I feel very oppressed too

Apparently, today’s “woke” Philippines subjects even a man’s private fantasies to a congressional inquiry nowadays. The “thought police are coming for people’s libido (and their careers too). 

One minute you’re sitting in the House Committee on Justice, defending the Vice President’s right to “unenforceable statements,” and the next, you become a victim of censorship just for sharing a personal anecdote. Since when did the legislative record become too fragile to hold the risqué heat of the manifestations of a red-blooded lawmaker? One was simply being authentic in citing Anne Curtis’s “nakakainit” looks. Surely one cannot be charged for something imagined?

But alas, people were swift in striking one’s words, claiming that such comments have no place in Congress, especially during National Women’s Month. Even the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW)  is treating one’s words as a felony branded as predatory desire and a violation of public trust. 

All of a sudden, a man of such culture is expected to suppress himself just because a few other representatives and interest groups find the sexual objectification of a celebrity offensive. They claim that such remarks reinforce a culture of harassment that violates the Safe Spaces Act. They also go on about an “architecture” of gender inequality as if one’s right to narrate my “heat” in a public forum is not the real thing under attack.

If a lawmaker cannot utilize a national impeachment hearing as a platform to vilify a woman’s dignity as a subject for commentary, then he truly is the most persecuted man in the room. 

This is what Representative Bong Suntay would want to entrench in everyone’s minds. This performance of his is a textbook example of how men in governance view themselves as “victims” of social change whenever they are held accountable for their hostile sexism. 

They hide behind the idea that “mere thoughts” are ineffectual in the broader social space and turn the halls of Congress into an exclusionary brotherhood where women are reduced to objects of male desire: a defensive reaction to feed into the patriarchal structures that award them a sense of superiority and dominance in a workplace where hierarchy is inevitably institutionalized.

Men in power claim to be the victims of a dangerous precedent of censorship. Yet they weaponize misogyny repackaged into “harmless imagination” to protect their privileged status and maintain an architecture of dominance that reduces a woman’s personhood. By treating a national hearing as a conduit of their ego, the fundamental dignity and rights of the very citizens they serve are subjugated.

Furthermore, this incident highlights a growing masculinity contest culture within public service (and even workplaces), where officials use their institutional authority to act out against perceived threats to traditional masculine roles. Suntay’s insistence and ignorance blinds himself from how his words carry the weight of his office, influencing social norms and normalizing the daily harassment Filipino women face in the streets, schools, homes, and workplaces. 

By failing to embody the values of the Magna Carta of Women and the Code of Conduct for Public Officials (RA 6713), he proves that for the patriarchy’s lapdogs, public office is not a “position of example” but a shield for unchecked ego. On top of that, knowing that Ethics Committee would rather remain silent than challenge a colleague’s “imagination” proves that the toxic masculinity is still the most protected space in government.

As a woman, it is profoundly exhausting to realize that no matter how high you climb in life or how professional the setting is, patriarchy is always waiting to seep through. This devolution public office into a chatterbox of systemic misogyny is a grim reminder of the staggering distance we have yet to travel: as a woman, your dignity is always second to a man’s comfort. Tell me Rep. Suntay, have you no ounce of respect and basic decency left? Even for the women in your life or the Vice President who you so vehemently defend?

We must decide if our institutions are meant to be theaters for the fragile ego or bastions of accountability. If a lawmaker finds it “exhausting” to maintain basic professional decorum, then the seat they occupy is a burden they are no longer fit to carry. The “thought police” aren’t coming for anyone’s libido; they are simply demanding the basic decency required of a public servant’s paycheck.

Ultimately, the real architecture under threat is the structural integrity of a democracy that promises equality but delivers locker-room banter. The “most persecuted man in the room” isn’t the one being told to keep his fantasies to himself; it is every woman who must work twice as hard and run as fast as they can in a space that still views her as a punchline or a prize. It is time we stop coddling the egos of the privileged and start demanding the respect the Filipinas deserve.