Actors Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings screwed up.
Cheating happens, unfortunately, but more unfortunately for public figures, a case of cheating naturally morphs into a nationwide scandal.
But straight to my headline’s point, Maris is getting the brunt of the ridiculing, with a considerable majority hyperfixating on a number of choice quotes from her. “You miss my body?”; “That was so hot”; “Smoke then fuck”; and a few others. At this point, they’ve been reused, and meme-fied countless, many times. (A segue: if there had been no cheating involved, these would have been par-for-the-course messages to send to a lover.)
Memes digging up old videos of Maris that now have new, ironic meaning have also been popping up, as well as more serious posts chastizing Maris.
But the shaming has been largely skewed towards Maris. We can do better: We can ding our shame bells towards Maris’ cheating accomplice and co-equal co-conspirator Anthony Jennings too. (Or were Anthony’s midnight correspondences simply a little too drab to be meme-fied?)
Lawyer Jesus Falcis — in his now-viral explanation of the potential legal issues that cheating screenshot leaker and Anthony’s ex Jam Villanueva might also face — succinctly puts it:
“What’s unfortunate and what I find personally wrong in leaking the screenshots of Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings through social media is the slutshaming of Maris Racal because of her supposed ‘thirst trap/hungry’ messages. Look what statements have gone viral. 3-4 messages from Maris Racal and only 1, barely viral, from Anthony Jennings (about him disgustingly using method acting as justification).
“Cheating is bad. But so is misogyny, enabled by violating the right to privacy.”
As it stands, we’re playing to our societal biases — that the woman is the temptress in sexual mis-encounters, and the man, in his innocence, is powerless over said feminine lures.
That’s where we’ve been operating from in this still-developing saga.
And again, we see just how quickly social media snowballs and amplifies these kinds of ingrained biases — leaving little chance for ideas like “Hey, maybe this time, we should blame the guy too, and that we should know by now, it takes two to tango” or “Hey, maybe we should also focus on how Anthony Jennings was making the most comical, absolutely ridiculous excuses, and was stringing along his then-girlfriend Jam.”
On another point, Jam, for her part, could have gotten a lawyer’s opinion on the subject of leaking screenshots.
The aforementioned Falcis says he has been asked about this before. He said:
“Even before screenshots of text or chat messages between Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings were leaked today, many people — especially those who were cheated on — have always asked me before about the legality of posting and sharing screenshots of private conversations….even if you were the victim of cheating, by posting screenshots of any alleged affair, not only are you exposing yourself to cyberlibel charges but also to charges for violating data privacy — which is punishable by stiffer and harsher penalties than cyber libel.”
What should cheating sufferers do then? Falcis suggests still taking screenshots of possible pieces of evidence of cheating or an affair. But don’t post it on social media. Instead, file a violence against women (VAW) case, specifically “psychological violence caused by infidelity.”
Once screenshots are presented as evidence in court, that’s when they are no longer covered by rules on the right to privacy, Falcis explained.
Jam must have been in great despair to pull the trigger on posting the screenshots, so perhaps no sensible legal advice could have stopped her — we’ll never know.
All we know is — hell has no wrath.
(But if we are to scorn, might we be equal opportunity scorners for both man and woman in incidents like this?) – Rappler.com