By Rhea Catada

Written in 2021, in the middle of a pandemic lockdown and under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, whose particular brand of macho, misogynistic politics was cheered on by far too many Filipino men. This angry blog has a very specific target: a particular kind of educated, privileged, straight Filipino masculinity, steeped in performative intellectualism, misogyny, homophobia, class contempt, and generational machismo. Read part 1 here

No one wears his ignorance as proudly as the Filipino Man*. His profound ignorance meant that he thinks the world revolves around him, his identity, his masculinity, his politics, his religious beliefs, his sports, and even his taste in music, movies, clothes. For him, the only humanity that matters is his own humanity.

This Filipino man is a straight, cisgender man raised in a strict Catholic environment, inheriting some of the ideas about gender, sexuality, and morality that centuries of colonial Catholicism helped embed in Filipino society. Of course, Catholicism did not invent Filipino patriarchy, nor can colonialism explain every shitty Filipino man. But it did leave us with a particularly rigid vocabulary for deciding what a man should be, what a woman should be, and what happens to anyone who refuses to be either.

The Filipino man likes those categories because he gets to claim the narrative that as a man he has god-like superiority over women, he holds the heaven, he is the master. Women should be beneath him, as his maid, his adulating fan, his babysitter (since the Filipino man never grows up), his sex object. For him, nothing exists outside the cis-man and cis-woman dichotomy. Everything else is either made up or just sheer abomination – either way, their existence should only be relegated in his punchlines or insults.

This Filipino man is a mediocre man but doesn’t realize it because he was raised to believe that being born male is already in itself an achievement. As a kid, he may have been the most troublesome boy in school, the worst bully, his grades mediocre, but his parents still looked at him as if he lays golden eggs. For mom and dad, having a boy meant he will carry forward the family name, and that’s good enough of a legacy. Thus, from his childhood and all the way into his adulthood, his parents let him do the bare minimum – a stark contrast to his sisters (or queer siblings) who are expected to work twice as hard. “Boys need to go out and play with other kids so they will grow up strong,” the parents said, while the daughters are expected to finish all their schoolwork then help with house chores.

While he got to enjoy his childhood and adolescence, there were 100 rules for his sisters: rules how to sit, rules how to speak, rules about shutting up, rules about keeping the house in order; rules so that they grow up to become respectable women; rules so that they become marry-able and not rape-able members of the society. There were no 100 rules for this Filipino man when he was a boy, but 100 excuses and justifications for his behavior – all are different variations of the expression “Boys will be boys.”

And so this Filipino man grows up to become a mediocre man, yet expects to be constantly adored and praised. Yes, he works to provide for his family, but he’s barely even doing any kind of parenting. “I am earning money for this family, and for that, I’m doing a spectacular job,” he thinks, so after a hard day’s work, he sits in front of the television, not to be disturbed from his series or movie marathon. He’s practically oblivious of his children and his wife. His wife runs around the house to take care of the kids and a million of other chores – even if she herself also just got back from work. He only takes a quick break from his television stupor to take a picture or a short video of his kids so he can upload it to his social media accounts: Dad of the year.

This Filipino man believes his name, his words, and his actions are sacred so no matter how mediocre, how ignorant, or how insufferable he is, it is blasphemy for a woman to criticize him. No matter how legitimate or how serious a woman’s concerns may be, they are nothing but offensive drivel if they will hurt a Filipino man’s fragile ego. For a Filipino man, a woman should be silent, or silenced – either by shaming her or by hurting her.

This Filipino man is an unbearably ignorant man, he is mediocre, he is a bigot, he will forever be inappropriate towards women (especially those who are half his age); but this Filipino man is also an insecure little man, so we are all supposed to look away from these major character flaws, we must not point them out, or be prepared for the wrath of a spectacularly disappointing man-child.