Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has officially gone off the chain. According to a government transcript of a speech he delivered on February 7, Duterte said Philippine soldiers should not kill women rebel fighters. “Tell the soldiers, there’s a new order coming from the mayor. We won’t kill you. We will just shoot your vagina. If there is no vagina, it would be useless.” The president also chastised female fighters for abandoning their children and families, in order to join the communist movement. Of course it was red hot fire, with human rights and women’s rights groups calling for his head, both of them. Representative Emmi De Jesus of the Gabriela Women’s Party said, “It further confirms himself as the most dangerous macho-fascist in the government right now. He has further presented himself as the epitome of misogyny and fascism terribly rolled in one, He is dangerously pushing the fascist Armed Forced of the Philippines (AFP) to commit more bloody human rights violations and grave abuses of international humanitarian law, and takes state terrorism against women and the people to a whole new level.” The Gabriela Women’s Party is a Filipino organization that advocates for women’s issues. It is a nationwide network of grassroots organizations, institutions, and programs. Its name is an acronym of General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action.
This not the first time the Philippine Presidents has made misogynistic remarks. In January, during his visit to India, he told a group of Indian and Filipino business leaders in New Delhi that he would like to attract visitors to the Philippines by offering “42 virgins”and told a group of soldiers fighting Muslim armed fighters in Marawi that they could rape up to three women without getting punished. In July at the Miss Universe pageant he again got into scalding hot water when he offhandedly implied he would congratulate the person who rapes a pageant contestant. “What I don’t like are kids (being raped.) You can mess with, maybe Miss Universe. Maybe I will even congratulate you for having the balls to rape somebody when you know you are going to die for the crime.”
Ana Santos, a Manila-based international journalist and women’s rights advocate, said Duterte’s repeated jokes about rape “have reached a point of maddening frustration”. “Scarier and more upsetting for me is that people still laugh at them. I think the challenge for us now is to not get used to it. The first thing we need to do is to stop laughing at these rape jokes because they are not funny.”
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