Several government agencies led by the Philippine Commission on Women engaged in an 18 days (November 25 to December 12, 2022) campaign to end violence against women and girls. This is part of an annual worldwide campaign that started way back in 2008 under the leadership of the UN Secretary-General. Such program had been christened to “UNiTE by 2030”, and is considered essential to attain the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Certainly, this will be launched again this 2023. Already, allied entities like the One Billion Rising Organization (https://www.onebillionrising.org) had started with their “Rise for Freedom” 2023 campaign against “Patriarchy and from all its progeny….capitalism, impunity, poverty, oppression, division, exploitation, shame, control, individualism, greed, violence”.
The Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the DENR, Region 2, thru its Chief of the Mining Division, Engr. Ellen Grace Galiste, and its Regional Director, Engr. Marcelo Noble, gave me the opportunity to speak at their agency’s event supporting this campaign, held last December 1, 2022 at the Bayview Hotel in Manila.
Due to my advocacy, I have sat thru a lot of lectures given by different speakers from various professions on this subject. On my part, I have on many occasions lectured on how technological innovations have been used by abusers to perpetrate online violence against women and the members of the LGBTQIA+ community. In 2022 for example, I was privileged to contribute to the Anti-Sexual Harassment First Responders’ Kit and training of the relevant members of the University of the Philippines Cebu system, particularly on electronic evidence, and gender identity issues surrounding not merely women, but also LGBTQIA+.
But if the goal is to end violence against these vulnerable sectors by 2030, I thought long and hard what I will present to the MGB that are not commonly addressed or even mentioned in the usual lectures concerning the law, regulations and jurisprudence on this area. So two hours before my actual lecture, I decided to highlight some of the age-old beliefs that most of us hold, that had been ingrained in our countries, cultures, religions, tribes, and in our homes, which define women, and those who are different, as inferior and subservient to straight dominant cismen due to their supposed weakness in mind, body and spirit, their impurity, and their being the cause of sin, evil and temptation. I chose to do this with the mindset that we will never be free of violence as long as we do not understand its root causes that lie in these beliefs, then question, change and liberate ourselves from them.
My approach is informed by the World Health Organization (WHO) which in 2012 came out with a list of views culled from different communities all over the world based on their religious, ancestral and traditional practices and beliefs that WHO identified as “norms and beliefs that support violence against women” which also are relevant in violence against the LGBTQIA+ peoples. Some of these worldwide beliefs are:
- A man has a right to assert power over a woman and is considered socially superior
- A man has a right to physically discipline a woman for ‘incorrect’ behaviour
- There are times when a woman deserves to be beaten
In India, female feticide, dowry killings, widow burnings, and even gang rapes in very public places like traveling buses had surged in recent years, and the offenders have largely gone unpunished. The recent death of a 16 year old girl for wearing denim jeans by hanging from the hands of her male relatives who viewed the jeans as sexually provocative, is another item in the innumerable crimes against women, which can be understood, (and others have tried to justify) in the context of a very ancient complex caste society fueled by religious beliefs that uphold the superiority and even god-like status and privilege of men over the lives and bodies of women.
A similar thing can be said about the motivations and beliefs about the honor killings of women in middle eastern, African and eastern European countries. These are still prevalent today because despite apparent laws that prohibit these actions, the offenders subscribe to their ancient religious and tribal beliefs that subjugate women to extreme and even fatal measures, which they consider worthy of pursuing, despite the consequences to their physical liberties. It must also be mentioned that in predominantly Muslim countries and societies, some of the Islamic writings or “hadith” about the prophet Mohammad, and some passages of their Qu’ran or Koran are not women friendly. In fact, I showed the MGB attendees four translations of the passage in Qur’an 4:34. All of these translations by Islamic scholars prescribe the beating of women by men who find them disobedient.
China, like India, has a skewed population in favor of men. If one considers their millennia of cultural history, rites, religious beliefs, art, literature and even government policies, they are not flattering, and in fact, are quite harmful to women. This has been resulted in female feticide, femicide and human trafficking. There are over 50 to 100 million women missing in China. In some provinces, the female shortage is so severe that infant girls are purchased by men who raise them as their brides.
In some Catholic countries, extremely conservative legislators have passed laws, implemented by ultra-conservative judges that absolutely take away the women’s autonomy over their bodies. In El Salvador for example, abortion, for any reason, even if it is done to save the life of the woman is completely criminalized. This has given rise to the phenomenon of the victimization by the legal and judicial system of very young, poor, and even illiterate girls and women, like Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz, who have been subjected to incest and gang rapes, who are suspected of terminating their pregnancies intentionally, even without any medical or legal evidence. Ms. Cruz, who was a teenager was raped many times by a gang member, passed out in a toilet, with a dead infant found beside her. There was no evidence if it died in the womb or during the birth or if she killed it. All the same, the judge sentenced her to 30 years in prison!
Civil strife and war also escalate the violence against women and LGBTQIA+ peoples. In fact, rape as a weapon of war is terrifyingly illustrated in the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine. The patterns and incidents of sexual violence in Ukraine done by Russian soldiers have been reported in the U.N. Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, A/77/533, released last October 18, 2022.
It must also be emphasized that in 2022, the human rights of women and LGBTQIA+ peoples have taken severe curtailment and regression in progressive countries like the U.S.A., see in particular the US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health promulgated in June 24, 2022 which denied a woman’s right to abortion. When this decision was handed down, I searched for a copy from the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, and much to my chagrin, the majority decision penned by J. Samuel Alito relied on a dubious and copious historical analysis (many, many pages) of the absence of abortion rights from the 18th to the 19th centuries, without taking into consideration the current 21st century norms and advances in technology.
As with Dobbs, most of the founders, writers and interpreters of religions, religious texts and dogmas are men, many of whom insist on a historical, even literal, and absolutist interpretations of ancient texts which could not have foreseen the vast and multitudinous changes in our contemporary ethos and technological discoveries.
As I said in my MGB lecture, the current laws, rules and jurisprudence that we have which appear to protect the rights and interests of women and LGBTQIA+ are merely reactive and palliative. They only and partially address the physical and online consequences, but do not address the root cause of all these violence. Unless and until all of humankind engage in a continuing discussion, soul-filled revision and liberation from their ancient beliefs and traditions concerning women and LGBTQIA+ peoples, a VAWLGBTQIA+ free world may seem to be a mere (vanished) ideal by 2030.
To all the DENR MGB Region 2 officials and participants, to Mr. Macandog and Engrs. Galiste and Noble, thank you wholeheartedly for allowing me to be part of your agency’s campaign. I salute you all! To all subscribers, readers and friends, An Empowering, Enlightening and Grace filled 2023!!!
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