Last night I heard the screaming
Vic burst out into laughter, the vociferous kind, when I recounted to him the story of J. If Vic, my lawyer friend, was not very close to me, I could have put out my cigarette in his mouth while he was dying of laughter. But I realized I was seeking his advice – to some extent I was asking him to do a pro bono legal service – regarding the violence suffered by J from the mighty arms of Kent. So, I disregarded his tirades about J’s story and I kept my cool. My half-finished cigarette landed on the earth, quashed to perfection by the might of my foot. I shouldn’t feel incensed and insulted by Vic’s reaction. Even if I told him – and this was the reason for his deafening and deepening guffaw – that J was almost mauled to death by Kent, his lover of five years. In one of their many heated arguments, Kent hit J with an ironing board. With the impact of the assault, J fell to the floor, rumbling and crumbling, gasping for breath. Kent even threw forks at J’s face that almost caused him to lose his left eyesight. If it were not for that terrifying incident, J would have not thought of leaving Kent for good.
"What’s so funny with J’s suffering?" I asked Vic with my face turning red, betraying my attempt to keep my calm and collected composure. All I was asking him was to help J go about his legal battle against Kent. Just by the sound of his crackling laughter, I knew that Vic had already denied J of the justice he was seeking for. He was one macho guy – though friendly to and comfortable with gays – who thought that violence between same-sex couple could be brushed aside. Simply put: Vic did not take J’s case seriously because in his mind the aggrieved and the aggressor were both gays. Just gays. I blew my top and exchanged expletives with Vic, one of the very few moments where I displayed anger.
Not many are in the know – or perhaps they are just unmindful and insensitive or simply oblivious – to the fact that domestic violence is not just a crime affecting heterosexual couples. The structures and dynamics of homosexual battering are also similar to the abuses that take place in heterosexual relationship. After all, violence is not just about anger. It’s about power and control.
Unlike women, however, who can report cases of domestic abuse to many a women center all over the country, gay and lesbian victims in the Philippines normally do not seek help not because they are ashamed of their plight but because they think there isn’t any help available to them. More often than not, gay people lodge their complaints in the barangay. Many times, the buck stops there.
Of course there are courageous gays who bring to police authorities their experiences of domestic violence. Cops, in all fairness to them, will attend to their complaints, but not without the ubiquitous sneer.
When I was a reporter covering police and investigative beats for another paper, I witnessed how one cross-dresser hair and makeup stylist was reduced to humiliation when he filed a complaint at the homicide section of the police district office. He complained that his boyfriend of barely six months literally stabbed him in the back. He continued to narrate his sad story when all of a sudden the investigating officer stopped typing away at his worn-out typewriter and scoffed at him: "Baka kaya ka sinaksak dahil hindi ka magaling sa kama (Perhaps you were not good in bed that’s why you were stabbed)." Thank God he was a policeman otherwise I could have stabbed him, too. But since I did not have the criminal instinct, I just stabbed the officer with my acerbic tongue; each word that lashed out from my mouth was punctuated by my brows highly arching like the "M" in any McDonald’s signia.
Homophobia truly compounds the problems faced by gay and lesbian victims of domestic violence. The rest of the society may not admit it but I still believe that homophobia – the society’s fear and hatred towards gays and lesbians – is a contributory factor to the difficulties and complexities faced by battered homosexuals. Though there is much tolerance now, the persistent and palpable societal homophobia leads to isolation of the victims, thereby contributing to the violence they undergo.
Perhaps homosexuals in Manila and its neighboring towns are quite empowered that they can bring to the fore their cases of domestic abuse suffered from the hands of their respective partners. The same picture, however, is neither depicted nor duplicated in the provinces where gays are still considered a minority, a subculture whose existence is primarily geared towards man’s primordial need: sex.
It is always, always unjust and unwarranted to hear heterosexuals saying that a gay couple’s main function for coupling is because of sex. Look closely here, the configuration of gay and lesbian relationships mirrors that of their male-female affair counterparts. Unions between two gays or lesbians stream from far more than the desire to have a steady copulating partner. Like the heterosexuals’ search for a lover, homosexuals also look for love and loyalty, devotion and dedication, friendship and fidelity, commitment and companionship in their partner. The many parallels and similarities between a man-woman relationship and man-man or woman-woman relationship make homosexual domestic violence equally alarming as that of the heterosexual’s. Since, as I have said earlier, violence is also about power and control, I wouldn’t be surprised if gay and lesbian domestic violence occurs in relatively the same proportions as domestic violence in heterosexual affairs. Only, there are no 24-hour crisis hotlines or emergency shelters – well, not that I know of so far – that solely cater to domestic violence in same-sex affairs. There is no provision in the Constitution like Republic Act 9262 (Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004) that protects the welfare of gays and lesbians who underwent nightmarish experiences in the hands of their own partner. There is no Manay Gina de Venecia – a fierce supporter of battered women and abused children – who would take the cudgels for homosexuals battered by their own lovers.
For the lack of visible advocacy centers for victims of domestic violence in same-sex relationships, one way of effective healing from the traces of aggression is to be able to tell other people about your experience. Like a balm to the soul, being open about the suffering you endured has a healing effect.
If at the onset of the relationship you feel that your partner has the tendency to abuse you, it would be best to nip in the bud the imminent violence. Lovers are blind they say that they tend to ignore the signs of a relationship that is gearing towards an abusive affair. What they do not know – or what they refuse to acknowledge – is that they can be abused without necessarily being harmed physically. To discern this better, here’s a quick quiz: Is your partner threatening to leave you every time you have an intense discussion? Is your partner righteous to the point that he or she puts the blame on you when something goes wrong in your relationship? Does manipulation occur in your affair? Does your partner ignore your feelings? Does he or she exploit you financially? When you fight, does he or she destroy the appliances in your house? Did you ever catch him or her cheating on you?
If you answer "Yes" to any of those questions, chances are you are bound to have a violent affair with your partner. When physical assault happens, it is not love anymore. Love is kind and patient – to borrow a line or two from the Scriptures, whose many followers think that homosexuality is a sin that can be cured by exorcism or a disorder that can be corrected by therapy if not by Xanor and Epival – so what’s the point of hanging out with the person who does not know the meaning of love? Let go of the affair before he or she kills you. Forewarned is forearmed, remember?
When will the screaming ever stop?
(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. You may also snail mail me at The Philippine Star, c/o Allure Section, R. Oca Jr. corner Railroad Streets, Port Area, Manila.)
