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By Sammy Martin, Correspondent
GABRIELA, the lone women’s partylist in the
House of Representatives, has condemned over the weekend the
launching of the Philippine edition of Playboy, a men’s magazine.
In a statement, Gabriela lambasted Playboy, one
of the world’s best known men’s magazine founded in 1953 by Hugh
Hefner, for continuously capitalizing on the prevalent culture that
treats women as commodity.
“We commit to criticize any form of medium
that perpetuates the traditional feudal patriarch views on women,
more so for the end goal of ranking in profits,” Gabriela said.
The launching of Playboy Magazine, held amid
worsening poverty in the country, could worsen the exploitation
suffered by Filipino women, Gabriela said.
“We take this as a challenge to be more
steadfast and determined to educate the public—both men and
women—on the rights of women and on the just place of women as
productive members of society in our continuing struggle for
women’s emancipation,” the statement claimed.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) on Thursday also slammed Playboy’s launching,
claiming it might aggravate the sexual permissiveness of Filipinos,
particularly the youth.
Anti-pornography advocates support the
bishops’ position, saying that the proliferation of “obscene
materials” such as Playboy could be an indicator of “declining
moral values among the current generation of Filipinos.”
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