Cases of Women’s Hate Speech Due to the Use of Taboo Language on Social Media

Cases of hate speech linked to Indonesian women using taboo language on social media have risen, leading to many Indonesian women being subjected to criminal penalties. Therefore, research on taboo language must be conducted to resolve cybercrimes. This study discloses the type, category, and adverse effects of using taboo language from a legal perspective. The data were verdicts downloaded from the Supreme Court’s directory. Data were analyzed using the intralingual equivalence method to examine linguistic features such as meaning, information, and speech context. Linguistic forensics was also applied to focus on the language that generates legal cases based on the Indonesian cultural environment according to Jay’s classification of taboos. The results of the study revealed that the women on social media utilized prohibited language, including hate speech in Indonesian and indigenous languages. The taboo languages used by women on social media categorized as cases of hate speech were: 1) sexual references, 2) profane or blasphemous, 3) animal names, 4) ethnic-racial-gender slurs, and 5) references to perceived psychological, physical, or social deviations. The negative impact of using taboo language by women on social media from a legal perspective is a hate speech crime that violates the Indonesian Electronic Information and Transactions Law. This research contributes to handling legal cases by imposing language, gender stereotype theory, and taboo language as potential evidence in hate speech cases.