Nicole has gone abroad.
Leaving me with the growing suspicion that my first theory about the whole case was right. They are trying for another "inherit the wind."
Way, way back in high school, I came across a story. I forgot the title, I forgot the book, but the argument stayed with me: If you weren't there, how would you know how long Creation really took? The length of a day may not be the same for us now as it was with the Almighty when He created the earth. A day to him might be a month to us. Or a year. Or the billions of years of evolution.
It took ten years before I read "Inherit the Wind" and found out about the famous "Scopes monkey trial" on which it was based... and found out where the argument came from. I also found out there was more than that argument to interest me about that trial.
In 1925, in rural Tennessee, in the United States, a young teacher, John Scopes, dared to challenge a law that forbade the teaching of evolution in the schools. He taught his students about evolution and was arrested and charged under that law. The resulting trial was EPIC, a battle of legendary lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who both traveled long distances just to be in on the case that would change a nation.
But, here's the rub: it was a case of someone creating a scenario in order to create a case. A law ordinarily cannot be challenged unless there is an actual controversy, so the American Civil Liberties Union created the controversy. They looked for someone who was willing to undergo the trial just to challenge the law, and found John Scopes. The rest is history.
The difference is that John Scopes was willing to see the case through to the end. If there was a noose, he willingly put his head in it. The law he challenged would be viewed in present times as unjust and narrow-minded, and his cause, justified. And it took only his case to effect a difference.
But now?
Nicole, in the "Subic Rape Case" in which we are told now that no rape really happened, was supposed to be a symbol of all the Filipinas who have been exploited by the foreigners. Nicole was held up to all of us as a symbol: This is what the Americans have done to us and will go on doing to us. She is all of our sisters who were exploited and abused by the foreigners. She is the reason why we must kick them out of our land.
Unfortunately, Nicole said, what abuse? What exploitation? I'm tired of all this guff. Let me out of here. I need cash. Or words to that effect.
And the people who were looking to her as a banner under which to rally a cause, were disappointed, their hopes collapsed. They wanted the Americans out of the country. They wanted the Visiting Forces Agreement nullified. So, it seems, they are trying again.
After Nicole, Vanessa.
The problem, people, is that Filipinas are often viewed as prostitutes, our efforts to the contrary notwithstanding. Women who would do anything for money. Another such "rape case" would be laughable if the "victim" would be another "Nicole". A woman who goes to bars, most often in the hopes of meeting a foreigner. Yes, I know. "She asked for it" is NOT sufficient justification for rape. I would not be worthy to be called a woman if I didn't know or believe that. But then, going to bars and hotels to meet strange men, sleeping with them, and then crying "rape" just to make a case isn't justifiable either, no matter how you look at it. Act responsibly and be responsible for your actions, for goodness' sake.
If they had to find another victim to make an example of, for crying out loud, can't they find the real thing?
Women's month? It is? Really now?
Well, for one thing, Nicole issued that statement about how she doubted that she was raped.
*START RANT HERE*
(1) That case was supposed to be a vindication. Not a damnation. Not of Nicole, not of other Filipinas, not of the rest of the Filipinos, not of this country and its culture.
(1a) How can supposedly morally upright people condemn a girl, a woman, for being raped because her clothing, her behavior, "invited it"? The heck, how masochistic women must be, to invite their own violation and degradation, then. The implication being that women must be restrained, must be prim and proper. This from the same morally upright viewpoint that family planning is a sin and that really now, people should keep themselves from having sex. Well then, those people who should be disciplined enough to abstain from the act, should be disciplined enough to not assume a woman is "inviting" them just because she wears shorts and a tank top or to not act on the "invitation".
(2) We should be protecting our own. Not, well, pimping them. Really, in this country some people think everything is relative to money. And don't some of us have that practice where, if people accuse our children of wrongdoing, we immediately punish the child without waiting to find out if the accusation was true or not? The reason: the child being accused shamed us, and it didn't matter if he was in the right--- he was just a child, and had no right to shame his parents/family.
(3) Many Filipinas do have dignity. We are not all for sale, not to the first person who offers, not to the first person who offers a reasonable price, not to any person no matter how high the price, dammit.
(4) Not all Filipinos want to kowtow to the Almighty superpowers, either, just because they are a so-called First World country (that went into a recession which infected us). And don't you be calling me a hypocrite now. I have online friends in other countries. But you don't see me deferring to them or fawning on them, just because of where they live, because we are on the same footing and I like it that way. Filipinos are as good as anyone else in the world, warts and all. If you want to insist that other nations don't have any warts, I will think that you are the hypocrite.
*END RANT*
For another thing, Jalosjos just got out of jail.
*START RANT*
(1) Rape is never justified, dammit. That's why it was changed from a crime against chastity to a crime against persons, in the first place. And rape of a child is reprehensible. How twisted would you be, to even think of doing such a thing?
(2) Such statements we see about how he had the right to have his sentence commuted and all that. About his having suffered already and should be given another chance. Suffered, my ass. Spare me. According to reports, he had a pretty cushy cell. And later, he even lived outside of the prison, in his own house, beside a resto-bar yet. And reportedly drove around the prison in his own car. While the other inmates rotted. If he had suffered like them, along with them, I would have believed that talk about punishment.
(3) What sort of message are we sending here? That there are a lot of things you can get away with as long as you have money and power? Two life sentences, PLUS a minimum of 48 years / maximum of 90 years... reduced to 16 + years only by the powers that be. Ain't life grand.
*END RANT*
Such wonderfully ironic timing some things have. Murphy's Law, yet.
Happy Women's Month to all of us.
(an open letter to "Nicole" of the Subic Rape Case)
What a Women's Month gift you gave us, Nicole.
What does it look like now, to us? The newspapers say that you took the 100k he offered and emigrated to his country. They say that you went to join one of his countrymen. We feel betrayed.
I feel betrayed. I had viewed your case as something quite close to the one in "Inherit the Wind." You were a symbol to us of all our countrywomen who had been oppressed by foreigners simply because of our nationality, and far greater insult, this time the oppression had occurred on our own native soil. Would we let the foreigner get away with it? Of course we needed to show that we are not the pushovers they take us to be. We needed to show that the Filipina, despite her submissive reputation as a domestic helper, as a mail-order bride, even as a prostitute, also had dignity and was entitled to respect. Since you were the one involved, you became that symbol, Nicole.
In the end, you stood for none other than o
"...pag-ibig nasa kanyang palad,
nag-alay ng ganda't dilag,
at sa kanyang yumi at ganda,
dayuhan ay nahalina...
bayan ko, binihag ka, nasadlak sa dusa."
(Love was in her hands,
she offered beauty and splendor,
and because of her gentleness and beauty,
the foreigners were attracted.
My country, you were taken captive and plunged into despair.)
Did it ultimately prove too much for you, Nicole? Did you just want to shout that you cannot be the statue on the pedestal that everyone wanted you to be? Or did you not realize how great a symbol you had become?
A friend of mine says that perhaps you were not strong enough, that was why you gave up the fight. She says perhaps if you had a more activist mentality, perhaps if you had been more idealistic, you might have seen the fight through to the end. As it was, she said, like most of us maybe you just wanted to give up. After all, "what justice could there be in this country?"
Others are only all too ready to heap blame upon your head for your acts, saying that since by your own admission, you were promiscuous after all, you deserved no respect and you proved it by skipping out on the rest of us. Some think that you were all too ready to give up the fight for a little money and the golden opportunity to emigrate to the "land of plenty." Implying, of course, that you are really just no better than the gold-digger which some people in other countries label us Filipinas to be-- all too ready to lie down and spread her legs for a little cash, long devoid of any inherent dignity. And that image does not help us at all.
Why, Nicole, why?
I do not know you as a person. Still, I do not want to condemn you for what many of our other sisters have done by reason of poverty or external pressure. Our country has long rationalized many acts in the name of personal prosperity-- how else would it attain the level of corruption the world perceives in it? We know the concept of "kapit sa patalim" (cling to the knife)-- the justification why so many of our countrymen leave the country to work in other places, no matter if they are overeducated for the job, just as long as it pays better. It takes a person with backbone to stand against that concept, to refuse to be one of those who subscribe to it.
I know too, how in this country things can be deceiving on the surface. I know how innocence can be twisted till it looks the very picture of guilt. I know too how guilt may be whitewashed till it looks the very image of innocence. I know how great a role money and influence play in those transformations, especially when it comes to politics. I know how this can subvert truth till it cannot be found anymore. Which is why, in the face of all the recriminations being laid at your door, even in my disappointment I do not want to judge you, Nicole.
What happened, Nicole? Only you know the truth... but then again, when it comes to this country, does anyone ever know the truth anymore?
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