Category Archive for: conversations

komentaryo

From Mocha to Krizette: What to do with irresponsible commentary?

It was difficult not to be transfixed, watching pro-Duterte social media personalities in the TriComm hearing respond to questions about things they have said, posted online, screencaps and all.

It was much like that meme called expectation vs reality. The expectation was for a grand display of arrogance, a show of force, from people whose voices and faces inundate political social media algorithms with their brand of incendiary commentary. This expectation is not unfounded: they had already shown a united front by ignoring the first invitations to attend this same inquiry, and they had seemed to quite enjoy the mainstream attention, including the support of people like veteran journalist Vergel Santos who believed, as Duterte social media personalities did, that the invitation in and by itself was a violation of the right to free speech.

The reality though was this: faced with screencaps of the things they’ve said recently on current issues, and questioned about the truth these opinions carry, they were cut down to size. There were raised voices, pleading and whining, and then calm, quiet engagement—and agreement—with the heightened elderly macho emotions of the dominantly male Committee. Apologies, forced and otherwise, were made; fear and harassment were invoked; vlogger tears fell.

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kultura

Llamas, Heydarian, Esguerra: The post-Duterte macho punditry

The thing with six years of a fascist leadership like Duterte’s, built on fragile masculinity and misogyny and violent rhetoric and male chauvinism is that it changes us culturally. Women and the LGBTQIA+ community are more sensitive, and therefore angrier, and rightfully so. We are also exhausted.

But the men. Oh the men.

It’s one thing to have had to deal with the likes of Banat By and Jeffrey Celis during Duterte years and the first years or so of Marcos governance when SMNI continued to give them a platform. It’s another thing altogether to find that even men who should know better, ones who claim they are better, media personalities even, can use exactly the same tone and tenor, the arrogance, the same machismo, as that which the six years of Duterte had enabled and encouraged.

And of course this could only surface at scale when they are talking about a woman like Sara Duterte. Because there is nothing like a woman in rage to get men frothing at the mouth.

I will admit that the impulse to label SaraD for her year-end political performances was strong. After all, we had come from six years of old man Duterte doing those midnight madness press cons, and her Blairwitch Project version just brought it all back. Consider too that those press conferences about imagining beheadings and wanting to exhume the dead and talking to assassins to take down the Pres-FirstLady-SpeakerOfTheHouse trio were happening alongside Congressional Inquiries where she refused to take the oath and Senate Inquiries where she shiminetted her way through all the questions about accountability and public funds.

Which is all to say that it was easy, too too easy, to simply fall back on calling her every kind of crazy after the two presscons. After all, we called her father that, too. But what is unique to SaraD is that macho commentary reduced her to only that. And given the digital and media platforms that have the same male opinions on repeat, then it is normalized as discourse for a certain algorithm: the woman in rage is an unhinged woman.

Ronald Llamas is at the forefront of this male chauvinism, but it is because he is being given the platform across mainstream media’s Storycon (also hosted by men, with a woman on live video) and guestings on shows like Karen Davila’s Headstart, as he always is on digital platforms from Christian Esguerra to Richard Heydarian, and is co-host of Bilyonaryo’s four-male panel called Kwatro Kantos. These hosts practically give Llamas free rein over conversations, and in relation to the SaraD press cons already frame the conversations so that it justifies the sexism.

Read the rest on Vera Files.

komentaryo

Thinking of FVR

In 2016, I met FVR at the book launch of Carmen Pedrosa in Fully Booked BGC.

It was serendipitous in more ways than one.

This was in June, when those of us elsewhere in the political spectrum (i.e., non-Duterte voters) were still adjusting to the idea of Duterte as President. We saw FVR arrive at the launch while Ma’am Carmen was speaking, and as I have been trained to always have a bunch of our independently published books in the car, we scrambled to get a copy of Angela‘s EDSA Uno Dos Tres for FVR.

After the event proper, during which he spoke and paid tribute to Ma’am Carmen, but also poked fun at her seeming fascination with Imelda (haha!), I went up to him to give him a copy of the book, introducing myself as my mother’s daughter. Ma’am Carmen stepped in to introduce me as well, as a young writer who was with a group of old journos on a China trip the year before. FVR’s eyes lit up, and out came jokes you would hear from your grandfather or Tito, that it was easy to laugh-out-loud and roll ones eyes at him.

At some point we sat down, and he asked how Mama was, what she’s been doing—he remembers having sat down for interviews with her in the 90’s for the first EDSA book, and so I said, all of that is in EDSA Uno, plus whatever new information on EDSA that has since come up. He asked what it is I do, what it is Vito does, when I said I was a columnist with The Manila Times, we talked about politics a bit. But it was a very light conversation, the tenor of which was mostly Lolo jokes: “Totoo ba ang glasses mo?” he asked. And when I said yes, he pokes his eye to reveal that his is just a frame with no lenses: “Ito kasi para matalino lang tingnan.” (more…)

radikalchick.lit

What We Know Of Darkness*

Is what we know of the certainty of light. As in the impulse to unite on shared battles, the ones so crucial they survive the passage of time, are embraced across generations, as it was brought to bear on that moment 75 years ago, when the Philippine flag flew highest in the air for the first time.

Is what we know of our capacity to create light. Despite, or because of fear. Spreading photocopied stories on the real state of the nation; supporting a free press that bites incessantly, draws blood unfailingly; living off a lush grapevine of narratives passed surreptitiously at gatherings. Until the voices grew louder to the point of paralysis: a boycott of wants, needs, cravings—all sacrifice, maybe rebellion—aimed squarely at the corrupt and wealthy. We practiced and won on civil disobedience 35 years ago, a citizenry discovering its collective power.

Is what we know of carrying a torch. For revolutions that we fashion ourselves. Bright enough to overthrow a dictator, or unseat a President, or take back our freedoms. (more…)

komentaryo

Defending a rapist? Sobriety and hunos-dili, please!

Hate and lies don’t stop in a time of a pandemic—we are after all under a government that lives off this kind of propaganda. But when it comes from regular people who deserve respect for fighting for the poor and oppressed, the farmers and the peasants and the workers, you can only be taken aback, to say the least. That they would even take the time to fashion you as enemy, throw shade in your direction, especially on social media comment threads where discrediting a person is quick and easy, here and now, well, there is a time of reckoning for that.

This is not that time, but it is the time for some clarification. So let me take precious energy to talk about the accusation that I “defended a rapist” last year. A controversial, sensationalist statement to make, a juicy piece of news to hear about the person who wrote a review of Ang Huling El Bimbo in 2018, and questioned its handling of the rape of the lead character Joy; the same person who likes to see herself as a feminist, who writes about being woman in this country, who builds upon the kawomenan of many others. But of course via people like artist and peasant advocate Donna Miranda, what will surface is nothing at all about what I’ve written, or the play in question. Instead it will be this statement from her: “Gusto ko man basahin ang review na yan nahihirapan ako bilang nagtanggol ng rapist yung manunulat a year after.”

What a way to take down a person: throw a one-liner, attack her, try to ruin her credibility. Who cares if it’s true?

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