What is the purpose of a hymen in a woman? Ever since the painfulness of my own being broken during my first sexual intercourse, I’ve tried to find this out. Several gynecologists I asked simply shrugged–they never even wondered about such a thing. (Needless to say, they were men!) I once had a teacher at college who postulated that the hymen was some sort of genetic aberration that had been reinforced once men discovered it. The idea was that the girls who had a hymen were the ones chosen as brides, since they could prove they were virgins, a valuable asset when dealing with a patriarchal culture that must be certain that a woman’s children were really her husband’s, not some previous lover’s. (In some societies it was customary on the morning after the wedding night to hang out the bed sheet to show the hymen’s blood.) The women with hymens passed them on to their daughters, while those without weren’t chosen as brides and didn’t reproduce as frequently. So hymens became the common thing. Any truth to this theory? –Nancy J., Montreal, Quebec
