Dear Malaysian mainstream media (and also, dear Jacqueline Ann Surin)

So I hear there is (or was) a boycott against Kosmo! and the people that run the paper for an obituary on Yasmin Ahmad that revealed her gender past.

It’s true that close friends and family had found the article insensitive, though there are also those (like myself) who felt the the reaction, moreso than the article, reflected Malaysia’s homophobia and transphobia by treating Yasmin’s gender as something to be ashamed of. Indeed, in the bigger scheme of things, there were a lot worse articles printed in the Malaysian papers that didn’t get such an outcry.

Like how, for many years in the 90s – and still now, every so often – Bangladeshis were always painted in the news as women-stealing dirty thieving criminals. No other race (aside from any other labourer race) was ever pointed out for their crimes; no other race had “XYZ, a Chinese/Malay/Indian criminal” attached to their heading. Even though they were often exploited and they made up a very small percentage of Malaysia’s official crime.

I had to deal with continuous questioning from my teachers and peers about my race. I was told multiple times to “go back to my country”. I was expected, at eleven years of age, to atone for the sins of my countrymen (however small they were) – and to be thick-skinned whenever I heard another slur, whenever I was blocked out of receiving what I deserved. I had politicians report year after year about how “those Banglas” were blue-eyed horny men out to get “our women”. I still hear those sentiments now.

Were there boycotts then? No. No one gave a damn. Instead, when I went to the BRATs workshop in 2003, I asked Tan Ju Eng of The Star about it, and she told me it was their responsibility as a public service. A “public service” that singled out an entire race and caused much personal strife and tension. No apologies.

And what about 2001, when there was plenty of demonization of young people and youth culture supposedly over Black Metal? Alleged groups of youth stomping holy books and sacrificing goats at rock concerts? Condemnation of anything remotely Pagan? And the hysteria about hip-hop and “sex parties” that soon followed? There were the odd articles supporting young people, and I remember one magazine taking Harian Metro to task for using photos of their gig and claiming it was a sex-fest. But were there boycotts against Harian Metro or any other press that sought to sensationalise youth? No.

Every so often in the Malaysian papers I will see anti-gay sentiments, anti-Semitic sentiments, anti-nonMalay-Muslim sentiments, all sorts of rubbish. And yet no one’s ever found it fit to call a boycott. Why? Because you won’t then have an opportunity to harp on Twitter (or wherever) about how you’re doing it right by publishing 4 pages?

If you’re going to proclaim big things like a boycott, be consistent. No need for hypocrisy.

And while we’re on that…

Dear Jacqueline Ann Surin,

If you’re going to fuss about Kosmo using personal details then may I ask why you saw it fit to eavesdrop on a private conversation between myself and Asha Gill in 2005, and then publish to the world in Off the Edge that Tiara Shafiq, university student and webmistress to Asha Gill, was holed up sick in her dormitory? You used it as an anecdote for Asha’s open heart, but neither Asha nor I had given you permission to publish that.

I had people in university asking me about it. Granted, it wasn’t the most humiliating thing ever, but it did make me sound like a young kid unable to take care of herself. The Malaysian reading public didn’t need to know that I was ill, that Asha was trying to coax me out of bed. I thought Asha had told you, and I let my annoyance known at her; she was very surprised and told me that she hadn’t told you directly, only that the phone conversation happened at the same time as the interview. The interview was with Asha not with me!

It’s funny that we were both at the 2006 AWAM Writers for Women’s Rights event; I think you might have worked out who I am. I understand you are well-respected within Malaysian journalists and creatives. I myself wouldn’t have kicked such a fuss – for what point really? – but your article about Kosmo being “sensationalistic” felt very ironic and somewhat hypocritical after that experience.