The theater of the bully
Years ago, I walked up the steps of an LRT station behind a trio of women: a mother, grandmother, and child no older than 10, all carrying bulky, heavy, giant bags. The mother and grandmother were able to lift theirs, but the child understandably lagged behind. The bag was bigger than she was, and she strained to drag it up the steps, through the turnstiles, and onto the platform.
I couldn’t help, as I had my own bags to carry, but I had the chance to observe the trio as I fell into the queue behind them.
The mother looked back at all of us waiting for the train. Then, she turned to her child and slapped the little girl across the face.
“You’re too slow!” she shouted in the vernacular, ostensibly watching if people were watching her, “We’re going to be late because of you!”
I called the attention of the nearest security guard. When the guard came, the mother was smiling, the grandmother was stoic, and the child was crying quietly.
As soon as I recounted what had happened, the mother shouted over my voice, telling the guard that her child was old enough to be reprimanded in public.
Yes, but not hurt, the guard corrected her.
When the train arrived, the guard boarded with us, sat the trio down, and guarded them. Nothing happened after, but I alighted before they did; the guard never moved from her place. I couldn’t forget how the mother looked like she wanted everyone to see how she could humiliate her child in public. And, when shamed, she was loud, resentful—still a bully who could not stomach being humiliated herself.
I remembered what I had seen as I watched a video from last week’s Seoul Defense Dialogue, an annual forum hosted by South Korea’s Defense Ministry that aims to enhance defense cooperation among countries and regions. At one session, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. answered questions on China’s gray zone tactics, or its efforts to exert pressure without crossing into conventional armed conflict. This included its maritime strategies of blocking ships, using militia, and firing water cannons at Philippine vessels.
Then, someone came onstage and gave Teodoro a note. It was a statement in English, handwritten on hotel stationery: it reiterated China’s rejection of the 2016 arbitral award, insisting that it was void and illegal.
Teodoro read the note out loud and countered every line. He questioned its timing and professionalism. He called out China for bullying and coercion, then drew attention back to the hosts, whose forum had been disrupted by China’s lack of basic decency.
China called Teodoro’s response a provocation, labeling it “theatrics.” A big word, coming from a group that interrupted an international forum and talked over accounts of its gray-zone tactics with yet another iteration of its longstanding refusal to accept the decision of the international tribunal. To echo Teodoro: “Of course–because you lost.”
This, from the same China whose United Nations staff, according to human rights and democracy researcher Yaqiu Wang, stormed into a Human Rights Watch press conference in 2020 to denounce the group’s report. Whose officials reportedly disrupted the 2018 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Papua New Guinea by trying to force their way into the foreign minister’s office to change the wording on the final communique, and whose delegates applauded when the summit ended with no joint statement.
The same China that engages in “tantrum diplomacy,” as the Washington Post calls it, is trying to redefine theatrics for a nation that already witnesses it every day. When politicians emerge in a neck brace, a wheelchair, or in an entanglement of wires in a hospital bed when threatened with arrest. When a vice president with a record for violence whines about not feeling safe. When senators dare to prance around in impeachment robes but can barely frame a comprehensible question or speak a coherent thought.
We see it every day when local officials emblazon their names across waiting sheds and relief goods, when nepo babies flaunt their designer bags while ordinary people suffer flood after flood—when a mother visibly relishes punishing her child in public.
We have our bullies, too. We know theatrics when we see it.
Teodoro did not read the second half of the note, which said that China would handle disputes through “dialogue and consultation.” It would have been useless to bring these up. How could anyone trust such an offer from a group that interrupts speeches and contradicts a forum’s goal of cooperation?
When provided an audience, it is the bullies who engage in the loudest theatrics. When confronted, it is they who are the loudest at shifting the label. Humiliation strips them down to their truest selves.
Teodoro did not just stand up to a bully. He countered their version of reality. He forced them to reveal their appetite for chaos. He did it all with calm and composure—with no need to perform power to an audience sick of the theatrics of intimidation.
To that, we shout: BRAVO.
And if it happens again? ENCORE.
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
