Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form . Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification. Russia’s full-fledged military assault on Ukraine has heartbreakingly become a breeding ground for objectification of Ukrainian women on China’s social media platforms. Some men have suggested “importing” beautiful young women fleeing from Ukraine, which generated rounds of backlash on Reddit and Twitter . In response, the social media platforms said such remarks would be addressed seriously, with thousands of posts and comments deleted and accounts suspended State-owned news outlets condemned the vulgar speech and called for rationality in war-related discussions. However, this is far from enough to dismantle the appalling male gaze that reflects a deep-seated societal ill. In some segments of Chinese society, women are still perceived as a disposable means of procreation and sexual gratification rather than sovereign individuals with equal rights. Consider the unbalanced gender ratio after gender-selective abortion across several decades, the recurring fantasy of “wife distribution by the state” in some online communities and the recent jaw-dropping report that a woman in Jiangsu province was chained up , sold twice as a bride and forced to bear eight children. Some people’s blatant refusal to fully acknowledge the problem also gives us a window on how deeply embedded hostile views against women are. A WeChat user commented under a news article: “We Chinese want to marry them, don’t say such ugly things, don’t look down on Chinese men. … It’s so hard to get a wife in China nowadays.” Gender equality from birth to politics in China has far to go: report Some people are worried that talking too much about the issue might hand Western media fresh ammunition or aggravate the gender divide . Others have employed whataboutism and claimed it is unfair for Chinese men to face criticism since men from other countries engaged in similar rhetoric as well. There is no place for schadenfreude – particularly in the form of bigoted sexual fantasy – in the digital age when the wall between domestic discourse and global diplomacy is all but non-existent. The sexualisation of Ukrainian women on social media amid an escalating international conflict serves as a wake-up call to all of us that an internal societal ill could endanger the reputation we have built with effort over many years. We can and must do better. Guo Zhiwei, Guangdong