A comment section is not a country. But sometimes it provides a small window into what a country has begun to permit.
Recently, I have read degrading and sexualized comments directed at Rep. Bel Zamora that have little to do with politics. They speak about her body, sexuality, voice, smile and mannerisms. When did political disagreement become permission to speak about another human being this way?
There are legitimate reasons to criticize any politician. People may believe Zamora’s politics or judgment profoundly wrong. But I believe your politics are wrong does not become therefore whatever I say about you is right. Accountability does not require humiliation.
There is an irony here. During a House hearing, Rep. Bong Suntay used actress Anne Curtis in an analogy colleagues regarded as sexual and inappropriate. Zamora moved to strike his remarks from the record. Her record also includes advocacy on women’s issues and participation in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
None of this proves her politics correct. It establishes something narrower: the woman who objected when another woman was sexualized in Congress is now herself being sexualized because people dislike her politics. Hindi puwedeng women’s dignity only when we like the woman.
Try the reversal test. If identical language were directed at Sara Duterte or Kitty Duterte, would those using it against Zamora still consider it legitimate criticism? The test reverses: if Zamora’s supporters use the same language against a Duterte woman, the standard does not change. The answer to asymmetric evidence is not false symmetry. It is a symmetrical standard.
The comparison isn’t symmetrical in one respect. With Rodrigo Duterte, there are actual words on the record to examine. With some accusations against Zamora, the sexuality was supplied by the observer.
I lived through Martial Law, including its darkest years, and nothing here diminishes its repression and abuses. Perhaps memory is imperfect, but I have since seen EDSA, coups, impeachments and bitter elections. We have never lacked political anger. Yet something changed during the Duterte years.
Duterte did not invent Filipino vulgarity. But presidential speech carries symbolic weight. Research on his rhetoric has described how profanity and rejection of conventional decorum became part of a performance of authenticity.
Perhaps Duterte did not create the crudeness.
He changed its status.
What we once called bastos could be defended as totoo. Vulgarity could become authenticity. Insult could masquerade as tapang. Restraint could look plastik. Perhaps what survives is something more diffuse: permission.
What happened to the maginoo? Perhaps the measure of a maginoo is not how he treats the woman he admires, but the woman he cannot stand. Kailan naging tapang ang pambabastos sa babae?
The mandirigma understood that strength requires restraint. The Scout promised, Sa ngalan ng aking dangal. Christianity taught neighbor. Kapwa refused the complete othering of another human being.
These traditions were never principally about the person standing opposite us.
They were about ours.
And yet we make the Sign of the Cross, pray the rosary, receive the Eucharist, and then open Facebook. Ano ang nangyayari between “Amen” and “Post”?
Formation happens through repetition. So does deformation: an insult excused as a joke, vulgarity celebrated as authenticity, humiliation justified because the target deserves it, until what once embarrassed us no longer does.
A young Duterte supporter recently worried about the example Zamora sets for younger Filipinos. She is right about one thing: the young are watching.
But they are watching everyone.
If we worry about what Zamora’s mannerisms are teaching young Filipinos, perhaps we should also ask what our treatment of her is teaching them. Are we teaching morality as formation, or as ammunition?
Political leaders can move boundaries. Political tribes can reward behavior. Crowds can normalize it. But none eliminates agency.
We may inherit a permission. We still decide whether to use it.
You need not like Bel Zamora. You may believe she has made serious political mistakes and criticize them loudly. But the maginoo does not cease being maginoo because the woman before him is someone he dislikes. The Scout’s honor does not depend upon her politics. The Christian’s neighbor does not cease being neighbor at the ballot box. Our kapwa does not cease being kapwa because she chose another side.
The question was never really what we think of Bel Zamora.
It is what disliking Bel Zamora gives us permission to become.
The permission was ours to give ourselves. The decision to withdraw it is ours as well.