I’m not entirely sure what kind of story this is. It isn’t a story of rape. It isn’t quite a story of sexual assault. But what it is is my story.
It starts with what can be called “purity culture.” It’s hard to describe it exactly if you’re not in it, but it’s a fixation on virginity (especially for women) and how important it is to keep yourself “pure” until marriage. There’s even some stress on “emotional purity” and “guarding your heart,” which means not even getting emotionally tied to someone until… I don’t know. The threat is on giving away pieces of your heart because, like your virginity, you’ll never get those pieces back. To really understand, read Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye. For a longer take on “purity culture” and the emotional aspects, try this blog post.
Purity culture has a demand and a promise. It demands you keep yourself “pure” and it promises that this will make everything once you get married be wonderful. It will strengthen your relationship with your spouse. It will make your sex life amazing. It will protect you from STDs and unplanned pregnancies.
I have to forgive my parents for three reasons. 1) They wanted what was best for me. 2) While there was a definite expectation I’d maintain my virginity, I wasn’t forced to read lots of books, go to purity balls, wear purity rings, make purity pledges or anything like that. That didn’t even come up. The purity culture was much stronger in the church and the homeschooled kids around me. 3) When I started dating my husband, they supervised us for a year (because of our 5-year age gap) and then decided we could handle it. They never once asked me about sex.
My husband grew up in the same culture (although he loathed Josh Harris’s idea of “courtship”) and we both decided that it would be more meaningful to wait for the actual “coupling” until marriage. Since we were together 5 years, there were other things, particularly while we were engaged, that we did which I’m sure my parents wouldn’t have approved of. But my virginity remained intact and my vagina unbreached. Entirely.
Between 18 and 21, when we married, I had 3 gynecological exams. One was an emergency and for unrelated reasons, so I’m not going to talk about him. The other two were my family practice doctor, a Catholic lady who knew I was a “good Christian girl.” After telling me she was downgrading to child-size equipment, she noted that I was “a bank vault.” I assumed this meant “definitely a virgin.” Ok, cool. The second exam was performed by the conservative Christian nurse practitioner at my college. She also used child’s equipment and noted that I was “definitely a virgin.”
Hooray, right? I made it through my dating years with my virginity intact, but my new-husband and I knew a thing or two about pleasing each other (ok, not purity-perfect but we’d only been with each other and were getting married so it was ok) so the wedding night was going to be awesome! Or maybe a little rough at first, but awesome pretty soon…right?
Except. His penis wouldn’t go in. At all.
I hadn’t ever been able to get a tampon in, but…I figured it was just a tampon issue so I never asked. We tried. We tried fingers. …pinkie fit. But I couldn’t tear it with my finger. And it hurt so much. I was crying. At some point he started crying because I was crying.
The next day…we tried again. Nothing. I managed to squeak in an index finger.
We went to Condom Kingdom because we’d stopped in Philly for a couple days on our honeymoon and bought a very small and thin vibrator. We figured maybe it’d help if I were stimulated. We bought the tiniest tampons available to see if I could get them in.
That’s essentially how the first six months of my marriage were. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t bring myself to just rip it. I wasn’t even sure if I could. It felt like another layer of skin that happened to have a small hole in it. I would have seen a doctor, but my parents’ insurance dropped me when I married and neither of our jobs provided insurance benefits. We were young and living month-to-month. Some days I thought about just grabbing a knife and shoving it in there.
Gradually we worked on it. There were tears on both parts. We would try to have sex and I’d cry because it hurt when he tried to push in and he’d cry because he wanted to stop but I told him to keep going because I wanted it gone. We could only bring ourselves to do this a couple times a month because the thought of doing it made us both curl up and cry inside. Or outside.
I felt defective. I felt betrayed. I was terrified. My husband felt like…I can’t even say what he felt like because I can’t use that word for him. We were co-victims of our own upbringing, of our economic circumstances, and of our emotional paralysis that kept us from asking for help.
Finally, almost six months later, it gave way. Suddenly, sex was possible and it was good. But those 6 months hung over our sex life for another couple of years, both physically and emotionally. Some months we still wouldn’t have intercourse and just have manual and oral sex because we couldn’t emotionally handle it.
Once the barrier was broken and I was beginning to recover, I talked to my little sister, who was still on my parents’ insurance and had her seen by a gynecologist. She had a thick and only semi-perforate hymen. The GYN was shocked that I had broken anything like that myself, but less surprised it took so long. My parents agreed immediately with the recommendation for her to have surgery.
Helping her do that made me feel better, not just because I saved her from that experience but because her diagnosis and the GYN’s shock validated everything I had gone through.
I cannot say that I was raped. I cannot call it an assault. But I was betrayed and it caused me sexual dysfunction and emotional scarring. I was betrayed by being taught by a whole culture that my hymen was important. I was betrayed by two medical professionals who I think must’ve assumed from their and my religious backgrounds that I wouldn’t want this surgery. I was betrayed into being so ashamed that I couldn’t bring myself to ask my parents for financial help. I know they would have paid for the surgery outright.
Nearly 6 years later, I can still feel the overwhelming pain and the shame and the emotional agony which I suffered for those 6 months. But now it’s not brought on by sex with my husband. Instead, it’s triggered whenever I brush up against the purity culture–encountering blog posts on waiting for marriage or seeing pictures of a purity ball. There is still pain and there is blinding rage rage and there is helplessness. I cope by telling my story.
One thing that saddens me about the whole situation is that we could have waited and things could have gone so differently. If there hadn’t been a huge fetishization, if I’d gotten medical attention before marriage…if I hadn’t felt such weight and shame around everything, we could have begun our marriage without this trauma. This post is not meant to denigrate those who chose to lose their virginity after marriage. But I need to share the damage that can be done by the purity culture narrative.
As much as I’m not a fan of purity culture, I think this problem is actually a lot wider spread. I went to see a doctor before I got married, as a friend had had similar problems (hers was noticed and corrected by a doctor, because she went for a pre-wedding exam). The doctor was very dismissive of me bothering to come in – she implied that since I didn’t need to be tested for STI’s that there was no point in seeing a doctor, and then explained that now that I was going to be sexually active I was going to need to get my pap tests done. I felt very condescended to. (Thinking back, I think that the reason we had as few problems as we did might have been related to the fact that I deliberately made myself use my menstrual cup, despite/because of the fact that it hurt when I tried to insert it.)
Christine, you make some excellent points about problems within the medical establishment. There is certainly room for widespread improvement and education on the subject as a whole. I have another friend whose doctor reacted simply by slicing hers without warning or anesthetic and it was a traumatizing experience for her as well.
In my case, I see a strong connection, since I did have two full examinations (and one rushed one) before marriage, during which my problem was noted but not in a way which let me know I had any options. Additionally, the reaction and trauma it caused were strongly tied to expectations and emotions which we had internalized, both from the purity culture and from the general culture in which we live. That is to say, it may not only be because by it, but it is certainly caused by it in some cases, and perhaps intensified.
This was a wonderful piece. As a guy, it’s definitely helped to shed off some of the ignorance I have regarding sexual politics. And as tough as it may have been to read, I can’t even imagine how tough it must have been to write – or experience.
Thank you for this.
Please do consider reading the rest of the pieces in the Sexual Assault & Disability Series. They’ll be published all month, and are vital to shedding light on a part of rape culture which isn’t spoken about as often.
Thank you for both reading, and commenting.
Ruth I just read your story & it saddens me for 2 reasons. #1 would because of the pain, frustration & anger you’ve had to deal with. It was a long journey to get to a place where you can even write about what happened. #2. One day you’ll realize that despite all the pain & anger, frustration & all the rest…You need to let it go. That’s the thing about the past. No matter what we do, we can never change what happened, only our interpretation. The story we use to describe our past experience. By this I mean if you get up every morning & continue to rehash everything that happened, you’ll never be free of it. Eventually all this sadness becomes so overwhelming we slip right into depression. Pills for the disorders & all their accompanying side effects. Please realize I am not being judgmental, I just hate to see a young girl making the same mistakes that I did. Hating myself, saying Yes to everyone thinking that if I please others they’ll accept me even if I’m a freak. Cause guess what, we ALL think there is something wrong with us, or we’re weird, strange, crazy & if anybody realizes this they’ll reject me. Esp late teens when our hormones have our emotions running crazy. We get the insecurities, decide we’re not good enough, or skinny enough, pretty enough, rich enough. I’d bet 90% of people at one time believe in the,”I’m not ____enuf” syndrome. Realize & know this, You are enough, just the way U are. Same thing with 90% of the things we worry about. Afterwards we realize that about 90% of the time, the things we worried about never happened. What a waste of time!! I have been in your shoes & 10 times as many horrible events. I won’t go into them because all it will do is bring me back down to the same sadness, grief, shame etc. I refuse to live like that ever again. I will explain to U how I got passed all of it. You must realize that everything in our life starts out as a single thought in our heads. All of our successes & all of our nightmare situations, relationships, everything. From that 1 thought we begin to focus on that subject , whatever it is. Thoughts become things. By this I mean, if You focused all your thoughts on becoming a successful ‘anything’ like say a surgeon. If you spent all your waking moments focusing on that one goal, made your life closed off to anything but pursuing the education, the training etc, eventually You would become just that, a successful surgeon. It works exactly the same in the negative. When we focus all of our thoughts, behavior & actions on the negatives, drowning ourselves in the sorrows (like I did) you would remain stuck in that hell hole. A simple statement made by Henry Ford, the famous automaker went something like this ” Whether you think you can… or think you can’t… your right” As in, whatever we believe about ourselves it will become our truth, our reality. Some call it a self for filling prophecy.
All this comes down to what U believe about your life. If U continue to beat yourself up about the past, you can not move forward. I hope this doesn’t sound mean, it is not my intention. I only wish someone had bothered trying to explain to me, the fact that we create our own reality, years ago, I wouldn’t have wasted about 30 yrs. Now it’s up to U to decide what U want. Do U want to wake up everyday & focus your mind on things that can never be changed or concentrate all your thoughts, dreams & goals on a wonderful future? Because that is all it takes to make a profound change in your life. We can choose the power of re-inventing our lives at any time we want. It starts with your waking thoughts. Give it a try. For 1 week every morning when U first wake up think about something you love to do. Focus on it, imagine what it will take for you to enjoy doing that activity every day. How it’s going to feel to own it…Or it can be about making a positive change in your life. Keep a little notebook by the bed. So when U first wake up, ask yourself… “OK here’s my goal, what concrete small steps can I start today, to accomplish this?
Who can I call up who’s familiar with this area who can guide or mentor me towards accomplishing this? Where can I find info on the Internet that will help me make positive changes in my life?” During the day keep this little notebook in your pocketbook for those inspirational brain storms that you’ll soon be coming up with. Every day thousands of people decide to change their life for the better. I think that once you find yourself not focusing on the past you will be amazed as to how beautiful your life can become. Now I know You may not believe this, eventually all those bad experiences will soften & shrink down to the distant past where they belong. You’ll be too busy with your new life to waste a moment with the WHAT IF’S . Lastly one other piece of the success puzzle. It’s called EFT. or simply, tapping. It is free to learn & can help you with just about any problem you will ever encounter. Blessed Be my friend, the best is yet to come…Peace
Debi –
The reason these stories are being published is so that others do not feel ashamed or alone. We’re not publishing these stories because people are doing nothing with their lives, but rather to show people that while hurtful, sad, painful things happen to us – they do not happen to JUST us.
I believe the author has coped with her past – or else she could not have written this eloquently about it.
~ Elsa
Well, damn. I was reading the archive of this site because well, you rarely see disability sections on a feminist site and I came across this and.
I’m 24 and have been having exams since I was 16 due to poly cystic ovaries and they have to use the child size one on me too. I found this out, for the first time about a month ago because I switch gynocologists. See the one I was seeing didn’t HAVE the child size one so that yearly exam has been met with dread and postponing every time because it’s done with tears and bleeding every time. And every time I am told everything is normal. I can get a regular tampon in but not a super one without pain.
So now I am wondering if this is a similar situation as yours. I really doubt the doctors would have told me if it is because they hide things from me constantly. I honestly haven’t even tried to have sex because it’s been pretty obvious it will be a horrible painful traumatizing experience if I try so why bother? But this defiantly makes me wonder if this was an actual fixable thing that could be addressed that they are ignoring.