Institutions like schools and the media play a great role in legitimizing what are “proper” (and thus more prestigious) uses of language, but often simply echoing previously drawn lines of asymmetrical power relations between haves and have-nots.
Ever heard of that song by Dionne Warwick and later revived by Luther Vandros – A House is not a Home? That is how I can describe what the Meranaw people feel about the rehabilitation efforts of President Rodrigo Duterte and the Task Force Bangon Marawi to Marawi City.
When they killed Ate Beng, it was not only her body that they were trying to destroy; they were after her ideals. By thinking that a bullet could pierce through an established principle, a member of the CAFGU shot Benjaline Hernadez near the head when her hands were clearly raised.
If our religious practices now really revolve around a genuine sense of community and equal love to all our sisters and brothers, then there should be less and less room for flashy manifestations of grandeur and affluence.
A spectre is haunting the land — the spectre of Commander Kontra.
K-12, with some schools offering inadequate choices, worsens the state of our educational system by making education a privilege than a right.
If we want to help the millennials and the coming generations, we are now tasked to see the interconnected of things. What is it that the preceding generations need to do to bridge the gap. This is not just the problem of one generation. This is a challenge to the whole human race, I dare say. The millennials bring the signs to the surface.
So when President Duterte makes jokes about shooting vaginas, at the first instance this is, of course, a grave form of symbolic violence against all Filipinas. But making light of the vagina – by joking about it, by devaluing it – is merely a cheap attempt to put the disarray back together to the old order, where vaginas are forced back into control as mere sites of misogynistic violence or objectifying sexual desire.
We can vividly remember this administration’s campaign promise in February 2016 to provide food for every household across classes. However, as for how to fulfill such promises is another thing. With much certainty, Piñol’s PR circus cannot solve this.
Each time I give birth to my children, I die a little. I was, and still am ready to give…
