T.I. Said Gynecologist Checks His Daughter’s Hymen, Here Are The Misconceptions

During an interview on the podcast Ladies Like Us, rapper and actorT.I. mentioned the following about his daughter: “we have yearly trips to the gynecologist to check her hymen. Yes, I go with her."

Umm, what? Yearly trips to do what? If you want to hear what else T.I. (otherwise known as Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr.) said, this tweet pointed out where exactly in the podcast this comment occurred:

Yeah, many on the Twittersphere were not too happy with this revelation. The challenge was finding tweets about the topic that didn’t include expletives. Here’s one:

And another tweet:

And a third one:

So far, T.I. has not offered further comment about the statements that he made during the podcast. I have tried to reach out to his representatives and will update this article accordingly.

For those of you who don’t know what a hymen is exactly, it is not a smartphone, a car part, or anything else that parents will commonly take their teens to get checked. Instead, a hymen is a thin membrane that tends to be located at the opening of a person’s vagina. Most but not all females are born with a hymen.

Why would T.I. want his daughter’s hymen checked? A common misconception is that examining a person’s hymen can somehow gauge that person’s sexual activity or virginity. Take, for example, the following exchange from the movie Clueless:

Tai: “Cher, you’re a virgin?”

Cher: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Dionne: “Besides, the PC term is “hymenally challenged.”

Believing that a hymen inspection can be a “virginity test” is being clueless, so to speak. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an interagency statement entitled Eliminating Virginity Testing, with the goal of doing exactly what the title of the statement said. According to the WHO, a systematic review on “virginity testing” showed that such as examination “has no scientific merit or clinical indication.” The WHO also called such a practice “a violation of the victim’s human rights and is associated with both immediate and long-term consequences that are detrimental to her physical, psychological and social well-being.”

If you think about the anatomy of a hymen, there’s no reason why it can be reliable indicator of sexual activity. Typically at birth or shortly after birth, the hymen does not cover the entire opening of one’s vagina but instead runs along the edges of or at most partially covers the opening.

In rare cases, a newborn will have a hymen that continues to completely cover the opening of her vagina, a condition called an imperforate hymen. As a National Library of Medicine website describes, a female may not notice this condition until she gets to the age of having periods. With the hymen blocking the exit, the menstrual fluid then has no way of flowing out, leading to symptoms like abdominal and back pain, fullness in the belly, and interference with the two “p’s”: peeing and pooping. The treatment for an imperforate hymen is usually surgery, cutting and removing the extra hymen membrane. Thus, the belief that having sexual intercourse for the first time somehow “pops” open the vagina by breaking through the hymen is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Moreover, as a publication in the journalBMC Reproductive Health described, one’s hymen changes in shape, size, and flexibility as the person travels through life. A newborn baby tends to have thick and pale pink hymen that folds on itself due to the mother’s hormones. The infant’s hormones keeps her hymen this way for the first two to four years of her life. However, over the ensuing three to four years, her hymen may thin and become smoother. Closer to puberty, one’s hymen may become thicker again and more elastic, changing in shape. The shape and texture of one’s hymen may continue to change with age, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, and other life events. With one’s hymen continuing to evolve, it is difficult to link it’s appearance with sexual activity. Moreover, the appearance of one’s hymen can vary significantly from person to person. This is another reason why believing that a vaginal exam can somehow gauge sexual activity would be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong with an extra wrong added.

Additionally, many things besides sexual activity can stretch or tear one’s hymen. These include tampon use, horseback riding, doing splits, and other types of physical activity. Oh, and a vaginal exam itself can cause stretching and tears as well. So, the results of the so-called “virginity test” can actually be the result of so-called virginity testing. How;s that for making things even more confusing?

Plus, sexual activity may not even alter the appearance of one’s hymen. A study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics (which previously had the longer-to-write name Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine) revealed that 52% of females from 13 to 19 years of age who had had prior intercourse did not even have detectable changes in their hymens. That’s because the hymen can be quite elastic.

Then there’s another “bloody” misconception. The hymen doesn’t have nerves and has relatively few blood vessels. Therefore, a tear in your hymen won’t necessarily result in bleeding. Studies such as one published in JOGN Nursing have shown that bleeding doesn’t tend to occur during the first experience with sexual intercourse. If bleeding does occur, it is probably the result of wounds to the vaginal wall, more likely when lubrication is lacking or penetration is forced.

Here’s a TEDx Oslo talk by Nina Dølvik Brochmann, MD, and Ellen Støkken Dahlon about the potential damage that all of these misconceptions about the hymen and bleeding can cause:

It is time to completely discard the notion that one’s hymen or bleeding can somehow be used gauge a person’s previous sexual activity. It is also time to banish phrases such as “intact hymen” or “broken hymen,” because they have no real useful meaning. In fact, they can have misleading and harmful connotations. You don’t hear any talk of boys to men being intact or broken before and after losing their virginity. What’s broken is the continued use of and belief in virginity testing.