The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) has decided to rename the hymen. It’s new English name, according to the group, is the “Vaginal Corona.”
Everyone knows that the vagina is already an organ of many monikers and has more parts than a Rube Goldberg Machine. So why are our blonde buddies across the Atlantic further complicating our lady-parts?
Because the Swedish term for hymen, mödomshinna, translates literally as “virginity membrane,” leading to misconceptions about what virginity means and what the organ-formerly-known-as-hymen has to do with it. In English, the hymen was named for the Greek God of marriage with the same name. (Every time you’re having sex out of wedlock, remember, Hymen is watching you.)
The new Swedish term for the hymen is slidkrans.
Krans is a Swedish word for something shaped like a circle,” RFSU secretary general Åsa Regnér told Swedish news site, The Local. “Language has power over how we think. The point is to provide information about how the body works.”
Sweden isn’t the only place where intact hymens are mistaken for purity and vice-versa. In some Australian tribes, for example, older women inspect and puncture each young woman’s hymen a week before she is married. If, while they’re down there, they notice it’s already separated from the vaginal walls, the bride-to-be is subject “to public humiliation, torture, and sometimes death.” Jesus.
One would like to think it is common knowledge in places like the United States, where sex education is more prevalent than many places in the world, that the membrane in question can be punctured by many things other than a penis, like a tampon, or by the woman’s own fingers while masturbating (conversely, if the hymen is too small to be ruptured, it can stay intact through childbirth). Unfortunately, as often proved by the sex-education-bashing Christian Right, this is not always the case.
Though the term “vaginal corona” doesn’t roll of the tongue in quite the same way, if changing the name can help dispel rumors about sex and virginity, then it’s about time for a change. Go Swedes!
the term vagina only refers to the actual canal, not the entirety of female anatomy.
But like the Fark headline said, won’t the lime wedge sting?
I’d like to see a proper citation for that Australian tribal custom. Many Australian aboriginal groups practice a form of ritual hymen-opening, but I’ve never heard of this humiliation, torture, death business before. Quite the contrary; the ceremony takes place at puberty, not marriage, and in many groups sexual activity with many different boys and men is encouraged, not shamed. The references I’ve found refer to the “Pitta Patta tribe”, which appears to not exist. In fact, the original anthropological report on which this practice is supposedly based is from the 1890s, and details not an authentic Aboriginal practice, but a confused description of young Aboriginal women being enslaved for sexual use by whites. The girl initially described isn’t being initiated, she’s being gang-raped.
Of course, it’s worth noting that if that margarine tub looked like the Virgin Mary or Jesus or something, millions would be flocking to see it . . .
See also: Sapir-Worf hypothesis under clever theories that turned out not to be true. I don’t think any Australian tribes call the hymen mödomshinna.
By coincidence, those to believed the Sapir-Worf hypothesis also use aborigines to support their claim, saying that because their language only had words to count up to three or four, they were incapable of learning math unless first forced to give up their language and learn English. We know how grateful people are when you force them to give up their language and speak English.
wtf was wrong with “cherry”? everybody likes cherries.
Jacko, firstly, i take ‘wtf’ to mean ‘what the FUCK’. No skiddling around, you and your buttbaby boys can say the naughty word outright, even in Neverland. Nobody said anything was wrong with cherry. Are you talking to the man in the mirror again?
“Language has power over how we think.”
Troodat, yo.
Looks like margarine. Sticking your cock in there would be like sticking your cock in a hard core feminist: it might look like butter, feel like butter, but it’ll taste like shit.
My Bachelor’s thesis was a debunking of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I rest my case.
Irving: sweet!
Hello, this is Buster Corona!
No, just doesn’t have the same effect.
But I guess these guys could have some fun with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFu68oMmv…
“intact”
@5 & @10, criticize particulars of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis all you want, but if you are saying that the argument over whether language affects the way we think has been settled, you are wrong:
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09…
ok, @7. fuck you.
@14: Eh.
@16: Did you read it? It’s fascinating. And it does provide empirical evidence that language shapes thought, opening the door for tons of new research questions.
elenchos, I think you would find the work her team did with the Kuuk Thaayorre, an aboriginal group in northern Australia, particularly interesting.
I know a girl who broke her hymen while horseback riding.
No, Patrick. The vaginal corona is a mucus membrane, quite elastic. It doesn’t “break.”
Maybe she got a scrape or a small rupture that bled, in which case it would have repaired itself.
No, Patrick. The vaginal corona is a mucus membrane, quite elastic. It doesn’t “break.”
Maybe she got a scrape or a small rupture that bled, in which case it would have repaired itself.