The Arab Spring is not all sunshine and roses... but some of us knew this:

A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."

But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice.

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "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)."

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

"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," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)."

Because the best defense against the charge of rape or sexual assault is proof of the victim's virginity. 

Once again the West is confronted with the misogyny of Islamic culture and once again, this story and stories like it will fade into the background. 

Though it's great to see Amnesty International raising an outcry we'll know that the West is waking up to the barbarism that is Islam when we see Western women's groups join in loudly and vociferously condemning these actions and raising their voices in support of those victimized by such travesties.

But don't hold your breath.