Giant If

The daughter test, in Egypt

From the Huffington Post’s list of 2011’s Most Absurd Quotes About Women– And Who Said Them:

An anonymous Egyptian general spoke to CNN about why female protestors arrested during anti-Mubarak demonstrations were strip-searched and forced to submit to virginity tests. “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 in the tents 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.” 

2 responses to “The daughter test, in Egypt”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The logic was hard to follow there. At first I thought the logic was "if they weren't virgins they can't be raped", but upon further inspections the logic is actually "if they later use a negative virginity test, they won't be able to use it against us because the status changed *before* they got to us".

    This of course is still tenuous, but not as crazy as I initially believed. Nevertheless there does seem to be an undertone of "you can't prove we raped you now!", but that might be me being an uncharitable cynic. I think less cynically there is an overt attempt at humiliation…

    Reply
  2. dr x Avatar
    dr x

    Pretty obviously a cover for committing sexual assault, which is what such an involuntary "test" amounts to.

    Reply

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