This website should only be accessed if you are at least 18 years old or of legal age to view such material in your local jurisdiction, whichever is greater. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography). She has a postgraduate degree in Gender (Sexuality) from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening scholar. Santos writes about gender and sexuality and its intersections with migrant labor, intimacy, and the politics of equality. The destiny of a 100 million people over the next six years depend on it. On May 9, we will need to decide which side we are on. The side that disregards the plight of citizens still reeling from yet another typhoon and calls reporters to a posh hotel. The side that gnashes their teeth through a two-hour press conference just to reiterate that they will not relinquish power to a woman. The side that crumbles from the extreme discomfort of having a woman lead. Men with fragile egos exposed a side of machismo and toxic masculinity. People watching that train wreck of a press conference saw grown men banding together to whine about how little attention they are getting in the poll surveys. Well, some of them seem to be perfectly happy swimming around in their self-inflated egos. It took the tidal wave of backlash from netizens to make the men snap out of it. It would make more sense for these men who have no chance at all of winning in the election to withdraw their bets and consolidate their voting base under Robredo, who has a chance at winning.īut no, they still view next month’s trip to the ballot boxes as a popularity contest that will launch their showbiz career rather than a presidential election where the stakes are the lives of 100 million people. The more candidates there are, the more votes are going to be distributed among them.
It will only take about 20% of the votes to win the presidency. Statistically and mathematically, this makes no sense. The dictator’s son has not engaged in public debates and has not explained his political platform outside of a call for “unity.” He has no evident political platform apart from again attaching the Marcos name to the presidency and rewriting history.Īnd yet, the male candidates who have no chance of winning the presidential race asked the one other person who stands a chance to, as Isko Moreno put it, “be a hero and withdraw.” The same dictator who treated the nation’s treasury as his bank account and hunted down activists and dissidents. In less than 15 days, we are going to decide if we are going to elect the son of a deposed dictator to the highest office. has been able to evade not only questions about his private life but also questions about the years of dictatorship under his father. Owing also to a mass disinformation and historical revisionist campaign, Marcos Jr. While VP Robredo has to field attacks on her personal life, her closest contender Bongbong Marcos has enjoyed most of his life living off the ill-gotten wealth his family amassed during their years in power. Their antics drew the much deserved disgust of the public, but still, Senator de Lima remains in detention. Using the tired trope of an alleged sex video, male legislators feasted on the details of the senator’s private life. We only need to look at the case of Senator Leila de Lima to see how shaming using sexuality has far more serious consequences for women.ĭe Lima’s sexuality was used to discredit and humiliate her. President Duterte tried to shame Isko Moreno by surfacing his beginnings in showbiz and calling him names.
Meanwhile, male politicians are unscathed by attacks on their sexuality. In the case of Vice President Robredo, whispers about a boyfriend, about a pregnancy, about being a wife ring louder than her achievements as a public official, her political platform, and a critical assessment of her ability to lead.
Less obvious but just as insidious are the attack on a woman’s sexuality that run from her physical appearance to her private life. In the realm of politics, rumors of a sex videos are the most obvious display of the weaponization of a woman’s sexuality or the various components of a person that include biological sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual practices, and preferences.