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Female Indonesian Police Officers Subjected To Archaic And Invasive Virginity Test Before They’re Allowed On The Forceâ€
If you are female and want to be a police officer in Indonesia, there is an important matter that must be attended to first. One would think the most important factor in assessing whether someone should become a police officer would be passing a physical fitness or mental aptitude test. In Indonesia, maybe that is the case if you are born with a penis but all women who want to join their police force have to submit to a “virginity test” first. And this is the part where you will all want to toss your computers on top of a bonfire and give up on humanity.
Here is a video from Human Rights Watch including interviews with female police officer applicants:
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If you are unable to watch the video, from The Washington Post, we have the first-person account of a 19-year old Indonesian woman who wanted to join the police force. Here is how this atrocity goes down:
“They put up a curtain so that outsiders could not look inside,†she told Human Rights Watch in a report published Tuesday. “My group of about 20 girls was asked to enter the hall and was asked to take off our clothes, including our bras and underpants.â€
Then came the exam.
“We’re asked to sit on a table for women giving birth,†she said. “A female doctor did the virginity test — the ‘two-finger’ test.â€
Sick to your stomach yet? I know I am. This is obviously wrong for about a million different reasons but let’s start with the most glaring- this “test” tells a doctor nothing about a woman’s virginity (or lack thereof). Some women are born without a hymen at all and many have sex without any rupture or bleeding. It can also be ruptured by tampon use and it can regenerate after a woman loses her virginity. In short, it is proof of absolutely nothing.