ISMA wins ‘Aiyoh…Wat Lah?!’ awards
The annual Awards gives recognition to the most sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic statement, act and policies made public.
(Free Malaysia Today) – After a month of public voting, seven winners were announced for the 2014 awards, at Merdekaraya in Petaling Jaya yesterday. It was hosted by Ribena Berry, an alter ego of actor Jo Kukathas.
The Aiyoh…Wat Lah Awards is an internationally acclaimed spoof award organised annually by the Joint Action Group (JAG) with more than a thousand members of the public voting to choose the winning statement, act or policy in the seven award categories.
The ‘Foot in Mouth’ category – whereby a statement made manifests notions of misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and/or transphobia without the speaker actually intending for it to come across as so.
The winner of this category was Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan who received 71% of the public votes for his apology for his previous sexist and misogynistic statement, “I did not mean that women are property. What I meant was, if we build a house and want it to appear nice, it needs to have make up, like women.”
The ‘Insulting Intelligence’ category – where a public statement is qualified as illogical, irrational and blatantly false in the area of gender and sexuality.
With 57% of the votes, the women’s wing of Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) won the award for defending the flogging of women under the Syariah Law.
In the ‘Cannot Ignore’ category are those who had made an offensive act or statement that is damaging to the cause of gender equality, requiring severe response.
This year’s winner was Deputy Public Prosecutor Ahmed Nazmeen who had stated that the government had no objection to a statutory rape case being withdrawn, as long as the offender settled the matter in the Syariah Court.
His statement was made in court during a statutory rape case involving a 13-year-old girl and a 40 year-old-man. He garnered 53% of the votes.
‘Least Helpful to the Sisterhood’ category covers an act or statement made by a female public figure which displays extreme conservatism towards women’s position in society and/or promotes inequality between the genders was won by PAS MP Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff’s statement in parliament.
She had urged the government to prohibit indecent dressing among women to help curb sexual crimes and sexual harassment. She was the runaway winner garnering 74% of vote
There was a tough fight for the ‘Enough Already!’ category where statements and acts of discrimination towards gender and sexuality is continuously repeated.
But the winning statement that emerged as ‘champion’ with a total number of 34% votes was the repeated statement “characterising LGBT’s as a dangerous social ill that is infectious, a threat, and which needs to be curbed”.
The Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, the NGO Persatuan Kebajikan Darul Modahish, and UMNO Member of Parliament Noh Omar and among others were all named joint winners
Where a federal policy is misogynistic, sexist, homophobic, and/or transphobic in its content and/or consequences, it falls under the ‘Policy Fail’ category.
The winner was the government’s sponsorship of “Asmara Songsang”, a propaganda musical against LGBT’s. In the musical drama, characters who persisted with this lifestyle were killed off in a lightning storm.
