Front and center

MANILA, Philippines - This is quite evident in the Lower House’s swift passage of a diluted death penalty bill, its approval on third and final reading taking a mere two months compared to the 13 years of toil the RH Law faced. (That’s 13 and counting, if we consider the TRO placed by the Supreme Court on the purchase of contraceptive implants, a hefty part of the core of the law.)

In this country, poverty, drugs, and matters revolving around public order are deemed as top priority for our government. There’s nothing wrong about it, per se. What is wrong, however, is that the government has been hyperfocused in addressing a certain niche of concerns that they have lost sight of other struggles that may expedite the country’s journey to development.

Gender and sexuality are routinely ignored in development discussions, silenced and shushed in favor of other issues the heavily male-dominated Congress would rather tackle on the floor.

In a Third World country like ours, it is easy to dismiss discussions on gender and sexuality as nothing but First World, Western conceptions that have no place in our consciousness.

But as Kamla Bhasin and Nighat Said Khan pointed out in their 1986 work, Some Questions on Feminism and its Relevance in South Asia, issues surrounding gender and sexuality are transcendental amidst almost every intersection, and there are affairs that go beyond the discussions of class struggle – like Violence Against Women (VAW) or the desire to maintain a healthy reproductive life. 

With the transcendental nature of gender issues, it is concerning to have the majority of our legislators take an antagonistic stance on using a feminist lens in addressing national matters. We have lawmakers who would rather make snide remarks about single motherhood while expressing utter disdain over the RH law; we have those who repeatedly quote the Bible on matters of sexuality, while adamantly defending their concubinage on the floor. Such instances are very telling of how the current administration sees gender. Gender is seen as taboo, unspoken, radical, unmentionable. Worse, it is seen as something to be joked about, something to be taken in stride.

Gender matters matter. To ignore it is to, at the most basic point, put half of our country’s population out of the picture. To silence it is to dehumanize, to make invisible the struggles felt by locals who do not belong to the dominant group.

As Sara Longwe mentioned in her 1991 work, Gender Awareness: The Missing Element in the Third World Development Project, development is about meeting the needs of those who are most in need while enabling people to take charge of their own lives. I believe that this core facet is what our government is missing in their priorities and planning.

Though the efforts have been valiant and many, much still needs to be done for our government to truly address the country’s problems. I believe it is high time for every branch to sit down and rearrange its priorities, while injecting a gendered lens to existing and upcoming projects.

Our problems cannot be solved with a one-track mind; we need to realize that struggles intersect, and that there is no single, messianic solution that exists to wipe out all our problems with a single stroke.

Bella Biscocho is a graduate of AB Political Science from the Ateneo de Manila University. She is currently taking up a Master’s degree in Women in Development at the University of the Philippines. She considers herself a post-modern, socialist feminist and is a stark advocate of Women’s and LGBTIQA+ rights. Though seen as a bright pessimist, she believes most in the empowering capabilities of hope.