IT WOULD only be in movies where a president would name top officials involved in drug syndicates but President Duterte did just that. Not only did he name them, but also catalogued their positions in the police hierarchy.
He named them and carefully enunciated their ranks, first names and last names. And when he named them, I recalled the movie, Conjuring 2, where the Warrens were able to name the evil entity haunting a family.
When the name ‘Valak’ was finally called, the spirit was easily sent back to where it rightfully belonged -- to hell. Bad analogy, perhaps but Freud and Shakespeare both recognized that the relationship between name and identity is so strong that the misrepresentation of a name amounts to a misrepresentation of the person. Name it and claim it.
But in between naming the devil and the five Generals came a more interesting name that absolutely had nothing to do with drugs -- Ian Angelo King.
I know nothing about Ian King beyond being the husband of model/host Joey Mead. It’s just recently that I learned that the Kings own the Victoria Court group of companies and that it was his dad, Archie, who perished in a helicopter crash a year or two ago.
Ian King’s world is too alpha male -- fast, expensive cars being redesigned to make these faster and more expensive. When he describes cars in his YouTube videos, he does this with intense passion. Long haired, tattooed, and very tall, Ian may even pass off for a rock star.
But he was not just Ian King when I began reading about him. He was already Angie Mead King and he named himself that. Some say Angelina Jolie is his wife’s favorite actress but his Twitter account carries a second name, Angelo. Wherever it came from, Ian became Angie. And it took Ian several painful years to name and claim himself as Angie.
There is only one published interview with Angie Mead King by her friend, Tim Yap. So far, she has avoided other media interviews saying that she “has nothing to explain to anyone”.
Her social media accounts as Angie and Ian show the best of both worlds -- as a leading car enthusiast and architect in the Philippines and as a man transitioning into a woman -- shopping for shoes with wife, Joey and dressing up in expensive bodycon dresses and signature clutchbags.
But the social media comments also speak of the person that Angie/Ian is -- not only a rich kid collecting expensive cars but a rich kid who works hard at re-designing cars, creating theme rooms of Victoria Court, saving stray pets, and lately, raising funds for someone who lost everything to fire.
In claiming that Ian is now Angie, the lines that divide have become blurry except, well, for Angie.
Her long struggle has sharpened and defined what she is -- from trying on high heels as a child, wanting to be a pretty boy with long hair in grade school, and wearing women’s lingerie with full knowledge of her wife, Joey.
In the Tim Yap interview, Angie said that he is not gay and his sexual preference would still be women because they are “soft and curvy and have no body hair.”
And Ian’s long struggle to become Angie has made him very articulate about his situation: “I perfectly understand. Sexual expression and sexual preference are two different things. There is no clear description in the Filipino language, there is no Tagalog version of LGBT and however how many letters there are — that’s where the blurred lines come from.”
But what are the blurred lines? Let’s look at Sogie or Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression.
Sexual orientation “describes to whom a person is sexually attracted. Some people are attracted to people of a particular gender while others are attracted to people of more than one gender. Some are not attracted to anyone.”
Gender identity and expression are “the ways in which a person identifies and/or expresses their gender, including self-image, appearance, and embodiment of gender roles. One’s sex (e.g. male, female, intersex, etc.) is usually assigned at birth based on one’s physical biology. One’s gender (e.g. male, female, genderqueer, etc.) is one’s internal sense of self and identity. One’s gender expression (e.g. masculine, feminine, androgynous, etc.) is how one embodies gender attributes, presentations, roles, and more.”
While sexual orientation and gender identity are internal, gender expression is external and often scrutinized.
There has been no interviews how Joey Mead King is taking all these.
Ian/Angie says “I broke her because she lost face where her knight in shining armor wanted to be a princess. That was the hard part for us, but we picked up the pieces, we figured out what our relationship was — we love each other and this is not gonna break us.”
Yes, only love can claim such win.