Dear Senator Robin Padilla,
Your projection of masculinity which made you popular in the ’90s, and presumably even got you elected to the Senate when acting no longer served as a viable source of income, needs to be re-imagined, reworked, and reconstructed.
Let’s start by unlearning your outdated concept of marital obligations between husband and wife, and introduce you to the concept of consent. Though your comments at a recent Senate hearing pertained to heteronormative relationships, let me stress that sexual consent applies to all relationships across all genders.
When it comes to sexual consent, no is not simply just a choice. No is a complete sentence. It does not require explanation or further justification. It is a complete sentence that needs to be heard, understood, and respected, whether in casual relationships or in formally officiated ones like marriage.
To better illustrate this, let us eat some fries together. Fries, as spelled out, hold the key to understanding consent.
F – Freely given
Consent is freely given. Acceptance of romantic or sexual overtures or agreeing to sexual acts is expressed or shown freely.
Senator Padilla, what you said in the Senate is something that women have heard from centuries. That wives exist to serve and cater to the pleasures – or as you put it, the urges – of their husbands. What you need to unlearn is the concept that women need to play coy or make pakipot. To do otherwise would mean that a woman is loose, easy, and slutty.
It may surprise you to know that women also have sexual needs pleasures, and urges.
Freely given expressions of love or affection are not indications of moral standing. They are expressions of body autonomy.
R – Reversible or revocable
A woman may consent to cuddling, kissing, and caressing – the different intimate activities that may lead to sex. But she can decide to stop at any point in time, for whatever reason. Maybe she remembered that she has an early morning, maybe she doesn’t like how her partner smells when his socks come off –whatever. No does not need to be explained but it must be respected.
I – Informed
The usual example of informed consent are instances of alcohol or drug intoxication. Simply put, a person cannot give informed consent if they are drunk or high and others should not take advantage of their intoxicated state to assume consent.
In your case, Senator Padilla, centuries of social conditioning and social shaming, and former bad boy action heroes such as yourself “informed” women that their main role was to please and pleasure their husbands. They were made to believe that performing their wifely duty meant never saying no to their husbands.
The recognition of marital rape as rape has changed this “informed” notion. In the Philippines, the Supreme Court already ruled on a case of marital rape rejecting the long-held belief that marital rape does not exist because of the “implied consent” that comes with being a wife.
Consent is never implied.
E- Enthusiastic
“Yes” that is enthusiastically given is consent given without reservations. An enthusiastic yes differs from “sige na nga” which may be tinged with other apprehensions like “you might leave me/hurt me/or get mad at me if I don’t do what you want me to do”. Which brings us to the other point. An enthusiastic yes means a woman is only doing things she wants to do, and not merely what she is expected to do.
S – Specific
There is no blanket consent where saying yes to one sexual activity means saying yes to all sexual activity. For example, consenting to sex is one thing. Having sex without a condom is something else that must be agreed upon. Consent must be given to each sexual activity.
Senator Padilla, in response to all the backlash you have been getting, you have extended an olive branch with branches made of manufactured perfunctory words of apology. Personally, I would prefer some FRIES. – Rappler.com