The Bare Minibum

Gender.

The American Psychological Association defines gender as “the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person's biological sex (APA, 2012). Gender is a social construct and a social identity. Use the term “gender” when referring to people as social groups.” Gender is a social ideal of the roles a sex should fulfill.

Sex.

According to the APA, sex “refers to biological sex assignment; use the term “sex” when the biological distinction of sex assignment (e.g., sex assigned at birth) is predominant.” In terms of the Sex Ed Shelf, sex has very little to do with what we’re talking about.

Sexuality.

Finally, the APA defines sexual orientation (or sexuality) as “a part of individual identity that includes “a person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction” (APA, 2015a, p. 862).” Sexuality is the people a person finds themselves attracted to and has a lot to do with gender—gay, straight, pans, etc all are different sexualities.

Girls, Don't Do These Things Lest Your Hymen Break.

If you’ve had any access to any type of news media you have probably heard about T.I.’s whole scandal with checking his daughter’s hymen status with her ObGyn. To keep it brief, rapper T.I. apparently has been asking his daughter Deyjah’s doctor to check her hymen since she was 16, and give him the results. 

But the thing is- sex doesn’t always break hymens and hymens can break for reasons other than sex. In fact, doctors rarely enjoy doing hymen exams as they are an extremely inaccurate and outdated procedure rooted in sexism. So- here is a list of things that you can’t let your daughter do, lest she break her hymen. 

First off- do you even know what your hymen is? It seems like there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this little body part, but it’s merely a little bit of skin towards the back of the vaginal opening. In fact, hymens don’t even cover most of the vaginal opening- and when they do, surgery is preformed so natural bodily functions such as menstruating and producing discharge can occur safely and healthily. 

So what are some ways besides sex that you can break your hymen you might be asking?

1. Riding a horse or bike- plenty of people have broken their hymens while riding a bike/horse, and a quick google search leads to a ton of “articles” and teenage girls on chat-rooms asking about the subject. Any type of harsh movement can cause the hymen to detach, leaving a broken hymen on the holiest of virgins. Is it likely to break your hymen while riding? Not exactly, but you need to know if she is sexually active and this is the only way to figure it out.  

2. Stretching- Stretching can once again separate your hymen, and it involves literally nOtHiNg near your vagina. That’s right folks, stop letting your little girl do yoga. Pull your toddlers out of cheer and say fuck you to gymnastics- there will be no olympians here, only in tact hymens.

3. Tampons- Tampons can tear hymens so they’re out of the picture. Once again, this is a very unlikely scenario- but so is the chance of you getting accurate results from any virginity tests. Burn the tampons along with their pants!

   4. Water Skiing- Honestly just keep the girls out of the water in general, apparently water is a huge hot-spot for hymen-related “injuries.” Slipping is just so common with young women, you need to keep them far away from the water. All water. Don’t even let them bathe.

   5. PAP Smears- Let your daughters get cancer because pap smears run a chance of breaking a hymen. I mean, since hymens don’t always tear during sex, there’s an easy chance HPV can be transmitted with a perfectly in-tact hymen. But that doesn’t matter- her hymen was still in tact.

   Print this list out and hand it to your daughters, nieces, moms, and grandmas. Because your nose definitely belongs in everyone else’s pussy.