By: Syarifah Fatin Anisa Tuan Said Shakh
Women who travel solo in public should be given an award if they managed to reach home without getting attacked by someone.
With all the incidents that happened to women, we should be happy that they didn’t start a war on men.
An indie musician, Takahara Suiko has something to say about the incident that happened recently at the Taman Mutiara MRT Station in Cheras where a woman was beaten and had her belongings taken. It even happened on Valentine’s Day!
Takahara posted a video of her singing about it on Twitter with a caption, “pertahankan maruah lelaki”, which literally means “protect men’s honour”.
pErTahAnkAn mAruAh LeLAki
(kalau terasa maksudnya…) pic.twitter.com/mkjJ4SIPnN
— . (@takaharasuiko) February 20, 2019
She made it as though it was an advice for women to respect men in her caption but upon listening to the song, a different message was given.
The message was clear. She criticises men on how women are told to be safe and take extra precautions such as by carrying pepper spray everywhere they go.
Clearly, women are sick of being told on doing those things when assailants are still out there planning their way to attack them.
In her song, Takahara Suiko reminds men that women are at par with them and that they have a power to bring them down.
Women are also told their whole life that men has the ability to think and make decisions better than women but she questioned them by saying, “Sehingga akalmu melayang, terbang ke udara, akal yang konon sembilan, hilang entah ke mana, adakah ini rupanya ketua keluarga?”.
In lieu of recent events and technically any woman’s eternity, we have been told to ‘be safe’ ‘be careful’ ‘don’t do this that’ ‘have pepper spray’ etc.
Tiba masanya untuk kita menasihati lelaki pula/juga. Jenayah boleh berlaku pada sesiapa.
— . (@takaharasuiko) February 20, 2019
According to Takahara in her tweets, she received a lot of backlash for it because of how she uses satirical advances to condemn men but she asked them to join her gig to talk it over.
I think some people are mad because the title says ‘pertahan laki’ and they’re about to cheer until they realised the song stabbed them in the back
— . (@takaharasuiko) February 20, 2019
What do you think about the song? Do you agree with Takahara Suiko? Tell us your thoughts.
