KUALA LUMPUR: Here at Universiti Malaysia, a group of female students are livid. They all point to the headline in The Star on Monday, “Hookers earn quick bucks in Malaysia” and their faces are quickly emblazoned with anger. They are again angry at the online news portal for using the terms “hooker” and “prostitute” when referring to the sex industry in the country. “How many more times do we have to put up with this trash?” asked Mona Abdallah, 21, who told Bikyamasr.com that “these women are doing a service in a capitalist society. They are not hookers or prostitutes, they are sex workers.” It is all part of the ongoing barrage of what they term anti-women sentiment in the country and across the region. For them, the sex industry is part of the overall business society that the government in Malaysia and elsewhere have developed. “These women, whether they come from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, are possibly forced into the sex work or are doing it to make money. Using slurs and derogatory language makes them out to be dirty people and that is wrong,” interjected Rina Chu, 20. These students, who are part of a growing anti-media community on campus, believe that more efforts need to be made to end what they have dubbed “the sexualization of women and the sex industry.” They continued to argue that even if a woman has the agency to use her body for money, it should not mean that she is a “prostitute.” “These women are giving a service, and men are paying them to have sex or other things, so this kind of language is horrific and needs to stop,” added Chu. The first line of the article has been the most angering, they said. In the report, it begins by saying, “Foreign women are earning quick bucks up to RM30,000 (S$11,978) each in only 20 days by prostituting themselves in Malaysia.” This is a red flag, they said. “This is what we are all fighting against. The report makes it seem as though women are the problem, but the reality is that this is the society's problem. Sex workers exist, but they are human beings and not some people to be slurred and thrown under the bus,” added Abdallah. Their anger foments with each passing day and new headlines across the local media.
