Teen singer-songwriter Frankie “Kakie” Pangilinan on Sunday shared a screenshot of a tweet that might have been an accidental admission of rape amid the debate on rape culture victim-blaming on local social media.
Pangilinan had been vocal against recent online posts that put women and their clothing at fault for sex crimes despite cases that proved otherwise.
While she mainly earned support for her bravery, some accounts threw disrespectful and horrible comments against Pangilinan’s tweets that criticize rape culture in the country.
She managed to take a screenshot of one of them and shared it on June 14.
The tweet in the screenshot said: “Girls wearing modest clothes are harder to r*pe. Simple as. I know this from experience.”
This post had since made rounds more than 13,000 times and earned more than 63,000 likes on Twitter.
The Twitter user, whose account username was cropped out of the screenshot, retweeted Kakie’s previous post, saying: “Stop teaching girls how to dress??? Teach people not to rape.”
This was the singer-songwriter’s reaction to a now-deleted post of the Lucban Municipal Police Station in Quezon Province that warned women against wearing skimpy clothes, which local police claimed to provoke sexual harassment.
Pangilinan then responded to the quote tweet of the unnamed Twitter user and asked “Inamin?” referring to sexual allegations.
Pangilinan also shared a compilation of screenshots of tweets that contain vile messages against her.
Pangilinan previously said she had been receiving threats of harassment and rape.
“Threatening to r*pe me or hoping I’m r*ped in order to somehow justify that victims are to blame — that’s the real brain cell gap right there,” Kakie said.
Following her tweet against the local provincial police, Pangilinan figured in a word war against veteran broadcaster Ben Tulfo after the latter tried to tell her off about women’s rights.
While he addressed Pangilinan as “hija” on both platforms, Tulfo’s post on Facebook differed and appeared to be more scathing, wherein he even called her “the wannabe smart aleck.”
He also mentioned Kakie’s, father Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan who authored the Juvenile Justice Law. This is the country’s existing measure that deals with children in conflict with the law.
“Bago natin sila baguhin, baguhin muna natin ang sarili’t pag-iisip natin. Gets mo Hija? Tatay mo ang author ng Juvenile Law,” Tulfo said on Facebook.
For this, Kakie immediately schooled Tulfo over his outdated notion of women and rape.
“Rape culture is real and a product of this precise line of thinking, where the behavior is normalized, particularly by men,” she said.
She used the hashtag #HijaAko which set off a new online protest against the harmful perception that victims of sexual violence and abuse should be reproached or attacked instead of holding their perpetrators and abusers responsible.
Others also used the phrase “RAPE IS RAPE” in all caps as part of the initiative to educate the public again on women’s rights and sex crimes.
Amid the verbal attacks, Kakie also received support from Samira Gutoc, a former senatorial candidate and human rights activist.
Kiko, meanwhile, shared that he’s proud of Kakie for speaking up.
“Ngayon alam ko na ang naging pakiramdam ng Tatay ko nung isa akong nagmamartsa, nakikibaka at lumalaban na lider estudyante sa UP Diliman nung ‘80s nung panahon ng Diktadura,” the senator said.