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THE recent suicide of Swarnamoyee Biswas, a female journalist at the online media outlet Dhaka Stream, after accusing her section chief Altaf Shahnewaz of sexual harassment, has sparked a storm of outrage. Swarnamoyee worked there as a graphics designer. Her complaint against Altaf Shahnewaz, alleging sexual harassment and workplace bullying, was not verbal gossip but a written statement. On July 13, 26 staff members, including seven female journalists, submitted a written complaint to the outlet’s human resources department detailing Altaf Shahnewaz’s repeated sexual harassment.

Yet, months have passed and the editorial authorities have taken no effective action. Instead, five female journalists were reportedly fired for their involvement in filing the complaint. The management’s silence and retaliation spoke louder than any policy statement. Cornered by humiliation and despair, Swarnamoyee chose suicide as her ultimate protest.

The allegations are horrifying not only for their obscenity but for what they reveal about power and language. Altaf Shahnewaz is said to have made a grotesque remark about her body, stating: ‘A woman whose breasts shape are deformed like that, her Bengali must be deformed, too.’ The sheer vulgarity of this statement is staggering. How can a man, born from a woman’s womb, reduce another woman to such degradation? The mind revolts at the thought. This is not merely indecency. It is linguistic violence, the deliberate use of language to dehumanise.

In sociolinguistics, this behaviour is identified as sexist language, which psychologically and socially assaults a particular gender, most often women. It operates as a cultural weapon, reinforcing hierarchy through humiliation. As American linguist Robin Lakoff argued in her seminal 1975 work Language and Woman’s Place: ‘Language uses us as much as we use language.’ Her insight is timeless. Sexist expressions are not slips of the tongue. They are the social DNA of patriarchy. Each word reveals an ideology that women exist to be evaluated, judged or disciplined through language.

This was not Altaf Shahnewaz’s first controversy. Before joining Dhaka Stream, he was the literary editor at the daily Prothom Alo, where, according to colleagues, he also faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment. He reportedly sought ‘poetry in the curves of women poets’ bodies’ — a vulgar metaphor that betrays both his abuse of power and his bankruptcy of intellect.

Women continue to face sexual harassment at workplace, from newsrooms to corporations and universities to ministries. Most remain silent, crushed by the weight of social expectation, job insecurity or what we cynically call ‘shame.’ They internalise this suffering as a ‘normal process’ of survival. But inside them burns a silent rage and wordless protest. This is the cruel paradox of our patriarchal society: women are forced to adapt to oppression as a condition of existence. Only a few dare to speak up and when they do, they are punished, stigmatised or destroyed. Swarnamoyee is the most tragic embodiment of that pattern. Her suicide was not an act of weakness. It was a symptom of a system that left her with no room to live with dignity.

What is happening is not accidental. It is the ‘new normal’ institutionalised patriarchy. We witness the normalisation of sexist behaviour, where the degradation of women has become part of the everyday rhythm of the workplace. This normalisation is what sociolinguist Sara Mills calls the ‘discursive reproduction of sexism.’ Through repetition and silence, misogyny begins to look natural. Vulgar comments are brushed aside as ‘humour.’ Harassment becomes ‘misunderstanding.’ And the management, driven by fear or convenience, shields predators under the banner of ‘organisational image.’ In such an environment, words lose their moral gravity. Sexism becomes policy through omission.

A patriarchal society is full of contradictions. It worships the image of ‘mother’ but disrespects women. It celebrates female ‘purity’ yet violates it daily through speech and behaviour. It expects women to endure humiliation quietly, calling it ‘grace.’ Before making a filthy remark about a woman’s body, men like Altaf Shahnewaz forget that it was a woman who brought them into this world. They forget that women are not metaphors for pleasure. They are the emblem of intellect, dignity and agency. But the burden is not only on the abuser. It is on all of us who stay silent. For every sexist joke left unchallenged, every slur we ignore, every victim we disbelieve, we become complicit in the crime.

The cost of this silence is measured not only in suicide such as Swarnamoyee’s but in the daily erosion of women’s confidence. Workplaces are crowded with Altaf Shahnewazes, men intoxicated by power and protected by impunity. They destroy promising careers, crush young dreams and leave women psychologically scarred. This is why despite decades of ‘empowerment’ rhetoric, the workplace remains one of the most unsafe spaces for women in Bangladesh. Until justice replaces fear and the system values ethics over image, the tragedies will recur.

Moral outrage alone is not enough. Real change requires structural reform. Three shifts are essential in this regard:

Institutional accountability: Every organisation must establish an independent, gender-sensitive complaint mechanism, not a token HR cell designed to suppress scandal. Complaints must lead to transparent investigations and consequences.

Gender and language training: All employers, editors and managers should undergo regular training in gender-sensitive communication. Understanding how language can harm is the first step toward ethical leadership.

Cultural re-education: Society must unlearn its habit of blaming victims. Media, schools and universities should integrate gender ethics and sociolinguistic awareness into their curriculums. Change begins with consciousness.

The irony here is brutal. Journalism exists to expose injustice, yet its own houses often nurture it. When media outlets suppress complaints or silence whistleblowers, they betray not just their employees but the public trust. The newsroom cannot demand transparency from politicians while hiding predators in its own ranks. The pen loses its moral force when it refuses to confront its own corruption. Until journalism becomes a safe and dignified profession for women, every banner headline about justice will ring hollow. The tragic story of Swarnamoyee is not merely the story of one woman’s despair. It is the story of an entire system’s decay. She died because she refused to accept degradation as destiny.

Before making a vulgar comment about a woman, we should remember that every man was once born from a woman’s womb. We owe our very existence to those we so easily demean. Women are not objects of commentary. They are the bearers of life, builder of society. They are our mothers, sisters, lovers, colleagues and companions in building a humane society. The question we must keep asking is simple yet searing: when will women in this country find workplaces free from fear, violence and humiliation?

Swarnamoyee’s silence now speaks for every woman who swallows her pain to keep her job, for every journalist who fears retaliation, for every daughter who wonders if her dreams are worth her dignity. If there is any justice in language, let us begin there, by naming the problem honestly. Let us reject sexist speech, confront the abusers and dismantle the culture that protects them. Only then can we say we have learnt from Swarnamoyee’s tragedy. Until then, women like her will remain the mirrors, reflecting, again and again, the ugliness of a patriarchal society that still refuses to see itself.

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Emran Emon is a journalist, columnist and global affairs analyst.