What if De Lima were a man?

They thought they were being so clever. Congressmen on Thursday could hardly keep a straight face as they zeroed in on the “love life” shared by Sen. Leila de Lima and her former driver/messenger/boyfriend Ronnie Dayan.

Though by Dayan’s own account the liaison had long been over, our honorable lawmakers persisted in digging up the minutiae of the relationship, including such details as to whether they ever shared the same room, much less the same bed (duh!), their pet names for each other, and whether and when their passions heated up and cooled as time wore on. You’d think the lawmakers were out to outdo the most fanatic followers of the AlDub or JaDine love teams. With one important distinction: Movie/TV fans have never speculated on the salacious details of their idols’ love life. Senators and their drivers, it seems, are much more vulnerable than movie stars. Or to put it another way, stars’ followers are models of rectitude when contrasted with members of Congress who behave, at least during the hearing purportedly on the drug trade within the national penitentiary, with unbelievable crassness.

Abetted by their audience who greeted each titillating admission with snickers, if not outright laughter, the lawmakers insisted on ferreting out the smallest detail of the relationship. At one point, admitting he had a falling out with De Lima because she had supposedly fallen for the charms of another member of her security detail, Dayan let slip that he had slapped the senator “slightly,” sending his interrogators and audience tittering. Never mind that the fugitive driver had just admitted to violating the law against violence against women, as well as opening the door to charges that he had an axe to grind against the senator. It was entertaining nevertheless.

Now I wonder how the hearing would have proceeded if the personality in question were a male senator, or one of the male members of Congress, or even our macho President. In the first place, would there even have been a hearing? Or a hearing where the private proclivities of the person in question figured so prominently?

Men fooling around, as has so often been pointed out but which still bears repeating, is not only considered “normal” in Philippine society but is actually encouraged and envied—a sign of real manhood, bolstering a man’s credentials and masculinity. If ever a man’s hypermasculinity were to be the subject of a congressional inquiry, chances are he would be extolled as a model of manhood, or else excused and forgiven as being simply human. The frailty of a man?

Please note that among the more fiery interrogators of Dayan regarding his extra-employment activities was a congressman who has “starred” in an underground sex video with an actress, and whose wife, a former starlet, committed suicide amid charges that she had been subjected to domestic violence and her children emotionally distanced from her.

And when De Lima publicly admitted to her relationship with Dayan, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre immediately pounced on this piece of information as “proof” of her complicity in the drug trade in the national prison (because Dayan was said to be a courier of drug payoffs), while another lawyer said De Lima could be disbarred, allegedly for “immorality” and for “concubinage.”

I am no lawyer, but even I know that concubinage is a ground for legal separation on the part of the husband, while the wife can be haled to court on the flimsier ground of adultery.

To be guilty of concubinage, a man must have brought his mistress or girlfriend to the conjugal home or lived with her in “scandalous circumstances.” A woman is considered guilty of adultery just for having sex with a man other than her husband, although women lawyers say that for the charges to stick, she must almost literally be caught with the man doing the deed itself.

If anyone is to be charged with concubinage, it might just have to be Dayan, but a lawyer has said that if his wife knew of the affair and consented to it, then even he and his partner would be absolved.