Dear Rep. Suntay, from someone young enough to be your daughter
A 23-year-old pens an open letter to Quezon City 4th District Representative Bong Suntay regarding his lewd remarks about Anne Curtis at a recent House hearing, where he pointed out that there's "nothing seditious" in Vice President Sara Duterte's past statements against President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. He said they were just products of the VP's "imagination" as he likened them to his own "desire" after seeing Curtis in person.
Dear Rep. Suntay,
I’m 23. You are old enough to be my father.
That’s not an insult. It’s a lens. It’s the distance between the world you were raised to navigate and the one I am trying to survive.
Because when you said:
“Nakita ko si Anne Curtis. Ang ganda-ganda pala niya. You know, may desire sa loob ko na nag-init talaga—na-imagine ko na lang kung ano’ng puwedeng mangyari. Pero siyempre hanggang imagination na lang ’yun. Pero hindi naman siguro ako puwedeng kasuhan dahil kung ano-ano ’yung na-imagine ko.”
I didn’t hear it as a viral clip or a metaphor; I heard it as a generational gap.
You framed it as imagination. A thought. A harmless internal combustion of desire. “Nag-init.” Heated up. But because the fire stayed only in your head, you claimed no crime.
Perhaps you’re right about the law, but public office is not graded on criminal liability—it is graded on judgment.
When I was younger, I imagined Congress as a room where adults spoke with gravity because words carried weight. I imagined restraint. I imagined intellectual deliberation.
I did not imagine a lawmaker narrating the temperature of his impulses during a congressional hearing.
Maybe that’s my mistake. I’m new here. I just graduated. I still iron my blouses too carefully for meetings. I still rehearse how to speak in boardrooms without sounding “too much.” I am learning the choreography of professionalism: confident but not intimidating, assertive but not abrasive, competent but not threatening. It’s exhausting.
So when you say you “imagined what could happen” with a woman you saw—in the People’s House, no less—and then defend it on the basis that imagination is not prosecutable, I wonder what lesson I’m supposed to take from that. That power makes room for fantasy? That institutional microphones double as confessionals? That the bar for leadership is simply “not illegal”?
You may have meant it playfully. That’s what men often say when confronted with the discomfort they create. It was just imagination. Just a thought. Just heat.
But women live with the consequences of “just.” Just a comment. Just a joke. Just a look that lingers too long. It accumulates.
At what point do we stop accepting "just" as an excuse for a culture that routinely treats the presence of women as something to be appraised rather than respected?
You are old enough to be my father—and fathers make the room safer for their daughters, not smaller.
You spoke about Anne Curtis. She is famous. Accomplished. Accustomed to public scrutiny. But visibility is not immunity, and resilience is not consent. She did not deserve that “manifestation,” which traveled far beyond her. They reached women like me—women sitting in cubicles, classrooms, courtrooms. Women who are still proving that our ideas deserve attention before our bodies do.
When you narrate desire as entertainment, you remind us how quickly the room can tilt. And when confronted, you offered a technicality instead of accountability—categorizing your words as an “analogy” that was perhaps in "bad taste," apologizing only if "sensitivities" were hit.
But an apology anchored in "if" is not an apology; it is a displacement of guilt. It suggests the fault lies in our reaction, not in your action.
More telling was your admission that you do not regret the analogy itself, suggesting that the actress should feel complimented. Admiration can be respectful; broadcasting your urges is not. By framing your remarks as a mere "point of context," you chose to prioritize your intent over your impact. It sounded to me less like a representative of the people and more like a man who believes that causing "hurt sensitivities" is a small, necessary collateral for being heard.
And here’s the sharper edge: You said you could not be charged for what you imagined. But you were not being judged in a courtroom. You were being judged in the court of character. There’s a difference. One requires proof beyond reasonable doubt; the other sees evidence beneath reasonable conduct.
It is March—International Women’s Month. The world is draped in purple banners. Panels about empowerment are everywhere. Speeches about equality grow louder.
Yet, a congressman—a lawyer—publicly describes how a woman’s beauty stoked his imagination—and the defense is legality.
“Hindi naman siguro ako puwedeng kasuhan.”
Congressman, daughters do not ask their fathers to be legally defensible. They ask them to be honorable.
You are old enough to have seen how culture shifts. What was once shrugged off is now scrutinized. How power, once unchallenged, is now recorded, clipped, replayed.
We are not asking you to have no thoughts. We are asking you to understand that when you speak from power, your thoughts become signals. Signals about what is normal, what is tolerable, who is scenery and who is substance.
You may think this is generational sensitivity. Maybe it is. We are the generation that grew up with anti-sexual harassment seminars, Safe Spaces Act, and the uncomfortable knowledge that professionalism is not guaranteed—it is a territory we have to fight for every day.
You are old enough to be my father—and fathers make the room safer for their daughters, not smaller.
Respectfully,
A 23-year-old Filipina
Still deciding what kind of country she wants to inherit
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