Myths about Sexual Abuse

03. Myth: “A girl loses value if she is raped/if she isn't a virgin.”

Fact: What is perceived to be a girl’s purity and virginity generally depends on whether or not her hymen is intact. Yet, when tracing the etymology of the word hymen from Greek to Latin and English, what becomes immediately evident is that our understanding of it is misinformed. The term was initially used to refer to any bodily membrane, then it shifted to refer to the womb and finally to the virginal membrane (Professor Kathleen Kelly, cited in International Women’s Health Coalition, 2010). Thus, even though it is now thought of as a thin membrane/piece of skin that partially covers the entrance to the vagina, according to its original meaning, the hymen does not refer to a fixed part of the body. The term hymen has become so problematic that The Swedish Association for Sexual Education proposed renaming it as the vaginal corona in 2009. This implies that virginity itself is a concept that we have constructed to meet our own needs, rather than a biological condition or a state. Accordingly, it is tragic and unjust when a girl is shamed over something that does not have an objective existence, for a crime that deprived her of her agency and reduced her to an object. A girl’s worth should be measured by her character rather than by an elusive concept.