HYPOTHETICAL RAPE AND POLITICAL IDOLATRY
ASTANCE that defends free speech is totally different from, and not mutually exclusive of, the stance of vehemently condemning and arguing against an offensive one. After all, the antidote to offensive speech is not to deny it the space provided to it by the Constitution, but to exercise our right to speak against it. The reason I say this is that two columns ago, I wrote about defending the freedom to offend and I do not want you, my readers, to accuse me of being inconsistent now that I speak against people whose speech is patently offensive.
And there is nothing more offensive than one who promotes misogyny, and worse, would threaten raping someone. And this is exactly what one loyal supporter of President Rodrigo Duterte just did when, if only to demean a law which was authored by Sen. Francis Pangilinan, which exempts child offenders from imprisonment, he threatened Pangilinan’s daughter Frankie with rape. And without losing a beat, the loyal Duterte base defended the man from the wrath of Sharon Cuneta, the mother of Frankie, who gave him an online dressing- down that only an aggrieved, offended mother can give. Their defense is that the man was only speaking in the context of a hypothetical, that he would seek out Frankie if he were only 12 years old and rape her, and he would not be imprisoned thanks to the law that her father wrote.
It is really amazing — if I may use a kinder word because the alternative is unprintable — how these loyal Duterte supporters can fail to see that a hypothetical rape is still as offensive as a real one.
They also fail to realize that most threats are actually phrased as a hypothetical — like “You try hurting my family and I will kill you,” or “If you dare step in my house, I will shoot you.” It is troubling that they would punch holes on Ms. Cuneta’s reaction as a mother, dismiss it as exaggerated hysteria and even make fun of her dropping the name of her long-deceased father Pablo Cuneta, erstwhile political kingpin of Pasay City. And yet, they would not find any problem with this Filipino expatriate, even to the point of defending him, when he publicly threatened to seek out and rape a young woman, even if only hypothetically.
And then you realize that this is not entirely unexpected. We are speaking of a loyal base of a president who has a history of using rape as a discursive device to propagate his political machismo. These were the voters who did not find it offensive when the then candidate Duterte joked about his desire to rape a dead Australian missionary. These are the people who laughed every time the President dishes out his misogyny, including that of publicly admitting that he digitally raped their house helper. They did not cringe when he ordered soldiers to shoot the vaginas of female rebels, or when he told them that they each can rape three women and he would protect them, that is, the soldiers and not the women.
They say the President has, in fact, a record of being pro-women when he pushed for gender and development policies when he was still the mayor of Davao City. It is as if gender sensitivity is like the Catholic practice of procur
ing indulgences to compensate for being sinful, that one can support pro-women policies and then have the right to make rape jokes, or sexually assault women either verbally or actually.
There can never be an excuse to rape. It is not an act of sex, but an act of violence. It is not about lust alone, but about power. This line of argument, that women who wear provocative clothes who get raped were asking for it, deserves a sound trashing. Fully clothed women, like nuns, are raped, and so are children and old women. Men are also raped, by other men, even if they don’t wear provocative clothes. And in case these people who blame the victim would still ask for more evidence that rape is about depraved minds asserting their power over anyone regardless of what they wear, they may want to reflect on cases where the victims are not human beings, but pigs, and not the metaphorical one, but the real animal.
A week ago we saw how a former part-time professor from De La Salle University in Manila was called out for posting what many considered as a veiled misogynist attack on Sen. Ana Theresia Hontiveros. While I defended the right of the person to his opinion, I agree that what he posted was offensive not for his brutal directness in frontally threatening to rape Senator Hontiveros. His suggestion that she hold a closeddoor session with convicted rapists inside Bilibid formed the core of his symbolic violence. And if on this alone there is already a breach of a safe space which the law defined for a woman, then what more with what this Filipino expatriate publicly said when he directly threatened to seek out and rape a young woman. This is no longer just an issue of free speech, but one that already breached a law because there is already a direct threat of rape, albeit hypothetically.
The loyal Duterte base includes parents of daughters, and even sons, who can fall victim to sexual predators. It is really sad how many of them can still find it hard to just for once condemn an act that is so wrong. And yet, they double down, and turn on Sharon Cuneta, the offended mother, who happens to be a supporter of the President. However, one is no longer be surprised. These people have shown on several occasions that they will turn on their own kind and political allies, even their families, if only to defend and protect the President, and their narratives, no matter how offensive.