It seems even the “experts” on women’s issues got it wrong as far as what could’ve been the whole point of commemorating International Women’s Day celebrated today, the 8th of March. Quite ironic that the most visible group that claims to be fighting for “women’s issues” takes their name from Filipino folk hero Gabriela Silang, wife of the Ilocano insurgent leader, Diego Silang. Following Diego’s assassination in 1763, she led the group for four months before she was captured and executed. Unfortunately modern-day “women’s group” Gabriela like most other political entities in the Philippines now merely insults both the memory of their 18th Century namesake as well as the intelligence of Filipinos today with statements like “We will continue to criticize government policies that make the lives of Filipino women and their families poor.”
And so in their latest “protest” action, this year against oil price hikes, an official statement issued by the radical group goes like this:
The women mainly forego their share of the food [so] that her husband and children could eat. This is why it is in the interest of the women to protest and fight against the increasing prices of oil and staple goods that has brought further burden to Filipino families.
Hokayyyy. So it is International Women’s Day today and there happened to be a hike in the price of oil that coincided with it. And so some genius within the Gabriela politburo constructs a pseudo-logical link between the two situations and comes up with the above protest rationale.
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Classy.
And creative too. By virtue of this laughable logical construct, Gabriela managed to turn oil price hikes into a woman’s issue as well. Goes to show that these professional protest mavens are not above the same sort of marketing trickery that their capitalist arch-rivals have turned into a lucrative science.
The international passport to smoking pleasure
Those of us who are old enough to remember that moronic tagline in the bluish-themed ads of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes that used to be a regular on the back cover of most editions of TIME Magazine in the 1970s will get what I mean.
You just gotta give a bit of credit to the people who make a career out of engineering stupidity into cool.
But this is the 21st Century where the advent of “social media” technology is being touted as the big silver bullet that will supposedly kill Filipino mass ignorance as it sweeps the globe and fattens its “timelines” with our private artifacts. Yet here we continue to see self-styled “champions of the oppressed” like Gabriela continuing the tradition of the banal stupidity that Filipinos have come to be renowned for.
Fact is, there are lots of issues specific to the plight of women that Gabriela can back more robustly if it weren’t too fixated on its commie agenda. Reproductive Health is one of them. It so happens that the biggest roadblock to the implementation of a scientifically-sound modern reproductive health program in the Philippines is a religious organisation ruled exclusively by men.
Gabriela got it wrong. Oil price hikes are a men’s issue — because most jeepney drivers are men. And I’d call that a far more logical rationale for tsupers to rally than making protests against Big Oil the main commemorative event on International Women’s Day.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Does this protest accurately define “phoning it in”? I think it does.
Why is this post dated March 9 when I’m reading this on March 8? Comment above is even time stamped March 9. Just wondering…
Must be Australian time after looking at my time stamp
Gabriela are just as expert at womes’s issues in the same way that Tupas is an expert at trial law: hazy at best, completely ludicrous most of the time.
And for f*cksakes, gas prices are everyone’s problem, not just women. That includes rich people too (factor in how much transporting a truckload of a rich man’s goods has to pay for in gas, for one).
And last time I checked, CPP-NPA are just as perverse as Jalosjos when they get their boners on. But they won’t get any lip from Gabriela, so long as they are “comrades in the revolutionary struggle”.
Bunch of raspy leaky cvnts, that Gabriela.
Instead of this joke, Gabriela should focus on women’s inferiority complex or should just promote awareness on women’s role in society e.g. that they shouldn’t be treated as sex objects nor should they be commodities for sex tourists. Gabriela should also learn to know their role and what they should be fighting for. Lately for example, they have been banging on Meralco issues and impeachment concerns Sereno testifying and what not. What do these things have to do with the plight of women? They had scrap E-VAT, Impeach Gloria, Stop Political Persecution. Gabriela bills for example have included HB 5276 – Mindanao River System, HB 4997 – Increasing The Liability For The Loss Of Cargo By Cargo Forwarders, HB 4566 – Prohibiting All Retired And Active Military And Police Personnel From Being Appointed To Any GOCCs, HB 1139 Changing The Name Of C-5 Road To Isabelo Delos Reyes Hi-Way, these among many others. Seriously, can anyone tell me how this is related to women’s plight?
We don’t have a “like” button for comments here, so I’ll give you one of these: \m/
same here! đŸ™‚
I agree with this statement, but we have to be very careful that we don’t come out as saying something that could be misinterpreted as “Women should stay in the kitchen”. I won’t be surprised if someone comes along and sees that.
People missing the point – it’s more fun in the Philippines indeed.
Indeed, Gabriela have lost the plot. Their goal is to politicise rather than understand and address issues from a purely problem-solving approach from women’s perspectives.
Now that’s a group of women that should stay in the kitchen.
Oil Prices are everyone’s issue. Men, women, transgenders, in between….it affects everybody. It affects the family. It affects the community. It affects our way of living.
Noynoy Aquino and his administration have no Comprehensive Energy Program , to address this energy issue.
You cannot divert peoples’ attentions from this issue. Because, it involves their stomachs. If the earning of any family is not enough to put food on the table…we have a looming economic, and surely political trouble…
protesting against oil prices while sucking the yellow king’s *ss..
it’s more fun
Gabriella is more communist than feminist.
Sure, they argue against chauvinists and gentlemen for treating women differently at an individual level but when it comes to the bigger issues that affect women’s live specifically (RH, unequal pay, divorce), they fail big time for ignoring these and focusing on bringing down the machine to be replaced by another, yet communist, machine.
This group sounds like the female version of the NPA gangsters who come down from the mountains to extort cash in the name of higher values. Oil a feminine issue? A shortage of whitening oils would be a feminine issue for the modern Filipina.
I don’t know where the broad-based citizen organizations are than simply stand for common sense and high principle. Even the Catholic Church treads the extremes, willing to sacrifice the good of the nation for a bizarre right to life for my sperm, whilst watching millions of poor hungry kids drop out of school and become criminals. Yet the Church claims no responsibility for anything around here. Not the over-birthing poor (government’s fault for failing to feed the teeming oft-intercoursing masses), not the churchgoers who steal from the public coffers (Satan did it; we forgive you for falling for his trickery and getting discovered), and sexually deviant priests (shhhh!).
I refuse to subscribe to any group that claims my soul in the name of its righteous narrow little agenda. Not the Church, nor the Aquino administration (take that, Parallelaxe), nor the like-thinking pundits on this site (muah), nor Democrats nor Republicans. Now if Ambrose Bierce, Jonathan Swift, Chris Rock, George Carlin, Andy Rooney and Bill Maher formed a public interest group . . . sign me up! They all believe in free use of the brain instead of bogging it down with dogma.
Gabriela thinks women are the only creatures discriminated by society.In was only in recent years that fathers are honored by Father’s day. When couples split up its always the men who are blamed as if only men commit infidelity. When they fight over children’s custody stupid laws always favor the mother even if the mother is an adulteress. When we try to push a bill for divorce they think it is unfair to women, as if men dont suffer from it. When congress proposed divorce Corazon Aquino the saint of the yellow mob immediately killed it dousing the hopes of legions of men suffering from hellish relationship with unfaithful wives. There is more need for a men’s group than an idiotic one like Gabriela.
So this dude is badmouthing the church and his role model is Bill Maher(!) because of his belief in free use of the brain instead of bogging it down with dogma. Jeez…
Bill Maher his role model???
Stay classy American boy.
But then moral relativism comes into my mind.
Maher is not my role model. He does not allow others to determine what he should think. He is an example.
Maher is wrong 15% of the time, obscene 12%, crude and rude 28% and hilariously brilliant the rest of the time.
American boy, read your previous comment again.
Talagang hindi ka marunong mahiya…
@Joe
This is such a lie. I have lost count how many times you defended ABNOY! You even wrote so many articles saying that you support ABNOY!
Don’t be a liar like all the other yellow zombies.
The way I see it, he’s not lying. Perhaps, he has just realized something and wanted to start reengineering himself.
This Corona impeachment has performed some miracles. A lot of people I know suddenly has a change of heart. They became aware of the “protocol” thing.
Penoyista is not the de rigueur anymore for them.
I agree with Hyden Toro. It’s sad to see that Get Real has lost its sense and logic over the years. Is it because of your purported fame over the internet? Anyway, try to dig deeper into issues. OPH is not just a men’s issue. Even issues that are said to affect women are men’s issues as well. Things are very well interconnected that one affects the other. A simple logic: if a driver loses much of his income from OPH cannot give much to his wife, thus affecting the economy of their household.
Tanong lang po Who says it’s just a men’s issue Mister?
Ganon po ba yun sir when hindi exclusive domain ng mga lalaki automatic pambabaeng issue na din po Mister ReallyReal?
Did you mean to say that OPH is not exclusively a men’s issue?
There may be an eventual link between the OPH and the suffring of women, but it seems that Gabriela jumped through all the related issues and did not define explicitly how to get from point A to point B.
Hello po. Sino po ang nagbibigay ng pondo para sa site na ito? Kailangan lang po kasi namin sa subject namin.
Madali lang ang sagot dyan. Pero bago ang lahat, saang school yan at sino ang nagtatanong?
Alam mo Ms Jen ang kulit nyo. Nakakasawa na itong tanong nyo. Gamitin mo utak mo pwede ba?!? Kung meron kamin nakukuhang pondo para magsulat eh di sana araw-araw na ginawa ng Dyos eh nagsusulat na kami. Ang hina nyo.
Try to use your brain, please.
Hey wacko, give GRP a break. Having opinions utterly different from yours does not mean this site is funded.
Why not argue passionately yet sensibly so you can at least hone your communication skill? Is that all the argument you can squeeze inside your cranial cavity?
AdChoices.
Look at the upper right hand corner of this page.
Why are you still here twoface?
You said you hate this site but you keep coming back to leave your garbage behind? Go get a life.
Didn’t realize that that was a sensitive subject. I don’t remember saying that I hated this site. I do remember saying that I hate SC though. Okay, I will leave. This site will be pretty much deserted after March 23rd anyway.
See, that’s where you are wrong. You add nothing of value to this site. You just keep writing the same thing over and over while insulting the writers. You don’t offer anything new except your one sided opinion. It’s not a discussion when you are involved.
And by the way, you do not have access to our site stats. You do not know what you are talking about when you try to insult our standing in the blogosphere. Try using Alexa đŸ˜‰
Hey twoface, don’t leave us. I promise you I’ll always give brownie points to your comments.
You’re our Exhibit A on how lap dogs minds work.
You’re a gem.
You are about to beat Vincenzo’s spewmeter. So don’t leave.
No matter how many times I try to analyze, look at at it at different perspectives and even turn it in and out, Gabriela’s logic of “oil prices soar equals women suffering” is likely to induce insanity much like the non-euclidean geometry of the Cthulhu mythos. Then again it’s more easier to to go mad than understanding it…..