The Subic rape case is unfolding predictably with this latest attempt by the male defense lawyers to paint their client as the put-upon victim of unwanted seduction. She made him do it. She was so insistent. What was the baby boy to do? Gentlemen are supposed to stand at attention in the presence of a lady, even an Asian female at that.
Hey, haven't you heard? That's the role Asian females with no names have been playing since the white man came in contact with the East. They just force the white man to give in to their primitive island girl wiles. No names necessary – so hard to remember, much harder to roll off the white man's forked tongue, and especially while the hapless baby boy is being forced into lascivious acts he really doesn't want to do.
Damn. This is getting me sick to my stomach.
Lest a reader accuse me of racism and anti-male harangue, the issue of a white man having what he claims to be consensual (read: solicited) sex with an Asian female with no name did not come from me. This is part of the testimony presented in the Subic rape case.
I could – as any decent Asian female is expected to do – pretend I did not hear that, but I just don't feel like living up to someone else's expectations today. Male rapists and male lawyers who defend rapists have for far too long appointed themselves the spokesperson on female sexuality, Asian or otherwise. Male rapists and male lawyers of rapists don't know beans. But they convince male judges often enough to make people think they're the authority to what gets a woman to heaven.
And what about all those guys who damned me to hell and back for believing sexual molestation happened in that van? I do remember at least three who took pains to draw the schematics of van's insides along with the average body measurements according to race and gender. In the absence then of admission that something unsavory did indeed occur in that van, a former Ateneo teacher long since lost to us would rather we thought they were all sitting so decorously together and politely discussing the weather. Well, I guess those guys are likely to say that women have more imagination. They're right – or at least, their logical arguments proved it.
I wonder how Atty. Evalyn Ursua can take any more of this predictable crap day in day out as she helps women go after their rapists. Up close, she strikes you as a woman who is as hard as nails, but her career at interpreting the women laws to the advantage of the disadvantaged sex speaks for the idealism she has yet to lose despite the words she's heard and the things she's seen. (She charmed me once by telling me in her matter-of-fact manner to give up cigarettes. This, while we were sharing a smoke in the parking lot of Regine's Restaurant).
Ursua and her client Nicole are riding out the ugliest part that features in the prosecution of rape cases. If the accused doesn't claim a relationship that supposedly grants him sexual rights carte blanche, he's likely to claim it was actually the woman who forced him into it. So now you got both sides of the fence crying what amounts to "Rape!" It tips the balance of doubt for those who think good girls always keep their knees together.
Well, gee, it's kinda hard to do that when her knees are being forced apart by someone – with the helpful encouragement of three other prime, Grade A specimens of manhood – who has her idea of heaven farthest in mind.
Most times, it is the prospect of having her person and her sexuality demonized in public that causes a woman to do the decent woman thing: shut up and forever remain silent as her abuser gloats and gets away with having abused her. I hope that doesn't happen to Nicole.
However the judge is going to believe on Smith's vaunted sexual prowess and irresistible attraction, Nicole will someday find a redhot lover who'll put Baby Boy Smith's Halloween trick-or-treat where it belongs. That'll be like her Christmas day to chase away the ghouls terrorizing her memory. Just because Smith wants others to think that he gave her the time of her life for as long as he could hold out (like what?- ten seconds? Pwe!), doesn't mean any right thinking person – woman or man – has to believe him.
You know who'll believe him though? Those guys who have to believe that ten seconds is all it takes to get Asian females with no names to heaven. That's because that too is how long they can hold out.
No wonder some women would rather take the matter in their own hands. (Wayward and Fanciful is Gail Ilagan's column for MindaViews, the opinion section of MindaNews. Ilagan teaches Social Justice, Family Sociology, Theories of Socialization and Psychology at the Ateneo de Davao University where she is also the associate editor of Tambara. You may send comments to gail@mindanews.com. "Send at the risk of a reply," she says.)