Egyptian general confirms–and defends–forced 'virginity testing' of detained female Tahrir Square activists. (Tests that prove nothing except that the military tortures women)

A couple of months ago, Aggie wrote about the the allegations that the Egyptian military tortured arrested, female activists from Tahrir Square with electric shocks, strip searches, and 'virginity tests.' Well, a senior army official just confirmed that 'virginity testing' was done, but he also defended it to CNN:

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found … molotov cocktails and [drugs].

We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place. None of them were [virgins]."

As my partner-in-crime Lisa said when she sent me this news item: "There are so many things wrong with this story I'm not sure where to begin." Let's try anyway.

1. There is no such thing as a virginity test. You cannot tell anything about a woman's sexual history from examining her hymen, the current standard so-called virginity test. How many ways can we say that?  

2. 'Virginity testing' is torture. Subjecting female prisoners to these tests, not to mention beatings and electric shocks, while allowing guards to watch and take photos, is invasive, painful and humiliating torture.

3. Anyone can be a victim of rape, no matter their sexual history. Insinuating otherwise encourages the myth that sexually-active women are of less value and even deserving of sexual assault.

4. The State uses virginity to control women's bodies and lives (and not just in Egypt). As Aggie wrote in her previous post: "Though the majority of women in Egypt were not physically detained and tortured by the state, in a story like this, we as women are all controlled. That is, we are reminded of the intractable grip of this meaningless [virginity] construct squeezing our bodies, squeezing most stringently, of course, in those moments when we start to actualize our own awesome power."

As an aside, it was Egyptian clerics who pushed for the death penalty for any woman caught using an 'artificial hymen.'

Egyptian activists will be staging an online protest Wednesday. We'll update this post with more info.