The right to be remembered

When we think about our digital footprints, it can be quite scary knowing how easily our privacy and security can be compromised if we are not careful.

For some people, typically those without power and privilege, the thought that their personal history could be traced just by being online is a real fear.

What if a potential employer finds online posts that leak personal information from your past and this has potential repercussions on your employability?

What if someone finds your online data from decades ago to be used against you today, by threatening to expose compromising online content to your family or community?

Especially for youths who started using the Internet from an early age, namely “digital natives”, the right to be forgotten on the Internet would mean having the right to erase their personal data from the past.

So for a time, there was a debate on the right to be forgotten in the online world, initiated by a case against Google Inc that was filed by a Spanish citizen in 2010.

However, the philosophical discussion on our digital existence has now gone beyond the case.

The fight for the right to be forgotten is a privacy issue for those who are often and always seen, heard, and visible. On the contrary, women and other marginalised groups struggle for the right to be remembered.

How women are remembered

On a larger scale of things, women's history (or herstory) are often missing from both official and alternative narratives, so how can they fight for a right to be forgotten if they barely even existed in the first place?

On the other hand, when women are remembered, how they are remembered also comes with its own issues.

Women who are remembered are often heads of state or historical figures who have long passed away, and those who get there are few and far between.

When they are remembered, they are remembered only as good wives to their husbands, or good mothers to their children.

These are not bad things to be remembered as, obviously. But it becomes a problem when a woman's existence is only remembered in relation to the men in her life, and not for her own contributions to her people or country.

Representation in history aside, what about the representation of women in the here and now?

Are we appreciating or even acknowledging existing women intellectuals currently still alive and well who can contribute to public discourse?

How many times have we complained about all-male panels in public talks and forums?

I know I have complained more than my fair share. And it's still not enough.

Women often have to fight twice the battle, having to be really loud for the public to even take notice of them. And when the women have already got the attention of organisers, they often become the few women invited to talks again and again, trapped now in a different kind of problem with representation.

For those who are conscious of this, we often find ourselves having to decline speaking invitations to public forums because we know there are more women out there who deserve the space. They too deserve to be seen and heard, and consequently, remembered.

A lack of representation

Meanwhile, we see men who became famous doing the exact opposite.

I once confronted Bersatu Youth chief Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman for accepting an invitation to speak about women empowerment, when he should have declined and offered the space to other women, because at the end of the day, it would be his words that got more attention in the media than actual women, and this would not help the cause for gender equality.

While half the world population comprises women, we do not see enough representation of women in the public sphere.

In the Malaysian parliament, only 23 out of 222 parliamentarians are women.

When this issue is raised, an insensitive voice will make this snarky comment somewhere: "If you want more women in politics, get more women to run in the elections".

These are the very same people who would be snarky about the 30 percent quota set by the government for women representation in politics, business and corporate leadership positions. These people would claim that a quota is insulting to women because it means women cannot make it on their own.

Other than missing the point of a quota system, which is only introduced when there is a problem to begin with, this mentality is also ignorant of the fact that the balance of socio-political power has always sided with men.

There is no way that a quota system would be sexist against men because we have barely even reached the target of 30 percent female representation anywhere, and men are socially and politically dominant by default thanks to patriarchy. In what way can a policy to uplift the powerless hurt the already powerful?

What I am trying to say is that we need to spend more time and attention bringing stories of marginalisation to the surface.

Is it incumbent upon the more privileged to recognise their privilege to help those without such luxuries to tell their stories?

Personally, I make it a point to mainstream stories of women and yes, I admit I do privilege the voice of women over men in my own projects because I know the space for women is shrinking everywhere else. And I will not apologise for that.

But this does not mean that privileging women for a short period of time and for specific projects will hurt progress; it is supposed to do quite the opposite.

We have to stop propagating the myth that when women assert their right to be remembered in any space, they do so with less merit than men.

Any progress without the inclusion of women, people with disabilities, and people of various social disadvantages is not a progress worth remembering.

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MARYAM LEE is a writer with a chronic tendency of getting into trouble. What she lacks in spelling when writing in English is made up for with her many writings in Bahasa Malaysia. She believes in conversations as the most valuable yet underrated cause of social change. She wants people to recognise silences and give them a voice, as she tries to bring people together through words.- Mkini