Anachronism antidote  

It’s another progressive step forward for our Supreme Court.

Fresh from reprimanding a judge for homophobia, it now turns its attention to women, and slaps back arguments designed to concretize the machismo culture in our legal system.

In 1979 this married guy, 47, met a girl, 20. He then proceeded to have an adulterous relationship with her, had children with her, and began to commit acts of violence against both her and the children that triggered the protection of the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act (the VAWC law).

A Permanent Protection Order (PPO) was issued against him. The VAWC law was enacted in 2004, 25 years after the two met. Assuming she had immediately sued him when the law was passed he would have been 72 (and at the time of this decision 90).

As of publication, the full text of the decision of Cabanez v. AAA (G.R. 187175) hasn’t yet been released, so we still don’t know exactly what kind of abuse the septuagenarian inflicted on his then-45-year-old paramour, but it boggles the mind to think that aging hadn’t contributed to the gentling of the man because his arguments in court were so driven by machismo, it actually hurts to think some men think this way.

Bucking the PPO that simply asked him not to commit violence, (which would be pretty easy to accept if he had no plans for committing violence in the first place) he went all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing the VAWC law could not protect the woman because she was an adulterer.

This man, who had indispensably participated in her adultery and committed bigamy at the same time, had the cheek to argue that if the Supreme Court gave an adulterous woman a protective order, then it would be sanctioning adultery.

Not to be hoodwinked by the appeal to their masculinity, the justices declined to view with any sort of favor this argument forwarded. Justice Marvic Leonen, ruling for the court, relied on the principle that since the VAWC law doesn’t make any distinction as to whether the women it protected should be lawfully married or not, then the court wouldn’t make a distinction as well.

A married woman, or any woman in an intimate relationship, and even if that relationship was illegal or immoral, is entitled to protection from violence. And hence, the now 90-year-old should still have a PPO enforced against him.

Isn’t that a nice gift to the now 63-year-old woman? Perhaps she can now rest easy, knowing that even if all through her life, she was considered only a querida by the man who fathered her children, still, the society she is in views her as worthy of its protection.

With this progressive framework in mind, let me also just congratulate The FREEMAN for turning 103. Over the past couple of decades (exactly how many years has it been?) wherein I have had the privilege of writing for this paper, The FREEMAN has been incredibly fearless and seriously non-judgmental in publishing my perhaps strident, arguably acerbic, often tongue-in-cheek commentary on the ills of society.

All the while, I have been advancing feminist, LGBTQIA+, politicized, cynical, and maybe even silly theories, and unlike the adulterous and bigamous man in the case with his antiquated ideas of the place of women in this society, The FREEMAN has been wonderful in permitting the airing of opposition to the prevailing norms.

Thank you for giving me the space, and may neither the winds of political change nor the global and national crises we have had the misfortune to endure blow you astray from your steady course. More power, The FREEMAN.