Million Dollar Question: What's the Evolutionary Purpose of a Hymen?

Rub3x brought up a good point in the Religious Abstinence thread, which I have also pondered.

I thought about it a lot actually, if we are built to screw then shouldn't it be culturally "norm" for us to just screw each other, without marriage or serious commitment?

But then I realized, women are born with hymens - something evolution has placed there to make it actually *difficult* for us to reproduce... a hindrance to life which evolution has placed there? Does it make any sense?

So the question is:

What's the evolutionary purpose of a hymen?

 

Better ask Larry Flint from Hustler or Joe Francis from "Girls Gone Wild"

They are likely to know

 

Not everything has an evolutionary purpose. Some things just are. Some organ parts are vestiges of something else, so they don't have a purpose by themselves. Also evolution is not exactly a purposeful intelligent person/force [That's supposed to be god, right?].

Some women aren't born with a hymen. Did they get special exception from the evolutionary purpose or what? Plus I don't think the hymen makes human reproduction "difficult".

 

Evolution isn't perfect, it is continuous trial and error, every so often one of those trials succeeds.

 

I'm not sure - the appendix once thought to be useless has now been found to actually play a role in providing a safe house for germs. People without tonsils are 4x more likely to develop Hodgkin’s disease, it fights germs.

There are possibly many other organs similar we have yet to understand, but for now have been deemed worthless.

Excluding abornmalities, the vast majority of women are born with hymens. In order for a women to reproduce, she must first have her hymen broken which is a painful process - this doesn't make reproduction difficult but its an initial barrier to reproduction... which evolution should have phased out long ago ????

 

You could look at this from the other side as well.... perhaps the hymen was developed to proove to us that casual sex is required and that you do need to have sex for fun before you can have sex for its real purpose.

 

Evolution is not exactly a purposeful intelligent person/force as I said. And humans have been humans only for relatively small period of time. [Looking from the perspective of evolution, which is a looooong term force]

 

Exactly.
/rubs my man nipples

 

Thanks to your avatar I just had an image of Bob Ross rubbing his nipples... I need to go puke now.

 

Off the top of my head, doesn't having a period weaken the hymen over time? As a natural barrier to pregnancy I would assume it was natures way of keeping prepubescent girls from dying out due to pregnancies their body wasn't ready to bear. I'm really ignorant about womens health so I probably am wrong

 

They're for confused babies to pinch so you know they are hungry. Hurts like hell.

 

When thinking about evolutionary origins of organs and parts of the body it's usually best to start thinking about what benefits having one has, or may have had, over not having one.

So, The hymen is a membrane that seals (or partially seals) the opening of the vagina. The main benefit to having this would obviously be a reduction in the risk of infection in prepubescent girls. Other animals have hymen, including most of the equine family, some birds and even insects. In insects the hymen would serve the purpose of preventing sexual intercourse before maturity, So it's possible that the human hymen is a vestigial of this function though would still serve to reduce the risk of infection.

 

I agree with you evolution isn't intelligent, but its an efficient force and it has one goal in mind: to sustain and promote life.

That's true - I find it interesting that humans have developed a hymen in this short period of time, since Gorillas do not have one. I assumed they did but just looked it up.

True, it may be a vestige which protects against bacteria in young girls who haven't developed the "bacteria destroyer" fluid found in a mature mature womans vagina - just some speculation I haven't looked it up.

 

It's often broken before sex even occurs in a lot of women. A lot of the time tampons, or physical activity can break or tear it. For this reason I doubt it's a way of "regulating" our sex.

It's definitely not a good way of telling if a girl has had sex.

 

how long till some nuts brings up a brilliant "science cannot explain the origin of hymen -- ergo god puts it there to signal the loss of virginity -- ergo god exists"

 

Not long I assume. It's only a matter of time. Got sent a video by a member here today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A

The things these people come up with.

 

You missed the more appropriate video from the same guy

More specific to the OP Subject

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUVLZeaaekk&NR=1

 

The most retarded thing I've seen in a long time.

The funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

lol

 

Can you imagine the pitch of the screams if it was powered by a heavy duty battery too

 

That's old news. Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron.