Probing vaginas is the only way to test a woman’s morality, Indonesia’s military assures us

BANGKOK, Thailand — According to the Indonesian military, the best way to gauge a young woman’s morality is by probing her vagina.

It’s called the “two-finger test” and it’s imposed on all incoming female recruits. A doctor uses two fingers to determine whether or not the woman is a virgin. If her hymen is not intact, she can be deemed impure and the results are recorded in her personnel file.

Vaginal probes can’t test virtue. But they're also unable to accurately test virginity. According to the World Health Organization, the two-finger technique has “no scientific validity.”

That isn’t going to stop the commander of Indonesia’s armed forces, General Moeldoko, from endorsing the test wholeheartedly. As criticism mounts, he’s doubling down on his backing of the two-finger test.

“What’s the problem? It’s a good thing. So why criticize it?” he recently told the Jakarta Globe. There’s “no other way,” he says, to determine a female soldiers’ morality.

Two-finger tests aren’t unique to Indonesia. Before a nationwide ban in 2013, Indian authorities administered the test on rape victims. Until 2011, Egyptian authorities conducted the two-finger test on female inmates.

But as other countries are backing away from the test, Indonesian authorities — inevitably male — are displaying a lasting fixation with it. Human Rights Watch warned that virginity tests have “run amok” in Indonesia when an official tried to impose the test on every graduating female high school student. His proposal: no intact hymen, no diploma.

The Indonesian military oversees 500,000 personnel. That makes it the world’s largest institution to embrace the two-finger test. Suffice it to say, this force — which is 10 percent female — does not stick fingers inside the other 90 percent to measure their morality.