A Pugad Baboy strip that contained allusions to the purported lesbian scene in St Scholastica’s College, an exclusive all-girls-school in Manila, was pulled out of the Inquirer.net website. The “offending” strip which was published on an Inquirer.net page time-stamped the 4th June 2013 now displays a 404 Error message indicating that the page itself has been deleted from its server. The characters in that strip are shown discussing the hypocrisy of Christians in the way they regard homosexuality citing how all-female schools run by nuns allegedly condone lesbianism within their campuses.
In the third panel of the strip, one of the characters quips that in St Scho (presumably short for St Scholastica’s College), pretty students there are likely to be in a lesbian relationship with another student…
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The Philippine Star reports today that;
The Philippine Daily Inquirer announced on Wednesday its decision to pull out a famous comic strip from its Comic Relief section after its June 4 issue about students from an exclusive girls’ school drew flak from online citizens.
Furthermore, management of the Inquirer revealed that “the comic strip will not appear in the section starting Friday while its reader’s advocate investigates the issue.”
Pugad Baboy (literally, “swine’s nest” in Tagalog) is a comic strip created by Filipino cartoonist Apolonio “Pol” Medina, Jr. The strip is about a Manila community of mostly obese people – “fat as pigs”, so to speak (baboy is Tagalog for pig).
It started appearing in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 18, 1988. It currently appears exclusively in the Inquirer line of newspapers (Broadsheet Inquirer and its free concise sister tabloid called Inquirer Libre and tabloids Bandera and Tumbok.) Its popularity has spawned numerous compilations, a live-action television series, and merchandise such as T-shirts and figurines.
The strip does not only showcase domestic life; occasionally, it features adventure, drama, and pure spoof sequences. More often, the strip mirrors the general sentiment of the Filipino people on relevant topics such as corruption in the government as well as Filipino pop culture. In this respect, the strip has been likened to Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury. Sometimes, political satire is woven into some ordinary strips and adventure stories.
But lesbianism and its widely-observed prevalence in Catholic schools in the Philippines is a reality in Philippine society. Interestingly, this incident follows Filipino singer Charice Pempengco’s recent coming out to the public as an avowed “tomboy” and, at the same time, revealing an on-going relationship with female X-Factor finalist Alyssa Quijano. On that occasion, Get Real Post contributor Kate Natividad, wrote about her own personal experience with on-campus lesbianism in a previous article…
recalling my days as a high-school student in an all-girls’ school, I do recall some of my friends hooking up with self-proclaimed “tomboys”. Back then tomboys didn’t really come across as all that too convincing. For one thing, not too many of them had the resources or wherewithal to take on the full lifestyle and look. For another, many of them were just plain and simple confused. That’s easy for me to say as hindsight comes in handy in those cases. I know now that many of these high school tomboys now pretty much lead straight ladies’ lives. Those friends of mine who were the “girls” in these “relationships” remain the girls in their relationships with their husbands and boyfriends today.
…observations that seem to point to what should be a more sensible regard for lesbianism amongst the nation’s kolehyalas — one of just giving this issue a clueless shrug and just letting kids sort themselves out on their own and amongst themselves. Sexuality, after all, is really a joyful journey of exploration and perhaps lesbian experimentation in school is quite simply just a part of all that. There’s no harm in a bit of humour spun around this most basic of human conditions. And the best humour derives its efficacy from clear realities that it draws from.
[NB: Parts of this article were lifted from the Wikipedia.org article “Pugad Baboy” in a manner compliant to the terms stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that governs usage of content made available in this site. Image courtesty Inquirer.net.]
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Naturally, as a collector of Pugad Baboy books, I am disappointed at this turn of events.
Does anyone even give a shit if Charice Pempango is, or isn’t, a lesbian?
Is she about to release a CD? is her career flaming (Pun intended?) out?
This whole thing about her being gay is about as true as Angelina Jolie having both of her breasts removed.its basically un-provable(and I ain’t buyin the Bull-Shit) unless the both of them are going to be doin-the-do in public.SO, UH, WHAT?
Reputation and branding is important, therefore plausible deniablity must be maintained. The school is afraid of parents not wanting to send their kids there, and so they pander to conservative Catholic dogma.
Who cares.
If you don’t like it or want to read it then don’t buy it (cjange the channel). Seems to me they are all looking for their 15 minutes but its been an hour. As for gays who cares what they do in private as long as I don’t have to hear how gay people are and have it shoved in my face every ten minutes, just keep it to yourself.
I take the comic strip’s joke as it is — a joke. Plus the word “tongril” is funny. Bato-bato sa langit, ang tamaan tomboy! Hehe. Kidding aside, it’s just another opinion said in a creative way. So, no big deal for me.
I’m surprised no one here has argued yet that “why should the comic strip joke be taken lightly, but Vice Ganda’s joke was not?” They would further argue that sexual orientation is taboo here as well, not just rape.
Why would you even compare those two?
Rape jokes, are in bad taste, I think, no matter where you go. You just don’t do them, because rape is not a laughing matter.
But lesbianism? Is that a subject that, when joked about, in bad taste as well? And the thing is, that comic strip does make you think why it is allegedly rampant in St. Scholastica.
Maybe the nuns can’t really catch them all. And the Filipino tendency is, “if you can’t beat them, despite them being wrong, just let them be.” A fancy way to say impunity.
Any normal person will think rape is bad, but lesbianism? Any straight male (like most of us) will think this is hot.
Yeah, when faced with the issue of lesbians, the question that comes to mind is “Can I watch?” 😀
Well sure,BUT whenever I am faced with that situation (every once-in-a-while) I say: “Hey, move over!” then “AH, that’s better, Good girls.Aren’t you?”.
Conversely, straight women squirm at the idea of two men going at it. O baka ako lang yon? Hahaha. You guys! Take your fantasies elsewhere noh. Behave!
St. Scholastica has been the butt of jokes ever since. During the Lim Seng execution, it was rumored that St. Scho students dipped their handkerchiefs in Lim Seng’s blood as a souvenir. Another is that St. Scho students are the stereotype for the conyo kolehiyala. Now it’s lesbianism. Similar to that old “La Salle scandal back then?
I wonder if Filipinos love school days so much because they hate work.
napa-research ako dun a. Assumptionistas daw yung kumuha ng souvenir sa Lim Seng execution according to this letter sent to the Inquirer by the office of Gen. Ramos: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/letterstotheeditor/view/20090112-182765/Lim-Sengs-execution
and yes, rumor nga and hindi daw probable. Just sharing.
Whoops, I got it wrong. Assumption nga pala yan. Memory fails me sometimes. Probably because I think St. Scho has a similar reputation for “sosyalan” with Assumption during my high school days, but I wonder how it has evolved throughout the years. It’s different when you’re past school. hehe
Funny how the strip got “drew flak from online citizens” according to Star but when I accessed the page earlier, there were less than 10 comments, 3 of them identical.
I’d find it funny if the Star hires him
Maybe we can invite him here in GRP, after all he claimed to be a victim of ‘conPIGracy’ over his suspended strip, his political savvy in making satirical cartoons can be a boon for us..
If someone comes out and says that she is a lesbian, that is her choice. But to be a lesbian, is NOT a choice! No one chooses to live a life that is deemed inappropriate by their society. This is just hilarious as this is the first time I’ve stumbled upon a progressive site–so I thought–from the Philippines, but judging by the comments here–REALLY? GET REAL PHILIPPINES!
The hypocrisy of the Church is very much seen here. If someone says something bad against their reputation they immediately take action to sanction that person. But they ALWAYS have a say to almost everything, even though it doesn’t concern them, without any subtleties that their words might hurt the person concerned. So we are not allowed to say anything against them but they are allowed to do so? Where’s the justice in that? Self-righteous gits
St scholastica’s college – the most lesbian friendly in the world.
2,4,6,8
We take kids, gay or straight
2,4,6 and a quarter
More than a schooling for your daughter
1 minus 1 equals nun
And extracurricular fun
1 plus 1 equals 69
Fail on maths, but oral fine
Our girls are upper class
But still take you up the ar$e
Our headgirl is called jane
She likes it now and again
And again and again
2,4,6,8
Who do we appreciate
St scholastica girls
sometimes 1 + 1 only = 181
Someone argued that, although there is freedom of expression, there is no freedom to offend people using such expression.
With regards to this matter, though, the proper term is “asar-talo.” I remember a 4chan meme of iDOLM@STER’s Ritsuko Akizuki with a straight face of her and a text bubble saying “Oh, that. You lose if you react to it.”
What’s your take on these things, GRP?