The year is 2007. I went to school here for the most part of eleven years. I also frequently visited a hospital (one that shares the same name as the girls’ school neighboring mine) here as a child, having my hospital file grow thick and yellow over time. And, as luck would have it, I also would find myself with my family all across the small township having some of the best meals a child could ask for. Today, in 2007, it is the 20thof August. It is a slow and admittedly lukewarm Monday morning, and school is all a bore, leaving me with a hollow pit in the middle of my body, right below my ribcage, a wisp from the day before. As I look back at it from where I am seventeen years later, Sundays have always been scary. There were too many variables for the new week, and the biggest anxiety was Monday – a day that held too much to bear for a child of ten. The early August months over the years have always been my favorite. Exams usually ended right after my birthday, and the heat and sun that found itself during this time of the year would bring me an inexplicable and unexplainable joy. No rain equals more fun.
At 10 AM, the temperature is twenty-six degrees Celsius. It will slowly pick up and hit a peak at 5 PM, where it will be at thirty-two degrees Celsius. As the temperature rises, the humidity falls. It is always hottest in the mornings, the heat leaving your skin feeling like it’s being prickled again and again. All of these scene settings are important for what is to come. I am, if you are unaware, setting a scene. An artist, for example, sets a scene through a picture that is painted on a canvas or any necessary medium used to tell a story. A writer paints one out through the use of words that emote a feeling within their reader.
School will end at about 1 PM, I would say goodbye to my friends and be shuttled home in the comfort (and safety) of a so-so van. The van driver accounted for every student and was a no-nonsense woman who held the fort down day in and day out. Back in 2007, when the access I had to the television was limited due to a strict parenting style that was similar to that of the army regimen or prison, I would peruse the newspaper to fill my time. I would indulge in the middle segment of the paper where the comics, celebrity gossip, and “worldly” pop-culture items were written about. After tearing through the paper, I vividly remembered coming across a report segment on a missing eight-year-old girl. What would transpire in the next twenty days would be some of the most horrifying chain of events taking place in 21st-century Malaysia.
Days went on and as it did, so did the guard of every responsible parent in the country. See, eight-year-old Nurin Jazlin was at a Wangsa Maju pasar malam before she disappeared forever. She left her home with the intent of getting hair clips. She never made it back. Her parents, frantic, held out hope, nonetheless. But the collective paranoia and anxiety had already sunk in. The kids were not safe anymore. I remember my grandmother sternly telling a ten-year-old me, “Don’t go out alone! You’re going to get kidnapped if you do!”. I am not going to be retelling Nurin’s story. I think every news and media outlet has already done that. It was inhumane, what happened. It feels inhumane to regurgitate the gory details of how it all came to an end. In the end, there was no respect for the girl who had her life and future snatched away from her. Not from the media, not from the onlookers, and most certainly not from those making and manning the law.
Today, Nurin would have been twenty-five. A whole life ahead of her, robbed. When her remains did turn up – which insanely enough, were ten minutes away from my childhood home – the body had already marked itself with a score. I knew then what I know now: there were real boogiemen out there. Seventeen years have passed, and the case remains unsolved, and from what I have read, her parents are still trying to find ways to have this cold case seen through. When I came to find out – in gory detail – as to what had happened to the girl, I got sick to my stomach and almost threw up my lunch. The hours and hours of Law & Order episodes that I had watched as a kid were not so far away anymore. “That could have been me”, I thought to myself. The story of Nurin Jazlin came once more into my consciousness when my friend (who is also my editor) brought up the death / suicide of TikTok creator, Esha that happened on the 5th of July. The incident had happened so quickly that I didn’t have much time to sit with what I had heard to fully understand the gravity of the situation. In my head, after hearing the news – having read a bit more of it on Twitter and Instagram – the first thought that came to me was: “Another internet user dead by the hands of their internet followers”.
I immediately snapped myself back into the present moment. What a privileged way of thinking. Someone had just died! But I questioned the thought anyway. Couldn’t the issue be shelved if Esha had just taken some time off her socials and come back to it afterward? The thought fell in on itself, of course. How was it fair to the girl who was getting cyberbullied by faceless perpetrators to have to take on that responsibility? Why did she have to get off her phone? Why did she have to be silenced just because hateful people couldn’t stand to see her in front of a camera? Responsibility, however, she took! She marched her way down to the police station and filed a report against her bullies. Her haters, these internet trolls, I would come to learn, were monsters. A Google search led me to a report that explained the gravity of her situation. Esha was not only having her likeness used but she was also being tormented with rape and death threats. But, alas, even in taking matters into her own hands, the police did as the police usually do when faced with an issue of this matter… They did nothing. A day after filing the report, she took her own life.
As I sat there with the information, letting it slowly sink in, I received another message from my editor. This time, it was about the death of a twenty-five-year-old Nur Farah Kartini. Farah died at the hands of a policeman. Newfound evidence points to him being her lover. “A lover’s quarrel”. That is how the news is portraying the murder out to be. I was seated on the carpet in my friend’s home when we got to talking about the recent suicide and femicide of the respective women. This was a couple of days after Esha’s perpetrators were brought to court and charged with a – what I think of it to be – a casual fine of RM100 for cyberbullying. There were no “real” charges for the victim’s death. As I kept reading, and as more information came to light, I began to question my morals and approach to the victims. More specifically, female victims. Even as I write this, I ask myself: “Who am I to talk about this?”. After all, I am a male presenting. There is no trying to justify how much of a girl or a princess I may be about things. At the end of the day, I could never relate to the struggles and issues that women face at large.
When it comes to matters relating to women-kind, I sit back and only open my mouth and give an opinion when asked. A friend once told me that it was “Not my place to insert myself in issues relating to womenkind”. Thus, my male-centered opinions regarding the struggles women face, day in and day out were kept to a minimum. I agreed with the consensus, men are dogs, and the police never do much to avenge a woman. I have stood by my girl friends, steering myself clear of men, decentering them and even renouncing my inherent maleness by not conforming to it. And yet, for as long as the hair grows out of my face, the guilt stays. But that is not the point of writing any of this. The point instead, is this: Does my opinion on the violence against women hold any value?
And if so, would it make a bigger change? Or better yet, would there be any change at all? It almost feels defeatist to be penning any of these thoughts down, watching it slowly turn into an out-of-touch story you would find on The Cut. I remind myself that I am not exempt from thoughtless misogyny even when supporting and standing for women. I wonder if the rest of the male presenting population is just as aware of this, and if so, is there any critical thinking done or any actions taken to avoid this continual perpetuation? Because, at the root of this matter, it is not an issue just of the unjust treatment toward women. It is an act of violence enacted upon women by men – this perpetuation that has been upheld by generations of men that came before them, a lack of awareness, and willful ignorance. A weapon in itself. Men are only conscious to the issues women face when it benefits them when they think they can get the girl, the guy, or gain a following on Instagram and TikTok, wearing skirts and painting their nails. Their advocacy and feminist agenda are a ploy, used for gain. Men enact violence, why can’t they check themselves and each other? Women, it seems, to them, do not matter. They do not matter beyond childbearing and exist for the pleasure of their pricks. I am filled with disgust.
When Esha’s perpetrators were reprimanded and fined, the general reaction from the public was simple as it was clear: they were low-life losers. I sat with that for a bit. Had the perps been of another race, would the reaction have been similar? Would the outcry be the same? Are we easy to pass judgment towards them – not only because they were inherently wrong and possibly evil – but also because they were brown? “Maybe don’t make it a race thing”, I thought to myself. “Then again, isn’t this racially charged somehow…? Best to drop it”.
Was this the only instance when the law was lenient toward brown folk? Let me stop shying away from the term and repeat that once more. Was this the only instance in which the law was lenient towards Indian people? The entire situation has become more complex. The added layer of (or a lack thereof in this case) prejudice felt both vindicating and simultaneously disgusting. What made this so different? The inner monologue dings: “See… it is somehow a race thing”.
That aside, the law at best has never benefited women in this country or any at large. Sexual assault cases are ignored or prolonged to the point of complete and utter destruction of the victim’s psyche. The point of the matter is, that men get away with a lot as long as the crime is perpetrated towards women. It is almost a commonplace acceptance of the fact that it is meant to happen to some degree. The only fear is when it’s going to happen. It’s jarring to have seen one of Esha’s bullies be another woman. Not surprising really, considering that we’ve not been liberated from the patriarchy. There’s a saying that I coined a while back, one that I believe to still hold true: “Men may have started the patriarchy, but women perpetuate it alongside them”. The case is not true for all, but if you dig deep and listen to half the things being said you will see what I mean.
Fifteen days after the 1st of September in 2007, Nurin’s body would be discovered. Ten minutes away from my parent’s house, and a two-minute drive away from my best friend’s parent’s house. A year before she went missing and was found murdered, a nine-year-old me was walking from the far end of the bus stop to the school entrance. I don’t remember why I had been dropped off on the other end of the school grounds. What I do remember was a man in a taxi driving by and asking me to hop into his cab with him. His windows were down, and the day was hot – sweat was already beading on my forehead. In remembering, the anxiety in my belly began to rumble. “Come on, get in! I’ll drop you off at school”. That wasn’t right now, was it? The school entrance was 200 meters away. My mother, a dissonate figure in my life even in my youth would warn me about stranger danger. My grandmother, who had raised me since I was a baby, had instilled great fear and anxiety in me. One thing I knew for certain – trust no one. That was the constant. “No thank you, the entrance is right here” I replied to the man. “Get in, I’ll drop you off. We can get food too”. He sounded more pointed this time, desperate, and wisps of anger floated from his mouth. “No thanks”. With that, he cussed me out and sped off.
Years later, on the way to an 8 PM tuition class, one that I trekked on foot from my parents’ home, I was accosted by another man. “Get on the bike, get on the bike you little shit”. A full one-liter water bottle weighed me down. “FUCK OFF YOU ASSHOLE!”. I tossed my bottle at him, and it missed. He drove off cussing me out and I didn’t stay to collect it afterwards. I found the bottle on the side of a beaten pavement on my way back home. There were many more instances like this for my friends and me. It just kept happening again and again. It seemed that kids and women were at the short end of the stick. When Nurin went missing, our trips to the pasar malam with my mother ceased immediately. We never went out to the night market together, ever again. It became a taboo, a frowned upon activity for children. What once was a place for joyous freedom, an exploration of food, and newfound trinkets became plagued. The 11th of September would have been Nurin’s birthday. She would have turned twenty-five. I hope change will come.
For now, I remain afraid.