Some Notes on Rape Jokes.

Rape isn’t funny.

Image via http://newint.org

That some people would protest and use comedy, or say, “Pikon lang kayo,” is worthy of rage, because that flimsy excuse justifies the trivialization of human pain. It allows for the belittling of harassment, trauma, and the fundamental violation of a human person.

If we can laugh about rape, then we can laugh about all kinds of abuse, too. It also allows us to poke fun at many other kinds of human suffering: child abuse, poverty, genocide. Because after all, if we can laugh about rape, then sky’s the limit, isn’t it!

But, you may say, it’s all in the context. Obviously, in a sexual harassment course, or a self-defense 101 class, laughing about the possibility of rape would be inhumane. Unthinkable. But you know, if you’re at a comedy bar or watching a sitcom, obviously, the context has changed: you’re allowed to laugh because that’s the whole point of the show!

Wrong.

The context may have changed for you, because you have shifted to the neutral side. You are now neither a student or an employee learning about the dangers or possibilities of rape. Upon witnessing a rape joke and laughing at it (and in defending it), you have made the conscious decision to identify yourself as passive: neither the joker nor the one being joked about. In other words, you are neither the actual rapist (in the joke and outside of it), nor the victim (in the joke or outside of it).

In fact, you have consciously and mistakenly made the decision that the people around you (particular but not limited to women), could not possibly, logically, be offended by a joke!

In fact, so certain are you about this assumption, that you have, in one stroke, also assumed that every single person around you (again particular but not limited to women), have never encountered a dark alley, a lewd stare, an unwelcome invitation, a not-so-accidental brush against the skin from a stranger – or even worse,  the act of rape itself.

What should be glaringly clear right now is that rape victims don’t go around with a badge saying they were raped, thus necessitating a culture of sensitivity, not one of denial, passivity, or plain asshole ideology that context changes personal experience, or neutralizes trauma.

And in a third world country where the middle and upper classes are outnumbered by the sheer number of the masses, to justify rape jokes is to justify the fact that a substantial  number of Filipinas who are exposed to the daily possibility of rape – or have already been raped –  do not even have the economic and educational means to either protect themselves or seek justice.

There is no neutral ground when it comes to rape.

The belief that a comedy performance erases pain after rape is a delusion.

But, you may protest, what about satire? Doesn’t that poke fun into serious social problems such as corruption and economic problems? Isn’t joking about rape also hitting hard on rapists?

The answer is no.

Satire is dark humor which often uses caricature or quotes to enhance the crassness of a human condition. It often displays the norm in contrast with what should be in order to expose the irony of difficulties brought about by the problematic situation (i.e., corruption).

Rape jokes, on the other hand, capitalize on the notion that being raped might actually be funny.

They suggest that the possibility of being tied up, pressed against a wall, or pinned on the floor, while your attacker gets what he wants from your body, completely disregarding your concept of self-worth, while threatening to kill you, is well, funny! And it’s not just funny because it’s funny, it’s funny because well, you’re at a comedy performance and a comedian’s speaking so hell yeah, why shouldn’t you laugh?

So if you can laugh at the possibility of your friends and family (whether male or female but particularly the latter) being raped, tell that to their faces.

Put a face to rape victims and laugh.

This is rape culture at its best: when it tells you that the woman is at fault for being raped because she wore that short skirt; when it tells you that rape is justified because she was out late; when it tells you that any woman who flirts wants to get raped; when it tells young girls to be careful but never teaches men the value of sexual consent.

Men should be offended when someone claims that women should prevent rape by not wearing certain things or not going certain places or not acting in a certain way. That line of thinking presumes that you are incapable of control. That you are so base and uncivilized that it takes extraordinary effort for you to walk down the street without raping someone. That you require a certain dress code be maintained, that certain behaviors be employed so that maybe today, just maybe, you won’t rape someone.

It presumes that your natural state is rapist (original source unknown)

Rape culture is at its best when it teaches silence.

And your laughter – that cacophonous complicity, that insistence that people just can’t take a joke – is the worst silence of all.

Image via http://thinkprogress.org

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Now tell me again that the backlash against Vice Ganda was mere overreaction.

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And girls, remember, you aren’t obliged.

I Refuse to be Whitened

But that doesn’t seem to matter a lot these days, especially once I set foot inside any kind of store that sells skin-related products.

Yesterday, after we went out for a small family get-together, I asked to be dropped off at a department store. It wasn’t late yet, but since it was a Sunday night and my eleven month-old nephew was getting restless, I had to rush while the car went around the building, waiting for me to finish.

Now I generally stick to certain facial products once I’ve discerned that I am, as we call it in our mother tongue, “hiyang” to these. Other than excessive oil, I don’t have an urgent skin concern, and acne only bothers me when I’m stressed, approaching the time of the month, or (and this is most often the reason), sleep-deprived.

In fact, the last is the reason that my face has only started to recover from a new deluge of small pimples on my chin and a few on my right cheek. Thankfully, a friend recommended a BB cream from a certain well-known brand –one which is infamous for its whitening products. Hearing its name, I balked, but my friend assured me that they have a BB cream that isn’t meant to whiten skin, and that the formulation of their product is of the highest quality.

Eager to cater to both my skin care concerns (read: the first being skin-care pertaining to the ritual of washing, toning, and moisturizing and the second being blemish-control), I walked into the store last night with the recommended item already added to my usual mental list of toiletry must-have’s.

However, once I got to the shelf where the recommended product under this brand was displayed, I was a little confused because there were only two variations of the product: one for anti-aging and one for whitening, which annoyed me because I was interested in either; I thought, didn’t they have one that was just BB cream, full-stop?

Of course, it’s easy to point out given what I believe about the politics of whitening and how much people are willing to underestimate the gravity of politics behind the symbolism attached to black versus white, that I should’ve gotten the former. After all, logically speaking, it would be best to use anti-aging products early on, as a preventive measure. But then, I argued with myself, age-wise, I don’t feel the need to use any products of this kind; I also don’t believe that beauty is inversely proportional with age.

I looked at the other variation. It said it was for whitening. Then again, I argued with myself, I’m not exactly morena (a point on which, I am sure, patrons of whitening products would be eager to point out that “Hindi ka naman maitim kaya ang dali para sa’yo na sabihing mali ang magpaputi,” thereby with one stone diminishing the entire principle upon which the pro-woman and anti-imperialist sentiment is founded). In fact, in my family, I have the lightest skin tone and have often had to tell people that I am neither Japanese, Chinese, nor Korean —  so what difference would it make if I used one tube of this product?

So in the end, I settled for the whitening variant. However, once I got home and examined the tube, I was dismayed with myself — and simultaneously, might I add, with the whole system itself — because the product promised to work its whitening magic from the inside out, and it was this promise, with its biological implications, that really irked me. I was  annoyed with myself for being so caught up in making sure that my family wouldn’t have to wait too long for me, that I didn’t pick the other variant, as that now seemed the perfect choice

Still, when it comes down to it, I don’t really want that one, either. I mean, can’t a woman have all the other healthy-skin benefits associated with the brand without the promise of whiter skin or the call to the new fountain of youth?

Truth be told, it’s this kind of system that irritates me, for it is an ingenious and insidious marketing decision both, to assume that consumers will only want either of the two — anti-aging or whitening. Of course, as with many things these days, it’s a numbers game, and a vicious cycle, too. If more consumers seem to demand certain effects X and Y from a particular Brand A, why then of course Brand A complies, and via advertising, creates more demand.

More importantly, what offends me about the politics of it, is that it leaves you and me with little choice between what skin-care products we can buy. I dream of the day when I can once again walk into a store and not have to painstakingly go through every product lining the shelf in search for something that isn’t trying to convince me to become brighter, whiter, and therefore, it implies, better.

Where did this idea come from, I wonder, that every skin-related product for women has to have a whitening effect — to the point that even our “intimate areas” need to be given the same attention?

And not only women, but men, are being subjected to this whitening phenomenon! To what end? I don’t know. Right now, pressed for money (I have a strict budget for what I am allowed to spend on toiletries and makeup), I’ve already decided to use the BB cream I bought (and yes, in case you are curious, sans whatever whitening effect it promises to give my already light skin, it does go on as smoothly as promised and is better than other creams I’ve tried). I cannot wait until it runs out, however, so that I can start patronizing the other variant indefinitely — or, that is, until (yes, critical thinking and hope are not mutually exclusive, it seems) a third option (neither anti-aging or whitening) becomes available.

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One may wonder why I didn’t mention the brand name (although it is glaringly obvious). To which I will only say: but that is besides the point.

Let’s Talk About Power

More specifically, let’s talk about power at its dirtiest: when it abdicates due process for ulterior motives[1]; when it threatens you at the slightest – but vague – provocation; when it lashes out with all the angst of a fifteen year-old instead of using logic or sincerity in order to rectify a mistake; when it pulls other people down in order to justify its own beliefs, via an article that reads like it’s more concerned with university competition than the actual state of the poor[2].

Let’s talk about corruption as an open secret; let’s talk about celebrity and politics; let’s talk about how elections, no matter how rigged, are rooted in ideology – one that reinforces the power of the state, so that the winner is the winner is the winner, no matter what; let’s talk about the convenience of forgetting, and the cheap luxury of saying we remember, without any action.

Let us talk about these things, and then let us listen to the deadly (no pun intended) silence that ensues.

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[1] See also here.

[2] Because seriously, this is no time for intimations of competition, UAAP-wise or no.

And an aside: while we’re at it, let’s be clear that cybersex, hacking, cyber-squatting, forgery, and fraud, ought to be illegal. The libel clause, however, is another matter altogether.

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It’s a wonder what people can talk about during a one-hour lunch break; and how all else, it is a double-edged sword.

A Travel Monologue

I would be lying if I said that all this chaos regarding airport brawls, CCTV cameras (or the lack thereof), missing luggage, and too much air traffic doesn’t affect me in two points.

The first, is simply personal.

Sibulan Airport, April 2011

This time last year, I was in a different place. But more than missing co-fellows or the cold mountain air, I distinctly miss the transient existence that only waiting in an airport can inspire. There, your luggage, their your hand-carry (inside the book/s you know you cannot do without if you must wait), there the making sure that you’re in the right waiting place, that you hear the announcements overhead, that your ticket is neatly printed out and the impermanence of your situation is certain only because you are so undeniably there only to head somewhere else.

The second point is a point of class perspective. This is not to tag as irrelevant the discussions made regarding the anti-woman subconscious, the erroneous media handling of death threats, or the issue of thoughtless luggage-handling and SOPs by the airline. This is to say that while I know the validity of those arguments, and agree with them each of them in some sense (an epistemological view being my own personal choice; but if you have not read these other perspectives, I highly recommend that you do), I wonder at the after-effects of the issue at hand to the a.) airport security and b.) ground stewardess involved in the chaos.

Whatever the final word said on the issue, whatever court decision is made, whatever settlement agreed on, I can’t help but wonder about those who will be left behind in the dust. The celebrities and journalists, after the final word, will always have the channels of power that they’ve worked hard for: they will have adoring fans, other journalists eager to tell their perspective, royalties paid them for all their endorsements and cinematic work.

But the ground crew and airport security guards only have whatever wage their jobs dictate they get. Too they are given the stigma of being “incompetent”; of being “lackluster employees working for an irresponsible company.” It is not that the celebrities or media men involved in the fray do not have their own traumas–or their own children’s trauma to carry–it is that we must admit how they are privileged individuals in society who have the means to help them better cope with their traumas.

To narrow down the situation solely to a game of identifying who the victim/s is/are and who threw the first punch, may be necessary in legal assessment. But it does not tell the full story. And to disregard the other characters in the narrative and how the issue impacts their lives, is a failure of the imagination.

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I can only dream of a better local travelling process. Because oh! What a luxury it is to leave.

So Many Gods

This is a little late, written and posted when what others might deem as the worst part of the issue has come to pass, but probably is only timely in my own regard, having attended the opening of the ManilArt Gallery 2011 just last Wednesday, August 24, and just now more than ever remembering a research paper I wrote in my freshman year at college on F. Sionil Jose.

Because even as I attended something that had its own saving grace(s), I know what discomfort lies at the heart of it. What saddens me most about the controversy surrounding Mideo Cruz’s Polyteismo revolves around two things: denial and refusal. When I say denial, I mean the Catholic-related denial of the fact that what we see in the display of Polyteismo is but the putting-into-art of everyday Filipino life. If we should be offended by the coexistence of Christ’s face with a penis in close quarters, then we might as well be offended by split level Christianity that Fr. Jaime S. Bulatao, S.J. himself pointed out.

If people can spend so much time insisting that the CCP shouldn’t have wasted its space and money in displaying such blasphemous artwork, then surely we can also banish all the vendors around Quiapo Church in a reenactment of Christ’s rage against the money-changers outside the temple.

Then we should be able to sweep off every single child begging for themselves (or for syndicates, who can tell?) outside the churches and chapels and restaurants and hospitals alike. Then we should be able to give justice to what is termed “the single deadliest event for journalists in history”. Then we should be able to remember what August 25 meant just a year ago.

The refusal, on the other hand, we can find in such strong insistence that people shouldn’t be allowed to think for themselves. I agree wholeheartedly that art can be offensive. And I can’t deny that the people who can and will feel offended are not faceless characters but are rather tangibly the people around me. What I dislike so much, however, is the insistence that critical thinking isn’t needed in the situation. Let’s put it this way. All right, Chist + penis = offense; is tantamount to bad art. Or perhaps isn’t really art at all.

But why? Why is it bad art? Why isn’t it art at all? What is art? Not only in the sense of the word that makes people think of the Greeks or the Renaissance artists but art in the sense of Filipino culture and history?

And to be specific, what does the penis mean? Mr. Cruz himself gives that answer, but I cannot believe that it has never entered the minds of people like Imelda Marcos that the phallus is a symbol of power. That we even consider the opinions of Imelda Marcos on art and even more sadly, on art in relation to faith, is so unthinkable, the fact that it happens speaks volumes. 

Even the Church, I choose to believe, isn’t naive to the concept of phallic power, because no matter what anyone says, no one becomes ordained without years of study, and not just in the religious field, either. But this is a society that is extremely pararanoid when it comes to sex, and extremely synthetic instead of analytic, so much so that every mention of sex is now suddenly supportive of the RH Bill. This in the light of Kapamilya shows like Alyna, Katorse, and more recently, Reputasyon, that so very few complained about, even with their premises of virgin-as-sex-object. It’s criticism that’s so selective, it’s either it isn’t criticism at all, or that it isn’t faith at all. Perhaps both.

Because honestly, perhaps it was inevitable that the Church was going to step in and rage against Mr. Cruz. Perhaps it was inevitable that the government would only pay so much heightened attention to the arts in a case like this (passive-aggressive as it always has been when it comes to the humanities). I hate that people have questioned what little Mr. Cruz himself has consented to offer as answers (taking to mind that Polyteismo is itself an answer or a response to daily Filipino faith) when they themselves have failed to question, well, their own causes for their questions.

After all, isn’t it worth asking the President of the Philippines what he means when he says that “When you stoke conflict that is not an ennobling activity”? 

If this is so, what did Ninoy Aquino do then, when he challenged a dictator? Was that not “stoking conflict”?

But of course challenging dictatorship and putting up a so-called subversive piece of art are not the same thing. What I do think is so dangerous about the President’s statement is the implication that you can allow for a certain amount of freedom and then expect that there won’t be any conflict. When you give people even the smallest amount of freedom, conflict is inevitable, and that is as it should be. And if and when you declare that someone has crossed the lines, then you must first ask yourself what those lines are, and most importantly: who drew those lines? What is the intention of such lines?

I am not here arguing that the lines should be erased. I am here pointing out how ridiculous the counter-arguments have been against the CCP. I am here arguing how disgracefully our media have handled the situation.

And I am here showing how disappointed I am at how little people can back up their so-called reasons for putting Mr. Cruz down.

Case in point, I don’t understand at all what F. Sionil Jose was trying to say when he wrote against Mr. Cruz. I do not understand whether he was vainly attempting to reassert himself in the discourse of local art (and thus coming off as defensive instead of reasonable), or just griping that in his old age, he doesn’t understand what all these young people are calling art these days.

In any case, he fails miserably because of an x number of false assumptions on which his response is based. What was the use of claiming that had he been in the CCP’s shoes, he would have done otherwise? What was the use of pointing out that he was behind the operations of one of the earliest art galleries in Manila? A person who has the curriculum vitae to back up his arguments, precisely because he has this CV, doesn’t need to go through every accomplishment.

And that person certainly gains nothing in pointing out the people he knows in the industry, just as he gains no more respect in naming “the masters we studied in school, the sculptors of ancient Greece and Rome, the classical writers as well, Homer, Cervantes all of them” when he speaks of so local and particularly historical an event in art, faith, and politics.

Perhaps I should just admit that I’m disappointed on a personal scale because I expected a renowned Filipino writer who is absolutely insistent on a kind of literature that is socially active and relevant to be more critical of the progression of art in the country. You know what, I am not even averse to the possibility that maybe, just maybe Mr. Jose has a point. Maybe in light of other art works, Mr. Cruz’s collage pales in comparison and becomes nothing.

But how do you treat an essay that starts with, “The artist who set up that controversial Jesus Christ exhibit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) the other week must be grinning and enjoying all that brouhaha that has made him the central object of attention in the last few days” when the artist in question, the same one Mr. Jose implies to be petty, was awarded the CCP 13 Artists Award in 2003 and the Ateneo Art Awards in 2007? I don’t mean to say that we should all bow down to Mr. Cruz because of his accomplishments or renown. But I do mean to say that a condescending tone that implies no prior investigation of what you’re up against shows you to be a poor critic. And on top of that, a sourgrape that accomplishes nothing.

Can you treat an article that works on such premises seriously?

In the end, there’s a part of me that is glad that art can still spark people into debate. But when I speak of “debate” I do not mean disrespect,   nor a looking back at what the Western world has so far deemed as art. I do not mean the un-classy use of a writer’s excrement to prove a point, and nor do I mean the reminder of how stifling the Catholic faith can become in my country nor the event of media sensationalism.

But that’s exactly what happened here. And that’s what really devastates me. Because I love my country, and I love art, but I just don’t see the two together without conflict any time soon.

Or is that a good thing, now?

Covered White: Space Covered Over in the GlutaMax Ads

The thing that really pisses me off is that there is no longer any subtlety in these ads. You turn on the television and you see all those Pond’s commercials, all those installments in story-versions, the tale of the woman who gets her life back in seven days because she is whiter, because she looks younger. And the story is always told with subtlety. Yes, it is peppered with the same lie, the whiter the better, but it has enough class to veil it underneath the guise of romance, of a career, of a struggle in the workplace.

But when I first saw this blatant, really classless advertisement I realized that the skin whitening industry and its marketing has sunk to an all new low. Kutis Mayaman, it tells you; there are no pretensions about love or career, and for once even I am shocked that the frankness of it is appalling rather than relieving. Ah, yes, but take note, it seems to do it all with a rather fickle-minded tendency. Skin Lightening System, it tells you. Not whitening, but lightening. Dear reader, it presupposes that whitening and lightening are equal to one another, while salvaging whatever it can of the subtlety which is key to advertisements:

Whitening is whitening, means not black, not brown, means mestiza, means well, white. But lightening, that connotes light, connotes better, hints at a lightening of burdens, at a freshness of spirit, at being elevated from darkness, connoting problems, connoting heaviness, hinting at a phase in life that must be ended.

I am not really here to compare which whitening product has a better catch phrase or advertisement. But I am here to ask, am I the only one who sees this as a slap on the face, a real up-yours perspective that won’t even try the guise of fairy tale endings? Yes, those other commercials are insulting, yes, the idea of recreation in seven days falsely gives the idea of regeneration, god-like to women who can [re]gain career and youth and love. And yes I think that’s a whole lot of fancy covering for colonial mentality, but at least there, there is a hint of struggle, of overcoming that bitchy boss, of victory over the traditional would-be mother-in-law, but in the Glutamax ads there is the one thing that really pisses me off, which would be reductionism.

Because that’s what it does and you know it: reduces the struggle of the masses to a single thing, You want to be rich, well here it is, or at least, the closest you will get to it because that’s what you want, isn’t it? You don’t just want white skin, you want to be rich, it’s not the skin tone, it’s the hinted wealth behind it, after all!

And it’s easy, isn’t it, if you didn’t know any better (and in this country, it is, for many people a default setting not to know any better because, well, no one wants them to know any better), to think that it’s some kind of boon, some kind of helping hand, to be given this opportunity. Recognition after all, of your desire means attention. Never mind it that the real bull’s eye of education, your real needs there, suffer no recognition at all; never mind that the demolition of shanties are taken back, without any real attempt at proper housing, and most of all, never mind that no real effort is put into sustainable development because at least you have this, the opportunity to seem rich because you’re whiter, the load on your back lighter, everything else, then, is bigger, brighter, better.

It’s easy not to see it for what it really is, the dissolution of space. When, regardless of brand, the skin whitening industry insists that the space occupied by the rest of us who are not white must be shifted, it implies that we are in the wrong. True to an essential principle of products, it creates a need not otherwise as seemingly important, but is more striking (read: insulting) because it invites us to take back all the steps we have already taken while seemingly being at stride with progress, with the idea of a free woman  who can command career and family all at once and achieve whiter skin, because progress is heavy, is difficult, is a burden unless white.

So you see, it’s not as simple as it seems, not mere colonial mentality but the sheer pressure which insists that the brown must be covered over, that the space occupied by the dark letters forming words must be made into white space, a space that is not ours, that is anything but the white ink Cixous speaks of because really, what do people who resort to Glutamax care to know about her?

And even more frightening, that this industry is promoting starting young key in Skin White’s tune, Gotta start it right, gotta start from white.And therefore, what of the fact that there is an entire race that will not start from white, from where then do they start? I tell you, it is not merely a matter of rhyme or a catchy tune, because even music, wordless, beautiful music that soothes the soul, inspires words before it can inspire the wordless, before it can make people realize that some words are inadequate; for inadequacy to be realized words must be tried first, and only when words are not enough do humans strive for something more.

So it sticks to your mind, that tune, Gotta start it right, gotta start from white, and is ingrained in you, younger and younger, why not take something too, take some pill, make sure your child will be brought to this world white, starting white, starting right.

Or perhaps we need not even go there, but simply see which celebrity Glutamax chose, the one they call Gretchen Barretto. And it really must be said, she was beautiful to begin with, but it doesn’t take much to see, even the natural beauty is, quite literally, frozen now, stiff with the lips trying to be Jolie, eyebrows trying to outdo jungles and its person armed with a teleserye which is yes, quite fabulous, even innovative in some areas (because credit must be given where credit is due), but which is, again, so reductive.

That the fashion industry is so easy to get to, so accessible, that the changing hands of money in companies is so easy, that meetings can consist of this: long wooden tables without documents, only a single laptop, a projector, that the head of a design industry can be changed just like that, the audience need not understand that for a change in corporate leadership to occur the flow from human resources to administration to the management committee is a frenzied dance of anything but slow–these are the reductionist structures created by a show that insists it is realistic, founded on a realism of another world instead of the one we know.

But hey, so long as the poor girl, the long-lost sister gets out of the slums, that’s enough, some pattern must be established after all, if Gretchen plays a role in a soap opera that reduces reality to where everything is easy, in a snap of fingers, like changing social classes, then she must be the same who endorses a product as reductionist as her show. And if someone like Gretchen who has the world at her feet, with her LV bags and her topnotch show still needs some plastic on her face, some more strands of eyebrow, what more those who didn’t, that is to say, start from right?

And at the end of the day, this is the price we must pay: the country which contains, allows spaces for, that very ideology which insists on the eradication of our original space, the very few despicable kind who fights, not to exist but to be erased, to be as white: until we are white as sheets of blank, until we are white as colonial masters, until we are white as nonexistence.