Malaysia, Day 4

My website is censored in Malaysia. You can’t even go to my shopping cart and buy a webinar on doing better intake sessions.

Having thought it over, I sincerely say, “Fuck the Malaysian government.”

This isn’t the first time I couldn’t access my own website while travelling (see Myanmar, China). Heck, there are places in the U.S. where I can’t access my own website (University of Arkansas, FedEx/Kinkos). Fuck them, too.

I don’t take it personally, as my website isn’t the only one. Anything having to do with sex—education, porn, health, news—is considered dangerous for the 33 million people of Malaysia.

Imagine deliberately imposing ignorance—of any kind—on an entire population. Regimes that do so may be powerful, but they aren’t strong—they’re afraid. They deserve to fall. Russians should know what their army is doing in Ukraine. Malaysians should know that some people have sex without being married, and don’t die.

American teens should know there’s a safe, cheap vaccine that can help prevent HPV (which can cause sterility). And that teens pledging abstinence-until-marriage are more likely to get pregnant before they marry. And that watching porn doesn’t undermine your erections, but that trying to have sex like a porn star does.

In Malaysia, it’s not only sexual topics that are censored. Like Singapore, Malaysia is an authoritarian parliamentary system. The government decides what’s moral and ethical, and enshrines its opinions in law. This is different than, say, setting highway speed limits or criminalizing murder. In those latter instances, science confirms certain harms, which are tangible, and which can be certifiably limited. Exposure to my website? Well, the data’s still coming in.

The connection between censoring my website, legally defining immorality, and jailing people for criticizing the government is simple and direct. For as Lenny Bruce once said after being arrested for on-stage “profanity,” “If you can’t say fuck, you can’t say fuck the government.”

So fuck you, Malaysia, for imagining my voice is so dangerous that you have to hide it from your own people. And bless every country, including America, in which you can say fuck the government.