THINGS women do on women in our country on Women's Month:
A sexy star and a model bashing each other on social media over their boyfriend, the hunk of a presidential son Baste Duterte. Bitch is on. As if a man is the center of a woman's life.
Sexy entertainer turned political blogger/Duterte defender Mocha Uson bashing lady Vice President Leni Robredo on the radio by calling her "tanga" (stupid), "nakakahawa ang katangahan" (contagious stupidity) for "destroying" the president. The Vice President's fault? Making a video message to the United Nations about the extrajudicial killings. Here's democracy for you: one side says something, the other side calls it stupid. End of discourse.
And the things men do to women:
A male-dominated Congress turning down the appointment of two top performing lady cabinet members: environment secretary Gina Lopez and social welfare secretary Judy Taguiwalo. These two have been doing their jobs right, protecting the environment and serving the poor and displaced. Congress these two have to serve their own pockets first.
And they say this is the change coming. The politics still remains the same, people make the other side look bad just to cover up their own screw job.
But more than the attacks in politics, the attacks on women in the margins are more pressing.
Mothers and their children get displaced in communities in Compostela Valley and Maguindanao as soldiers follow the order of "flattening the hills" by bombing farms. It's survival mode for these mothers who have to worry about protecting their children from bombs and bullets, and from the hunger and fear in evacuation centers.
Women and their children from the urban sector fight to claim an abandoned housing project in Bulacan. It's a struggle to find a roof over their heads while government housing projects unit are abandoned.
Teenage mothers rising and more girls at risk with human immunodeficiency virus, yet the influence of the Catholic Church against protection puts our youth in more danger.
Women who hold half the sky are also holding a mountain of pressures from the upper sectors in society that rifts families apart. If it’s change we want, it's time we have to move away those mountains.
tyvelez@gmail.com