By Farah G. Decano

           

WHEN women started discarding their roles as damsels in distress, they did not ask for men to discontinue being knights in shining armor.  Awakened by their worth, the maidens wiped their tears, picked up their spears and shields, and donned their cuirasses.  They just wanted to ride on horses alongside their counterpart in this ongoing precarious tale and journey of humanity.

As we witness women empowerment develop over the decades, we cannot help but observe a corresponding decline in masculinity among men. The concept refers to society-defined characteristics more associated with males such as courage, toughness, leadership, provision for the family, and chivalry.

Look around your circle. How many of your friends have male members in the family who are either jobless tambays or rejected husbands because of their inability to provide and protect?  How many have become Wimpy Joes who have returned to their parents’ fold rather than stick it out and face the challenges of life?

Why is there a rise in the number of distressed dudes?  Are they in need of a dame in her radiant cataphract?  Did the women’s rights movement aim for a reversal of roles?

Some foreign experts allude to the following causes:  the lack of education among men, the widening gap of maturity between males and females, with the females menstruating earlier while males’ testes descend much later, and the absence of father figures, which have more damaging and depressive impact on the sons than on daughters.  What with more women undergoing invitro fertilization, how many males born from them will turn out to become unstable?

Perhaps, the Philippine Commission on Women can do a study on this matter.  How many Filipino men have become reclusive, dependent, or even destructive because of their status in society?  Will the statistics trigger government intervention?   We must anticipate this possible scenario and correct it before it worsens.  I do not think that women intended to disempower men just to make half of humanity rendered helpless.

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For more than four decades, I have heard most pulitikos proclaim that their candidacies were hatched to address the poor living conditions their constituents. Judging from the results, I guess what they meant was to multiply the number of poor people in their jurisdictions.

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I find it curious that VP Sara has come out to endorse Imee Marcos’ re-election bid splashed in black colors and not green, the political color of her party HNP.  Black is a powerful color but is NOT normally associated with good fortune.  I am inclined to think the color choice was made by Sen. Imee’s camp, otherwise it would seem that the VP’s support was not made with full confidence or was given in humor.

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Why would a politician crave to render service again and again to the point of establishing a family dynasty for decades and decades?  The usual query of a thinking Pangasinan would be, “Anto kasi’y masamit ed satan ya posisyon no akin et kakaniten da?”  

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Congressional candidate Ian Sia has twice been called out by the Commission on Elections for sexually-charged remarks on menstruating female solo parents and for body shaming.  My initial response was to think that Mr. Sia was from the ranks of the jeje (Filipino slang to describe distasteful behavior by the uneducated mostly).  But no.  He is a lawyer and is a graduate of the Ateneo College of Law.  His Arrrneo classmate, senatorial aspirant, Atty. Luke Espiritu, is himself in a quandary about Sia’s conduct.

We could only hypothesize that Atty. Sia behaved the way he did in order to obtain votes from those of similar minds.  It is disappointing for one who went to Ateneo, a premier Catholic University, to lead the backtracking of society to the days of the neanderthals.  Did he think that there were a lot of Filipino cave people nowadays?

As a writer, I strive to present a balanced view, and thus I am expressing my even greater disgust for the Iskos and Iskas in the Senate who voted in favor of the grant of citizenship to a shady foreigner.  Thanks to the only senator who courageously voted against it, Senator Rissa Hontiveros. She is an Arrrnean, as well.

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