Addressing the Vilification of Women: Law’s Accommodation and its Potential as Counterspeech

Addressing the Vilification of Women: Law’s Accommodation and its Potential as Counterspeech

When: 17 June 2026, 1pm-2pm AEST

Where: Moot Court Board Room, Deakin Law School, Burwood

Abstract

This is a presentation of a chapter from a manuscript titled Hate Speech Against Women and the Role of Law. Whether hate speech or vilifying speech directed at and about women should be (better) regulated by law centres on the harms of such speech to women, as well as the utility of potential anti-vilification laws in addressing those harms, meaning what, plausibly, such laws may achieve. Applying speech act theory consistently with a systemic theory of harm, the chapter argues that law is one way in which the state may ‘speak back’ against the subordinating and silencing force of vilifying speech as it relates to women.

Speaker bio: Anjalee de Silva is a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a Women’s Leadership Institute Australia Fellow. She has expertise in administrative, anti-discrimination, and free speech and media law, with a focus on harmful speech and its regulation, especially in online contexts.

Please email law-as-protection@deakin.edu.au if you would like to join us for this event and if you have any dietary requirements.