The crowd did, in fact, laugh
Trump’s good friend Duterte has a new idea:
Addressing a group of former communist rebels on Wednesday, Duterte, who served as a city mayor before becoming president, appeared to encourage the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to target women in conflict.
“Tell the soldiers. ‘There’s a new order coming from the mayor. We won’t kill you. We will just shoot your vagina,’ ” he said.
“If there is no vagina, it would be useless,” Duterte continued, according to local media reports, appearing to imply that women are useless without their genitals.
The president’s communications office included the comment in the official transcript from the event but replaced the word “vagina” with a dash.
Well I’m guessing he didn’t say the Tagalog equivalent of “vagina” – I’m guessing it was the local version of “cunt.”
Duterte regularly denigrates and threatens women, but when challenged, he insists it was all just a joke. Just last week, his spokesman accused women of “overreacting” to the president’s comments. “I mean, that’s funny. Come on. Just laugh,” Harry Roque said.
According to the official transcript from the Wednesday event, the crowd did, in fact, laugh at Duterte’s remarks.
Duterte, who was elected president in 2016, has made headlines for “joking” about the rape of a kidnapped Australian who was later killed and for telling troops to rape women in conflict. He often shares unsolicited opinions on the sexual attractiveness of women, particularly female politicians who question his policies, in an apparent effort to demean, shame and silence them.
Nooooooooo, he’s just making “jokes.”
Hmmm, but no evidence of systemic rape culture anywhere in any society right? Just (another) isolated incident, completely unrelated and coincidental to all the other isolated incidents, like aid workers renting the inside of women’s bodies. I bet those aide workers carried out due diligence first, making sure the women weren’t trafficked, had great educations and were financially stable and were just doing sex work because it’s such a fun lark and easier than typing. I bet the phillipines army and public will be so revolted by their president that he’ll be tossed out forthwith and his comments will not be passed off as a joke, let-alone acted on.
Hmm, a friend of Trump, you say. Can’t think what they might have in common.