[Dash of SAS] The opportunistic gender politics of Pia Cayetano

Pia Cayetano’s political instinct of pulling out the gender card when it serves her is again very much apparent.

The continuously evolving Senate spectacle that started with former police chief Ronald dela Rosa running from law enforcement agents and resisting arrest (and also later crying about it), now has another episode that no one asked for.

Cayetano’s emotional meltdown after Senator Risa Hontiveros’ remarks about the chamber’s semblance of a “return to normalcy” following the May 13 shooting incident. Except for Loren Legarda who offered an embrace and someone else who offered a box of tissues, Cayetano’s tears did not stir any sympathy. It did, however, expose a familiar pattern of Cayetano using the politics of gender when it serves her political objectives.

This time, Cayetano invoked an image of her as a mother, two doors away from gunshots, terrified that she would never see her children again. For added measure, she threw in the image of her staff, who is also a mother, fearing that her child would lose a parent.

The internet was not having any of it. 

Mercilessly, they turned Cayetano’s political theater into memes, sarcastic commentary, and a hamster wheel of mockery. To be clear, this is not an indictment of Cayetano as a female politician becoming “too emotional” and therefore, weak. Cayetano’s political instincts dressed as an appeal for compassion exposed her selectivity. 

Netizens pounced with the question that was obvious to most everyone except Cayetano herself: Where was her appeal for compassion and justice when mothers lost their sons in Duterte’s brutal drug war? Where was her sympathy for the estimated 122 children who were killed, most of whom were caught in cross fire of police-instigated drug raids?

Selective feminism

Throughout the Duterte years, Cayetano was conveniently mute. Cayetano had built her early legislative reputation on being an advocate for women’s rights. She backed the Reproductive Health Law, she pushed for divorce and got the Magna Carta of Women passed. Most poignantly, she supported the safe spaces act meant to protect women and gender diverse people from misogyny and sexism. The kind that characterized Duterte’s rhetoric.

This was all before her brother, Alan Peter Cayetano, served as Duterte’s running mate in the 2016 presidential elections and to this day, has remained a loyal ally. 

This is the contradiction of Cayetano’s politics. It is selective and self-serving — and well, it is not new.

We have seen versions of this before.

During Women’s Month in 2017, I was on a panel with Cayetano when a participant asked during the Q&A portion how women should deal with sexism when it was coming from the presidential palace. Duterte’s misogynistic rhetoric was rich in imagery: shoot female rebels in the vagina, gang rape a nun, and the particular gendered hatred reserved for then Senator Leila de Lima.

Cayetano came out with a long list of limp justifications that included, “boys will be boys,” “you can’t be a manang” if you want to belong and, “…he stands up every time someone makes bastos a girl.” (Watch Cayetano’s reply in this video.)

(READ: To the girl who was told by Pia Cayetano, “boys will be boys”)

Politically useful vs politically inconvenient

Back then, I had termed it as Cayetano’s internalized misogyny that she applied so that her body parts would be spared from presidential adulation and her personal romantic decisions would not be the subject of a legislative inquiry.

Cayetano was given chances to redeem herself from this social castigation. 

When Duterte kissed a married Filipina migrant worker on the mouth during a visit to South Korea, a Rappler reporter asked Cayetano to comment on it. She sidestepped the question and when pressed to answer as a politician whose legislative pedigree was built on championing women’s rights, Cayetano insisted that her track record could speak for itself.

(READ: Pia Cayetano files COC, evades Issue  on Duterte OFW kiss)

Well, her track record has spoken for her. 

And it speaks of a traditional politician whose selective ideals of feminism, gender rights, and justice are on display when politically useful but disappear when allied dynasties make such convictions politically inconvenient.

Cayetano’s tearful episode a few days ago did not create this perception. It merely reopened an old wound that remains fresh in public memory. – Rappler.com

Ana P. Santos is Rappler’s gender and sexuality columnist and host of the video series, “Sex and Sensibilities.” She has a postgraduate degree in Gender (Sexuality) from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening scholar.