I first came across this story about 22 people caught in Malaysia for indulging in a sex orgy on the Straits Times’ website.

The headline of the Straits Times version of the story is “3 women caught at sex orgy”. After I read the story, I found out that the three women were Malaysian, and they were caught for prostituting themselves to 19 Bangladeshi men in a sex orgy. I got annoyed after learning the whole story because I couldn’t understand why the focus was on the women. The headline was plainly sexist.

Later, I realised the story was attributed to The Star, a Malaysian newspaper. So, I went to search for the original story that appeared on The Star, and the headline, “Three women caught at sex orgy with 19 foreigners”, was a little better than the Straits Times, although it was still sexist because the headline explicitly mentioned the word ‘women’ but not ‘men’.

I don’t understand why the focus of the story had to be on the women. The Bangladeshi men are equally guilty of committing the offence. Why can’t the headline be gender neutral, such as “22 people caught for sex orgy”?. The fact of the matter is that there were 22 people involved in the act, so why did the papers decide to highlight the role of the women in the offence?

In fact, the newspapers should highlight the alleged pimp and mastermind of the orgy, a 56 year-old man. Sheesh. I can’t speak for the Malaysian papers, but I think the Straits Times editors should have had more sense to change the headline for re-publication.