How difficult it is to write about the Hayden Kho sex videos without sounding like an MCP. Even as I’m writing this, I am unsure at how I’ll be organizing the thoughts and phrasing them for me not to take a step back in humankind’s evolution.
Over the course of yesterday, I’ve had several chats with both male and female friends and acquaintances regarding the Haydeng Kho sex video scandals. There’s the typical mind-in-crotch guy talk three bottles into a drinking session. Typical. But more interesting are the female reactions to the issue. Simplified, their reactions to Katrina Halili’s plight fall into the choices in FML – “Your life is f*cked” and “You deserved that one”.
I wonder if these reactions have anything to do with gender lines. I somehow think that judgments based on gender lines are moot and that reactions can fall either way or even in the gray areas of these choices regardless of being male, female, gay, lesbian or transgender.
Take the case of “Nicole” in that rape case. That issue polarized people’s opinions casting “Nicole” either as a victim or a slut who deserved it.
It’s inevitable that Katrina Halili and all of Kho’s partners in the videos will also be subjected to the same scrutiny of the public. It’s easy to sympathize with them all because what Kho did was plain wrong. Then again, there’s always the argument for assuming responsibility for one’s actions. Should “But I was in love” (or even “I was young and stupid. Now, I know better.) always be the victim’s Chewbacca defense to such situations?
On a simplistic level, Kho violated the trust that lovers share. A gentleman never kisses and tells. Recording videos intimate moments with lovers and have other people take a look is inexcusable. I wouldn’t fuss about the legal aspect to this, but given my own morality, what Kho did was wrong.
Katrina Halili’s recent actions involving the media, though, complicates my take on the matter.
Still, I can’t quite make myself able to fully sympathize with Halili despite my judgment on Kho’s actions. Sure she’s appeared in men’s magazines, a calendar, and even a gravure video. Those alone can push our patiarchal and Catholic society to mark her as a whore. It’s complicated, really, to draw the line between her work and her real-life self. Still, I think that Kho’s betrayal is undeserved. People who know her fully sympathize with her so I guess they are in a much better position to make judgments on that level.
It’s this. Why does her call for help even consider the issue a “career-ender”? In such a situation, why should economics even be part of the argument? It’s not even on the core matter of betrayal that’s central to her call. Bugso ng damdamin, perhaps?
I just think that, given the situation, her quest for justice should be fought on the level of principle. Involving her ability to make money just dilutes the what’s essential to this matter. Especially now that, again, rights of all Filipinas ride on this issue.
Then again, that reveals something about the hypocrisy of the entertainment industry as well. In the cut-throat entertainment industry where sex sells, why would a sex tape even be an issue? Pam Anderson had a sex tape out. Paris Hilton became a sensation because of hers. Kim Kardashian even landed a reality TV gig post that Ray-J scandal.
Is it because Halili now embodies all that’s impure in this society that networks and advertisers would not want anything to do with her? That just allows for an interpretation of the hegemony in the entertainment industry. “We’ll sympathize with you, Katrina. We’d give you slots in celebrity talk shows for you to cry on the air. That’s good TV. But for another big project on our network? Our market doesn’t like damaged goods. Sorry.”
On the macro level that also tells us something about our society. Will we consider Halili as forever damaged by this issue? We are a society who give premium people who keep their kings at the back row*. And yet Filipinos love sex. We wouldn’t reach a population of nearly 90 million if we don’t.
And oh how I laughed at Bong Revilla’s condemnation of Kho as a maniac of the highest order. Casting the first stone, huh?
*Read Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
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