Today, sisters, we resist
Watching the TV coverage of International Women’s Day on Wednesday night last week, Christopher asked, “Is there an international men’s day?” He was not being defensive, just curious, maybe a bit confused. After all, he lives in a house where the women rule and that has defined his experience.
When I responded with, “Isn’t every day Men’s Day?”— he wisely kept his peace.
I had come from an exhilarating morning at Miriam College where women (and some men) celebrated International Women’s Day listening to Vice President Leni Robredo and Senator Leila de Lima (via video) talk about misogyny in government. Senator de Lima’s absence was marked with a scarf and a sign on a couch that read, “The shawl must go on.” Senator Risa Hontiveros discussed recent triumphs and setbacks for women in the legislature, the executive and society at large. The durable Inang Laya duo of Becky Abraham and Karina David stirred the audience with their timeless feminist songs. Their signature Babae Ka had us on our feet, dancing and singing out loud.
We women may control our households, but we live in a country where women are routinely downgraded, put in their place by the menfolk, and are often blamed for being women by men and sometimes, other women. Even women in high office are subject to public embarrassment by the highest officials who, with no small amount of lasciviousness, have reduced them to their body parts. VP Leni recalled the low blow by the President who said he was distracted by her exposed knees, which drew guffaws from his supportive audience. Recently, I heard the President make a pass in public at a female undersecretary, drawing nervous laughter from the audience of local officials (who seem to be more gender sensitive than the President, but know which side of their bread is buttered).
And, of course, there is the disgusting “joke” that he repeated at least twice during the campaign that the mayor should have been first in the gang-rape of a dead Australian missionary. His wolf-whistling a reporter, and his question about the scent of the vagina of a reporter’s wife at a press conference brought the level of misogyny to a new low.
The legislature hasn’t been far behind. Who can forget, or forgive, the congressmen (and some women) who relentlessly slut-shamed Senator Leila de Lima on nationally televised hearings on her alleged links to drug lords in prison? In the Senate, the President’s surrogates had no qualms about depriving this strong outspoken woman of the chairmanship of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights after she brought in Edgar Matobato who testified that yes, there is a Davao Death Squad, and the former mayor of Davao City had everything to do with it.
It is not easy being a woman in the time of Duterte. To borrow from the title of the Coen brothers’ bloody 2007 thriller, the Philippines is quickly becoming No Country for Women. Strong women like Risa Hontiveros, Leila de Lima, and Leni Robredo have dared stand up to the official misogyny and will probably be punished for it, and they will survive. But there is the matter of mater dolorosa — the helpless, grieving, disempowered women in the slums who have no defense against abuse and indignity.
The lives of impoverished women are difficult enough, and the administration’s war against drugs has made it worse. Large numbers of mothers, widows, sisters, and daughters are keening over the loss of their loved ones who have been summarily executed, allegedly because they fought back in the face of arrest. Few have bothered to file cases against the perpetrators, and few have been properly looked into by lackadaisical police investigators. These cases are as dead as the victims, but we are left with enduring images of women, the bearers and nurturers of life, cradling the lifeless bodies of their husbands, fathers, and children.
Comes now the death penalty bill which was overwhelmingly approved by a compliant House of Representatives last week. We can expect a partner bill lowering the age of criminal discernment from 15 to nine, which means that a third grader can be tried and imprisoned, maybe even suffer a death sentence by hanging or lethal injection. Does the Congress even think of the mothers, most of them poor, who must bear this travesty of the right of their children to be children?
It is the underprivileged women who bear most the indignity and deprivation, the casual disrespect for their persons, the loss of their loved ones brutally and perfunctorily murdered right in their homes. Women, who hold up half the sky, are called upon to come to the aid of our beleaguered sisters by resisting the culture of poverty, exploitation, misogyny, and death. We call on our leaders to respect women as human beings, eradicate anti-poor and anti-women policies, and ensure the safety and security of families by putting an end to extrajudicial killings.
As Risa Hontiveros made the call on International Women’s Day, “Today, sisters, we resist.” HEART & MIND Paulynn Sicam
