‘She doesn’t even need to be smart. It’s enough that she’s pretty and has a hole’ ( Tak kena pandai pun, cukup la rupa cantik pastu ada lubang ) : A case study of violence against women in politics in Malaysia

Mohamad Jamil, Siti Nurnadilla (2026) ‘She doesn’t even need to be smart. It’s enough that she’s pretty and has a hole’ ( Tak kena pandai pun, cukup la rupa cantik pastu ada lubang ) : A case study of violence against women in politics in Malaysia. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. ISSN 2213-1272

Abstract

This paper examines how violence against women in politics (VAWP) is enacted and normalised in Malaysia through online reactions to a media appearance by Young Syefura Othman, a Malay-Muslim politician in the Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party (DAP). Drawing on Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS) ( KhosraviNik and Esposito 2018 ; Esposito and KhosraviNik 2023 ), it analyses reaction-emoji metrics and 2,800 netizen comments following the recirculation of the clip by Utusan Malaysia Online . The findings identify three interlocking mechanisms of political violence: (1) affective disciplining organised through emoji-driven ridicule; (2) embodied degradation via animalisation and sexualisation that recode political agency as bodily subordination; and (3) moral-religious sanction, in which appeals to haram (religiously forbidden), kafir (infidel), calls for fatwa (religious rulings), and eschatological imagery authorise exclusion from political and religious community. Sexualisation functions as a key intensifier that binds gendered hostility to racialised and religious boundary-work. The paper argues that framing such attacks as mere “online misconduct” obscures their political function in deterring participation, eroding democratic voice, and policing the boundaries of political belonging.