Category Archive for: aktibismo

komentaryo

in defense of Nicole

This is a translation of the transcript of Joms Salvador’s comments on the unthinking and insensitive soundbites that have come out of Nicole’s last sworn statement.  Click here for the original Filipino version.

I could not help but respond to the views this note on Nicole’s “retraction” has elicited.

First, on the basis of what’s preferable or not, it is true that it would’ve been better had Nicole and her family not “backed out”, if they didn’t get tired and just pushed through with the fight. From any given perspective — as a woman, as a Filipino, even as a victim — no one can say that in the eyes of the public, it was better that Nicole had executed her last affidavit.

But on the point of what is right and what is wrong — a moralistic enterprise that has as its by-products the notions of whether Nicole is scared or brave, selfish or selfless, shameful or decent — this should not be an issue here.

The reason is simple: we are not Nicole, we are not the woman who has had to face the distaste and ambivalence of the public, we are not the Filipina victim who is fighting a rapist, protected by both the US and Philippine governments.

Also, given thatNicole has conceded, has backed out at this point, does this mean that she wasn’t raped at all? If we analyze her affidavit well, she did not say that she wasn’t raped. What she said was this: she wasn’t sure if a rape happened. She said that maybe it was her fault, maybe she did or said something that allowed for her and Smith to become intimate.

Nowhere in the affidavit did Nicole say that she was taking back all the circumstances that surrounded the rape in Subic on November 1 2005: Smith carried a practically unconscious Nicole from the Nepture Bar as if she were a pig; Smith raped Nicole inside a moving Starex van; after which, Smith left Nicole on the sidewalk of Alava Pier, with her pants down and a used condom sticking to her skin. No one has said or proven these to be untrue, no one has said that none of these instances didn’t happen.

The Filipina Nicole was raped on November 1 2005 in Subic Philippines.

American soldier Daniel Smith raped her.

The law and the decision of the Makati Regional Trial Court are clear about Smith’s verdict: Smith took advantage of Nicole’s drunken state. Physical and circumstantial evidence proved that Smith raped Nicole.

Or have people conveniently forgotten this so that they can continue to view and judge Nicole based on the stereotype they so wish her to be?

Lastly, in order to understand Nicole and this last decision she has made, it is important to understand what rape is, and what happens to women victimized by it, especially for the ones like Nicole, who was raped by a soldier of the most powerful imperialist country in the world, who holds the most puppet-government in Asia by the neck.

This is the thing to do, instead of brandishing moralistic rhetoric to blame the victim of rape.

between the Philippine Daily Inquirer, among other major newspapers, posting images of her for all the world to see and calling the affidavit a “retraction” which IT IS NOT; between the conservative old men who fight among themselves (wow, namecalling! how macho!) and who think they are more intelligent than the rest of us because they (1) love to quote from the law (as if this has excused the Americans from trampling on this country time and again) and (2) blame everything on activism (as if they know what it means, when all they prove is that it has now become fashionable to be America-loving anti-activist fascists), and the women and men across generations who have said that Nicole is a disappointment, a waste of our time, a loser. what has become clear is this: we do not understand. and like the American soldier Daniel Smith, we would much rather work on the presumption that Nicole was a woman who deserved what she got (oh, pray tell, which kind of woman is this?), instead of seeing November 1 2005 for what it is: the night that a Filipina named Nicole was raped by American soldier Daniel Smith, period.

rape has nothing to do with the social class, the career, the life of a woman — much less how much she drank — at that point of becoming victim. rape has everything to do with a man eaten up by hubris, and imagining that he can get away with violence.

komentaryo

tungkol kay Nicole ni Joms Salvador

hindi ko mapigilang magkomento sa ilang mga naging pahayag hinggil sa note na ito.

una, sa pamantayan ng ‘preferable’ o hindi, totoo namang mas maganda sana kung hindi “umatras” si nicole at ang kanyang pamilya. kung hindi sana sila napagod at nagtuloy-tuloy na lang sa laban. sa anumang punto de bista — bilang kapwa babae, bilang kapwa Pilipino, o kahit pa bilang biktima — walang puwedeng magkaila na mas maganda at kaayaaya sa mata ng publiko kung hindi inexecute ni nicole yung huli niyang affidavit.

pero sa punto ng tama o mali — iyang moralistikong pagwawasiwas na iyan ng kaugnay ng pamantayang duwag ba o matapang, makasarili ba o selfless, kahiya-hiya ba o marangal — hindi dapat diyan hilahin ang usaping ito.

simple lang ang dahilan: hindi tayo si nicole, hindi tayo ang babaeng kailangang humarap sa alimura o ambivalence ng publiko, hindi tayo ang biktimang pinay na kinakalaban ang isang rapist na protektado kapwa ng gobyerno ng US at ng pilipinas.

pangalawa, kung sumuko man ngayon si nicole, ibig bang sabihin hindi na siya ni-rape? kung uuriratin ang bagong affidavit niya, wala siyang sinabing hindi siya ni-rape. ang sinabi niya ay hindi siya sigurado kung may rape na nangyari. sabi niya baka raw kasalanan niya, baka raw may ginawa o sinabi siya na naging dahilan para maging “intimate” sila ni smith.

wala ni isa man dun sa recent niyang affidavit ang nagsasaad na binabawi niya ang mga sirkumstansya ng rape sa subic noong nov 1, 2005 : binuhat palabas ni smith ang isang halos unconscious na si nicole mula sa neptune bar na parang baboy; ni-rape habang nasa loob ng umaandar na starex van; pagkatapos ay itinapon sa gilid ng daan sa may alava pier na nakababa pa ang pantalon at may nakadikit na gamit na condom. walang bumabawi sa ganitong mga paglalarawan at pagpapatotoong may nangyaring rape. ni-rape si nicole noong 2005 sa subic. at si daniel smith ang nang-rape sa kanya.

malinaw ang sinasabi ng batas at ang desisyon ng makati regional trial court sa verdict nito kay smith: sinamantala ni smith ang ganung state ni nicole. pinatunayan ng physical at circumstancial evidences na ni-rape ni smith si nicole.

o baka naman pati ito kinalimutan na ng ilan para lang sumakto sa iskema ng pagkastigo kay nicole?

huling punto na lang: para maunawaan si nicole at ang naging desisyon niya nitong huli, kailangang unawain kung ano ang rape at ano ang nangyayari sa mga babaeng biktima ng rape, lalo na iyong mga katulad ni nicole na ang nanggahasa ay sundalo ng pinakamakapangyarihang imperyalistang bansa sa daigdig na hawak sa leeg ang pinakatutang gobyerno sa asya.

mas mainam na gawin ito, kaysa magwasiwas ng kung anu-anong moralistikong retorika para manisi ng isang biktima ng rape.

kultura

in mourning

the real thang is coming out in the Inquirer daw this week. but just had to get this out of my head, about why exactly i’m so sad, and am in fact, in mourning:

because FrancisM just might be able to take credit for the kind of activism I found I was open to, having been exposed to him as a rapper and as a Pinoy when i was a 14-year old girl, who thought that rap — among many other things — could only be for Americans. (more…)

komentaryo

Shameless

It’s a downright shame that on the year of the University of the Philippines’ Centennial, one that has been celebrated with much publicity and fanfare and cash, we hear many stories of how the university has turned on its own. Students have to deal with a higher tuition fee and the difficult process of qualifying for the STFAP (one full scholar? unacceptable!). Janitors like Mang Meliton are given P.92 centavos as retirement pay after 41 years of service. Where is the justice in that?

And then there’s the story of Prof. Sarah Raymundo – one that has done the rounds of blogs, has warranted statements from scholars and activists here and abroad, and has been the bane of the Department of Sociology’s existence since everything blew over. And rightfully so. Because what happened to Sarah can happen to anyone who plays by the rules, does more than what’s required, but who is still deemed unworthy of permanent status in the University. What has happened to her can and will happen again, in a University of the Philippines that allows its departments to unilaterally decide on the future of its faculty members, ignoring what it is they have contributed to the University. What has happened to Sarah will happen again, in a Department of Sociology that has yet to come clean about her case.

In the meantime, one can’t help but ask: what is it that’s more important than Sarah’s academic work (international conferences, published essays in books and refereed journals, extension work, a graduate degree) in a University that teaches us about the value of getting published and the need for continuous study? What is it that weighs heavier than teacher evaluations that prove how students learn from her, and would take her classes again and again?

The answer seems simple enough: it’s Sarah’s politics. That’s as much as she’s been told by her superiors in the department, and this is all that this can be about given how Sarah has met all requirements for tenure. This is about her involvement in issues within and beyond the academe, it’s because she has decided not to sit on a fence and watch the world collide. It’s because Sarah’s an activist, and not the kind that only panders to what is politically correct when it is popular (for that is really just an opportunist). Instead she involves herself in issues that are important because relevant, and for this she is being made to pay dearly. What is wrong with getting involved in the issue of the missing U.P. students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno? What is unacceptable about her volunteer work for the human rights organization Karapatan? Why must she be made to apologize for the kind of teaching she does – which the Department of Sociology has deemed wrong – because some of her students have become activists themselves?

Any person who has been a student would know that some teachers can change our lives. Any student who changes her ideological leanings may pinpoint one teacher who has made her re-think her beliefs, re-assess her practices, without realizing that in fact she is only reacting to her own history, her own class contradictions. If and when a student becomes an activist, no teacher can take credit for it. To do so would be egotistical, and that’s to imagine that all students enter the classroom tabula rasa.

And yet it seems that the Department of Sociology’s active imagination has created a picture of Sarah as someone who consciously and conscientiously works towards turning students into her clones. Something that is impossible to prove, and is really more a matter of the pot calling the kettle black: there are undoubtedly teachers who want to create little mini-mes who will repeat what they say as if they are gods, who will put them on a pedestal and pinpoint them as mentors, who will forever be unable to look them in the eye and presume equality. Only teachers who see this as the correct order of things, will imagine that Sarah is the same. Only the powerful administrators can use this to take away the house and home Sarah has known the University and the Department of Sociology to be, political and ideological disagreements notwithstanding.

Sarah is a leftist, and the last time I looked there was no need to apologize for being so. Not when the work one does, the essays one writes and gets published, the conferences one is invited to attend, the M.A. one gets, is a product as well of that activism. There is nothing extraneous to one’s ideology, yes? So why is Sarah being made to suffer for what she believes in? Given so many tenured faculty members who are at the other end of the ideological spectrum, what can this be but a witch hunt? An academic killing of the progressive faculty of the University?

This is so much bigger than Sarah of course, as in this country real killings and disappearances of activists continue to happen everyday. But what has happened to Sarah, in the context of the publicity that has surrounded U.P.’s Centennial Celebrations, is proof of what the University has become.

So I take it back. It is perfect that this happened to Sarah on the year of U.P.’s Centennial. It reveals to us all, alumni and students, faculty and employees, that the University’s activist past is all lost glory, and is only celebrated when it is convenient and romantic. In truth, it is now anti-progressive and anti-activist, and it will endanger the life of its own, take away house and home, for reasons that are nothing but petty, everything and unacceptable. In many ways, this Centennial showed U.P. to be ultimately and unabashedly shameless.

komentaryo

questioning the usual

an essay by Ninotchka Rosca, aptly titled The Usual Can Be Criminal, on the ways in which our notions of womanhood and the roles we play, allow for us all to be victims.

such an enlightening read, even when we can only truly imagine what our domestic helpers are going through as they sacrifice their own families for a life of discrimination elsewhere. my favorite quotes:

“Household work has been historically women’s slave shackles, rendering her a service unit in the family power structure, stunting her growth and development, erasing her sense of self.”

“<…> having a household servant impacts even the employer who slides into this semi-feudal role of patriarch and patron. I hope others will seriously develop a political economy of housework. A serious one.”