The ignorant cult of hymen and the falsehood of virginity tests

El rapero y empresario T.Yo. desató una tormenta mediática esta semana cuando sus declaraciones de que acompañaba a su hija de 18 años una revisión de himen en el ginecólogo se propagaron como pólvora por las redes sociales.

Most commentators expressed their horror and disgust before that position in the 21st century, but the reality is that t.Yo.He is not alone in his ignorant cult of a tiny membrane.

Although doctors have denounced that the so -called virginity proof is not ethical, in the United States there is no federal or state legislation that prohibits it, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (welcome) has not issued any official guideWith reference to practice.The test consists of inserting two fingers into the woman's vagina to determine if the hymen is intact, so it is known as the "test of the two fingers".

According to a survey conducted in 2016 to 288 American gynecologists and obstetricians, 10% said that a father or family had asked them to test a patient, and 34% admitted that they had performed it themselves.Many doctors interviewed by Marie Claire magazine on the subject also said that they had lied to parents about the results, for fear of endangering the patient.

Other samples of hymen cult are more obvious: numerous centers of aesthetic surgery in the United States offer the procedure of reconstructing hymen, called Himenoplasty.Yon Miami, Mecca of surgeries, it can cost about $ 3500, according to a rapid review of sites that offer it, such as Jolie Plastic Surgery and Vaginal Elite Rejvenation, just to mention some.

Although there are no available figures for the number of women who submit to the US procedure, there are those of a culturally similar country: in the United Kingdom, 109 entered the operating room for that reason between 2007 and 2017, according to system figuresNational Health (NHS).

A virginity indicator?

Yot was the Belgian Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), founder of modern anatomy, the first to identify the membrane and link it to sexual virginity, in turn considered by patriarchal society as a symbol of female purity.

The hymen is "a collection of leftover cells that usually partially occludes the vaginal opening," the gynecologist and columnist of the New York Times, Jennifer Gunter, who also said that many mammals -perros, cats, camels, camels, camel, elephants, etc-.

The hymen is like the "milk teeth";Yot is more rigid when girls are born and provides greater protection during the first 3 years to maintain urine and feces outside the children's vagina, which lacks estrogen, so it is very sensitive to irritants, he added in his comments afterThe declarations of T.Yo.

Subsequently, the membrane is more flexible and can adopt various forms because "evolution no longer cares," he explained.

“Hymen is not a virginity indicator, 50% of sexually active adolescents do not have a torn hymen.The hymen is often very flexible, ”he said.And in addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) points out that some women can even be born without hymen.

A humiliating practice

Although the alleged value of virginity has been blurring in modern Western societies thanks to the social advance of women, it still persists in numerous nations.

En Yondonesia, por ejemplo, la prueba de la virginidad todavía se usa para determinar la idoneidad de las candidatas a varias fuerzas de la ley y el orden.And in Afghanistan, where premarital sex is a crime, until 2018 the law established that women and girls could be imprisoned for up to three months for not passing virginity tests.

En numerosas naciones -como la Yondia- las mujeres jóvenes que han “desaprobado” las pruebas de virginidad se han quitado la vida o fueron asesinadas por sus propios familiares por “mancillar el honor” de su familia.

For this reason, in 2018, the United Nations and WHO issued a statement in which it was called to end virginity tests worldwide, because it is "a violation of the human rights of girls and women, andIt can be harmful to the physical, psychological and social well -being of women and girls ”.

Unfortunately, if even in developed societies such as the American there are no regulations that prohibit these exams, it is not unreasonable to fear a massive return to such retrograde and humiliating practices as the t.Yo ha sometido a su hija.