Don’t think so — in the first place, the Filipino maid portrayal could easily have been a Brazilian maid portrayal.

Secondly, many Filipinos in Britain are for the most part doing either hospital assistant jobs if they are lucky but most of them are doing maid, houseboy work so how else could or should they be portrayed? They’re not teachers, not civil servants, not doctors, not lawyers, not even as shop keepers, etc.

Yes, some folks back home might not like the overall depiction of Pinoys/Pinays as domestic workers in the UK but heck, let’s face it, RP exports most Pinoys to the UK for that purpose (wasn’t it Gloria’s policy to launch them as Super Maids or something?) so we can’t be so onion skinned with regard to how these human exports are portrayed over in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Really? You reacted to the “Daily Show” gag? I find that hard to believe.

You will, I hope realize that here, in the Filipino context, there is necessarily an appeal to emotion to try to awaken us from the stupor of resignation to the fate our women are being consigned to.

C’mon, it is just really okay for us to shrug our shoulders since anyway its not the menfolk who are left to the lecherous and leech-like designs of foreign masters. Yes here at home we do employ ‘kasambahays’, but let’s not think we are “brown slavers” in that sense, right DJB? We that point is humane and dignified treatment and estimation of workers of whatever ethinic backgound or socio-economic station.

It only matters to people who keep thinking that we’re always “inaapi.” We have better things to do.

Agree. So I googled what bills have been originally authored by some people who are always in the news because of some advocacies just to earn media mileage…

Sad, most of them authored bills like declaration of observation for blahblahblah awareness. Talagang pang media image lang. Nasabi pa namang mga lawmakers.

“the clutches of virtual slavery?”

Even middle class folks employ domestic helpers right here in the Philippines, millions more than Brits employ.

Are we a nation of brown slavers then?

I think MP is right that the show pokes fun at the male characters as much as the Filipina.

There are also freedom of speech issues involved here. We cannot fight disinformation (if that’s what the BBC was doing) with suppression.

You are certainly entitled to be ‘unaffected’ and not feel that you were not among thosed ‘poked fun at’. Bur go back to the very title of the offending episode ans you will know it was a particular choice to project a ‘lowly’ Filipina maid offered up to be ‘mated’ by a Northerner, being ordered to offer her rear and later to be brusquely shooed away like a dog. Is the slur now abundantly clear to you?

Then again, may I go back to my own post’s point: that this episode serve as a wake up call, among other wake up calls for how our society is allowing out compatriots to suffer indignities far worse than what is portrayed in the skit. Need we be reminded of Sarah Balabagan and Flor Contemplacion and other faceless Filipinas who, to this day, are in the clutches of virtual slavery.

Nope, what the show did was play up the stereotype of horny white men with a case of jungle fever. Why do we assume that they’re poking fun at us and not them? Ganun ba tayo ka kulang sa pansin?

You’re reading too much into a show that doesn’t aspire to social commentary. They needed a character to do a lapdance and instead of getting your standard peroxide blond stripper they used a foreign domestic helper. The fact that she’s Filipino doesn’t really matter to the joke.

It only matters to people who keep thinking that we’re always “inaapi.” We have better things to do.