So, when former Commission on Audit (COA) commissioner Heidi Mendoza “offended” members of the LGBTQIA+ community by saying she still had to study her LGBTQIA+ support (particularly on marriage equality and the anti-discrimination bill) while she’s running for senate, it was oh-so-easy for us to confront (online, that is) her.
F*ck her intent to help cleanse the Upper House, we said; her vision of a good Philippines apparently excludes us, so no, we won’t give her our support. We hated the either/or approach; as if cleaning the government AND helping LGBTQIA+ Filipinos are exclusive to each other (!).
The “cancelation” of Mendoza definitely didn’t help her already-weak campaign; she lost even when there-but-not-there senator Lito Lapid was reelected. LGBTQIA+ people were called out for being “selfish” and not helping someone “good” like Mendoza, allowing the likes of Camille Villar and Imee Marcos (and yeah, Lapid) to win seats. But… LGBTQIA+ cancel culture is a b*tch.
But here is what I find abhorrent with this LGBTQIA+ cancel culture: it is idiotically self-injurious because it is (also) blind.
Take the continuing idolatry of LGBTQIA+ fanatics of former vice president Leni Robredo, who – also during the last elections – endorsed Manny Pacquiao. Let’s repeat that for emphasis: Robredo wanted Pacquiao to win. And that’s even if she knows that Pacquiao strongly dislikes LGBTQIA+ people, referring to them as “masahol pa sa hayop”.
Robredo continues to be silent about this endorsement (yeah, she continues to gaslight her followers), and instead of calling her out, her die-hard fans actually justify what she did.
Particularly: that she “knew” what she was doing, so she should have been supported (even by LGBTQIA+ Filipinos) and voted for Pacquiao because the anti-LGBTQIA+ boxer’s win could have prevented Villar and Marcos from winning.
Gist: We have here some LGBTQIA+ people who can’t bring themselves to cancel Leni, too, so they ended up defending what she did that’s really bad for the LGBTQIA+ community. Thankfully, Pacquiao lost (LOL).
Vice Ganda is another example, continuing to avoid cancelation even after that rape joke about Jessica Soho in 2024, endorsing supposedly woke people’s “enemy” Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, backing Abby Binay and Benhur Abalos for the past election, and so on. Idolo pa rin ng maraming LGBTQIA+ people, no?
Madalas kasi, at least sa mga LGBTQIA+ na supposedly ay “woke” na maingay online, hindi na nakasalalay sa prinsipyo ang cancelation; instead, nakadikit ito sa personalities. Kaya may free passes, may untouchables. Meron din extreme fanaticism na, not seeing that just as they hate diehard Duterte supporters (as an example), they have also become diehard supporters of some personalities, unwilling to cancel these people even if they did something to the detriment of the LGBTQIA+ community (and not care at all that they did this).
Without – therefore – recognizing that exactly because of our approaches to dealing with social ills, bahagi na tuloy tayo ng problema. Because even if what we do is too obviously self-injurious already, we just justify it as a “necessity”… just not for us.
