Talk:Hymen/Archive 3

Other Animals Dispute
There seems to be a lot of disagreement among academic sources about which other animals have hymens:


 * Only elephants: Hobday, A. J., L. Haury, and P. K. Dayton. "Function of the human hymen." Medical hypotheses 49.2 (1997): 171-173.
 * Lemurs and possibly other primates: Cold, Christopher J., and Kenneth A. McGrath. "Anatomy and histology of the penile and clitoral prepuce in primates." Male and female circumcision. Springer, Boston, MA, 1999. 19-29.
 * Llamas, guinea pigs, elephants, rats, toothed whales, seals, dugongs, and some primates: Blackledge, Catherine. The story of V: A natural history of female sexuality. Rutgers University Press, 2004.

At least some of those species actually have mating plugs and others have cases of abnormal fetus hymens persisting into adulthood (eg: Tan, Rachel H H, and John J Dascanio. “Infertility associated with persistent hymen in an alpaca and a llama.” The Canadian veterinary journal = La revue veterinaire canadienne vol. 49,11 (2008): 1113-7.)

--Vagary (talk) 02:31, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Pain
I am opening this section to address to-ing and fro-ing involving possible vandalism and multiple reversions over the pain involved in first intercourse. Pain is relative; my position is to stay with 'pain' with no modifying adjective. Johncdraper (talk) 08:47, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

The hymen is rich in nerve endings.
This is not proven, so I have taken it out of the text. Please do not add this in again without a source. Previously "Our Sexuality" (Robert Crooks & Karla Baur) was cited here, but their book does NOT state if there are nerve endings in the hymen. They talk about nerve endings in the vestibule - area of the vulva inside the labia minors - but not the hymen itself. Many other texts have repeatedly stated that there is no reason to fear pain from the rupture of the hymen, as it does not have any or many nerve endings, for example: "Residual hymenal tissue may also contribute to discomfort or pain, but for the vast majority of women, hymen issues play a minor, if any role in pain on first intercourse (unless the woman has an imperforate hymen that has not been reduced beforehand)." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201103/the-hymen-membrane-widely-misunderstood?amp

or Gellhorn G. Anatomy, pathology and development of the hymen. (1904) Trans. Am. Gynec. Soc., Philadelphia, 29: 405 - 440. [www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=2fN--3vFL_rNnknJ9EK67fS3Wnl8MTU5MTEwMDE2MUAxNTkxMDEzNzYx&q=https%3A%2F%2F embryology.med.unsw.edu.au%2Fembryology%2Findex.php%2FPaper_-_Anatomy%2C_pathology_and_development_of_the_hymen%23Anatomy&v=4icWdu8hL30&event=video_description] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atiajanssens (talk • contribs) 12:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Reverted without re-adding "rich in nerve endings." Stick to WP:MEDRS-compliant sources. You should not be citing a source as old as 1904 for this information. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 23:46, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Function in the infant
This was recently removed (correctly) since it was uncited.

"It is believed that the purpose of the hymen is to prevent infection. The distance between the anus and the vagina on a baby is so small and the stools passed by the baby are so unpredictable, it acts as a preventative barrier. As the child grows the distance between the anus and vagina expands and the need for it lessens and the shape of the hymen changes to adapt to the child going through puberty."

I happen to know where these edits are coming from- Dr. Jen Gunter did a tiktok recently saying this that did some numbers. The paper which is the original source of this idea is:.

There are some secondary sources that mention it:,. Do we think that's sufficient to mention it? In this case it's not really a medical question, but an evolutionary biology one... I would be fine with citing these as long as we're clear it's just a hypothesis and not actually supported by evidence. Granted, a /lot/ of ideas in medicine make it to secondary sources without evidence... :) Mvolz (talk) 13:19, 13 March 2021 (UTC)