Dear Ms. Abel I am reading your book I... â€� Regine Abel Q&A

A Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ user asked Regine Abel:

Dear Ms. Abel I am reading your book I married a lizard man and wanted to let you know that your explanation of virginity and the hymen is entirely wrong. I hope you can do some research on the myth of barrier virginity and the truth about what a hymen is. This is incredibly harmful to include as fact in a book (even though the book is fiction). Can you fix for future readers so you donâ€™t perpetuate a harmful myth?

Regine Abel Hi Kristina,

I actually did a great deal of research on the hymen before writing this. A handful of people like you have raised major concerns about what they read without stating what the feel is problematic. So I'm genuinely curious as to what what specifically you find "entirely wrong" and harmful about this.

Hymens come in different shapes and the amount of bleeding (if any) can very greatly depending on how much hymenal tissue a woman has. While I did slightly exaggerate her bleeding for that scene to work (and like you said IT IS a work of fiction), it wasn't all that much. TMI incoming, I personally bled like a pig my first time lol.

Also, keep in mind this isn't a study of human biology. So I didn't want to go into paragraphs and paragraphs on how the female human works, and the fact that there are a million ways a woman's hymen can breach or the fact that some women can have sex without breaching it. I simply wanted to convey how an alien might react to physiological differences. This is the explanation given by a woman without medical training who grew up in a fairly bigoted religious colony.

That said, once again, if you have specific things you believe should be addressed, I would sincerely love to hear about it either here or you can send me a private message :)

Thanks for taking the time to sharing your thoughts with me <3

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