Recently, there were disturbing incidents of hate speech directed against women who spoke up on issues of public interest.
The hatred vented by their attackers, by way of anonymous letters and social media postings, crossed the line into misogyny.
Male critics of women who are vocal in expressing their views on matters of public concern need not necessarily be regarded as misogynists.
But when detractors allow their criticism to descend into hatred, and worse, accompany it with threats to harm their female targets, the vitriol crosses a line that separates legitimate criticism from hate speech.
Civil society must protect proponents of free and critical speech from exponents of hateful and threatening speech, especially when the targets are women.
It’s not that women require special protection from scurrilous attacks; it’s that misogynistic pronouncements are as despicable as racist speech.
In Malaysian political discourse, racist speech has had a longer history than misogynistic speech.
In Parliament in the 1980s, a couple of MPs were notorious for resorting to racist epithets when venting their bile on opponents.
True, this did not happen often.
Nonetheless, the few times it did were enough to cause such consternation on the part of the targeted legislators and the next day’s newspaper readers that there was acute dismay, judging from letters to the press, at the perpetrators’ insolence and impunity.
Laxity on the part of the speaker was unhelpful for the preservation of parliamentary discourse in keeping with the dignity of the lower House.
This permissiveness must have eased the way to the next downgrade in parliamentary discourse – the incidence of misogynistic remarks by some MPs.
Who can forget the query by an Umno backbencher directed to an opposition MP about her menstrual cycle: “How often do you leak?”
If parliamentary exchanges could hit such lows in the first decade of the 2000s, what’s to be surprised at the turpitude these days.
Take the case of the female student at a school in Shah Alam who raised the alarm over a male teacher who allegedly advised students that if they wanted to rape a girl, they should choose someone 18 and above.
The female student’s courage in bringing up the issue led to reactions such as a fellow student’s threat — later recanted – to rape the complainant for making the issue public, and a denunciation by the female school principal of the complainant’s rectitude.
It took a month for the education authorities to transfer the allegedly offending teacher from the school where the incident was supposed to have taken place to the state education department, a telling gauge of how misogyny is viewed by the people who ought to be really concerned.
The ethos that prevailed 40 to 50 years ago would have seen the offender carpeted and drummed out of the service with all deliberate speed.
It’s hardly a surprise then that tardiness and laxity in dealing with the high profile case of misogyny in a public school has been followed by more of the same.
The latest is the case of an environmental activist who was prominent in a recent public demonstration against the government over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
She was warned via an anonymous letter that if she did not cease and desist, she would be splashed with acid and could expect other gory consequences.
Reactions on social media have drawn sympathy for the activist but there has been little curiosity about where this misogyny is emanating from.
Several decades ago when the consciousness of women’s rights was not as high and female tribunes were few, there was almost no evidence of misogyny when tribunes raised their clamour in the public arena.
This misogyny is a thing of recent vintage. It must come from a mindset. What is acutely troubling is there is little curiosity about the how and why.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
