septate hymen + penetration

[sparrowlace]

so i'm transmasc and nonbinary, and i've been masturbating "normally" for a couple years (i'm 18 now, still living at home), which is fine and good. i'm happy with my body and my situation – i'm aroace and living my best life without any romantic or sexual partners. the problem is that i want to masturbate vaginally. i have a septate hymen, which means my hymen has two openings instead of one. it's just a tiny strip of flesh across my vaginal entrance. i found out when i was 11, using a tampon for the first time, and it got caught. the gynecologist explained my situation and said it would go away in time – either by thinning out over the next few years, or breaking when i started having sex. all well and good, it's annoying that i can't use tampons, but whatever.

well. it's been a hot minute since then and it's still down there making things difficult. i have small hands, so i can get one finger (or anything that size) in the bigger opening, but that's it. and unless i'm extremely careful, it hurts to move it at all. everything i read says it should stretch, at least enough for a toy or something, but whenever i try it feels like i'm trying to tear it open (which i guess i am, sort of). i've tried powering through, like "oh it'll stop hurting in a minute," but that just leaves me sore for the rest of the day. i know it's not actually affecting my health or my sexual enjoyment. i'm just annoyed and a little concerned. i haven't seen a gyn since that first time, but i'm going to start needing pap smears soon, and i'm worried that they'll either try to do it without breaking the hymen (ow) or just break it then and there (OW). is this common? is there something i can do about it? i'm planning to go on testosterone but that's kind of a someday thing right now, and i don't know if it would affect it anyway. help? :/

[Heather]

Welcome to the boards.

So, the corona/hymen itself doesn't have any nerve endings. It is, however, attached the the front of the vaginal canal just inside the opening, where there are nerve endings. If you're having pain when you masturbate with any kind of vaginal stimulation, I am wondering if:
1) You're using plenty of lubricant when you do this, right from the start, and
2) You're not trying to insert your finger or anything else until you're already very turned on.

Can you fill me in on those things?

The corona/hymen also isn't going to just "break," it just doesn't tend to work like that barring things like violent sexual assault. Generally, during masturbation or GYN care or tampon use, you/they should be able to still manipulate around or through that tissue, since it tends to be flexible. But it sounds like, at least with tampon use so far, and with some masturbation, you are not finding that to be the case, which means that some of the issue here may not be just that it's septate, but that it's inflexible, a separate issue.

My best advice to you would be to go ahead and see a new GYN about this sooner rather than later, just so you can have a recent eval of this -- 7 years is a long time and a lot could have changed, and if it didn't, the advice about what to do might. I'd also suggest seeing someone before you start T, because one of the side effects of using T tends to be extra dryness with the vulva and vagina (which is why local -- not systemic -- estrogen for that area of the body while using T can be helpful or advised). Since you're already having discomfort, I'd want to know, for instance, if perhaps they would want to be sure you already had some topical estrogen before you even start on T.

For the record, when you're feeling pain with something you're doing sexually, you always want to stop instead of trying to power through. Not only is pain our bodies' way of generally telling us to stop or do something differently, when we keep doing something that causes us pain, the more our association with that thing or area of the body becomes painful, which tends to only make it more likely we keep having pain, even when the body itself might not create it or create it at the level of our experience. Get what I mean?