This Jude Bacalso issue reminded me of an old column by the late Conrado de Quiros titled "Popoy," written way back in 2001.
De Quiros wrote of the labor leader Filemon "Popoy" Lagman -- who was assassinated in 2001 -- during one of the most difficult years of the Cory presidency:
"Some time during her term, Cory allowed the oil giants to raise oil prices despite widespread public perception that it was unjustified. The oil price increase swiftly triggered public protests, which snowballed into an entire movement called the Kilusang Rollback. Emboldened by this, and to 'raise the struggle to higher levels,' the NPA began stopping buses outside Metro Manila and burning them when their drivers refused to join the strike. As it turned out, the fires that consumed the buses consumed the protest movement as well. Overnight, the protest screeched to a halt. The bus burnings sparked angry protests from the public, the commuting masa above all."
Lagman called for a press conference, where he and other members of the New People's Army tried to justify the bus burnings to the press. According to De Quiros, they implored the journalists to "look at the bigger picture," and insisted that the bus burnings were part of a strategy against the Aquino administration's decision to side with the oil companies.
De Quiros was having none of it.
"I disagreed, saying the media reports about the protest had a sense of proportion and fairly accurately reflected the public sentiment about the bus burnings," De Quiros wrote. "I myself had called the people who wreaked them a bunch of terrorists in my [previous] column. Popoy answered back, and before long I found myself arguing heatedly -- for the first time in my life in a press conference -- with the person I was supposed to be interviewing. Popoy was saying in a raised voice: 'No, you people were wrong to exploit the sensational and draw public attention away from the real issues in the protest.' I replied in equally heatedly: 'People are watching a play, when suddenly someone darts out from nowhere and streaks in front of the stage. Whom do you think people will watch -- the characters on the stage or the streaker? That was what you did when you burned the buses -- you streaked while a play was going on. Don't blame the media.'"
I remembered this old column because Bacalso, who was -- in his own words -- trying to "educate" the waiter who called him "sir," streaked while a play was going on. He burned a bus and drew attention away from the issue of misgendering. What the people saw was someone -- a former TV personality and member of the media -- berating a lowly server for close to two hours instead of proving a point (in a world where social media is king, an issue like this will go viral in a matter of minutes), a server who was working for, in Bacalso's own words, one of the owners of the restaurant, a friend, who is "a beautiful transwoman, whose own transition I have witnessed through the years."
What a missed opportunity for the LGBTQIA+ community to focus on the real issue of misgendering.
