Articles

The recent murder suicide in Brisbane is more notable than others for the drama it offers a cynical public, desensitised and indifferent to the violence women face. It has the victim’s sexuality questioned and almost pulverising the tragedy.

In a desperate act to engage their audience, the media has then moved away from inured and indifference of the very alarming issue of domestic violence, and found a new angle of engagement – scrutinising the victim over her sexuality.

The reporting took a horrific turn when journalists turned their attention to the victim, Mayang Prasetyo, describing her as a ‘transgendered prostitute’ and underlining her Indonesian heritage before tearing through her social media to find pictures of her that fuse and exacerbate their depiction of her.

Suddenly, are we to take less compassion on such a violent act towards a fellow human? Mayang Prasetyo, was first and foremost a fellow human being, who strived for happiness and who had aspiration for a better future.

What does this manner of reporting; assuming journalists saw this angle as the only means to get our attention on the subject, say about our culture? That Prasetyo was most prominently defined as a prostitute and a transgender? Prasetyo suffered at the hands of a man she trusted and was in a relationship with and not as a result of a hate crime relating to her occupation.

The powerful words that swayed an audience to attention were; ‘shemale’, ‘prostitute’, and ‘hooker wife’. Words that single out people by underlining what makes them different in the eyes of the majority, reducing their humanity and removing them from our compassionate eyes. These words to a degree render her murder less violent and almost justifiable.

Prasetyo, was described as someone away from the conservative view of who we hold to deserve compassion, maybe even justice and assume quite comfortably that Prasetyo’s failure to comply perhaps contributed to the tragedy. This then follows into the fallacy that it is the job and the gender identity that kills. However, the truth in Prasetyo’s case it was neither her job or her gender that killed her, it was her beloved partner who decided to kill her.


Are we to stand to be judged and scrutinised over our sexuality?