A Backlash Against Feminism? Nah! It's a Backlash Against Gloria!

What's this? Men finally fighting back at women of power?

But before I even proceed further, and to provide context, please watch first this youtube link of another song which is hitting the airwaves right now entitled "Mga Tambay Lang Kami": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkx2fNrmXNM

Hilarious? Well, I would have laughed all the way until the end of the song, but stopped short of succumbing to the temptation of being totally amused after I was reminded by the discomfort I felt while listening to it. Like the song I featured in my most recent post entitled "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon," I always hear this being played on the radio while I am doing my daily ritual of lifting pounds and burning calories in my neighborhood gym. My initial take was that I found both songs to somewhat have politically-incorrect messages. I had to find a way to resist, if not subvert, the inherent politics of these songs. As I have done in my previous post, I have to likewise find a way to invert, if not appropriate the message of "Mga Tambay Lang Kami," if only to reverse its seemingly problematic message.

Comparing both songs led me to believe that there is an on-going backlash against women innocently masquerading as humor embedded in popular culture. This discourse, albeit hidden in the text but easily visible if one only listens carefully, of men talking about abusive women in "Mas Mahal na Kita Ngayon" and in this case, of men eventually rebelling against women who have broken their hearts and emptied their wallets by choosing to love gays instead.

I have to hurriedly scan the literature on post-feminism to find my bearings, as I search for a theoretical explanation to this everyday form of gender politics. Girl power, "do-me" and "beyond-bitch" (don't fault me for using this word--it is in fact how one type of post-feminism is labeled) feminism seem to have focused on new forms of being a woman, of how the "woman as victim" image has to be debunked, and how strong women have to be seen in the light of being bearers of power that are not to be condemned for their being masculine-like. Well, indeed we have images of women who ooze with raw masculine power tempered with feminine beauty, enabling them to rival and re-cast male forms of power. Lara Croft and the Charlie's Angels come to mind. Post-feminism is a reaction to the essentializing implications of demonizing too much images of masculinity and patriarchy as anathemic to being a woman, and in turn celebrates masculine features in women as a new embodiment of female power, and as a novel deconstruction of male monopoly over strength and masculinity.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may in fact be a child of this type of imagery of women. However, she is not a perfect fit for the simple reason that her power is not in her masculine features, and is in fact compromised by her lack of grace and motherly aura as she governs the nation. Any attempt to imagine her as our Lara Croft, or our Charlie's Angel is blatantly abusive of our sense of sanity. Her false projection of power falls flat simply because of her physical attributes, her smirk, and her character, things which were revealed for all to see, complete with the mechanical applauses from ther unthinking horde of supporters, during her SONA, which to my mind was the worst and most unstatespersonlike SONA in the history of our Republic.

It is perhaps the images of dominant women, of women who employ male strategies as a way of empowering themselves, that led to this silent but not so-hidden transcripts of resistance now found in songs like "Mga Tambay Lang Kami" and "Mas Mahal Na Kita Ngayon." While I would be guilty of stretching too much the political implications of men celebrating, at the sight of their dead female-partner-tormentors, to the point of finally declaring their love for them; or of men deciding to ditch their women partners who only caused them misery and penury, to eventually find love from their gay lovers, I am actually tempted to go beyond the more convenient argument of simply identifying the stereotpyical dominant and intellectual women as the object of this male forms of resistance.

In fact, I am willing to even argue that in the context of the present times, when there is much to be said about the deadly effects of Gloria's nine years of being our nation's "woman," that these two songs are in fact forms of popular resistance aimed at what her brand of masculine power has brought to bear.

I believe that, like hidden codes, these songs may be appropriated as templates from where to launch a resistive reading of the kind of feminism, albeit false, that Gloria has imagined herself to have. It may not have been the intention of their composers, for after all, they may in fact have simply composed and performed them to make fun of women, gays and even themselves. But everytime songs like this invade the public space, they also become public property, and hence, can be used and interpreted in any way people may choose.

And I choose not to read these songs for their obvious politics, but instead appropriate them in my engagement of this particular woman now occupying Malacanang who has caused much violence against the Filipino people, abused us, and emptied our pockets. By June 30, 2010, she will hopefully be lying in her political coffin, and by then, I may be able to say to her that "Mas mahal na kita ngayon," even as on the May elections in 2010 I would even be willing to give my political love and support to, and vote for a gay politician, for it will not matter what his sexual orientation would be, as long as he would be able to truly "love" and understand me back and the nation as well, for like what is said in the song, I am one of those citizens who are now "sawa [na] sa babae, mga babaeng manloloko, pineperahan lang kami."

So, is this a backlash against feminism? Not at all. It is more accurately my expression of resistance against one particular woman whose pretentious self-moralizing of not liking men, gay or otherwise, who say bad words in public is contradicted by her shameless audacity of doing bad acts publicly.