This year, with the theme “Our Bodies, Our Rights”, the festival is focusing on issues that affect everyone, such as privacy, moral policing and human rights. We speak with co-organiser and feminist activist Jac SM Kee to find out more.

Jac SM Kee is is a feminist writer, activist, poet and occasional painter. She has written column pieces for several Malaysian newspapers, and numerous articles for both online and offline journals.

from PopTeeVee.net

PopTeeVee interviews Jac SM Kee, one of the co-organisers of Seksualiti Merdeka, about spaces and internet censorship.

Just when I thought our television had turned over a new leaf.

I should have known of course that there’ll always be certain boundaries drawn, especially around supposedly sensitive issues such as homosexuality. Still, when they showed Brothers and Sisters on our cable tv more than a year back, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Whoa. A regularly recurring main character who happens to be gay on our national tv? Hell, that’s progress if anything.

Maybe our idiotic censors can change.

Still when week after week they continued showing our gay protagonist Kevin Walker’s brief dalliances with his coterie of male admirers ( at least before he settled down with Scotty ), I found myself almost applauding the seemingly enlightened censorship board.

Scotty : Awww, Look, our proposal scene is coming on!
Kevin : Where? Bloody hell. Did they just erase it?

Of course – as usual – I spoke a lil too soon in praise of the scissor-happy censors. Since I guessed that tonight would be the infamous proposal scene that Kevin makes to his partner Scotty, I figured I might as well take a look. As a measure of support if nothing else. But just right at the end before the gay proposal, the episode came to an abrupt end with a clever segue nto a preview of the coming week’s delights.

Yup.  Our diligent censors had been busy at work. Helpful lil buggers. Obviously talk of gay marriage turned out to far too much for them. Two men committing to each other must have blown their little minds. Shouldn’t have expected much from folks who’d censor the word ‘gay’ from the Oscars.

So for all my fellow countrymen – at least those who aren’t as blindly bigoted as our homophobic censors – just take a look at what actually happened at the end of the episode.

Makes me wonder how they’re gonna play out the episode next week which centers on Kevin and Scotty’s marriage. Will the overeager scissor-happy censors slice and dice again? Tune in next week.

You may mail your letters to:
Malay Mail: http://www.mmail.com.my/mail_hotline.aspx
News Straits Time: news@nstp.com.my (Attn: Letters)
The Star: editor@thestar.com.my (Must be addressed exclusively to The Editor of The Star)
Malaysiakini: editor@malaysiakini.com
The Sun: chenghai@thesundaily.com
Astro: http://www.astro.com.my/service/contactus/default.asp

I can’t find an email for the head of Astro. All I found was the above feedback form. Can someone get me relevant email addresses? Thanks!

Why did Astro censor the words “Gay” &  “Lesbian” from 2 Oscar acceptance speeches?

I want to thank Astro for screening this year’s Oscars, which gave us the very heartwarming wins by the screenwriter and the lead actor of the movie “Milk”. Congratulations too to the movie “Milk”, about the first openly gay man elected to public office in California who was then assassinated, for winning Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. The acceptance speeches by screenwriter Justin Lance Black and actor Sean Penn were both moving, bold and timely. They spoke up about the need for equal rights, to love, to share this land and to be heard. This year, the Oscars celebrated the kind of diversity that the arts is able to champion; it’s the kind of diversity that desperately needs championing in a world so overwhelmed by racism, war, and hatred.

This is part of Justin’s speech:

“When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope one day I could live my life openly as who I am and then maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married. I wanna I wanna thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk.”

And this is Sean’s:

“For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”

However, if you caught the Oscars on Astro, you would have noticed something so bizarre almost to be ironic. The words “gay” and “lesbian” have been censored from both these speeches. For me, this act of censorship defeated the very victory won by these two men. The two moments of silence rang out like the gun shots that killed Harvey Milk.

We live in a time when understanding is needed, when artists need to be bold in addressing the manifold injustices of the world. Hence, such a movie had to be made, such acceptance speeches to be uttered. But by its act of censorship, Astro has sent a message to all Malaysians that gays and lesbians are still shameful things to be censored from the public’s ears. As a gay man, I am truly offended. After all these years of contributing to the country through my work, of helping people regardless of their orientation, being proud of who I am and helping others be proud of who they are, I can assure you that the only thing wrong is how much hate gays have to endure simply for the way we love.

What is Astro trying to achieve with the censoring of the words “gay” and “lesbian”? Do they think these words will promote homosexuality? Let me assure you that homosexuality cannot be promoted, it just happens. Just as a person’s sexuality becomes apparent to him or her when the hormones kick in in the teen years; you don’t need sex promoted to you by the TV, your body does its own promotion.

Meanwhile, words like “terrorist”, “rapist” and “murderer” gets passed and nobody gets their panties knotted over how these words might promote terrorism, rapes and murders. On the other hand, words like “gays” and “lesbians” that describe people among us who happen love the same sex get treated like it is a crime to even mention in public. Is Astro promoting hate over love? Just what kind of society does Astro want to be creating? One where people can talk about terrorism but not love?

You want to know what breeds social ills? It is the kind of insecurity and low self esteem that results from such continual shaming through the media, that then leads to machismo, violence, bullying, and other superficial ways with which men employ to compensate for their insecurity.

Does Astro not know that many of its own staff are gay? I won’t name them, but trust me, I know many of them (and I congratulate Astro for smartly tapping into such a pool of talents). But is Astro now ashamed of its many talented gay and lesbian staff?

And does Astro not know too that a huge number of its viewers are gay and lesbian? Otherwise, why bother to screen “Brothers & Sisters”, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, “Six Feet Under” and other popular TV series that show how gays and lesbians are not only part of society but play vital roles in shaping that society for the better? Is Astro ashamed of its gay and lesbian viewers? And if this is some national guideline, then Astro needs to question it if it hopes to be fair to its viewers.

Stop censoring the words that describe who I am. I am a Malaysian. I work hard for the right to be here, and I work hard for the right to love, just like everyone else. Thank you.

Pang Khee Teik

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Someone suggested to me to turn this into a petition. Maybe we should finally once and for all get the words “gay” and “lesbian” recognised as legitimate words that desribe a segment of the human population here in Malaysia. Anybody want to draft a petition and post it on petitiononline.com?