Thoughts on the Senate and the Sex Scandal

by JOSE CHAVEZ CAMANO

The sex drama online between Ms. Katrina and Mr. Kho had spilled over the Senate floor and everyone got wet, literally and figuratively. The august chamber on cue from Senator Jamby Madrigal, Committee Chairman on Youth, Women and Family Relations had summoned, on suggestion from Senator Bong Revilla, another movie actor, both artists in the sex video to bare it all, entertain the public and to enlighten the distinguished lawmakers so they can craft a piece of legislation to address sex videos proliferating online involving our young adults as well as not too young adults. It is indicative enough that the Senate has the fortitude and the resolve to address this one vexing issue of pornography online, though hours earlier, the same body was at a loss on how to interpret their ethics rule against one of its member Manny Villar, and would defer to the High Tribunal for guidance. Proficiency in math seems to plague this chamber too that it is likely to ask the same tribunal to determine what constitutes ¾ of the chamber to call for Con-Ass, though in the latter, it is losing steam as of now. Imagine children in gridlock over whose turn it is to wash the dishes and whose turn to play the video games that they have to ask their parents to settle the matter. The only difference is that our lawmakers were no longer immature children, though temperamentally they could still be.

That this august chamber is deficient on something else does not argue against its capacity to fashion a piece of legislation that will address the issue of “voyeurism” or “pornography” online. There seems to be, in this regards, a unanimous perception that the Senate can handle this “sex” investigation in aid of legislation or in aid of its basal interest for raw and prurient desire to look at the “perpetrators” up close and personal.

Let us leave the Senate for a while and look for some substance.

If adults had engaged in some kind of indiscretion, our reflex reaction is to find out if it was consensual on their part. If this encounter was captured digitally frame by frame, our instinctive reaction is to ask if both knew of the capture. If yes on both, we tend to brush everything aside and take a hike. If there is no public interest that is involved, we can sleep tight at night. But how about if this indiscretion was done in an awfully tasteless manner and the entire episode becomes an overnight sensation online as to provoke someone to cry in anger: “masyado akong nababoy”. Now we can see some public outrage, though mistaken and misplaced in part because it was snowballed by the TV-network and the movie industry that had packaged Ms. Katrina both as a sex symbol and a heroine out to save mankind. If Ms. Katrina was advertised as a sex symbol, what is so wrong with her being seen performing an act that she was packaged to deliver? Was it because her director was a doctor and she was unaware of the camera rolling? Was the outrage lies in part because she was not able to deliver her best worthy of a FAMAS title as she was unaware of the camera rolling? Or was it because it was a one-sided portrayal of her as a sex symbol and it was not balanced by her selfless heroine character?

The perplexing personality of Ms. Katrina is only matched by his partner who now claims that his deviant behavior was a result of a childhood trauma. What childhood trauma? He seemed to be upbeat and in high spirit sojourning with his girlfriend, Ms. Belo in another escapade in Singapore until the sex video with Ms. Halili had appeared online. He did not appear to be suffering from any trauma before the video scandal.

The negative reactions from the public was fueled chiefly by GMA-7, Ms. Halili’s employer, whose daily variety show features scantily clad young girls gyrating before TV cameras beamed throughout the country and other parts of the world, which announced that it was standing behind her highly-prized sex kitten, Ms. Katrina. The entire movie industry had rallied behind her as well.

Dr. Kho was overwhelmed by the negative reactions from the public about this video clip that he hired a lawyer to fight tooth and nail for his right over this video which he claimed was released without his permission. He appeared on TV contrite though for his behavior only after his doting mother had made a similar appearance earlier that was a disaster.

The public are being entertained with the cheap kind of circus where one is being portrayed as virtuous and another as a villain. Her virtue centers around her being unaware of the camera rolling while doing sex act; and his villainous act, that of taping the sexual congress and releasing it thereafter. We seem to wallow in the idea that had she been aware of the camera rolling and consented to it, it will cement a character in her person which in the first place was not there. For proper perspective though, the public should see them both as villains.

To illustrate this point, let us put another face instead that of Ms. Katrina’s doing sex with Mr. Kho. This other face is not also engaged to be married with Mr. Kho either because he has his own girl Ms. Belo. We have no problem conjuring up an image of what the local wags would call “Pok-Pok” but in the case of Ms. Katrina, we conveniently put a face of a “victim of injustice”.

In the case of Mr. Kho, the public can easily read perversion from every copy of sexual video he has with his partners to catalogue his conquest and to make money in them in the future.

If you sympathize with either, then we have our priorities wrong and our morality totally upside down. This could be the reason why we can only achieve so much as a nation.