It's Time to Put an End to Our Obsession With a Woman's Virginity

I was around nine years old when I saw for the first time a friend lose her virginity… to a bike. Let's just call her Siti. I can't recall how she fell. All I remember was that Siti was riding the bike with a friend. She was sitting on the top tube, while her friend was on the bike's saddle. After the fall, my friend whispered to me, "Siti's got blood on her underwear." She was no longer known as the best female bike rider and fastest rambutan tree climber. All of her greatness was tamed by a myth. From that point on, she became the girl who's not a virgin anymore.

Suddenly some of my female friends no longer wanted to ride their bikes. Some even quit climbing the rambutan tree in front of my house, because they didn't want to fall and lose their virginity. Most of them settled for hide-and-seek or played with the cooking toys. Unfortunately, the control exerted by virginity myths affects Indonesian girls at such an early age. While my father kept pushing me to ride my bike, some of my friends decided to stop entirely. Was it the wrong decision? Of course, they could do whatever they want. But their decision had roots in this country's sexist obsession toward a women's "morality". Morality equals virginity in Indonesia, and an in-intact hymen is the great decider.

What if Siti dreamed of becoming a police officer? It's almost certain that Siti, who fell from her bike seventeen years ago and tore her hymen, would have failed the National Police's "virginity test." In 2014, Human Rights Watch reported that Indonesia still upholds discriminatory selection process that degrades women who want to apply to government institutions, such as the National Police. The organization interviewed female police officers and applicants from six cities in Indonesia, all of whom were subjected to a virginity test. They described the test as inserting two lubricated fingers into the applicant's vagina to check for an in-tact hymen.

Human Rights Watch didn't say that the applicants who deemed "sexually active" were rejected by the police. But all sources did say that the virginity test had caused them pain, trauma, and embarrassment. There is no confirmation on whether the test is still applied. But the fact that it had been done in the recent past is just one example of the discrimination and gender-based violence women are subjected to in Indonesia.

In 2010, a regional elected official in Jember, East Java, proposed a regulation that would've made virginity tests a requirement for graduation for male and female students at middle and high schools. The rational was that it was a way for educators to measure their morality. If the bill had passed, and if Siti had gone to a school in Jember, she would have had to drop out of school. Siti would have had no access to education, wouldn't have been able to afford a good life. Siti, once again, would have been tamed by society's obsession with virginity. How would a person check or measure another person's virginity anyway? And what's the indicator of virginity for men? Is having hymen a curse for women? I got in touch with Mariana Amiruddin, a commissioner at the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan). She said the concept of a woman's virginity and hymen as the standard for purity is an antiquated idea.

"Virginity is actually a myth," she said. "It's as if a woman's virginity represents her purity. In fact, it only worked in the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, right now, someone's purity is no longer measured by hymen, but personality."

Recently, Binsar Gultom, an Indonesian judge who over the trial of Jessica Wongso in a murder case that captivated the nation, released a book called A Critical View of a Judge, or Pandangan Kritis Seorang H in Bahasa Indonesia. The book was mostly about law enforcement, but at the book's launch he decided it was a good time to offer his opinions on the rising number of divorce cases in Indonesia. In his view the reason so many couples were calling it quits was clear: the women weren't virgins. There needs to be a virginity test before marriage, he explained, to prevent marriages from ending in divorce.

The judge cited a report by the Directorate General of Religious Court System Bodies (Badilag), which found that out of 2 million registered married couples, 300,000 got divorced. The reasons behind the divorces varied widely, but to Binsar it was all the woman's fault.

"That's why there should be a virginity test," Binsar told local media. "If the woman is found to be a non-virgin, the government should do preventive and repressive action. Perhaps they could postpone their wedding."

While his "critical" statement was his own—he wasn't representing any government body at the time—just imagine how many other misogynist judges like Binsar there are out there right now. Most importantly, imagine how many women are at disadvantage in the court of law because of such gender biases.

In reality, the Badilag research had nothing to do with whether a woman was a virgin or not. The research instead showed that there was a serious disadvantage to getting married at young age. Those surveyed were 25-years-old and they had been married for a minimum five years. It concluded that the main driver behind the rising divorce rate in Indonesia was a general immaturity, personal problems, and financial issues. It also listed infidelity, bad morales, domestic abuse, forced marriage, and child marriage as some of the root causes.

Meanwhile, one of the reason Indonesians get married so young is because it's seen as improper to have sex before marriage here. Talk about twisting some research to suit your own views.

This obsession made me think a lot about how rules like this would've affected Siti. She would've spent her life being told what she couldn't do. Siti couldn't ride the bike. Siti couldn't go to school and aim for the stars because Siti didn't have good morals. Siti couldn't marry because it would just end in divorce.

If virginity and hymen can be seen this way, then it's no different from the pineapple myth or the myth where women aren't allowed to sit in the door jam. They're all falsehoods all made to control women.