16/10/2025
MALE s*xual abuse is the focus of the Ilonggo short film entry in the 21st Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival – “Kung Tugnaw Ang Kaidalman Sang Lawod” (“Cold As The Ocean Runs Deep”) by Seth Andrew Blanca
The film underscores the deafening silence surrounding male abuse as this topic is rarely discussed.
“Tugnaw” centers on a debt-stricken seafarer. He takes his superior’s help in his desperation to send money to his girlfriend. The superior later tightened the hold on him initially through simple massage which later became s*xual advances.
A seafarer himself, Bianca said, “The film touches on seafarers’ infamous stories rarely shared, especially those about being manipulated by people they deeply trusted. From power struggles to abuse, and finally, succumbing to the void. Worse than the waves we encounter at sea are people with evil intentions. It makes you feel as if you were on the ship, feeling the liminal spaces of the corridors to the haunting rumble of the engine.”
The Supreme Court stressed in Richard Toliongco vs Anglo Eastern Crew Mgt. (G.R. No. 231748, July 8, 2020) that s*xual harassment can happen to anyone and everyone.
The Supreme Court underscored that victims of s*xual abuse usually take time before reporting to the proper authorities, more so if they are male as society has made it hard for male victims of s*xual harassment to come out and report.
“Our society has often depicted women as being the weaker s*x, and the only victims of s*xual harassment. It is high-time that this notion is corrected. To consider women as the weaker s*x is discriminatory. To think that only women can be victims of s*xual harassment is discriminatory against men who have suffered the same plight; men who have been victimized by s*xual predators,” the Court said.
Sexual harassment may take the form of s*xist remarks, s*xual advances or s*x-related behavior. It is a reflection of the power relations between individuals involved where, in most instances, the harasser is a person occupying a higher position than the victim.
The Court cited a separate opinion in Garcia vs Drilon, (712 Phil 44, 2013) which recognized the existence of violence against men and the underreporting of such incidents.
The Court said that “social and cultural expectations on masculinity and male dominance urge men to keep quiet about being a victim, adding to the unique experience of male victims of domestic abuse. This leads to latent depression among boys and men. In a sense, patriarchy while privileging men, also victimizes them”.
“There is now more space to believe that portraying only women as victims will not always promote gender equality before the law. It sometimes aggravates the gap by conceding that women have always been dominated by men. In doing so, it renders empowered women invisible; or, in some cases, that men as human beings can also become victims,” the Court added.
The Court further stressed that “it may be said that violence in the context of intimate relationships should not be seen and encrusted as a gender issue, rather it is a power issue. Thus, when laws are not gender-neutral, male victims of domestic violence may also suffer from double victimization first by their abusers and second by the judicial system.
Focusing on women as the victims entrenches some level of heteronormativity. It is blind to the possibility that, whatever moral positions are taken by those who are dominant, in reality intimate relationships can also happen between men.
At its core, s*xual harassment is not an issue of gender but an issue of power.
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MALE s*xual abuse is the focus of two regional entries in the 21st Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival – “Kung Tugnaw Ang Kaidalman Sang Lawod” (“Cold As The Ocean Runs Deep”) by Seth Andrew Blanca and the full-length film “Raging” by Ryan Machado, and a short film. The films undersco...
