By Reisha Mae F. Valdez
When did a woman’s voice become more interesting than what she was actually saying?
Rep. Ysabel Zamora was questioning a police witness during a recent impeachment hearing. There were firearm records to examine and testimony to scrutinize. Yet online, much of the conversation drifted elsewhere. People dissected her voice, her English-dominant cadence, and the way she pronounced Filipino words such as “baril.” Some even turned her voice into sexual jokes, calling it seductive or “bedroom” talk.
A congressional hearing had somehow become an excuse to talk about a woman’s sexuality. Maybe we should ask ourselves why.
Filipinos have always been quick to judge the way people speak. Polished English can be called conyo or elitist. A provincial accent can become a punchline. Taglish can be used to assume someone’s social class. Before we understand what a person is saying, we have already decided what kind of person we think is speaking.
Language carries social baggage. An accent can suggest education, money, geography, or privilege. But none of these tells us whether someone is competent, honest, or worthy of being heard.
Zamora’s case reveals an uglier side of this habit. The criticism did not stop at her accent. Her voice became something people felt entitled to sexualize, reducing her public role to how strangers perceived her femininity.
A lawmaker can be questioned about her preparation. Her questions can be criticized if they fail to establish a point. Her political positions can be challenged. Her performance in a hearing can be examined because public officials should be open to scrutiny.
But calling a woman’s voice seductive is not political criticism. It does not challenge her argument or help the public understand the issue. It simply turns a woman doing her job into entertainment.
Women in public life already face a different set of expectations. Speaking firmly can make a woman “too aggressive.” Speaking gently can make her “too soft.” Speaking English can make her appear privileged before anyone has even heard her position.
There always seems to be something to judge before her ideas are considered.
Social media makes this easier. A voice becomes a meme. An appearance becomes a discussion. A mannerism becomes sexual content. Thousands can participate in someone’s humiliation and hide behind “it’s just a joke.”
But humor does not automatically become harmless because people laugh.
The “conyo” label deserves scrutiny, too. It may sound casual, but it carries assumptions about class. We use accents to guess someone’s upbringing and sometimes decide whether they deserve respect. Yet the way someone speaks is not evidence of character. Pronunciation does not tell us whether a person is intelligent, capable, or arrogant. It certainly does not give anyone permission to sexualize them.
We tell young women to speak up, lead, and enter rooms where important decisions are made. Yet when a woman actually uses her voice in one of those rooms, people can turn the voice itself into the controversy.
Public officials should be criticized. Their decisions should be questioned. Their arguments should be challenged. Democracy needs people willing to scrutinize those in power.
But there is a difference between challenging a woman and degrading her. One contributes to public discourse. The other only makes it uglier.
We do not have to agree with Zamora or like her speaking style. We can question her arguments and examine her performance. What we should not do is mistake sexual jokes for political commentary.
The next time an official speaks, perhaps we can listen long enough to hear the point before deciding what her voice says about her.
Because the problem was never that Zamora sounded “conyo.”
The bigger problem is how quickly we turned a woman’s voice into something to consume instead of something to hear.**
