Virginity checks

How much truth in there in stories I've heard that in old times, in some places, it was routine for Moms and Dads to check their daughters' hymens for evidence of virginity or the lack thereof? I'm not sure if it's more true or more urban legend.

There were times in the past when this was done. But much depended upon when and in what areas and cultures.

Poor parents, with lots of children would obviously not fall in such a category, the costs alone being prohibitive. In a European setting, this would at times have been applicable to daughters of either high born or respectable bourgeois parents. Conversely, it was certainly done to adolescents sent to institutions for delinquents. This happened in some French institutions, even those run by religious orders.

As a single instance I read about in a detailed biography, Eva Braun (yes, of AH fame) attended a Catholic boarding school in Germany (Bavaria) and upon graduation, the girls were apparently all given what would be called a virginity/fecundity examination, to determine and somewhat officially attest to a girl's good prospects for a suitable marriage. These examinations were not done overtly as such, but rather in a roundabout and general manner under the guise of a medical health examination, whose findings could reassure parents.

And btw, in the biography on EB, she passed the expected requirements and graduated from a Catholic boarding school intact. Not that it mattered much afterwards.

I suspect in some cultures it is still done to prove acceptance for marriage - whether it’s legal or not. Most cultures seem to have outlawed it, but I doubt that stops it. A ripe virgin is in high demand to some

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginity_test

During The communist era of The eastern block of Europe, in some countryes was a mandatory medical check (inside of each highschool infirmery), mostly done when a new grade year begin after the summer vacation. In some highschools was required just for the 11 and 12 grade girls.

You can use a translate service to read this testimony https://republica.ro/in-clasa-a-xi-a-dirigintele-ne-a-dus-incolonate-cu-clasa-la-un-control-ginecologic

Back in the 80's a girlfriend during my freshman year of high school, her mother would check her after every date. I remember her telling me how embarrassing it was as her father would watch. She said her mother always expected her in the living room ready with the Vaseline after she changed clothes.

A doctor friend was working in a private hospital in the Middle East in the late 80's. He was faced with a dilemma when the wealthy parents of a young girl demanded that he certify she was intact. The problem being that if she wasn't he obviously had to say so and the girl would suffer extreme punishment. Possibly death; a frightening responsibility.

He couldn't refuse but insisted that the he was accompanied by a female doctor to perform the examination. Fortunately the outcome was good and she was safe but he says it scared the living daylights out of him. I cannot imagine what the poor girl was feeling at the time.

@ggheat Did she tell you more about how the exam went?

@ggheat Did she tell you more about how the exam went?

Just that she removed her pants and bent over her mother's knee and her mother inserted her lubed finger looking for her hymen

Although I graduated from high school in the early '70s, I have always claimed that I am a child of the '60s as more happened in the '60s. I had a lot of close girlfriends and never once did I ever hear of a mother having her daughter's virginity checked so urban legend.

My mother, who was a nurse by training, did sit me down at a young age (13, I think) and explained the different forms of birth control and all the sexual urban legends of the times like you can get pregnant if you just do it once. While she didn't encourage me to have sex, she didn't try to scare me with horror stories either. As Jack Webb would say, "Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts!"

Although I graduated from high school in the early '70s, I have always claimed that I am a child of the '60s as more happened in the '60s. I had a lot of close girlfriends and never once did I ever hear of a mother having her daughter's virginity checked so urban legend.

Of course you wouldn't have heard of that.

A virginity check is an Old World thing, especially among nobility, where potential offspring and inheritances played such an important part in the marriageability of a daughter. And when I talk about the Old World, I mean a time period from the Middles Ages with outliers up the 19th century with even fewer outliers into the early 20th. And then again only amongst the more affluent part of small percentages of the population. It was not a common practice at any time either.

Think for instance of Jehanne d'Arc/Joan of Arc being examined to determine her virginity during her trial, which was done by nuns I believe. This was in a judicial situation, somewhat different than during a marriage negotiation concerning a daughter who might very well produce a future king and heir to a throne.

Aside from that, up to the end of WWII some institutions for wayward girls, both secular institutions as well as religious, would perform some similar check on new intakes, especially in cases of runaways or orphans, this to determine not only factual virginity, but as a sort of moral character reading of newly arrived.

Think of French institutions/prisons for instance or the Irish Magdalen Sisters and similar organizations.

@agracier , Not all is in the past . In the 1970's I dated a young lady , Immigrant from Afghanistan . We dated quite heavily for a while . It became evident she couldn't indulge in sex ...... At All..... When it came out as a child , she had been sewed shut to preserve her virginity . I paid 1800 dollars to a doc . held her hand though the whole thing . Held her close for weeks as she recovered both in her mind and body . When the time came and she was wanting to ,,,,,,,,,,,, I couldn't ..... After knowing what she went though I couldn't get it up ,,,,, at all .....

This kind of thing is still going on . I don't have the words to convey my disgust and horror that "some" will do to their young .

She was a virgin when we met , a virgin when I left . she was a proper well dressed considered high class young lady and me ,,, I was just a dirty biker . But she felt safe with me .

@agracier , Not all is in the past . In the 1970's I dated a young lady , Immigrant from Afghanistan .

I am sorry. I indeed didn't consider modern-day Muslim practices in some countries. I plainly forgot about these.

But then such customs are outside of my cultural areas of experience and interaction.

In Russia at the end of the 20th century, a school for girls was founded. The girls were to become officers' wives in the future. The girls underwent regular examinations to check their virginity. This refers to the tradition of elite girls' schools in the times of tsarist Russia, where students also had to be virgins.

In Russia at the end of the 20th century, a school for girls was founded. The girls were to become officers' wives in the future. The girls underwent regular examinations to check their virginity. This refers to the tradition of elite girls' schools in the times of tsarist Russia, where students also had to be virgins.

I suppose that quite a number of such schools were like that in various European countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries and that they followed similar practices. Practices that parents counted on, but never talked about, things like virginity checks on their daughters.

In the early 1970s a female friend was told on several occasions her mom was going to get her virginity checked by mom's gynecologist if the girl was caught in a compromising situation.

It's said that even today physicians in France sometimes receive these kinds of requests from parents from certain cultures (they legally cannot do it).

Some female acquaintances of mine, some 30 years ago, were taken to the gyn by their mothers and, from what I understand, the mothers expected the physician to tell them if their girl was sexually active. It was not a virginity test per se, more like "I suspect her of seeing boys can you confirm this and if so prescribe some contraceptives".

In the 1930s, "reform schools" for girls in the US routinely checked for virginity, venereal diseases and questioned girls about masturbation and homosexual behavior. I've seen it in writing in a book discussing best practices for these schools at the time.

The "Bon Pasteur" reform schools for girls, run by Catholic nuns, to which the French government subcontracted the handling of "wayward" girls until the early 1970s (they began being phased out in the 1960s to be replaced by government-run schools), routinely checked for virginity.

In Australia, some physicians at the Parramatta school conducted pelvic exams with a goal of determining how much vaginal sex the girls had had.

Of course, these institutional checks, which were largely humiliating for the girls, were formally justified by reasons such as checking for venereal diseases, risks of pregnancy, checking which girls needed to have their sexual morality reformed to eschew "illicit sex" (recall that sex outside of marriage was illegal back then in most US states), separating girls between "fallen" and "intact" so that the former do not contaminate the latter by discussing sexual activity, and so on.

to eschew "illicit sex" (recall that sex outside of marriage was illegal back then in most US states)

I think you are thinking of adultery being illegal in some states and certainly being grounds for legal action by a spouse (as in divorce obviously).

But sex/fornication (aside from racial, familial, same-sex, paid for, unusual as in anal/oral) was not illegal perse. Meaning that there were no legal sanctions as long as you remained with partners within the permitted categories. You might be shamed, vilified, ostracized and whatnot by a community, but sex prior to or without marriage was not illegal.

That would have been an impossible to enforce statute. Or made more than half the population eligible for jail ... sort of like during Prohibition ... ha ha

That is why for instance the concept of 'common law marriage' was conceived. To provide certain basic protections for those couples having sex and living together outside of marriage.

@agracier I'm afraid you are incorrect - fornication (sex between unmarried people) was illegal in many US states only some decades ago. In fact, such laws were still on the book not so long ago in some states, though unenforced…

Cohabitation (living together) was also illegal. Again, this was not necessarily enforced and could be selectively enforced.

Your remark about "impossible to enforce" is both true and false. It's impossible to enforce in general, but is susceptible to selective enforcement. The same was true of laws against anal and oral sex. Of course these laws are impossible to enforce in general without putting sensors in bedrooms. However, it used to happen they were enforced for instance during divorce proceedings; one party to the divorce would claim the other party initiated "perverted acts" and would try to get a criminal conviction, or at least obtain favorable circumstances for the divorce.

I recall reading about (15 years ago?) a girl from some conservative state (Nebraska?) who got hauled to court for fornication because she had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. The law was still on the books, unenforced, and some prosecutor enforced it selectively.

@agracier I'm afraid you are incorrect - fornication (sex between unmarried people) was illegal in many US states only some decades ago. In fact, such laws were still on the book not so long ago in some states, though unenforced…

Any idea which states?

It does indeed sound plausible that such statutes were legal in colonial times, say for the theocracies created by the Pilgrims and Puritans. But in modern times? Say in the 20th century. I wonder if other more (equally spurious) specific statutes might have been used to prosecute, with the defense claiming 'mere' fornication?

Any idea which states?

It does indeed sound plausible that such statutes were legal in colonial times, say for the theocracies created by the Pilgrims and Puritans. But in modern times? Say in the 20th century. I wonder if other more (equally spurious) specific statutes might have been used to prosecute, with the defense claiming 'mere' fornication?

Fornication laws, which effectively make all forms of sex outside marriage illegal : Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah

Fornication laws cannot be enforced due to the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The Court ruled that a person’s private sexual acts are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Thus, government actors cannot intrude into and criminalize these personal actions. That being said, a few states still have fornication laws on the books. Since the laws cannot be enforced, they also cannot be challenged in court since a challenge requires actual harm, not just disagreement. As such, the laws will likely remain until legislators formally repeal them.

2022, adultery by some definition is still a crime in 16 states: Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Utah, New York, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Oral & anal sex, and sex outside marriage are still illegal in the military. UCMJ:

Art. 120. Rape and carnal knowledge

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who commits an act of sexual intercourse, by force and without consent, is guilty of rape and shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct. (b) Any person subject to this chapter who, under circumstances not amounting to rape, commits an act of sexual intercourse with a person-

(1) who is not that person’s spouse; and (2) who has not attained the age of sixteen years;

is guilty of carnal knowledge and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

(c) Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete either of these offenses. (d)

(1) In a prosecution under subsection (b), it is an affirmative defense that-

(A) the person with whom the accused committed the act of sexual intercourse had at the time of the alleged offense attained the age of twelve years; and (B) the accused reasonably believed that that person had at the time of the alleged offense attained the age of sixteen years.

(2) The accused has the burden of proving a defense under paragraph (1) by a preponderance of the evidence.

Art. 125. Sodomy

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense. (b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.