Fatal misogyny
Congressional bet Christian Sia and gubernatorial bet Jay Manalo Ilagan, reelectionist Peter Urabia, and Ruwel Peter Gonzaga triggered visceral responses and widespread outrage.
Daily TribuneCongressional bet Christian Sia and gubernatorial bet Jay Manalo Ilagan, reelectionist Peter Urabia, and Ruwel Peter Gonzaga triggered visceral responses and widespread outrage.
By and large, they’re essentially derelict appendages of the recent political and cultural past who had hoped to drum up transient enthusiasm on the campaign trail with dead sexist humor.
But to their bitter discovery, their off-handed misogyny induced a quick backlash.
And that’s the most charitable thing we can say — in a deliberate, contrasting, refined elegant way — about four relatively obscure local politicians who gained their three minutes of national outrage last week for petulantly making tasteless, lewd jokes.
How crudely they poked fun at single menstruating mothers, at the age of a senior female rival, at why professional female nurses shouldn’t be “ugly,” and at women’s sexual habits that need not be repeated here.
Undoubtedly, cornered novice congressional bet Christian Sia and gubernatorial bet Jay Manalo Ilagan, reelectionist Peter Urabia, and Ruwel Peter Gonzaga triggered visceral responses and widespread outrage.
Trust me, the subsequent rage heaped on them was brutal.
Offended women and women’s groups of various stripes, innumerable local and national bets, the government’s welfare agency, and even the Supreme Court in one case all loudly weighed in, heaping disgust on the four.
Even the otherwise reticent Commission on Elections quickly issued “show cause orders” for the four to explain in writing their alleged electoral offenses — the “gender-based harassment,” “discrimination against women,” and “labeling.”
The four are still in the process of submitting their written defenses. But they have since issued profuse public apologies for their remarks.
Far more lasting than their defenses, however, is that their stories generally signify the beginning of the end of a bigger story that started a little less than a decade ago, during the cuss-laced times of the former strongman Duterte when misogyny was the norm at the highest levels.
A story that at its core was about the conflict between what many mistakenly applauded as the correct version of Filipino “authenticity” and proper political discourse.
A heavily propagandized version which, by and by, drowned out clear-cut objections that it glorified violence, masculine virility and opposed common decency and toleration.
But with the takedown of Sia, Ilagan, Urabia and Gonzaga, many apparently cured themselves of the blindness of the past.
So much so that pols going for the applause meter by cracking lewd jokes are not only grossly misreading the putative smug political audience but are in fact committing political suicide.
Still, even if it looks like there’s been some progress, sociologists insist the hard work isn’t done and many remain blind.
Yes, we can all still make political jokes. But misogynistic jokes on the political stage and elsewhere do irreparable harm.
Sexist jokes, for one, contribute to a culture of prejudice against women and make sexist attitudes more acceptable.
So much so that studies show that in extreme cases, sexist humor may make more men accepting of rape myths — like women are just playing coy —and normalizes violence against women.
Sexist humor against women is more than “just a joke,” say sociological studies, since sexist jokes “serve as a means of maintaining and reinforcing existing power dynamics and social hierarchies, while lowering women’s social status and jeopardizing their safety.”