De Lima slams Duterte, allies as misogynists

Sen. Leila de Lima tagged President Rodrigo Duterte as a "flaming misogynist" as she also criticized him and his allies for trivializing women's issues by making fun of them.

De Lima was a guest speaker at the first "Buhay at Babae" Forum, organized by several women's rights groups and hosted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on Wednesday.

The senator, who Duterte has accused of being involved in the illegal drug trade, said the President is able to get away with this "by humor."

She added that the same attitude could be seen in other elected officials, notably in Congress.

"I just never realized that, aside from one flaming misogynist sitting in the highest echelon of power, who thinks rape jokes are actually funny let alone worthy of a president, I would also be working so closely with some of them," she said.

"I have had to sit there and roll my eyes to the ceiling as 'unparliamentary' innuendos about the Visayan term 'libog' and the surname of a layer for a witness being 'malaki' were made in the middle of a serious matter in order to satisfy their phallic obsession or, perhaps more accurately, insecurities," she added.

"But I realized that that's how they get to us. We are lulled by humor. Women's issues are trivialized by jokes. By the mentality that it's okay to make jokes about them, and we are being 'overly sensitive' or 'KJ' (killjoy) by not finding them appropriate," she went on.

Here, she showed video clips of Duterte's controversial statements about women, including when Duterte cursed at her in an interview and his remarks during the election campaign about slain Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill.

"That's your president," she remarked, which gained adverse reactions from the audience that is composed mostly of representatives from women's rights groups and other advocates.

"This is not about having a sense of humor, but about having sensitivity towards real issues affecting women. By going along, by laughing along, by keeping silent, or allowing ourselves to be bullied into silence, we are unconsciously being groomed to laugh at abuse and, in so laughing, becoming abusers ourselves," she also said.

'Slut-shaming'

In her speech, De Lima referred to the controversy about a sex video that allegedly features her and her supposed lover Ronnie Dayan, her former driver-bodyguard accused of collecting drug money that was used for her senatorial bid.

There was an earlier proposal to play the said video at the House inquiry on the proliferation of drugs at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP), supposedly to establish De Lima's involvement in the drug trade.

The senator has denied the existence of such video.

"Walang mailabas na credible evidence against me so they consciously use the old 'sex, drugs, and violence' approach to shield their hypocrisy and incompetence," she said.

In particular, she scored House Minority Floor Leader Danilo Suarez for reportedly replying "Meron ba nu'n?" when pressed if he didn't think showing the said sex tape was a form of slut-shaming.

"Yes, Representative Danilo Suarez, to answer your question, there is such a thing," she said.

De Lima then said that to guide Suarez and his colleagues "towards the path of enlightenment," they should undergo training on human rights and gender sensitivity required of all government personnel "involved in the protection and defense of women against gender-based violence" as provided in the Magna Carta of Women.

"[S]ince you, as a lawmaker—a lawmaker!—presumably swore to protect the rights of women, may I kindly suggest that you and your wise colleagues all undergo such training," she said.

"Maybe, in your wisdom, you’ll actually think about it so that, next time, when a young reporter asks you about slut-shaming, you wouldn’t be caught with your pants down again, so to speak," she added. 

De Lima defined slut-shaming as making women ashamed of their sexuality, which she said is "an essential part of our being."

"Apparently, we are good enough for pleasuring our partners, giving birth to our children, taking care of them, but heaven forbid we actually dare to own our sexuality, to find pleasure in human relationships and contact. If we do: we are women of the world! We are immoral! We should all go and hang ourselves," she said.

Then added: "No. You don’t own us."

"If mothers have to go through the pain of birthing us into this world, the least—the absolute very least—we can do is to make it none of our business whether she enjoyed the process of conception," she went on. "It is no one’s business but a woman’s and, to some extent, her partner’s.  But ultimately, hers." — BAP, GMA News