ that only pops when a real penis touches it. Sometimes it tears for some other reason, including some of the ones he himself listed — especially if the hymen-haver in question is doing them all at once, practicing gymnastics on the back of a skateboarding horse during hay fever season.
Conversely, the hymen doesn’t always tear when it does encounter a penis for the first time; sometimes it just stretches. Making things even more complicated, some future brides are born without a hymen at all.
Nonetheless, numerous commenter agreed wholeheartedly with the OP’s, er, analysis. One fellow called WasteApplication9 added some more “analysis” of his own, taking a potshot at “soy boy” critics in the process.
Why would the hymen exist if it didn’t serve some sort of purpose? It would’ve been evolved out as the pain disincentivizes women to have sex.
The purpose of the hymen is essentially proof that the women has not had sex before. Women who had a hymen had an advantage of those who weren’t born with one, as she could be a virgin but you’d never know.
Imagine refusing to drink soylent when the safety seal has been tampered with or removed while having sex with women without a seal.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A SEAL.
Still, there were more than a few skeptical voices in the comments; incels believe many terrible things, but they’re not all complete idiots. One pointed out, as I did above, that other animals have hymens — which another commenter “rebutted” by claiming that
It is the same thing. Biology works the same. There are incel animals too.
Bro, that doesn’t even make the slightest bit of sense.
And then there was a commenter who pointed out that hymens can be easily broken during masturbation. Another incel replied with a sarcastic comment that seemed to suggest that a virgin who used a dildo was just as much a slut as any non-virgin woman penetrated with a real penis.
So apparently these guys don’t only want virgins; they want dildo virgins too.
And they wonder why no woman wants to give them the time of day.
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“Man is the summit of creation. Therefore he is a noble being who transcends himself. His highest aspiration is not happiness, but passing on his genes and thus living forever.
That’s why he needs the woman. But there has to be some order, otherwise how does the man know it’s his genes? So, every woman will be given to a different man as a possession, and the hymen is the certification that she’s fully his.
It’s also a certification that she’s not morally condemnable, because women, or the evil that lives in them, are fully responsible for their unruly behaviour towards their Master.
But, alas, after the first child is conceived, the hymen is broken and doesn’t grow again. This apparent problem can be fixed in one or both of two ways:
1) Imprison the wife at home. Society collaborates.
2) The first born child is the heir, not the rest.”
Is that patriarchy, more or less? It came to me upon reading the OP. Like, one thing leads directly to the other.
…while masturbating with a tampon.
Absolutely. This is why childbirth is safe and painless, because how could any species thrive if its means of reproduction was an agonizing blood-soaked horrorshow?
@ucalegont
Well, exceptions can obviously be made if the firstborn is a foid, because who’d want one of those to inherit everything?
@Mabret
Well, when soy protein becomes a major part of the diet, I won’t really feel sorry for them if they refuse to eat it. There is something a little funny about these fools thinking that they are pinnacles of masculinity.
It’s also possible to buy fake hymens. These are most commonly used by women in countries where they face the risk of murder by their husband if they don’t bleed on their wedding night.
@Yutolia
But everything exists for their benefit. Why should evolution be any different? /s
@Empress Penguin
You are right that there is a such thing as a PhD in gynecology.
Ikarikid the dumb:
I don’t know why anyone needs to hypothesise the reason for the hymen. It is pretty obvious if you have ever looked after a female baby.
As with boy babies girls are fecally incontinent, and the hymen is the seal that prevents faecal bacteria entering the vagina.
Anyone who has EVER changed a baby girls nappy can see this!
So I think I was fairly…aware that bleeding the first time I had sex wasn’t necessarily gonna be a thing. I was pretty well informed, between a robust sex Ed in school and having a mom that was honest and forthright about all things biological (no cute euphemisms in my household!), so I knew my fact from fiction.
And yet, I was still somewhat surprised when I did have sex (with a dude) for the first time and it only sort of pinched and there was zero blood. That thought was so ingrained, it was still expected. Whether or not my bf at the time thought anything of it is hard to say, but we had a good multi year relationship, so I’m confident he didn’t think I was lying about my virginity.
@ Battering Lamb – yep. It’s a not-entirely-disreputable hypothesis based on the idea that for most of our history as a species, human males didn’t physically chase off rivals like gorillas do, so we developed other ways of giving our genes a head start, like a penis designed to scoop rivals’ semen out of a partner’s vagina and big balls compared to most other primates.
And to be fair, there does seem to be some correlation. Male gorillas physically chase rivals away and they have small junk relative to their size. In contrast, bonobos have balls that put ours to shame.
Btw Scarleteen has an in depth article about the hymen https://www.scarleteen.com/article/bodies/my_corona_the_anatomy_formerly_known_as_the_hymen_the_myths_that_surround_it
Animal incels? I thought animals of all kinds were all ALPHA CHADS having constant sex with human (women)x feeeeeeeeemales.
@ Pie – right? And even if we’re just talking about sex instead of the reproductive process as a whole, “You might have a moment or two of discomfort, especially at first, but it’s totally worth it” isn’t exactly a new concept, and it’s not even limited to sex, come to that.
@ Citerior Motives – Leaving that disturbing fantasy aside, there are several primate species where females will sneak off and mate with a quieter, gentler male while the ALPHA CHADS are fighting each other. I wonder how that fits into their little classification scheme.
Who am I kidding? It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.
FYI pretty much ALL hymens stretch; it’s very rare for one to “break” or split, even with child abuse. How anyone ever thought the hymen was a sheet of tissue that tears instead of a partial ring of tissue that stretches is beyond me. I’ve had a lot of sex with a few partners, including painful sex causing bleeding, & my hymen is still “intact”. Same for every woman I’ve gone down on. & my labia still look the same as when I was a virgin, while we’re on the topic of incel bullshit. Just check my Twitter, lol ?
I thought this myth about the hymen was a relic of the Chasing Amy 90s.
Perhaps older Mammotheers can tell me if this has been going on longer than I’ve been alive, but there are times when it feels like society’s collective knowledge doesn’t seem to progress. With all the information out there from reputable sources online, why are antiquated concepts of virginity like the hymen still around the zeitgeist enough for these clowns to latch onto.
It’s like back in the early aughts when I first encountered quote-unquote “race realists” on forums. I was like “this gotta be bullshit” and a little Googling later and there were plenty of contemporary smackdowns of scientific racism in the 80s. Yet these dipshits like Charles Murray are getting talked about by people (read: impressionable YouTube viewers and creators) online as if they were the first to discover his name.
Do we have to do this every generation? Smack down the same myths we thought were debunked a quarter century ago? Can we at least leave the flat earth theory in the dustbin of history?
@Katamount:
I wrote recently about how “Anti-racists are the real racists” has been a thing we have had to debunk repeatedly – for decades now. Generations, even.
Not stated in there is that this is just a variation of the “uppity negro” argument of the 1870s that insisted that white people were only forming KKK chapters and lynching people because freed slaves were threatening whites, and if the freed slaves just calmed down and stopped acting threatening all the hostility between the races would just go away (because, of course, there was no hostility on the part of the people abducting and lynching Black folk, none at all).
Shorter me: Yes. We have to deal with the same shit again, every single generation.
Yeah, I thought phrenology was universally seen as an outdated, debunked joke.
Then Quillette brought it back.
@Katamount
It’s frustrating, for sure. And yes, it looks like it happens every generation.
Regarding the hymen myth and the scientific racism, both of those are more politically motivated than anything else. Conservatives want to keep the hymen myth alive so they can use it against women and to repress sexuality. Conservatives want to keep scientific racism around so that they can try to justify their bigotry. So yes, we may have to swat down these myths as long as conservatives propagate them as a part of their agenda.
On a related note, one conspiracy theory that I haven’t seen resurface much (and that I would expect to resurface) is the geocentric solar system model. It was proven incorrect by Copernicus, but it seems much like the flat earth model in that people would pick it up again.
I think the main reason flat earth conspiracy theorists still are prominent in the public eye is the fact that they have been parodied heavily so people know that they exist.
I actually deliberately used a dildo during my teens, so I could take it at my own pace, get used to the sensation, and stop if it hurt.
As a result, it didn’t hurt or feel strange at all the first time I had sex. There you go. A tip for any teenage girls reading.
@Violet I did the same thing. But it still hurt a little the first time I had sex with a guy – guess I didn’t do a good enough job. 😀
@ Fishy Goat – Nah, no matter how well you rehearse, you can still tense up on opening night.
Violet the vile–high-five! Did the same thing some 50 years back, with crude homemade instruments, and then found out I was an ace arrow. I had been told I couldn’t use tampons until I was 18 and went to a doctor for some rigamarole–and these were people who considered themselves progressive.
Never could stand the idea that people are bubble-wrap to be popped, or packages of crackers to rip open. Or prize sheep to be judged at a fair.
No reason anyone should be hurt when it is so easily prevented.
There’s a post up on Dr. Jen Gunter’s blog about “premarital exams” offered/pushed by some school(s). They hand out dilators, and it’s better than getting hurt, but she points out that it takes more than this to get someone ready for sexual activity. Necessary but not sufficient condition.
/drjengunter.com/2019/09/09/why-does-the-dept-of-ob-gyn-at-the-university-of-utah-offer-a-premarital-exam-for-women/
Let’s knock this pile of crap down yesterday! There’s plenty more stupid, stubborn myths out there waiting, stinking up our minds.
One theory I’ve seen is that the hymen is just tissue left over from the formation of the vagina. Though Ellesar’s ” keep the poop out” theory is a sound one. Maybe it started out as just an artifact from embryonic development but then was beneficial enough to be selected for.
@Ellesar, LindsayIrene
Diapers are a relatively recent invention (16th century) so it seems a little bit unlikely that it would be for that purpose specifically. Maybe it did another function but also does this? Or keeps out bacteria in general?
Incels in a nutshell: “I have a lot of problems as well as flaws and shortcomings that I’m nowhere near brave enough to confront and do something about and I therefore project the blame for my inadequacy onto total strangers and sadly also imaginary characters. The reason I’m so jealous at couples I happen to see on the street is because I’m shallow and see women as objects and status symbols instead of independent human beings. I suffer this vain delusion that having an attractive woman on my arm will magically make me stop hating myself. But it’s my mom’s fault.”
@ LindsayIrene, @Naglfar:
Yeah, I think the so-called hymen happens as a side effect of how the body forms during gestation—there’s a canal that begins outward from the uterus, and one that starts inward from the vaginal opening , and they often don’t join up neatly.
Fingerprints can be useful as a unique identifier, but they didn’t “evolve to prove our individuality” or some such nonsense—they’re just a side-effect of how the finger-pads form. Hymens are like that, except that, as detailed above in this thread, they aren’t even an accurate indicator of anything about the person who has one or their sexual history.
Why would the incel brain exist if it didn’t serve some sort of purpose? It would’ve been evolved out as the pain disincentivizes anyone to have sex.