Pleasure and subversion

Pambungad na Salita sa Pambansang Balitaktakan ng Mga Lider Kababaihan Ukol sa Kalusugan at Karapatang PangReporduksyon ng Kababaihang Pilipino

2011-10-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

(Oktubre 11 -12, 2011, Bulwagang Tandang Sora, UP Diliman, Q.C.)

Magandang umaga sa ating lahat at salamat sa inyong pagdalo sa Pambansang Balitaktakan ng Mga Lider Kababaihan Ukol sa Kalusugan at Karapatang PangReporduksyon ng Kababaihang Pilipino.

Nag-uusap tayo sa isang makasaysayang panahon. Makasaysayan dahil malapit ng matapos ang 16 taong pakikibaka para sa isang panukalang batas na magseseguro ng mga serbisyo sa pangreproduktibong kalusugan. Sa loob ng mahigit isang dekadang pagsisikap, nakakaseguro tayo dahil sa paulit-ulit na siyentipikong survey, na ang karamihan ng Pilipino ay sumasang-ayon sa ating adhikain. Sabi nga ni Dr. Junice Demeterio Melgar, ang taumbayan ay nag-desisyon na, Kongreso na lang ang hindi. Ang ibig niyang sabihin siguro ay marami-rami rin sa Kongreso ang hindi makapgdesisyun dahil hindi pa yata nababalitaan na trabaho nilang dinggin ang boses ng taumbayan.

Kaya't makasaysayan ito—kapag pumasa ang bill sasariwain nito ang maraming pang ibang adhikain natin para sa bayan---ang demokrasya, ang pananagot ng mga kinatawan sa kinakatawan, ang hindi pagbibigay pabor sa iisang relihiyon—marami pang iba.

Makasaysayan din ang panahon ito dahil ito'y ambag sa mga tagumpay ng kilusang pemista na sinimulan ng ating mga ninuno. Halimbawa nito ay ang mga babaeng nagtatag ng Assosacion Feminista Filipino nuong 1905 (AFF). Matagal din ang kanilang pakikipaglaban sa mga machong kongresista at kaparian para mapanalo ang karapatang bumoto ng kababaihan. Pipitsugin nga ang 16 na taon—sa kanila 32 years, 1937 nang naipanalo ang karapatang bumoto para sa kababaihan. Idinaan nila sa plebisito, hindi lamang sa paghain ng panukalang batas.

Nguni't alam niyo ba na ang mga ninunong peminista ay pro-RH din? Tinatag ng AFF ang Gota de Leche nung 1909, na itinataguyod ang papapasuso, nutrisyon at iba pang usaping pangkalusugan ng mga nanay at sanggol.

Kaya't mga kabaro, huwag ninyong pakinggan ang mga nagsasabing impluwensyado daw lamang tayo ng mga Kanluraning kaisipan. Aba, nauna pa tayo sa maraming kilusan ng kababaihan sa Europa at sa US na bansagan ang sarili na feminista at lumaban para sa RH!

Higit pa, huwag ninyong pakinggan ang mga nagsasabing labag sa kultura at kabihasnan nating Pilipino ang pag-usapan ang sekswalidad at karapatan nang malaya at hindi magpapa-kahon sa baluktot nilang mga pananaw tungkol sa pagkababae at pagkalalaki. Sila ang magsasabi sa atin kung ano ang pagiging Pilipino? Sila, na tinatalikuran ang kasaysayan at kasalukuyan?

Tayo din ang mga Pilipino. Tayo din ang mga relihiyoso. Tayo din ang may moralidad at espiritwalidad. Hindi nila nabili yan na para sa kanila lamang tulad ng pagbili nila sa mga malalaking bahay, kumbento, seminaryo. Sana nga makinig sila sa usapan natin ngayon ng makita nila na may daan tungo sa reproduksyon at sekswalidad na mapagpalaya para sa lahat—kasama na ang mga pari at relihiyosong sinserong naghahangad ng kabutihan.

Sa loob ng 2 araw, tatahakin natin ang mapagpalayang daan na ito. Pagkatapos ay magsasanga ulit ang ating landas. Nguni't dahil nagkasama tayo muli ngayon, uuwi tayong masaya dahil alam nating magkikita tayo ulit at baka naman sa susunod, pasado na ang RH bill.

Maraming salamat, magandang umaga at mabuhay tayong lahat!

The International Women's Health Movement in The Era of Globalization

2011-09-27T06:52:00.001-07:00

(Plenary address delivered at the 11th International Women's Health Meeting, Brussels, Belgium, September 15, 2011)

Sylvia Estrada Claudio

Permit me a moment of personal sharing. Before I left the Philippines, Senator Vicente Sotto, during his interpellation of a proposed bill to ensure reproductive health services in the country, projected the website of the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR). He chose particularly that part of the website which discusses abortion. He added that Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio is the Chair of WGNRR, and that she has been seen frequently with the authors of the reproductive health bill.

The proposed legislation does not, in fact, change the Philippine's restrictive law on abortion. The proposed law however, will mandate humane treatment of women seeking post-abortion care. It will also assure access to sexuality education, emergency obstetric services, modern contraceptives along with a range of other services such as those which treat and prevent reproductive tract infections.

I will add that Senator Sotto and other legislators who oppose any legislation related to reproductive health, divorce, LGBTI rights, are open about the fact that they are doing the work of God. Many advocates also state that they are doing it out of obedience and respect for the Bishops of the Catholic Church. And yes, in case any of you were wondering, the Philippines is a secular republic. But in the Philippines, as well as in other countries, legal guarantees on secularism have not restrained the fundamentalists from violations.

Perhaps I should move to assure you that I do not yet perceive myself in danger. I should also add that the rabidness of the religious fundamentalists at home is related to the strength of our efforts for the reproductive health bill. Two weeks ago, Philippine President Aquino certified the bill as a priority measure.

I mention this because this is the 11th IWHM, we are on our 34th year of the contemporary women's health movement since the very first IWHM was held in Europe in 1977. On the one hand we have achieved much as a movement. And yet on another, whether it be in Asia or Europe we are experiencing backlash and the continuing control of our bodies.

In 1977 and today regimes of control determine the way we work, love and live. Then and now, women have resisted. As long as there is a need for resistances there is a need for a movement. Where women work together to free themselves from class, caste, race, colonial, neo-colonial, heterosexist, and other regimes of control, there we shall find our movement.

In a paper of mine that has been put in our conference kits, I have mentioned a few reasons for our success. Permit me now to state where I think we must go. Why, despite our success, we are facing increasing poverty and control whether we be in Europe or Asia, or any other region of the world.

My dear sisters, I open my eyes and see that the world is poorer. There are large gaps between exist between the rich and the poor and the gap is ever-widening. Apart from this, the world is at war, led by a nation which reacted to the aggression of a few by punishing whole peoples. But big wars are not the only threats. Small wars are waged everywhere and the streets of our communities and the bedrooms at home can also be places of violence.

In places of worship, in the academe, in newspapers and websites, in village halls and international convention centers, whether these be in progressive democracies or known fascist regimes, women are experiencing serious attempts to roll back the gains of freedom. These are often led by religious groups but any type of group and individual may be the source of this.
In the meanwhile world organizations such as the UN, which we have invested in so that they may reflect our resistance and solidarity, have become increasingly bureaucratized and impotent. On top of the previous institutions of control like the Vatican, we see the rise of minor despots or major power institutions like the World Trade Organization.

In the meantime the environment is suffering and we are threatening the life of the earth itself.
Whether through militarism or environmental degradation we are being brought to the brink of destruction.

Please, I do not wish to raise a panic. Whenever there is a panic it is the women and children who are trampled in the stampede. Women are likely to be blamed for overproducing people causing poverty and environmental degradation. This is one reason we are told by some to stop making babies. Or, we are told the breakdown of our communities is caused by our licentiousness and that we had better go back to our homes to produce babies.

Shall I be honest now? As if I have not been honest before? Shall I have a small tantrum? For the last 21 years that I have been working with IWHMs I have watched as those of us coming from the global South had to speak louder when we said we wished to oppose the imperialism of the World Bank which made our governments cut down on health spending and impose user fees. I have also heard the criticism of lesbian women about their marginalization. And we may go on about others: the disabled, the women from various indigenous populations, etc.

I have seen how organizers has succeeded or failed to root our the very elements of the oppressive structures which the movement wishes to change. And as it is with the IWHMs so it is with our social movements.

But I am tired of recriminations and guilt. They are the power tools of the despots and the messiahs. We are a movement that understands that life means pleasure and that those who wish to create our lives for us will end pleasure for us, and that is where poverty starts. So resistance means an insistence on food, housing, health, but also pleasure.

And why is this so? Because I have come to understand that in the era of globalization control is not merely political it is also biological,

In magazines conceived in London but sold in the corner store in Bombay or Prague, people are told what bodies to have----what kind of hips, what kind of lips, what kind of sexual aspirations.

Fast and global systems of market surveillance all over the world make the gestures rebellion or alienation by people in any part of the world today, tomorrows chic and latest consumerist trend. Fashions are designed in New York, cut by women pattern makers in Manila and rolled out as clothes in Shanghai.
The extraction of profit at very moment of our human need to communicate or create has never been more efficient. Indeed, life itself is being patented for a profit.

This profit taking is so frenetic and so efficient that in capitalism's boom and bust cycles, trillions of dollars are lost or gained over very short periods of time.

We cannot delude ourselves that this efficiency in profit making is not resulting in global poverty.

We cannot delude ourselves that this enslavement of our human capacities to capitalist extraction happened independently of gender, race, class, cast and other dimensions by which they wish us to perceive our humanity.

Let me be clearer: class, sex, race, heterosexist and caste systems are not separate entities. There is no such thing as a less racist capitalism or a less heterosexist caste system. The feminist insight that brought us to reproductive and sexual rights has been validated by the evolution of the world's economy. Productive and reproductive systems derive from the same human creativity. When wealth is extracted from the poor, it begins by making us accept that these two moments of life, production and reproduction, can be separated. When power moves it dictates what we think of ourselves and our world. It does so only because it has to—because our lives are not like this and we resist.

But to understand the our own envelopment by hegemony is not a call to stop noticing the race, class, caste and other differences that cause divisions among us. I have no wish to excuse myself from my own shortcomings. I have no respect for those who would use political theory to excuse their own bigotry.

However, my ability to be bigoted is not the problem. Bigotry is the default option that biopolitical mechanisms of control instill in us. What is the problem, is my ability to accept the world according to their making. Where I exclude myself from others and their struggles, there is where I fall into error. Where I conceive of the women's health movement as not also a movement against globalization; where I conceive of the movement against sexism as not also a movement against heterosexism, where I conceive the movement against racism as not a movement against caste—that is where I fall into error.

Where I conceive that my ability to love can be stunted so that it stays in the confines of my home or tribe or nation, instead of allowing it to expand towards solidarity with all the world's poor, there is where I fail.

We cannot be blind to the fact that the world's economy is in trouble. Everywhere people are insecure about their futures and their jobs. In the meanwhile, the world financial crisis has not brought an end to capitalist greed because it cannot help itself. It falls to all of us to deal with this crisis.

It is wrong to think that world poverty comes about from the lack of democracy and equity in the area of production and not in the area of reproduction. The women's health movement must not feel itself out of its depth when it engages the movement against globalization. At the very least we must recognize that the medicalization of the bodies of women who can afford the expensive drugs and procedures, something I have seen discussed well in this meeting, comes from the same logic that denies life saving drugs to those who cannot afford to pay.

War, militarization and fundamentalisms are not distinct from the economic crisis. Wars have become police actions against leaders, nations or groups that would challenge the expropriation and concentration of wealth. But wars and intimate violence are never only about the free flow of goods and capital, it is also about how women must behave. Let us not be fooled by the rhetoric that those who would liberate us from our usual despots because these puppets can no longer to serve capitalism effectively, will also protect women's rights---as if our sisters from advanced capitalist economies were so liberated. We cannot throw off one set of dictators for a set of liberators who will instill the same norms for women's being. If real democracy is to be had it must be radicalized to extend to freedom for women as well.

Similarly do not let the urgent need to protect our environment blind us to the fact that it is not the world's majority poor who are the main polluters. The solution cannot be to lessen the population of a country by imposing sanctions on women's fertility.

But I do not wish to make a list of huge tasks addressed to some anonymous group called “”us”. Rather I would like us also to think how easy it is to work on all these issues because we are already in resistance. The movement for sexual rights and freedoms is everywhere. We can begin by refusing the identities that oppression wishes to impose-- “us”, “other” and “others”.

There is after all no need to submit our political actions to any unifying principle or hierarchy. As if our desires and our creativity have not always been polymorphous and unregimented. To ask a any woman to prioritize only this struggle or that is to say a woman is a good Muslim when she fights prejudice against Islam but chastise her when she criticizes the fundamentalists in her religion. Or it is asking a woman to be solely a lesbian and fight against heterosexism while denying that she is also a worker fighting against contractualization. We cannot fall into the these dichotomies.

In the Philippines, the Catholic spokespersons accuse us of going against Philippine culture and identity when we refuse Catholic norms for sexuality. Our response has been to insist that those among us who are not Catholic, and/or do not subscribe to their views on sex, must have equal citizenship rights and not be forced to live under their norms. To put it succinctly, I am a feminist and a freethinker and very much a Filipina. All women, as citizens, have a right to participate in social institutions and culture so that they may work to change the patriarchal norms embedded within them.

Second, we need not submit to any geographical hierarchies of struggle. Let me appeal to you that the local struggle in the Philippines maybe as important as larger regional and international struggles. Our struggle in the Philippines is important because we are one of the last bastions of Catholic fundamentalism in the old colonies. Here, the local is global. Similarly, the struggle of Dr. Agnes Gereb, imprisoned in Hungary for providing home births is of equal importance--as are a thousand other individual struggles.

At the same time I would not make boycotting or attending UN activities a litmus test for our alliances. As we go to the UN for the review of the ICPD for example, my question is whether those who go will speak of all our struggles. My question is whether those who will go to the UN will still do so out of a sense of joyous struggle rather than gloomy obligation. Because, as we grapple with the bureaucratization and isolation of the UN, we shall see how the global can be extremely parochial. Cairo and Beijing are not supposed to be the maximum, they are supposed to be the minimum. And we cannot forget what was not won in Cairo but knew we wanted. Sexual rights are not a matter to be compromised this time around.

Whereas the enemy prefers us to think of homogeneous and stable identities and institutions, we are actually a heterogeneous and nomadic movement. Whereas the enemy would divide the world into distinct arenas of struggle, we make the linkages, the confluences and the synergies. This is not a way of saying we must respect the diversity in the women's movement, as if diversity was a difficult but unavoidable condition. I am saying that it is only through diversity that we subvert the sterile homogeneity of fundamentalist prescriptions.

Lastly, we must trust our immense power to create what is positive. The first-ever IWHM did not speak of rights it spoke of self-help, the capacity of women to help themselves. Indeed, the regimes of power and control that envelope us survive only on our strength. This is why they lock us in their death embrace. As the world stands on the edge of increasing misery we must counter-pose a new regime of life enhancement for all the world's population. Universal health care, jobs for all, housing, clean water, food security these are not mere words, they are attainable social projects.

Thank you and good morning.

Stop the Witch Hunt of RH Bill Advocates

2011-09-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

Sen. Vicente Sotto’s interpellation of the RH Bill at the Senate has deteriorated into a witch-hunt of organizations supporting the bill that, in his opinion, have an agenda to legalize or promote abortion in the Philippines. The organizations that he has named so far are the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), Likhaan Center for Women’s Health (Likhaan), the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR), and the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (DSWP). More could follow as the senator has asked for a list of all organizations that have expressed support for the bill.

Instead of arguing about the content of the RH Bill, Sen. Sotto has shifted to attacking advocates.

This crude antic is an implied admission of weakness in conducting a reasoned and respectful debate with fellow senators who are, in the final analysis, the authors and sponsors of the measure. Civil society organizations (CSOs) are formally invited to public hearings on proposed laws and asked to present and argue their position. This engagement of CSOs is a key feature of democracy, of governance through dialogue. Unfairly using the immense powers of the Senate to attack CSOs for their different points of view is the act of a bully and violates the tenet of responsive governance.

Some RH Bill advocates—like the organizations maligned by Sen. Sotto—are truly concerned about the harm to women and their families of unsafe abortion. Because of our work in very poor urban and rural communities, we know firsthand of women who have suffered severe complications—hemorrhage, infection and perforated bowels—some of whom survived, while others died. We know of women survivors who were subjected to verbal abuse, maltreatment, and neglect in hospitals by the medical people who were supposed to help them. We know too that the reasons that push women to have an abortion are desperate, that the decision to have an abortion is never easy, and that if women could prevent abortion, they would.

Beyond the RH Bill, we stand for openly and soberly discussing the impact of abortion in the Philippines and finding humane and workable solutions. Last time we heard it, discussing abortion is legal in this country. A century of criminalizing abortion has not stopped its widespread use, but only made it dangerous.

The RH Bill has at least three features that can substantially reduce abortions without even changing the law. Family planning—whether through natural or artificial methods—can address the root of abortion, unintended pregnancy, by enabling women and couples to plan the timing, spacing and number of pregnancies. Post-abortion care, including medication, surgery and counseling, can save women’s lives, preserve their health, and help them to use family planning that will prevent repeat abortions. School-based sexuality and RH education can address peer pressure and sexual coercion and violence, delay sexual experimentation, and promote responsible behavior so that unintended pregnancies are reduced.

Those who obstruct family planning while exulting in the Philippines’ extreme anti-abortion law—which has no exception even when a woman’s life is in danger—are morally responsible for the vicious cycle of unintended pregnancy and abortion that continues to kill and maim masses of women. If government-supported measures to reduce abortion or to treat and counsel women with post-abortion complications are denied, where else could women go? What else could women do?

Sen. Sotto, if he has a modicum of sympathy for women, should find solutions to the problem of abortion instead of maligning organizations that support RH. If he is against RH, what is he for?

Anyone concerned about the health of women and the families that they care for will find it unconscionable to object to the RH Bill. If Sen. Sotto is worried that the bill will legalize abortion, then he needs to simply study the text and accept or reject it based on what he actually reads, not on what he reads of advocates’ intentions.

Released 7 September 2011 by:

Roberto Ador
Executive Director,
Family Planning Organization of the Philippines

Junice D. Melgar
Executive Director,
Likhaan Center for Women’s Health

Sylvia Estrada Claudio
Chairperson,
Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights

Elizabeth Angsioco
Chairperson,
Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines

Demeter and Persephone

2011-08-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

Like many feminist psychologists, I wonder why Freud was so fascinated by the tale of Oedipus that it became the predominant metaphor of his theory of psycho-sexual development. To make a Greek tragedy short, Oedipus unknowingly took his mother as wife. Upon learning this, Oedipus suffered from such guilt and remorse, that he blinded himself.

There are less male-centric stories from the Greek classics about sexuality and innocence that Freud could/should have considered. At the very least it would have balanced his theories of sexual development and women would not have had to suffer decades of damaging psychotherapeutic advice.

For example there is the myth of Demeter and Persephone. A myth I prefer for reasons I shall explain shortly.

Demeter is the goddess of the earth, agriculture, growing. Her daughter is Persephone. Persephone was kidnapped by the god of the underworld, Hades. It is a classic case of kidnap-rape. Having lost her daughter, Demeter grieves. The earth turns barren and cold.

Soon the other gods must intervene. In the end, despite having eaten of the pomegranate fruit that condemns her to the underworld, Persephone is released by Hades to go home to Demeter for half of each year. Upon her return, Demeter rejoices, sunlight and warmth return, things begin to grow again, the flowers bloom and the world sings. It is a return to joy, where the earth is able to bring forth that which will nourish itself and humankind.

Patriarchal elements aside (personally I would have preferred that Hades be condemned to prison, but he is after all, already in the Underworld), the story has tremendous value as a metaphor for an egalitarian sexuality that would liberate men and women from the pathology of current heterosexist and patriarchal disillusions.

The story can be read in ways closer to female desire, passion, nurturing, joy and power. For one thing, the story of Demeter illustrates what neo-Freudian and feminist icon, Karen Horney states is primordial female power: we give birth, we nurture new life, we see to its growth. It is this that men envy and which is the psychic underpinning of men's need to control and dominate women's sexuality.

It is the full recognition and valuation of this primordial creativity, rather than its denial, that is the first step towards towards men's embrace of child-rearing and other forms of nurturing. It is also a necessary element towards understanding the centrality of sexuality to political theory and emancipatory strategy.

To understand this delight in the fruits of our sexual bodies and to embrace it without fear, is to understand the path to joy without guilt. See Demeter and Persephone's happiness and how the whole world participates in this revelry! It is a joy so marvelously free of the hate that the religious fundamentalists bring to any earthly and embodied pleasure. And here I would agree with Freud. Unless this misogynistic self-loathing is brought to light, we shall never get to the bottom of predatory sexuality. Here I agree with those social psychologists who say that the impulse to fascism (religious or political) is rooted in psychic structures of control and repression that begins with how we construct the sexual self.

The myth of Demeter and Persephone validates what decent men and women feel about their children, even the girl children that many societies try to convince us are less valuable. There is no heterosexual reconstruction of maternal love for the male child in this story—something Freud would do repeatedly in his Oedipus-based readings of female sexuality; something repeatedly underscored by patriarchal readings of the story of Mary and Jesus. There is no degradation of the daughter who has lost her virginity to the unwanted male.

To the rape victims in my clinic, I try to be Demeter. There can be no stigmatization that is attached to their ordeal. I require nothing more of them but to return to the light and to eventually learn again to dance and sing. There is no shame in having survived, no question as to whether they had anything to do with the rape and kidnap. No degradation that accrues to the victim. Only gratefulness that they have survived and the promise of a return to self-nurture and growth.

Some of my counselees are women coming home from overseas. They bring with them tales of abuse and loneliness. But they also tell me that they have eaten the pomegranate seed—the good salaries they appreciated; the child of their employer they had nurtured and learned to love; the intimacies of friendship and romance they found there; the release from the parochial values of small towns; the sophistication that comes from having encountered a different horizon.

Demeter and Persephone are a metaphor for the homecoming of Filipinos to Inang Bayan. It is especially appropriate for those who, for whatever reason, left the country unwillingly or at great cost. We must welcome them all, particularly the the trafficked, the raped, the kidnapped, the abused. We must continue to work for a society that will allow them to stay home for good. Meanwhile, when they return, the earth must sing and dance and welcome them back, with joy.

Apology NOT accepted

2011-07-16T02:22:00.003-07:00

(I stand with the new PCSO, Marge Juico and the President)

There is something wrong with the universe. A group of Bishops have sought moral absolution from a bunch of politicians, in a gallery crowded by the Catholic supporters, after some heavy lobbying with the politicians beforehand. Does it surprise anyone that the absolution was given? The CBCP is economically powerful. Church and affiliate Catholic groups are the top stockholders in companies such as the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Philex Mining Corporation (PX), San Miguel Corporation (SMC), Ayala Corporation (AC), and Phinma Corporation (PHN) according to the latest data submitted to the Philippine Stock Exchange. Apart from its economic power the Church remains a powerful social institution.

The Senate Committee hearing, looking into the unconstitutional use of charity funds in the grant of vehicles to 7 Bishops, was a clinic in sycophancy, hypocrisy and farce.

The day before, the CBCP issued the same apology I hear erring husbands give to their wives. These are the similarities:

Firstly, most erring husbands address the apology to the smallest number of the people hurt by their abuse: the wife. Not the wife and the children, not the wife and the friends and family who love her who have borne her pain and suffering with her. And so the Bishops address themselves only to “the people of God”. Reading the letter it would seem that the more accurate phrase is: “the people of the Catholic God”. But let us say, that they mean also the people of the Allah, the Buddha, Shiva, and so on. They certainly have not addressed it to me and the small but growing band of Filipinos who have no religion.

They owe me an apology for participating in the violation of our Constitution. (And yes, they have. With all due respect to Senator Santiago who I admire for many reasons. But her interpretation is not the only expert one in the area and other constitutional experts including UP's Raul Pangalangan says the Constitution was violated.)

They owe me an apology for their hypocrisy that has affected my life and the lives of countless women and men seeking to exercise our sexual and reproductive rights. How often have they told me that we don't need a reproductive health bill because the more important measure the nation needs to progress is to stop corruption? Define corruption please? Is it corruption only if persons other than yourselves presume on the resources of the nation?

How often have I heard that it is the CBCPs duty to speak out against immorality, and that is why they interfere in the nation's politics? They have intoned against the RH bill like people who have a franchise on moral perfection. It is on this basis that they have run roughshod over all my appeals that they do not impose their single standard of morality on all Filipinos. Noooo. I must obey them whether I like it or not. Or to be accurate, the poor women who cannot afford to buy contraceptives must obey them.

In the meantime, such rigorous discipline is only for us, the spiritual orphans standing at the CBCP gates. Even before the apology the CBCP had stated that it was not up to the them to decide what the 7 would do with the vehicles. They were answerable only to the Pope and themselves.

And, it would seem that our spiritual development as a nation still awaits the first holier-than-thou person to hook us into belief. Even the intellectual Randy David says he welcomes the Church's incursions into politics because the standard of perfection is not a bad standard to strive for. Perfection? With all due respect to David, feminist agnostics like me strive for perfection too. It is a function not left only to religion. But I do not arrogate unto myself moral superiority as a basis for my advocacies. I claim a bit of non-Christian humility in this regard. I only ask that I too be given recognition as a moral actor. Not a moral paragon, just an equal moral agent. It is called secularism, this democracy of the moral.

But the parallels to the erring husband do not end here. Often too, the husband apologizes for the pain and suffering he has caused the wife without exactly telling her what he thinks about the events that caused the pain and the suffering. There is no definitive statement here about whether wrong was done only that there was an “apparent inconsistency in their actions”. And in the light of this apparition of wrong-doing, there is an appeal “to be slow in judgment and to conscientiously seek the whole truth.” Indeed, indeed. We have been hurt but only because we have allowed ourselves to be hurt by an illusion.

“And you know,” says the husband, “remember all those times when you thought I was at my mistress when I proved to you I was actually at my office? See? You are too suspicious and jealous.” Sounds like, “well you know, many times, the vehicles were used for real charity work.”

Nonetheless, like real men they are ready to face the consequences of an infidelity they are not certain they committed. “We assure you that the bishops concerned are ready to accept responsibility for their action and to face the consequences if it would be proven unlawful, anomalous, and unconstitutional.”

And like the erring husband, they assure us that IF there was abuse, it was done without malice. It was done because they had the urgent desire to serve the poor. “Honey, I am sorry I hurt you, it is just that I love you so much.”

As I tell my grieving counselees, it is the rare and lucky woman who walks into a room where the mistress and the husband are in flagrante delicto. I am sorry Philippine nation, I can give you no taped conversations that prove that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo granted those vehicles to Bishops who stopped the Church from condemning her when it was revealed that she talked to an election official seeking assurance that she would win by at least a million votes. If this is the kind of certainty you need, then do get back to the arms of the Bishops as those senators at the public hearing did. But perhaps you should take the Bishop's at their word on this and conscientiously seek the truth.

And so it has been with our poor political system. It has become the subservient chattel of the macho Church. The Senate hearing proves only one thing, we are not a democracy, we are a theocracy.

But oh, how quickly our erring husbands have cycled back to abuse after their remorse. At the very hearing the Bishops ask where the information about “Pajeros” comes from and refuse to accept Marge Juico's apology and explanation. This, while the pro-CBCP people still debating me on twitter have been tweeting links to me about Juico's public corrections long before the hearing.

And now a few Bishops have asked Juico and Pres. Aquino to resign. The President, has has hardly made a public statement on the matter. In the meantime, a friend in media tells me that those Bishops critical of the “donations” are no longer giving interviews. Marge Juico, Aleta Tolentino and the new PCSO are seeking to clean the augean stables of PCSO corruption. Someone, maybe Juico (though she denies it), may have said “Pajero” when she should have said “Montero”.

What is this sense of moral privilege that allows them to think that absolution by a bunch of politicians; that a half-apology; that the return of the vehicles over and above the call of the sycophants that they should keep them; is sufficient cause to pat themselves on the back? The morally righteous have tweeted me after the hearing as if I have been on the losing side of an arm wrestling contest. What is this sanctimoniousness that allows them to be so easy on themselves and so harsh against those who they think have wronged them? This is prophetic?

I have my own sense of prophecy. There can be no forgiveness until there has been a full acceptance of wrong doing. There can be no forgiveness until there is genuine remorse that does not minimize the hurt that has been done nor the number of people who have been hurt. There can no real remorse if the rebound to harsh judgementalism has been so quick.

I condemn the CBCP and the Senators at that hearing for this farce. That was unconscionable. There are righteous people here. They are Marge Juico and her people at the new PCSO.

Buy me a new car Mr. President

2011-07-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

His Excellency Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III
President
Republic of the Philippines

Dear President Aquino,

I want you to give me a new car for my birthday. Preferably a 4 x 4 SUV bought from government monies meant for health assistance to the poor.

May I remind you that Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos was given government money by former Pres. Arroyo so that he could buy himself a Montero for his birthday. As the Bishop's request letter managed to get him the said bonanza, I will cite the same justifications for my request. But my justifications, while similar, will be better.

I celebrated my last birthday like the good Bishop. I carefully discerned not to throw a party and “spent the day with and for myself”. But unlike the Bishop who spent the day also “with God” I spent some of the day with President Emerlinda Roman who was given a testimonial on her last day as UP President. I was running for UP Diliman Chancellor at that time, so I thought it best to be seen at said event. I therefore missed watching the Askals game with my family. I did not take my one-day birthday leave. With all due respect to former UP President Roman, surely the Bishop had a more pleasant day than I did. I deserve a luxury vehicle more, for having renounced more pleasures on my birthday than he did. I was a model of Christian asceticism and saintly sacrifice!

Unlike Bishop Pueblos who was chosen by the former President Arroyo as “Peace Champion of Caraga”, I was not chosen as UP Diliman Chancellor. However, I have been reappointed as the current Director of the UP Center for Women's Studies. I also have a few awards to my name, but I am so filled with Christian humility that I won't mention them.

The point is, like the good Bishop (and all those other Bishops who also bought nice SUVs or vans using government charity money), I DO GOOD WORKS! I do, I do. Swear and cross my heart. And in the words of said Bishop, “I know I could do more”.

Quoting Bishop Pueblos further, “It is in this view that I am asking a favor from your Excellency. At present, I really need a brand-new car, possibly a 4 x 4, which I can use to reach the far-flung areas... I hope you will never fail to give a brand new car which would serve as your birthday gift to me. For your information, I have with me a 7-year-old car which is not anymore in good running condition. Therefore, this needs to be replaced very soon.”

Your Excellency, my official vehicle is an early 1990s Toyota Fx and I am terribly ashamed of it at this point. It is older than 7 years old. When it was 7 years old I envied the Director who was riding around in it. It really needs to be replaced because when I use it to transport relief goods, the poor and displaced tend to hand me money thinking I am poorer than them.

Your Excellency, us poor Professors from UP, the servants of the Filipino youth, cry out in our desperation for 4 wheel drive SUVs. Please don't help the CBCP anymore. Help your own. It is high time government money be spent for the Colleges of UP rather than the College of Cardinals.

Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Estrada Claudio, MD, PhD
Professor of Women and Development Studies
Director, Center for Women's Studies
University of the Philippines

PS Please make out the check to: UP Center for Women's Studies c/o Sylvia Estrada Claudio, MD, PhD. I prefer that the check be made out in my name complete with all the post-nominal letters just like the one they made for Bishop Pueblos. Please note I have more letters after my name. This proves I am a worthy doer of good works. In any case, I promise I will tell the accountants about the check and the purchase. Trust me on this, I do good works.

P.P.S Don't worry, if it blows up in our face, I will promise to return the vehicle, all the while acting as if I still had the high moral ground. After all, I do good works.

cc: Margarita P. Juico
Chairperson
PCSO

The Psychology of Moral Certainty

2011-06-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

It has happened again. Someone begins a debate with me on my statements on the reproductive health bill, and then just drops me.

A young woman, a graduate of the university where I teach though never my student, tweets me. She is reacting to my proposition made during one of the televised debates that those who oppose the passage of the bill are seeking to impose one set of moral beliefs on the rest of the country.

The exchange below happens over a couple of days. I reproduce it below, edited slightly to make reading easier.

She: "Respect for diversity and opinion" of @seclaudio is standard relativist statement http://bit.ly/lanrdH =no single truth

Me: Not relativism but the Second Vatican Council on ecumenism and religious freedom http://tinyurl.com/6n68j If I am wrong in assuming you are Catholic, I can send you literature from other religious traditions.

She: Nowhere in Vatican doc says "respect for diversity of opinion". Opinion is not truth.

Me: Many times. section 2 para 3, whole of sec 4 latter part sec 7, etc. Demand for exact wording is bad argument. Tweets can be harsh. Do not mean to be disrespectful or hurtful but do think your demand for exact wording unfair. I am only asking for fairness. Long encyclopedia section accusing me of relativism doesn't say those words either.

She: Ma'm I didn't mean to be harsh & I wasn't looking for exact http://wording.But you're misreading a Vatican doc. Your camp's been asking for respect for opinion. We respect your opinion,your freedom, no coercion http://there.But ours is to http://truth. And RH Bill does not promote the truth about man.
CBCP only promotes what for Catholic teaching is right in fighting against this bill. If you're Catholic I suggest you try to study their matter closely.

Me: you can't just say I misread without explaining, that you agree with my call for respect while accusing me of relativism. As to truths, the Vatican statement is that each one may have his or her own perception of truth and we need to talk our truths and not claim that only one of us has commitment to the truth. sorry dear colleague, but your last few arguments seem to me like argumentation that tends to "lay down the law" to me, rather than meet me in good faith. this lessens the room for dialogue when you argue like this.

I have waited 2 weeks since my last tweet. I guess I will no longer get a reply.

Being a person whose formative years happened before the internet, I asked my 15 year old what this might mean. Have I offended? Am I being an old fuddy-duddy? In the good old days when we wrote snail mail, we broke off correspondences with proper goodbyes---even if “proper” could go like this:

“Dear John: I can no longer write you love letters. I heard you have taken Don into your bed. I am not homophobic, but you never said you were bisexual. The diamond engagement ring will reach you by courier.”

My 15-year-old says something like, “ask her if she needs a a mechanic. Looks like she got stopped in her tracks.”

Another young one says to me, “she got owned.”

For these young ones, failure to answer implies defeat. But I have no desire to treat twitter exchanges as contests.

As a teacher, a nerd and a psychologist, I feel only frustration and concern. Yet another person who thinks that, “because my God (or my Marx) says so,” is an acceptable form of engagement in democratic and secular society.

I am treading carefully here. Not all Marxists or religious people resort to this argument. Not everyone who has a religious or political belief finds it necessary to cling to the idea that his or her belief is the right one, regardless. I am not also certain that the young woman who had an exchange with me is one of these. I wish she kept engaging me, perhaps I could have known for sure.

But I am certain that the psychology of the ideologue permeates the views of the religious right that has gone all-out against the RH bill. This is also why, I get hate mail and hate tweets after each televised debate. The comments can be quite mean, making me wonder what it is that I have said, no matter how scandalous, would make them feel so threatened that they would lash out with such anger.

I have been challenged often too about my agnosticism. Even the nicest ones seem to think that being uncertain is some kind of a defect. But there is to me, a spiritual gain to be had by accepting ambivalence, ambiguity and uncertainty. For one thing, that is how things are. The truth about what those who believe in a God call “creation” is that it is ever-changing, immense and un-graspable.

Perhaps there is a Truth (yes, with a capital T) out there. But it is not something, little-old-me can ascertain. I remain humble about the presence and laws of what a horoscope writer I follow calls, “the Divine wow”. God is not my FB friend. I ask Her often enough if She is out there and She does not answer. When I die I may dissolve and lose the consciousness that will say that the atheists are correct . If I am wrong and I awake---ooohlala---I will have more questions than a curious 5-year-old.

But for now, I have no need for grand answers in order to lead a harmless, happy and hopefully meaningful life. It is a comfort to me that I do not need ultimate guarantees. I am not a high maintenance child of the universe. I have a brain and enough energy to keep on figuring things out as the need arises. I plod along and get by not having yet committed things like abuse, theft or murder.

On really good days, the idea that no one can know for sure when human life begins really makes me ecstatic.

The psychology of moral certainty is the psychology of fear and/or laziness. Maybe when they were growing up, the parents who nurtured those who are morally-certain-Dr. Claudio-is-wrong-on-RH (and therefore we will never yield her a point, besides she is a lackey of the big pharmaceuticals and the imperialist population controllers) laid down the law about what to do, what is right and what is wrong. That can be comforting when one is little.

Simple and unquestionable rules can be comforting while parents can control the external environment against the views of those who disagree or the harm brought by those who are mean or criminal. Perhaps the very young ones need not be asked for the courage to face the immense unknowable.

But those of us who are hoping to live happy lives in a just society must find it in us to face our limitations. Parents must change the parameters of what they teach as a child matures morally and intellectually. Children must be taught not to be afraid of heterogeniety, diversity and uncertainty. They cannot be afraid of difference. Fundamental differences.

If we are afraid to be unsure, to accept that perhaps we and our family, religion, tribe, institutions, science, political party can be wrong, then we will be unable to accept when we are defeated on twitter or we will lash out in anger against people we only see on television.

And I am frightened indeed by the man who is so angry at me because of what I have said on television that he takes the time to tweet me venom. My heart goes out the woman who cannot find the grace to end a debate she started with some decorum.

Perhaps someday, we will raise all our children with enough moral courage so that they can face profound uncertainty with good cheer. At least we can rejoice that there are enough brave and moral people out there such that the scientific surveys show that the RH bill has wide support.

Message on the UP Diliman Chancellorship

2011-03-02T19:06:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2011

Dear all,

First of all my deepest gratitude to all of you.

Many of you know that winning was only one of my goals for accepting the nomination. So please do not be saddened by the result because I/we have achieved other outcomes. This is why I have been saying that I am happy nonetheless. (And I am not just trying to keep a stiff upper lip.)

Most importantly, so many of you have come out in support. I am happy at the nature of this support because I do not think it was about patronage or personality but about common visions and principles. It is heartwarming that dear friends would go to bat for me, but also heartwarming that acquaintances and even people I did not know helped out.

I also see that many who did not support my bid are of the same principles. They just felt the other candidates more worthy. Even to these people, I am grateful.

My world is so much larger at the end of this process.

I hope that your worlds are also larger now. For a few weeks I was one of the foci of this larger community that you also belong to, and that has been a real joy and honor.

I am happy to say that I am now back to my other concerns. In a week or two I may be able to talk to you about a new initiative on pushing academic freedom. In the meantime, please do not forget our big March 8 rally for the reproductive health bill. Please go to the Likhaan website for final details.

As for UP, let us continue to be involved in its politics. Many of you believe as I do that UP's situation hinders or facilitates our goals for social justice.

While some of you are understandably disappointed about the processes and the outcome, I am convinced UP will continue to do what it has always done---survive because of (and despite) its leaders.

I congratulate Dr. Caesar Saloma and pledge my cooperation to him as the new Chancellor of UP Diliman.

2011-01-31T05:13:00.000-08:00

Health Care For All Filipinos

Sylvia Estrada Claudio

If I were the President, conditional cash transfers or CCT's would not be my flagship program. I would instead work on universal health care.

I know, I know. I am not the President. I am also not so arrogant as to presume to give Pnoy unsolicited advise or bad-mouth Sec. Dinky's thing. This is not about the pros and cons of the CCT, a subject that deserves it own Yellow Pad column.

But universal health care (UHC) is one of my hobby horses. It has been on my mind for the past year for several reasons, one of which is that Dr. Alberto Romualdez and a group of colleagues from UP Manila, put together a task force for the Centennial Lecture Series of the University of the Philippines and came up with a blueprint for UHC. The task force's output is exciting because it is straightforward in its proposal that we can achieve health care for all in a relatively short period of time.

According to the NSCB, our country's total health expenditure reached P180.8 billion in 2005
Using this figure the task force proposes that around 80 to 120 B pesos would be needed to achieve health care for all. The task force also proposes several funding mechanisms such as quantum increases in tax-based government spending, national government-tax increases, reallocations, local government-mandatory increases in proportion spent on health and significant increases in public health insurance support value for basic services. AER head honcho Men Sta. Ana, who I asked late last year, also thinks that sin tax increases and foreign borrowings could be tapped as well. It tickles my iconoclastic soul that activists like us would actually approve of foreign debt. But, many of us have always argued that debt that truly benefits the people would not be bad debt.

Thailand is an excellent source of inspiration. It's total health expenditures for the year 2007 are slightly less than the Philippines. Yet it has achieved universal health care. WHO statistics show that the Thai government provided for 73% of all health expenditures while the Philippine government provided only 35%. Simply put, Filipinos are paying for their own health care out of their own pockets. Naturally, the health statistics for Thailand are so much better.

Thailand achieved its universal health coverage over a period of years through a multi-pronged approach that involved, among other things, local-level initiatives.

So, I nagged another good friend, Dr. Dennis Batangan to work out a pilot program for UP Diliman. It is my dream to start piloting for universal coverage, so I thought this should happen in the place where I work.

What Dr. Batangan and I propose is to start a demand-driven and insurance linked health benefits project for UP Diliman. It begins simply as an information management system and health insurance project intended to expand the access of the UP Diliman Community to available health benefits. It aims to consolidate available information on health-related benefits intended for various sectors of the UP Diliman community and expand access to these benefits through demand-driven mechanisms and social health insurance schemes.

This is a first step towards ensuring equity in health benefits for all sectors of the UP Diliman community. It will also serve as a pilot effort towards universal health care coverage.

The project will be implemented in four phases namely: 1) a policy engagement phase. to ensure the commitment and support of the highest level of authority in the UP Diliman Community, the Board of Regents and the Barangay UP Campus officials; 2) a data integration phase that includes the designing of the data framework and capture forms to consolidate the available health benefits and insurance information for employees, students and community residents participating in the project. The data framework will also attempt to capture current demand for health services for the stakeholders concerned as well as health expenditures per capita and for UP Diliman as a whole; 3) a network expansion phase that involves the development of a directory for and organizing into a network of the health service providers the psychosocial , biomedical and alternative health service providers in the community. The information gathered from the network will be made available to the UP community through an internet portal and/or SMS services and; 4) a benefits convergence and development phase where institutions and organizations offering health related benefits will be guided on the process of converging or integrating their benefits for same beneficiaries and improving efficiency in the provision of these benefits. At the same time, new benefit packages for health related or psychosocial services will be developed or expanded for the benefit of the community.

The goal of the project for UP Diliman employees, students and community members have easy access to consolidated information on health related benefits they can avail of in times of need. In the process, the beneficiaries will also be provided inputs on how to expand the health benefits they are currently receiving through social health insurance schemes and development of other demand side benefits.

So, if I promise, promise, promise to cooperate with Pnoy's CCTs, can he spare me a bit of change to begin piloting universal health care in UP Diliman?

(Sylvia Estrada Claudio is a doctor of medicine and a PhD in psychology. When she is not attempting political trade-offs for her hobby horses, she teaches Women and Development Studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. She is a fellow of AER.)

UP Will Show You How

2010-12-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

(Statement of the Director of the UP Center for Women's Studies, on the plagiarism issue against Prof. Marvic Leonen, Dean UP College of Law)

December 9, 2010

News reports dated December 8, 2010 announced the offer of resignation of Dean Marvic Leonen of the UP College of Law on his admission that he had inadvertently left out two footnotes that contain the source attributions in his 2004 article titled "Weaving Worldviews: Implications of Constitutional Challenges to the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997."

"I had made that mistake. It's an honest mistake but one I should acknowledge, apologize for, and basically meet the penalty. And I thought that a huge part of it would be to offer to resign the deanship," Leonen is reported to have said.

In so doing, Dean Leonen has taken the first step towards showing our people what integrity means for lawyers, whether as professors of law or as officers of the court. In so doing, Dean Leonen honors his commitment to the restoration of the integrity of the law profession and the Philippine courts which is the subject of a statement of the faculty of the UP College of Law (UPCL) on the allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation in the Supreme Court.

Many sectors of the UP Community, including the UP Center for Women's Studies, supported the statement of the UPCL on that matter. I call on our leadership and my colleagues to stand fast in our support and to build on Dean Leonen's example. Let us show our people and the Supreme Court how to honorably handle a case of alleged wrongdoing on the part of one of our colleagues.

First, let us look clearly at the facts. One fact that is important in both cases is the opinion of the person or persons who were plagiarized. In the case of Dean Leonen, Prof. Owen Lynch has already stated that he does not feel that he was the victim of intellectual dishonesty. This is in marked contrast to the statements of those authors plagiarized by in the Vinuya v Executve Secretary decision.

This makes Dean Leonen's offer to resign an act of integrity. That he does not equivocate about admitting his plagiarism despite it being an “honest mistake,” makes it even more laudable. This contrasts sharply with the actions of Justice del Castillo who ignored calls for his resignation and the finding of the Supreme Court that “malicious intent” is required in plagiarism.

Teachers know that there are degrees and degrees of plagiarism and misrepresentation. Without excusing Dean Leonen who does not himself seek to be coddled by colleagues, it is my belief that there is a marked difference between the level of the misrepresentation in “Vinuya v. Executive Secretary” and in “Weaving Worldviews.”

I suggest to the UP leadership that if it be necessary, any body formed to judge the issue of Dean Leonen's plagiarism, be composed of peers who have no personal interests in seeing him absolved or punished.

Dean Leonen has shown us that public accountability does not lie in not making mistakes, but in owning up to them and being ready to face the consequences. Those of us in UP who have supported the faculty of the College of Law in their efforts to restore integrity to government service should take this as an opportunity to show our people that collegiality and compassion are never incompatible with the demands of justice.

If it should be shown that those who revealed this “new” case of plagiarism are motivated by reasons other than truth-telling, then they have made a serious error in judgment. With his offer to resign, Dean Leonen has proven, yet again, his moral capacity to lead the College of Law faculty.

If those who revealed the plagiarism are doing it to cover up their own errors, they have miscalculated. As it has in the past, as it will continue to do now and in the future, UP and its College of Law will show our people how institutions can behave with integrity.

Signed: Sylvia Estrada Claudio
Director

Science and Philosophy Lessons for the Pro-Birth (who call themselves Pro-Life)

2010-12-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

Several of my friends do not particularly like discussing the question of “when life begins”. I refer to this debate in relation to the reproductive health bills pending in the Philippine legislature. These friends would include non-Filipino veterans of abortion rights struggles in their own countries.

My friends, some of whom are philosophers by training, know that the “where life begins” question is really unresolvable. The philosophically sophisticated understand that a question like that is the stuff that has driven and will drive philosophy through the millenia. It is similar to other questions like, “does matter exist?”. The question is unresolvable. I am aware that the philosophy of natural science, (I love science!) merely assumes this without attempting proof: “matter exists”. I am also aware that the Buddha (love the Buddha) takes a different view: “all is illusion”. You have got to love philosophy for tackling the eternal questions and the calm philosphers bring to facing immense uncertainties.

Of course, the reproductive health bills do not change the punitive Philippine laws on abortion. So this “when life begins” debate should not be pertinent. But the pro-birth (I do not concede the term pro-life to them as my advocacy for the passage of RH bills is to save women's lives) opposition keeps insisting that contraceptives are abortifacient. They also insist that conception is equal to fertilization. According to the pro-birth people, contraceptives should be banned because the Philippine Constitution states as a matter of policy that the state, “shall equally protect the life of the mother and the unborn from the moment of conception”.

This argument alone is is more an example of the lack of scientific and philosophical training of those who espouse it. It is not an argument that should be dignified in the public debates. I know that certain advocates of this position are doctors, scientists and philosophers. But I have no fantasies about the guarantees that academic degrees confer. “Nil admirari”, my philosopher mother used to say. Admire no one. Certainly I am unhappy when people use their academic degrees to claim they are speaking the truth when they are not.

So let's see what science says and what logic demands. Science tells us that the argument that “contraceptives prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum” is an unsupportable generalization. I cannot go into the scientific literature for purposes of brevity, but many lay people know that the condom prevents fertilization. Looking at the literature, there is SOME evidence that some contraceptives MAY prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum as possibly ONE OF SEVERAL mechanisms for their contraceptive effects.

But even if we were to concede this rather flimsy basis for their claim that modern contraceptives prevent implantation, it is a misrepresentation to say that these are abortifacient. There is a wide-ranging consensus in the scientific community that pregnancy begins at implantation. An abortifacient, by definition, terminates pregnancy prematurely. Thus, none of the contraceptives are abortifacients.

When pro-birth advocates like Rep. Anthony Golez claim that contraceptives are abortifacient they should at the very least specify that this is a minority opinion. When Rep. Golez states, as he did in the last public hearing at the House of Representatives, that he is giving his opinion as a medical doctor, he borders on the unethical. I am a medical doctor too and I am ethically bound to tell the public and my patients what the majority of experts are thinking on the medications I recommend or discourage. This is especially true if my position is that of the minority.

The last misrepresentation in this argument is that “fertilization equals conception”. As I mentioned in my intervention at the last hearings in the RH bill, conception is not a medical term. Terms like fertilization and implantation are scientific terms. But whether we can tie this to the term “conception” and the larger question of “when life begins” is a whole other matter.

Indeed advances in embryology show us that fertilization is not a “moment” but is a process that takes some time. Thus, to equate fertilization to “the moment of conception” is something of a fudge.

Pro-birth advocates, like ex-Senator Francisco Tatad, also take the line that “moral natural law” is a universal truth that should guide our personal and collective decision-making on this debate. Their version of this philosophical argument says that it is inherent in all of us to recognize a God. Additionally, their version of natural law states that it is inherent in us to recognize that we do not kill another human being, herein defined to include the fertilized ovum. I have no argument against the presentation of this philosophy. What is problematic is that they present this as if it is the only philosophical tradition that is pertinent to moral decision-making. The truth is it is a philosophy that tends to be overvalued in Catholic schools and largely relegated to a minor discussion in the secular University of the Philippines. Again, the point here is the misrepresentation. For philosophers like Mr. Tatad one wonders whether he was not taught other frames in the pontifical University of Santo Tomas; he forgot what he was taught or; he has failed to stay current with the changes in his discipline.

I agree with my philosophically sophisticated friends that debates around when life begins are probably futile in the determination of social policy. Constitutions of a number liberal democratic states inculcate this wisdom by working on a definition of “personhood”. But I do feel duty-bound to help increase our people's scientific literacy and to help craft social policies that are enlightened by the advances of human knowledge.

Yet I shall end this with a salute also to the wisdom of my philosopher friends who insist that we weigh the correctness of a political and philosophical premise on the basis of its effects. I always wonder why the pro-birth are blind to the unequal effects of their insistence that life begins at fertilization. To insist on this premise is to tie yourself to a position that allows you to argue for the control of women's bodies for your political purposes. Meanwhile, men's bodies remain free.

And so, I have been proposing to friends to think of the implications of a premise that states, “life begins at sperm production”. I doubt whether the pro-life religious men, philosophers and scientists would like the restrictions on their bodies such a premise would imply.

Support for the RH Bill

2010-12-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

Intervention of Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio Director, University of the Philippines Center for Women's Studies at the Second Deliberation of the House Committee of Population and Family Relations on HB 96, 101, 513 1160, 1520 and 3387. December 1, 2010.

Thank you Mr. Chair, your Honors.

I have a prepared statement today but let me respond to the questions posed to the medical doctors by Representatives Biazon and Golez on the issue of when life begins.

I note that the Chair called upon me because Rep. Biazon also asked who does not believe life begins at fertilization. I do not, for two reasons. The first reason is that as an agnostic I do not subscribe to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. In this regard I would like to remind everyone that the Constitutional provision on religious freedom protects not just the right to belief but also the right to non-belief. But I will leave the representative of the Filipino Freethinkers who is also here today to elaborate this point.

The second reason I do not believe that life begins at fertilization has to do with my expertise as a medical doctor. Rep. Golez states that as a medical practitioner, he believes life begins at fertilization. He cites among other things the banning of Levenorgestrel by the government as proof that other experts believe the same thing. He implies that obstetricians and gynecologists may not be the best resource as to whether drugs like Levenorgestrel and other contraceptives are abortifacient. According to Rep. Golez, it should be those experts, like geneticists and biochemists, who do not prescribe these substances or devices who should be consulted.

With all due respect, I will remind Rep. Golez that the government reveresed its ban on Levonorgestrel. I was one of those who petitioned for a reconsideration of the ban through one of the organizations I work with. An expert committee composed of both medical and legal luminaries decided unanimously that Levonorgestrel was not an abortifacient. To be accurate there was one dissenting opinion and it was that of Rep. Golez. But at that time we protested the inclusion of his opinion because he really was not a member of the panel. At that time, he was merely the person from the DOH assigned to facilitate the hearings and panel deliberations.

As a medical doctor also, I would urge everyone here not to overvalue our opinions and expertise. Doctors should also be more humble. The question of when life begins is not a matter to be left to doctors or other scientists alone. Pertinent to this discussion I would like to note that “conception” is not a medical term. The terms fertilization and implantation are medical terms and we can describe and explain these processes to lay people. Any scientific discussion requires the precise use of terms. The Philippine Obstetrics and Gynecological Society is correct when it states that the mainstream medical and scientific community agrees that pregnancy begins at implantation.

As many of you in this room know, this is at the very least, the 4th Congress where an RH bill has been proposed. Many of us here have faced each other on this issue before. I do recognize though that there are people here who are new to the issue and their voices must be heard.

But perhaps before we continue our debates we should congratulate ourselves. Because of the engaged citizenship that the proposed RH bills have evoked, we are on the brink of enacting a social policy that has been understood by our people and crafted with their input.

So all I ask of your honors is to trust our people who have indeed come to a decision. Today's headline of a leading newspaper reveals that a high level of support exists for the enactment of the proposed RH bills according to a non-commissioned survey conducted by a reliable polling organization. This verifies an earlier survey showing the same results except that the newest survey shows higher levels of support for the bill.

Contrary to the claims of those who would belittle the survey results, it also shows that our people are aware of the major provisions of the proposed bills.

As an advocate for women's rights, I too must listen to our people. Like the Catholic Church I am against any form of population control either as a framework for an RH law and certainly not as a goal for its implementation.

Like the Church I do not think that lowering the fertility rate has any direct effect on poverty levels at the macro level. I disagree with the Church because I think that having less children does mitigate the burden of poverty at the level of the family.

My involvement with the women's health movement began because I felt there was a need to protect women from the population control programs of the past. This is the reason why I, and many other feminists, participated in the international actions that led up to the 1994 Program of Action of the ICPD.

I would therefore caution both sides who use demographic arguments like population density and replacement numbers to argue for or against the bill. Women have been hurt on both sides of this argument. Some would have us not give birth and others would force us into pregnancy. These are both violations of women's rights. Speaking again as a practitioner, I would caution against the use of any drug, device or technology for considerations other than a woman's well-being.

My support for an RH bill has always been because I am heartbroken by the harm and death that the lack of services brings to women and their families. No woman should die because of the lack of emergency obstetric services or due to violence from her intimate partner. No family should be left motherless because of preventable deaths.

I see the surveys. The Filipino people like the proposed bills. They agree with arguments for reducing population numbers in order to ensure the delivery services and national development.

Your honors, I accept the reasoning and judgment of our people. I hope you will too. Please pass a consolidated and comprehensive reproductive health bill as soon as possible.

Thank you.

NB Upon reviewing the decision of the technical committee that convened to hear our petition to lift the ban on Levonorgestrel, I realized I was mistaken in claiming that the committee was unanimous in its decision. There was one dissenting opinion. Anthony Golez also gave a dissenting opinion but I still hold the opinion that he should not have done this and that he acted beyond the role assigned to him in doing so.

Support for the UP College of Law

2010-11-30T04:12:00.000-08:00

The University of the Philippines Center for Women's Studies endorses in full the statement of the faculty of the UP College of Law titled “Restoring Integrity” on the allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation in the Supreme Court in connection to the case, Vinuya v. Executive Secretary.

As a research center concerned with promoting gender equity in the UP System and the larger society, the UPCWS lauds the statement of the College of Law upholding the quest of Filipino “comfort women” seeking redress for a decades-long injustice. A Supreme Court decision in their favor would have added to recent gains in human rights standards that recognize rape and other forms of sexual violence as war crimes.

We are disappointed with the Court in its decisions related to this because we have worked with the Supreme Court in its efforts to integrate gender-sensitive perspectives in the Philippine Judiciary; in fact, through this work, the UPCWS received the Justice Davide Justice Reform Award. We believe that if the Court had taken into consideration the women’s experience of sexual slavery within the context of prevailing international standards on human rights and state responsibilities, it would have recognized the merits of the case for our government to pursue the claims of the women against the Japanese government.

We find it disturbing that the Supreme Court has not only rejected the points of the supplemental motion filed by the petitioners, alleging that the decision promulgated had plagiarized sections, but it even upheld, in the process, this decision that was made on less indisputable grounds, at the cost of another injustice to the women. To make matters worse, the Court had to display “judicial muscle” and sought to punish the faculty and dean of the UP College of Law for their declaration of the paramount importance of integrity in the decisions of the Court.

Furthermore as a university research center, we are with the College of Law on its assertion that plagiarism is unacceptable and unethical. Issues of plagiarism and misrepresentation are serious violations of academic ethical standards. Ethical standards are sacred to the academe because they are a foundation on which the claims and strength of our work stands.

Yet caveats against plagiarism and misrepresentation do not merely apply to the academe. They apply as well to professional and governmental institutions, especially the Supreme Court, which undertakes the research, analysis, interpretation and application of social policy that governs our lives.

In choosing to make its statement on the issue, the faculty of the College of Law fulfilled their ethical duties. As professors of law, they are duty-bound to remind practitioners of the ethical standards of the discipline. As practitioners of law, they are ethically bound to speak against what they perceive as threats to the honor and integrity of the practice of law. Various ethical codes for professional disciplines both locally and internationally uphold this principle of speaking out against what one perceives as unethical behavior on the part of professional colleagues.

Government institutions in democracies, by character, must be transparent and accountable to the people. Criticism and dissent from the people should not be taken as an affront rather these are indications of our engagements in governance and the vibrancy of our democracy. Criticism may hurt. But those who wield government power must understand that openness to criticism is central to the wise use of power. We hope that the Supreme Court can view the statement of the UP College of Law in this light.

25 November 2010

Sylvia Estrada Claudio

Director

Odine de Guzman

Deputy Director for Research and Publication

Ma. Theresa Ujano-Batangan

Deputy Director for Training and Outreach

Welcome Remarks* for “If supporting the RH Bill means excommunication, then excommunicate me!”

2010-11-26T21:08:00.001-08:00

(An excommunication party organized by the Filipino Freethinkers, November 26, 2010.)

Welcome, everyone—atheists, agnostics, deists, humanists, Wiccans, Catholics and all other religious friends.

Let me start by qualifying the word, “Catholic”. Last week, Mr. Eric Manalang, President of Pro-Life Philippines, said to those of you who went to the Manila Cathedral that you are not “Catholics in the sense of real Catholics, you are dissident Catholics, what are you freethinkers?”

By this reasoning the majority of Philippine Catholics, who according to reliable surveys support the reproductive heath bill, are also bogus. If such is the case, the Roman Catholic religion has just become a minority religion in the country.

But lest I be accused of disrespect, I want to wish our Catholic comrades well in their fight to democratize their Church and return their faith to values truly worthy of Christ. I doubt very much that Christ would approve of Manalang's taunt from the steps of the Manila Cathedral, “You tell your mother to abort you!”

While I am on this topic, the Roman Catholic Church is in an uproar over Pope Benedict's remarks that condoms are now acceptable if the intent is to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. I hope that this concession that real problems happen outside the fantasy land of religious dogma on sexuality, can be brought to a logical conclusion. If the goal is to protect from infection, then all men should just use a condom. Given what we know of human sexual behavior, few of us can be certain of our partners' HIV status.

Permit me now, a moment of confession. I find making opening remarks somewhat wearisome. Recently, I have had to do more openings than I prefer.

Yet I insisted that I open tonight's festivities. During the preparations for this party, I was a shameless publicity hound. It is an honor to open the very first excommunication party ever. I want to claim ownership of this idea. The idea of requesting excommunication as a sign of support for the RH bill, had been thought of by several people independently. But I may be the first to think of “party”. I am tickled pink that I will now have a new image---from nerd to party animal.

Many of you know that I am an agnostic. When I was born, my parents were both agnostics. This is my identity and moral tradition. Unfortunately, pushy relatives prevailed upon my parents to baptize me. I used to think of my baptism as a trivial matter, not even of real interest to me. Yet it has become a burdensome truth each time the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines claims to speak for millions of Catholics. Those of us gathered here know, that which Mr. Eric Manalang wished to imply. Millions of those counted as Catholics are nominal Catholics.

I will no longer be spoken for by the bigoted. I seek excommunication and welcome it!

I stand to be counted with you here tonight and with those who wanted to come but could not (as we seemed to have filled the place, among other things). I will be counted among the tolerant, the thoughtful and the moral. I will stand for human rights including sexual and reproductive rights.

In behalf of the Filipino Freethinkers, particularly its Diliman chapter, I thank you for being here and formally open this party.

*Revised and edited prior to posting.

Academic Travelogue: Seoul, Korea

2010-11-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

I walked on the right side of the main pathway of Seoul's Gyeongbok palace. It is the first palace compound built by the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), which established Seoul as its capital.

Normally, when walking though ancient imperial sites, I take a childish delight in taking the emperor's path. No woman would have walked the sovereign's path, unless she was to marry him. In all likelihood she would have walked her way to permanent incarceration inside the palace.

And so with vengeful glee, I would skip down the emperor's path, a gawking and irreverent tourist. I am a woman footloose and free. I have no intention of being incarcerated within any man's palace.

It is almost a cliché to talk of the transient nature of pomp, power and glory. But I still amuse myself with these thoughts when confronted with the monuments of patriarchal power.

In Gyeongbok, the main pathway leading through the gates and courtyards of the imperial palace is divided into three. The central path, slightly raised, was reserved for the emperor. To its left, the path taken by his ministers and other members of the bureaucracy. To its the right, the pathway for the scholars. I am told also that when the emperor sits on his throne, he is slightly oriented to face away from his ministers and towards his scholars.

I am aware of my dislike for feudal patriarchies and yet I am happy to find an ancient tradition that reveres scholars.

I am in Gyeongbok, a day after speaking at a women's studies conference in Duksung Women's University. My task at the conference has been to share how I think we may establish scholarly cooperation in the Asian region.

I started my presentation at the conference by saying that I teach postmodernism by taking a Buddhist framework. I quote the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn: “Nothing in itself contains an absolute identity. This means a rejection of the principle of identity, which is the basis of formal logic.” And then I quote the feminist postmodernist Judith Butler: “Identity is a culturally constructed principle of order and hierarchy, a regulatory fiction.”

When I teach, I explore the main tenets of postmodernism through Buddhist sayings and practices. It helps even my Christian students grasp the difficult concepts better. Certainly my Asian colleagues who are more steeped in Buddhism, seem even more amused by my approach. Like any nerd, I could just go on about this , but that is not the point of my lecture.

My point is that there is a different set of histories and traditions that mark the Asian academes. The point is that Asian women's studies must begin with the understanding of the power dynamics in global knowledge production. It remains true up to this day, that the questions asked, how the questions are to be answered and who decides what are the good answers, remains a matter of power that skews knowledge production along race, class and gender dimensions.

Women's studies began with such a power analysis. Women studies scholars understand that women's knowledge and experience is often devalued in the academe as well as in society. Women's studies therefore. is about bringing balance to the knowledge of men so that we arrive at human knowledge.

We cannot engage in a dialogue without being aware of the differences in our histories, in our traditions, in our epistemologies and in our relative power positions within different academic settings.

One of my colleagues in Ateneo believes that Western society took a wrong turn when it took on the trappings of enlightenment and modernity. This is an argument for postmodernism, but it is also an argument for Eastern philosophies that lie outside the Western traditions. Thus, I engage both East and West dialogically by teaching postmodernism through the way of the Buddha. And yet I understand that I am making a dangerous proposition, this banging two philosophies around like that.

During the entire conference, a young student from Duksung University is assigned to help me. She picked me up at the airport, waited patiently to escort me to the conference room the following morning, carried my backpack when she could beat me to it, asked about exchange rates and tours, walked me to the restaurant for meals.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I asked her whether she did not feel like we were betraying the youth movement. I felt like one of those older activists making the young ones do menial work.

She was aghast. On our way from airport to hotel she had talked about how happy she was to volunteer for the conference. How she had looked me up on the internet and was happy to have been assigned to me. She answered by reminding me of these things and by adding that respect for one's elders was part of her culture even in modern and wealthy South Korea. I felt trapped between the two poles of ageism---was I treating this young person with disrespect and being ageist or was she treating an older person with respect and being non-ageist? Once again I am confronted with another Asian nuance to ponder.

I have come to realize that in the global social movement and the universal academe, we are unable to escape the hegemony of the colonial traditions and neo-colonial ways. Those in the margins need to work double time to recover our own modalities and transform them, while engaging with the mainstream within and outside our social movements.

Thus I walked the scholar's path in Seoul, wondering about the old and the new, thinking about traditions and transformations.

We Could Try "Nice"

2010-03-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

It isn't nice to block the doorway,
It isn't nice to go to jail.
There are nicer ways to do it.
But the nice ways always fail.

It isn't nice, it isn't nice.
You've told us once,
You've told us twice.
But if that is freedom's price,
We don't mind.

--Malvina Reynolds

The current controversy engulfing the university where I teach is one that could happen in any sufficiently open society. It is about whether a group of protesting faculty and students were right in painting slogans on walls; lobbing paintballs at one of our chancellors and destroying some chairs.

Yesterday I sent our Faculty Regent a song for those who believed the actions were justified. I have loved this song for a long time and I would urge people to look up Malvina Reynolds', “It isn't nice”.

The impulse to send the Faculty Regent the song comes from years of being an underground propagandist during the Marcos dictatorship. I have criticisms to make of those who used paint and destroyed chairs. Yet the song is a perfect vehicle to express their sentiments.

Only a few lines need be said about those who stood up for their beliefs in ways that were branded as impolite, improper, barbaric, unwise and criminal. Apart from the those who took up the early protests against the Marcos dictatorship, there are those who fought against apartheid, those who joined the civil rights movement in the US--- I could go on and on. I will add only that these movements were started by small groups who were initially vilified, only to be supported later by millions.

My criticisms have to do with why I have become a pacifist, though an angst-ridden one. Anyone who supports violent tactics and strategies needs to reflect on whether that particular form of violence (say, armed struggle as opposed to suicide bombings) can be justified. I am still convinced that there is a moral basis for violence. I am just setting the bar very high for when violent acts can be moral.

I think that using violence to defend oneself, one's loved ones and those in the immediate vicinity, against battering, sexual violence, torture, mutilation and attempted murder is eminently justified. I would not say that violence is only justified for these grand instances. I once slapped away the hand of my eldest son with enough strength to make him wail. At the time he was a toddler, trying to insert a pair of tweezers into an electrical outlet.

I do not think the methods used at the rallies in question were justifiable.

It is not just the University's officials who are condemning the methods. Several faculty members and researchers have expressed their disagreement in our discussions as well. I am also told that as the slogans were being painted on the walls, rank and file employees in the building were upset because the University would need additional funds to repaint. In their minds, the very people who had made an issue of the state's budgetary neglect of education, were squandering the very resources they wished to augment. Additionally, the discussions have now become about the methods of protest and not the issues of the protest.

I disagree with those who have tried to justify the violence by essentially taking the line that there is violence in society that is far more immoral than the case-at-hand. One cannot justify bad practice by stating that worse things have gone unpunished.

I must say that the tactics used do not rise to the level of truly gut-wrenching violence. In the opinions I have read or heard on the matter, I have noted some hyperbolic descriptions.

Furthermore, I do not condemn these actions just because these were impolite or bad mannered. Even the genteel may be roused to cussing when unduly provoked. I also urge the reader to look into the book entitled “Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior”, to find out how and why a person should deliver a social snub—of which there are several varieties. The lack of politeness in the protest is self evident. The proposition that bad manners per se are condemnable is put to rest convincingly by the sentiments expressed in Reynolds' song.

The protesters have every right to go beyond the formal or sedate ways of handling dissent (more Board of Regents meetings, administrative cases, court proceedings, fora, petitions and scholarly papers). The history of revolutions and transformations shows this to be a necessity. But the decision to use non-formal methods is not necessarily a decision to escalate to violence. The methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King are but two examples of this.

The question about tactics that should be answered is whether the wrong that is being protested justifies the slogans on the wall, the throwing of paint and the destruction of chairs. I have tried my best to follow the issues and believe that the protesters have very legitimate concerns. But I do not believe the tactics were just.

I believe this is why, confrontational tactics are being rejected by many ordinary citizens. We have too often planned protest actions that have resorted to minor forms of violence when, in the minds of a significant number, the moral basis for proceeding to violent action had not been met.

I am one of those who ascribe to the political ethic that the means must be justifiable in themselves. On a very practical level, questionable tactics are a barrier to revolutionary change. I am not the first to be discouraged by the fact that the people have not been more active in their resistance to the shenanigans of the Arroyo administration. I am not the first to note that the Left has been unable to provide the disgusted majority with tactics that evoke wide-spread action.

Folks from all walks of life have a deep desire for effective governance and democracy. This is true in all social institutions including the academe. If we are to be so arrogant as to call ourselves activists, we must come up with creative methods that can harness these passions in ways that do not trade off the future of activism for present gains.

Good doctor, Bad Priests

2010-03-01T00:40:00.000-08:00

Note: This was published in the Yellow Pad column of today's Business World. http://www.bworldonline.com/main/content.php?id=6900

Today, I received this text message: "They are crucifying Dr. Esperanza Cabral because of her decision to take HIV prevention seriously. Please write for Ma’am Espie." "They" are the extremists of the CBCP and their allies among the laity.

I send my apologies in advance to Dr. Cabral who taught me more things than just doctoring. I am unable to obey your lessons in graciousness. I am just too disgusted with the lies.

I will not engage in sophistry. I will give the public specifics that can be validated by the public themselves. I will trust in ordinary folk by telling it like it is: condoms protect against HIV infection.

Check out the literature of the World Health Organization (WHO). Check out the literature of the purveyors of death-by-AIDS. Here is one significant thing: the latter’s literature cites the few scientific studies that say condoms don’t work. The WHO will cite both types of studies and explain why they conclude that condoms protect against HIV. For one thing the studies that prove this are in the majority and are better constructed.

While you are at it, please remember what was taught you in grade school: there will almost always be contrary studies. I leave you to decide on the truthfulness of those who won’t tell you that they are citing the oddball findings.

I should end this piece here so that the reader can establish for himself or herself the truth of my specific claim. But I will beg your indulgence and request that you let me add a few more things.

The opposition to the condom is based more on the belief that people should not have sex unless they leave the women open to pregnancy. The propagandists will say "open to life," but anyone who understands basic biology knows the more accurate term is "open to pregnancy." Those of you who are shocked by my lack of respect may be comforted: in matters of religious belief I can be more respectful. I can say that I disagree with them and leave it at that. I only ask that they respect my views as well.

I think it is moral to use condoms to prevent HIV infection. Using condoms saves lives. I do not engage in their word play. Proper and large-scale condom use prevents the spread of HIV and other reproductive tract infections that cause death and disability. This is a pro-life stance in the real sense, not a pro-pregnancy stance that has been dressed up to look pro-life.

I also do not see anything moral about such fanaticism. Fanatics prefer hard and fast rules and acquiescence to authority figures. The authority figures seek power, not in respectful persuasion, but by encouraging compliance. Both leaders and followers are unable to accept the immense diversity of human beings and embrace the tolerance this diversity demands. This is why they misbehave in secular space and do not respect our country’s allegiance to secularism.

When these fanatics wander into secular space by making bogus scientific claims that threaten our people’s well-being, they must not hide behind the customary respect we accord each other for our moral beliefs and disagreements. And so I feel I am not being ill-mannered when I say: they lie and they lie repeatedly.

I will also state the obvious. I am not saying all Catholics are extremists. Many Catholics do not agree with extremists on their interpretations. Many who agree to their sexual morality are nonetheless disgusted by their methods.

We are often told we should choose both our doctors and spiritual guides wisely. Beware of the priests that lie. On the other hand, choosing Dr. Cabral as our nation’s doctor is wise. I know her, I was her student. She taught me in medical school that scientific rigor is necessary to compassion and moral rectitude.

Sylvia Estrada Claudio is a doctor of medicine and a doctor of philosophy in psychology. She is a fellow of Action for Economic Reforms. She heads the project Watch Out When Women Vote (WOWWVOTE) that hopes to encourage women to vote for candidates that uphold women’s rights.

Now Is The Time for All Good Persons to Dissolve into Hysterics

2009-12-11T06:09:00.000-08:00

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has declared she would run for a seat in the House of Representatives.

I can see it all now. Nine years from now she will be barred for a third term and will run for maybe, mayor? Governor? How many elective positions can she run for before she runs out? Perhaps she will then enter the Guinness Book of Records when she finally becomes the first centenarian to run for barangay councilor.

On the day of her announcement, her election lawyer also described the motorcade to be undertaken to file her certificate of candidacy. Perhaps aware of the massacres that happen to people who oppose administration candidates, her erstwhile opponent Prof. Randy David, decided not to oppose her after all. Opposition motorcades are a bit dicey these days.

Being a women's advocate I noticed her say that she felt the need to, among other things, continue to contribute to the empowerment of women. I suppose she intends to consult her allies, the Ampatuans, on the matter. Or should she consult Chavit Singson?

On the same day, Press Secretary Cerge Remonde attempted to speak at a rally in Mendiola to protest the Maguindanao killings. He seemed to take it graciously when he was booed off stage. “Part of the job,” he said. I wonder what else he thinks is part of the job? Making us believe that now that they are prosecuting the Ampatuans ever-so-carefully, they were not trying to keep them in power barely two weeks ago? Having us believe that we are to sit back and be jolly after discovering that Gloria and much of her cabinet have been pals with mass murderers?

Oh, I can imagine it indeed. The hoopla that surrounds the President and her men wherever they go. The bowings and the scrapings of underlings and sycophants. The increasing arrogance that comes when one keeps power that you do not deserve. With such power you can buy either, by money or the promise of lucrative positions, any number of lackeys. In fact, with such power you have no choice but to surround yourself with corrupt, the corruptible, the mediocre or the deluded.

It is a common question people ask each other. A psychological one really: how do they sleep at night? Very soundly actually. They can no longer imagine a way of politics that is different from their shabby shenanigans. They can no longer afford to exercise their moral faculties if they had it in the first place. Ampatuan, Garcellano, Abalos. Bolante, Palparan, I could name many more. Arroyo's friends and allies. They are famous not just for their misdeeds but for the added venality of their downright refusal to be shamed off the national stage.

Megalomania, dissociation from the humbling dialectics of a normal social life, the inability to respect dissent, delusions that have them believe their own lies, isolation from the ordinary lives of the majority. It is a condition that beset the imperial palaces of the past when the powers of kings and
sultans were paramount. These days, we might think of describing it as a mass psychological syndrome affecting members of a depraved elite.

They are shaking their heads over the turn of events, wondering how such bad luck could happen to them. The death of Cory Aquino and the surge in Noynoy's poll numbers, the Maguindanao massacre, their low approval ratings, the mass desertions from their political fold. Note to them: it is called by some religions, karma. The impersonal law of moral balance that no amount of wealth or power can overcome.

To sleep at night, those who have enough brains to need rationalizations, call us communists, terrorists, agitators, naive, wooly academics, hysterical, or any number of things. Those who do not have enough moral or intellectual abilities, do not need to even think about the rest of the world. Indeed they may be untouchable in their safe places. But those spaces have only the size of their mansions and not the expanse of our communal acceptance.

We, blessed ordinary folk, shall laugh in the face of at their arrogance. We shall whisper our dissent against their imperiousness. We shall satirize their self importance. And, at their moments of greatest venality, we shall hysterically scream: NO.

No, you're not good people. No we don't buy your lies though you may get away with it all. No, we will not be dazzled by your illegally obtained wealth nor grant your children and grandchildren the status that wealth confers. No matter how many people you can buy, cajole or threaten into showing you acceptance and admiration, you stand condemned by us.

With laughter, in tears, with sarcasm, in full-throated dissent, with irony, in hysteria---we say NO. And we will not forget. I humbly ask the good people of Pampanga not to vote for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

(A slightly edited version of this post was published in the Yellow Pad Column of the Business Mirror last December 9, 2009. Yellow Pad features opinion pieces by fellows of Action for Economic Reform, a non-governmental organization.)

Dear Blog: I think I just became a trans person who is gay

2009-12-09T06:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Blog,

I am a bit confused about my sexuality these days. Fundamental changes have come so fast that I am feeling that I have lost control of my identity. My sexual orientation shifted 3 weeks ago and now my gender identity has changed also. Strangely enough, I am sure of my politics.

But let me recall events. We had a great forum last Tuesday, December 8. The University of the Philippines College of Law, the University of the Philippines Center for Women's Studies (UCWS), RainbowRights and Libertas held a forum entitled: "I am so gay for human rights: A forum on politics and identity". We had planned this forum in October to cap the meeting of all gender coordinators of the 9 UP campuses. The UCWS, of which I am Director, hosts this meeting yearly.

Last November 13, the second division of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) decided to deny the application for accreditation of the LGBT political party Ladlad. The COMELEC stated that LGBTs were immoral (they cited the Bible and the Quran)as the basis for the decision. I was so upset, I declared that day, "I am gay until Ladlad gets accredited."

The UCWS, on the prompting of College of Law Dean Leonen, revised the format of the forum to include a discussion of the issues raised by the Comelec decision.

We had a great forum. I introduced the concept of identity politics, its usefulness as well as pitfalls. Dean Leonen recapped his lecture to the Supreme Court on identity, indigenous peoples and the law. Prof. Ibarra Guitierez talked about mraginalization, identity and the law on political parties. Germaine Leonin Trittle discussed Ladlad's accreditation process and it's petition for reconsideration.

Perhaps our session was blessed because December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Perhaps it is also because December 8 is Philippine Lesbian Day. Maybe both.

The only sour note was that I realized that I had been guilty of not treating transgender people with equal attention. One of the audience pointed out during the open forum that the Comelec decision had ignored all the reports of documented abuse submitted with their petition. She mentioned that in truth, many of these abuses were committed against transgender persons. She mentioned that even in Philippine history, transgender people had been part of the resistance against invaders, if not the leaders, and had suffered at the hands of the colonizers.

Another member of the audience mentioned that we had to be clearer about the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

All these comments hit me hard. I knew in my heart that I was as guilty as the COMELEC in my lack of understanding for transgender persons.

So I announced that I was withdrawing my identity as a gay person. From that moment on, I announced, "I am a transgender person until Ladlad gets accredited."

The kind members of the transgender community seemed to welcome me and forgive my previous insensitivity. I thought this resolved the matter.

Until I got home. I realized I still had not got it right. I did not need to dissociate myself from my gay identity completely. After all, I could be a gay trans person. This is precisely what my trans brothers and sisters were trying to tell me when they were insisting that we be clear about the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation.

But, dear blog, this is not why I am confused about my sexuality. The confusion stems from the fact that despite repeated promises to put Ladlad's petition for accreditation on the agenda of the COMELEC's en banc sessions, this has not happened.

Each time they delay deliberation and their decision, my sexuality hangs in the balance. I hope they decide soon. Then I can declare, "I am a gay transperson until the Supreme Court rules favorably on the Ladlad petition" or even, " I am a gay transperson until the United Nations censures the Philippine Government for it's violation of the human rights of LGBTI." As Prof. Guitierez mentioned, "we will take this issue up to the United Nations because some official body has to say it is wrong."

I teach my students that sexuality is very fluid and that identity is socially constructed.

I had not realized my life would be a case study.

My Heroic Action at the Barricades (Or: Was I Keeping Watch on the Barricades or Were the Barricades Keeping Watch Over Me?)

2009-12-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was supposed to be in my neck of the woods today—the University of the Philippines, Diliman campus. So I decided to uphold a sacred campus tradition---I joined a rally. The more dignified members of our group would call it a protest. Personally, I just wanted to razz the woman. Call it my version of a protracted struggle. Someday she will be brought to justice. In the meantime, let's just try to irritate her as much as she irritates us.

I was determined to enjoy myself, and so I did. Speaker after speaker cursed her. I did my creative best to add to the general grouchiness.

We warmed up at the lawn of the building nearest the one she was supposed to inaugurate then attempted to move closer. We made it only to the curb across the street from the site she would have inaugurated. Initially we were face-to-face with unarmed cops. It was not too pleasant looking at them, but it was ok. We had some more great speeches to listen to. The Student Regent was a revelation. Big explosive rhetoric from such a petite youth. When I grow up, I wanna be like her.

Unfortunately, the unarmed cops soon got replaced by men with batons and riot shields. Bummer! We had some serious pushing and shoving. Really bad stuff. For one thing, the riot police were not our local UP police. We have fought long and hard to keep our campus free from that kind of interference. For another thing they were pushing at my friend, the Faculty Regent; my other friend, our former Dean; and some other friends from the College of Science and College of Arts and Letters. Normally unconvinced about the need to push-and-shove, I felt I had to at least talk to one of the policemen doing the shoving. As a scholar, I felt I must rise to the defense of our multidisciplinary act of expressing sentiments of deep disgust.

The cops then brought in metal barricades. This for me was the highlight moment. The minute the police tried to put the barricades in place, some brilliant and strong kids pulled them away towards the lawn we had just left. This is was the opportunity for my most heroic moment. I decided to leave the frontlines and command the rear. I watched the discarded barricades.

Those barricades are dangerous things. When they give way during stampedes, the people on one side get pinned down and the people on the other side get hurt by the stampede too. So I was pleased as an anarchist in a free-for-all, when the kids managed to frustrate the attempt to place them.

So there I was, manning (womanning?) the barricades by lying along one of them. Expressing my heroism, by cooling it in the shade. The police tried to make me give up my post by pretending they were going to take the barricades back to their station. BUT I STOOD UPON THE BARRICADES by lying down on them all the more. NO PASARAN, fascists!

As I always say, when your position is righteous (and kinda comfy and shady), you will have many allies. Soon, most of my colleagues in the College of Social Work and Community Development joined me on the barricades.

Having frustrated the policeman who, because he was from the campus police force, did not want to argue about barricades with Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio, Director of the University Center for Women's Studies (he did ask, so I did say), I wandered off every so often. Also of course, the barricades were well-guarded by then.

My wanderings were quite satisfactory. Some intrepid students attempted to get closer by taking a side route. I hear they had with them the tomatoes purchased earlier, so that we could talk about vegetables wit her alleged Excellency. The police caught them, beat some and handcuffed several. The Staff Regent and our UP lawyers led by their Dean, prevented their arrest and led them to safety.

I came upon the President of our workers union, a former Dean of the College of Social Science and Philosophy and a few others, razzing a policeman who had stepped out of his car with an armalite. The armalite was back in his car by the time I came. Having missed the main issue, I decided to become incensed to make up for my bad timing. I had barely started to lecture when the police car drove off to to a spot 2 meters away. It was a very good lecture on human rights actually, and they should have stayed to hear it all. Pearls after FASCIST swine.

And so it was. Them cats were trying to have their way, but us mice would not let them. The fascist pigs could not wallow in the mud of their authoritarian ways. (I know, I know, my metaphors are all over the place, but I think they sound nice.)

We broke up when it was announced that her alleged Excellency would not come after all.

I could give a lot of advice to our UP Diliman officials and our local police about how to best deal with the preservation of the sacred UP tradition of protest actions. For one thing, they could have negotiated the conduct of the affair with the 3 sectoral Regents. They could have deployed only our pussycat UP police to be in our faces. They should have kept the tigers of the Quezon City Police Force back, only to intervene if we broke the negotiated space. They should have also ensured that, having decided to invite the Quezon City police into the campus, that no weapons of deadly force like an armalite be part of their gear. (Good heavens what were they thinking?) Some of the better rallies I have attended in my long years of rallying have been like that.

But I digress. Far be it for me to give unsolicited advice. This morning I had great fun. On a cool December morning, at the dawn of UP's second century, in the Diliman campus where I grew up and now teach.

It said in the news that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo only managed to come to UP Diliman once in her 9 years as alleged President. Shucks. I hope she comes before her term ends. I had hoped that we could have stayed at that corner for a week and begin a new, improved, Diliman Commune for the 21st Century. I can see it all now...

Solidarity: a moral lesson for my sons and my niece

2009-11-25T22:06:00.000-08:00

My gay hairdresser and I were in deep discussion about the LGBT rally, when the call from the television station came.

Dear Boys and Diana,

A long time ago, when I used to join the drivers of faculty members of the UP College of Medicine for lunch, I noticed that they behaved very differently towards faculty members who drove their own cars.

Dr. Marita Reyes, beloved of her students and beloved of her ex-students such as myself, never needed to find an empty parking space in the perpetually crowded parking lot. The minute she drove up, several of the drivers would volunteer to park her car for her. Instant and free valet service.

On the other hand, another doctor professor whom we shall not name, was left to fend for herself.

Your grandmother was the same way. She would enter the phone company, the bank or the electrical company to pay her bills, and would have at least one teller waving at her so that she could be attended to quickly.

I knew your grandmother's secret because I asked her about it. She said that if you really wanted your life to be easy, befriend the little people who actually did the work. For example, the bank teller who had a flower in her cubicle, received an orchid from your grandmother's garden on the next visit.

Yesterday, still in the advocacy t-shirt I wore for the rally to protest the non-accreditation of our LGBT political party, I requested our office driver to leave me at the beauty parlor. I needed a haircut and decided that walking home would be good exercise.

My gay hairdresser and I were in deep discussion about the LGBT rally, when the call from the television station came, requesting an interview. I agreed on condition that the TV crew pick me up from the parlor to take me home. My hairdresser would not have me go on TV to fight for his rights sans make up! He and his assistant gave up their tip (I had brought just enough to pay for the haircut and tip)so I could pay for the make up.

Those friends who saw me last night, and who are used to seeing me with an unmade face with its full complement of spots and wrinkles, have been teasing me about this. I do hope they liked the make-over.

In the interview I spoke of the psychological studies, decades old and never falsified by succeeding studies, that gay people are normal human beings. Except, that like many other groups, society discriminates against them. Many of them are part of that group your grandmother called "the little people" and what activists call "the marginalized". As your grandmother said, it is the little people who we must treat with respect. They are the ones whose rights we must guard as jealously as we guard are own. The ones to whom we must show compassion, or as the activist say, whose struggles we must join.

Forgive your corny mother (aunt), because I have seen this in you and know that you continue the family tradition without the drama. But I do want to play the role of the repetitive older one--you will appreciate the values drill someday

I add to your grandmother's wisdom--sometimes there is such a thing as John Lennon's Instant Karma--do a good deed and end up looking good (looking better?) on TV.

Or maybe, we might channel the philosopher Spinoza: altruism and compassion are a really good idea even for your own bottom line.

All my love,

Mother (and Tita Guy)

Only the religious are free

2009-11-24T05:29:00.000-08:00

Yet another bone-headed. white, liberal,sexist report from the know-it-alls in the US State Department.

The 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom, released in Washington, DC, in late October, said the Philippine government generally respected religious freedom in practice and that there was no change in the status of this respect during the period of the study, from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009.

The report lauds the fact that there are no forced religious conversions and no religious prisoners.

In the Philippines, we are free to believe--NOT!

The Philippines remains one of only two countries which does not allow divorce. The Philippines is also a country where abortion is illegal under all conditions . A reproductive health bill that merely protects accepted international standards of health cannot be passed despite nine years of advocacy because politicians who are Catholic insist on obeying the prescriptions of the Church and other Church-mandated bodies.1 What is pertinent here is that those against the bill state their religious beliefs as the basis for their objection without any attempt to reconcile their actions with provisions in the Philippine Constitution on secularism, non-establishment of religions and non-discrimination.

Last January 21, 2008 a case was filed in the Philippine Court of Appeals to invalidate Executive Order No. 003, a policy banning "artificial contraceptives" in all of Manila's public health facilities. This order was promulgated in February 2000 by then-mayor Jose "Lito" Atienza, Jr. The case was filed by 20 women directly affected by the Executive Order. Atienza repeatedly justifies this action as a way of advancing “morals” and as a result of his being “pro-life” and a member of the organization Couple's for Christ.

Because of the contraception ban, public health centers in Manila City are prohibited from providing condoms, birth control pills, or other forms of "artificial" contraceptives and related information. The dire effects have been profound. Despite Atienza's having been voted out of office in 2007, the Executive Order remains.

The case has followed a difficult course in the Philippine courts and as finally dismissed by the Supreme Court on a technicality causing the Center for Reproductive Policy to comment, “the Philippine Supreme Court rules in favor of ideology”. At the moment there is a petition for urgent action on the matter to the CEDAW Committee.

About a week ago our Commission on Elections has refused to accredit a political party representing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. The petition for accreditation was denied on the grounds of religion. The decision of the Commissioners quotes the interpreters of the Koran and the Bible wit regards to homosexuality.

These violations of sexual and reproductive rights of Philippine women en masse is a result of an religious/ideological hegemony. This hegemony is established not so much by extremist politics but by the willing acquiescence of allegedly grown men and women for someone else, often the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, determine their morality for them.

The fault here is not in the inability to express faith. These definitions of religious freedom may be coming from populations unlike the Philippines, where religion and colonial subservience have had a long and incestuous relationship. The Spanish friars who governed and abused the Philippines during the centuries of colonial occupation kept their power over Filipinos because they did not allow the native population to engage in a direct appreciation of the Bible. Philippine Catholicism is burdened by this colonial legacy. Up to the present spirituality is mediated for the masses by powerful and power-hungry men who have valorized obedience to their teachings as part of Catholic morality.

Maybe they should do a study to see whether we are also free not to believe. In the meantime, we can test the waters by not believing in the BS indicators of yet another BS report from the US State Department.

Psychiatric Association of the Taliban

2009-11-13T04:08:00.000-08:00

Dear Editor

Is there anyway to impeach the following Comelec Comisssioners: Nicodemo T. Ferrer, Lucinito N. Tagle and Elias R. Yusoph?

They must be impeached because they have openly decided to turn the country into a religious state instead of a secular one. I am referring of course to their decision to outlaw Ladlad on the basis of upholding religious beliefs. They quote the Bible and the Koran forgetting that they should consult the Philippine Constitution instead. Only in the Philippines would we have high government officials who state that obedience to religious beliefs trumps other more cogent legal provisions as a basis for policy.

If stupidity were a basis for impeachment, the proceedings would be quite short. Their display of ignorance of current scientific knowledge on sexuality is quite appalling. They should have taken the simple expedient of asking any psychiatrist or psychologist who upholds the standards of organizations like the World Health Organization or the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations. They would have been told that homosexuality was delisted as a psychological pathology more than 30 years ago. They either did not bother to read for themselves or consulted the psychiatric association of the Taliban when they decided that homosexuality is an abnormality.

As a Filipino citizen who is neither Christian nor Muslim; as a practitioner and teacher in psychology and sexuality; as someone who cares that we do not look like backward bigots to the world community; I urge the impeachment of these men who have violated morals, scientific truths and our laws against discrimination.

I am so upset. I'm gay starting today and until Ladlad gets accredited.

Sylvia Estrada Claudio, M.D. PhD.
Director, University Center for Women’s Studies
Professor of Women and Development Studies
University of the Philippines

I got a citation

2009-04-30T01:52:00.000-07:00

Acceptance Speech for the Bayi Citation for the lifetime promotion and defense women’s and people’s rights, and vigilance for genuine democracy.

Sylvia Estrada-Claudio, MD, PhD

April 30, 2009

I am deeply grateful to the Barangay-Bayan Governance Consortium (BBGC) and the Institute of Politics and Governance (IPG) for this citation. I also wish to thank the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and One World Action for their support of the BBGC and the IPG in this and other endeavors.

It was difficult to think about and write my acceptance speech. I do not know how to say that I think my award is less about me and more about the people I work with, while at the same time say that I am honored to be a member of a select group of Bayi awardees whose individual achievements are impressive. I am feeling deeply validated and at the same time, feeling like a fraud for getting an award when I was simply doing my duty and having fun while I was at it.

Nonetheless, I believe that awards are given to call attention to persons and their work so that others may be inspired.

So let me try to raise the stakes by talking to you not just about the people I work with, but also about the happiness that comes with the work. In other words, working with the oppressed in poor communities is not just noble work, it is also as the young say, pretty cool.

Where I work, there are many people who do not ask for recognition for doing their duty to their community and country. They expect no praise for coming to work on time, treating the public with courtesy and accounting for every centavo that they spend. These things are not a big deal and we take them for granted.

In the organizations I work with, people earn enough to meet their family's basic needs because those of us who could earn more tend to share their salaries with those whose work is valued less. In other words, I have met so many people who understand that beyond a very minimal threshold, happiness does not increase in proportion to income.

In my work the poor among us have an equal voice. We think and laugh and sit together in long and short meetings hatching plans of affirmation and subversion. We are not unaware of the inequities between us, but we have forgiven each other for the moment while we are trying to end the problem.

In my world we refuse to be twisted and amputated to fit conceptions of what is good for women and girls. We allow our waistlines to expand as we please and raise or lower our hemlines with impunity. We also raise our eyes to look deeply into the eyes of our lovers, our children and our friends.

In my world women and girls are not ashamed to be smart. We study the world around us in order to change it and mold it closer to our visions. Medicine and math; cooking and contraceptives; disruption and democracy---all the things under the sun and beyond the sun are our areas of interest.

In my world we are rarely afraid when we are together. Together we have ended criminal control of water and electricity in poor communities, faced down abusive husbands and confronted our lack of self esteem and feelings of inadequacy.

In my world the pleasures of the body are welcomed with joy. We rejoice in our strength and revel in our sensuality. We eat and sleep without worry. We dance and sing with abandon. We make love or refuse to make love without guile or guilt. We also expect to bear just the number of children we choose. In other words, we are not afraid of our desires, our passions our loves and our choices.

In my world we demand that justice triumphs in our intimate relationships and that caring thrives in our working ones.

In my world the atheist lives happily with the believer because when we allow ourselves to think and feel deeply we realize that we cannot really tell who are the heretics and who are not. In my world, we refuse allegiance to religious authorities that give no value women's capacity to discern for themselves.

In my world, we stay in the Philippines because of the overwhelming poverty. We do so because in the face of iniquity, a simple act of decency is an act of heroism, a small act of compassion an act of renewal, and everyday we witness the tremendous productivity and creativity of the poor.

In my world we view call the for the universal enjoyment of human rights as a serious and achievable proposal.

And here is the really inspiring thing, this world really does exist. It has existed for a long, long time and will continue to do so. It exists as anything would—full of contradictions and human frailty. But it is there nonetheless. And it is neither small nor narrow nor exclusive. We must tell people about it lest the cynical, the overly-pragmatic and those who do not understand what they are missing succeed in hiding it from view.

Thank you, for this citation and the chance to tell you all about how lucky some of us are to be able to live our dreams now.

Coming Home Part 2

2009-03-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

They put me on their blogroll these Filipino Free Thinkers---- deists, secular humanists, agnostics and atheists.

So now, I need to ensure that the blogpost you get when you click on the link at their website at http://filipinofreethinkers.org/, is about freethinking. My last one had nothing to do with my agnosticism.

So I might as well write up what I have been blabbing to all my friends about.

It all begins with a link my eldest son sent me. It leads to a site where I applied to join the egroup of the Filipino Freethinkers. I sign up after repeatedly having to edit my short description. I tried to put too many justifications because I thought they needed much convincing about: 1) my worthiness; 2) my not being a security threat.

I feel like a spy the first week or two after I am accepted into the egroup. I have been an agnostic all my life so I should feel right at home. But I am silent because for one thing, I noticed most of the group is young(er). It is also not a grassroots organization (yet). This is not a criticism as much as self-reflexivity about what my comfort zones are when it comes to issue-based groups.

But I am thrilled because: 1)FINALLY there is a group I can relate to; 2) I am learning a new method of organizing. I am as a happy as a vampire who as found her coven. I learn that there will be a first-ever forum. I wanna go, I wanna go. Should I? Shouldn't I?

Then, someone starts a thread about the reproductive health bill and I cannot help myself. I answer. For that, I get invited to do a 10 minute talk about practical freethinking in politics and particularly about the reproductive health bill. I cancel everything for that Saturday afternoon and commit to go.

I am like a kid in a candy shop with this group. When my turn to speak comes, I need to ask something I have been asking now for decades: "Are my sister and I the only two Filipinas who were born into a household where both parents were agnostic (or atheist)? Could we possibly be the only 2 who did not have a religious education with our baby bottle? Amazingly, a young man says he too is like us. More amazingly, instead of getting the awkward or curious responses---they clap! Here I do not have to explain myself or justify my upbringing or defend my parents.

I had learned not to bring my beliefs up because, growing up in the 60's and 70's, people reacted to me as if I was insulting their religion for not having one. I had learned to just be quiet when in government and other secular events I am not told there will be a mass before the actual forum or I am asked to "stand for an invocation". I have learned because no matter how hard I try to explain, seek a little sensitivity or have a civilized debate--I get nothing. At most I get, "its ok, its ecumenical." When I answer "but I don't pray. It is against my spirituality to pray," I get no further answers.

Those of us who have felt any form of marginalization on the basis of our sexual orientation, race, class, ethnicity, religion or disability, know what it is like to have to deal with repeated and unwitting slights. It wears you down. It does not help when those who are not discriminated against trivialize these things (e.g. "the invocation is only for 10 minutes"; "she did not mean to be insensitive"). Sometimes too, being misunderstood is not about day-to-day slights but major hurts. My mother-in-law, a truly wonderful Catholic woman of profound faith, died without learning about my agnosticism because I loved her too much to upset her.

So this group, just being there--I did not care if I was the older-one-flowing-over-at the-mouth. I was home again, in a group of 60 or so people I had just met.

What is more, I am happy with how these young people are using the internet to fight their struggles. I am elated to find people who are a natural constituency for the RH bill. I am thrilled at the thought that one does not have to come from my socialist background to care about the rights of people.I am over-the-moon at seeing their committment to reaching out to the marginalized. I am overjoyed that they are committed to a better country (and world).

I am also glad to meet such a bright set of people. No anti-intellectualism here--unleash your inner geek or nerd. And, despite my teasing at the forum, not all of us geeks or nerds are socially inept.

In my political circles and with my NGOs, I have long suggested that we start a "coalition against moral tyranny". No takers. Perhaps I was talking to the wrong set of people. Perhaps my words were too negative. Anyway, I think I will stop nagging now.

I have a new place to be when I want sanctuary from the mindless religiosity of the insensitive majority or the sanctimonious malice of the moral police.

A Bad End to a Good Start

2009-01-25T06:11:00.000-08:00

Friends of mine who also work in the University of the Philippines (UP) and live near it (in fact they live on campus)tipped me off the other day to a breakfast place in the newly opened Ayala-UP technohub.

They know that my husband and I go out for Sunday breakfast to get away from the household and the kids so that we can actually have a conversation---even if the conversation is about who gets to call the plumber.

Flapjacks, a 24-hour breakfast restaurant, is a pleasant place. It's got this airy, open feel. The huge glass windows allow the sunlight in and the orange chairs and yellow walls keep things happy. As newcomers, we did not realize that it was a self-service restaurant, but the waitress gladly brought us menus, took our orders and even brought us the bill. She also suggested that we share my "endless cup of coffee" as it was obvious that I did not understand that to mean that a big insulated jug of coffee would be brought to our table. I have not seen eggs benedict on a breakfast menu for a long time, and I so had that. It was..eggs benedict. I don't think breakfasts need to be complicated in order to be good. So when I say, "ok", I mean it as an endorsement. Indeed the menu covers generally what I look for in a breakfast menu when I am not having my usual oatmeal--rice, tocino, tapa, longganisa, ham, bacon, eggs, bread and hotcakes.

I am excited too about the possibilities of this part of the technohub. Only a third of the establishments are open, and I am looking forward to the opening of more food outlets and a drugstore. I did not get to go to the bookstore, but I will next time.

Today was the kind of Sunday that convinced me that I am almost over the intense mothering years. My eldest son woke up at 2 pm---his usual; my middle child was off to a debate tournament; and my youngest did not get in until about 4 pm as he had slept over at a cousin's house.

We almost had dinner at home, except that Sundays have been family day since forever. So we decided to have a quick dinner out just to keep the habit going. Both my middle child and my youngest wanted to get home early though, to do some final bits of homework before knocking off. They were both exhausted.

We haul off to the technohub again. At night, the center court features a lighted set of fountains--pretty. We have come to expect some prettiness from Ayala developments. I might add that there is sufficient green in this large commercial/business area. I haven't seen it all though. I wonder whether old trees were cut as the only trees I saw were young ones.

Then the nightmare began. We decided to eat at the Old Spaghetti House. It took some time before they could clean the table we took over from people who had just left; some time before someone came to give us menus; and some time before we could place our orders. We were still good-humored at this point because it did look like a busy night. (My entire family suffers from liberal, middle class guilt. We are very rarely mean to waiters.) But it got worse and worse. We practically had to beg the waiters for water. The food came in dribbles. After repeated follow ups, my husband finally went over to the counter only to come back with our youngest son's food platter in hand. (I jokingly asked if he had volunteered his services out of love for his family.)My husband's order never came, even if it was the same order as that of our middle child, who had finished his food way beforehand. In exasperation we asked that all the rest of our orders (desserts and my husband's oh-so-absent meal) be canceled and we be given the bill. Guess what? The bill comes, after follow ups, only they were still charging us for everything.

So my husband gets up to talk to the manager (poor man was getting a work-out instead of a meal) and she turns out to be the owner who turns out to be unable to do anything about anything. It's a pity I did not know this, as I had earlier vetoed a suggestion that we just walk out because I was afraid that the waiters would have to pay for our bill out of their salaries. (It's that liberal middle-class guilt thing again.)

We ended up at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf beside the nightmare of an Old Spaghetti House. The sympathetic people there brought my husband a tuna sandwich real quick and some soothing tea for me. It was there when we realized that this was the first time ever that we walked out of a restaurant with one of us being unfed. The second worst experience was at the soft opening of another restaurant, but the manager was so apologetic he did not charge us and had us take home some cake. That made us less miserable.

We are home now and the kids are upset about having to sleep much later than expected because dinner took so long. As for me, I had hoped to go to bed early too, but I just needed to write this down.

Anyway folks, do the serving staff, the cook and the owner a favor and lessen the load on the Old Spaghetti House at the UP-Ayala technohub---avoid the place.

Greetings

2008-12-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

I would like to greet my Christian friends a Marry Christmas and my non-Christian friends Happy Holidays.

I like Christmas carols actually, even if I am not a Christian. In the same way that I like religious classical music from Europe, Handel's Messiah, for example. In fact I listen to my copy of the Messiah during the Christmas season.

For me it's the traditional songs, Filipino and English, plus a few new good ones. "New" means to me something written in the 20th century. A choir please. I hate jazz, samba or stars-on-45 versions. The most contemporary I can get is Celtic Woman's Christmas album..released a few years ago. They're good, they sing mostly traditional English carols and I believe most of them are classically trained.

I have not blogged in ages. After my wild abandon of watching birds instead of working, I have had to learn more about not working because of a recent illness that has left me slightly disabled. I discovered during my first visit to the gym in months that my left triceps is now a "noceps" or maybe just a "slightceps". My rehab doctor and I will have a few moments of excitement when I see her in January.

In any case, like many others my illness has helped me realize that I must re-order my life around my essentials and that the world does not crumble when I do. So like December, I will chill...

Picture above shows me descended upon by my sons, several nieces and a nephew. Kids, you gotta love them.

Amorsolo and the Birds

2008-10-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

It is late at night and I am exhausted. I really should get some sleep as I am facing another hell of a week in a series of hell weeks. Today, for the first time in a really, really long time, I have decided to fail an NGO I am working with by not submitting an article I promised to contribute.

I am in dangerous territory here. My over-developed superego is screaming: "there will be dire consequences for you and the entire international feminist movement!!!!!"

But this triumph over guilt and compulsion comes from something I did this afternoon. Something I promised I would write about instead of the TRULY IMPORTANT AND EARTHSHAKING 25 year anniversary of a global network on reproductive rights.

I went to the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum and enjoyed the exhibit of Amorsolo paintings. (See it, it's lovely and historical and has much more even for those who for some reason cannot enjoy Amorsolo's stupendous evocations of light.)

Then I went birdwatching. The lovely people at the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines(www.birdwatch.ph) gave us a free guided tour right on the UP Campus. According to their brochures, the Philippines has a 600 species and UP Campus has at least 100 of them.

It's funny that having grown up on the campus, and now ending up teaching there, I am only beginning to appreciate a whole other universe that has surrounded me for most of life.

I am afraid I cannot recall the names of the kites, the shrikes, the swallows, the woodpeckers and the doves that were pointed out. I can't recall which one was white-necked or yellow-bellied or long-tailed. I recall the white necked one was really beautifully colored and wondered why they would name it after the little swath of white on its neck. I recall seeing what is called in Tagalog a "batobato" which is the name of the street one corner down from where I live.

I made one of the guides laugh by calling a piece of birdwatching equipment, "that fancy thing".

But it was glorious. Having grown up on the campus I know how beautiful it is. Despite the encroachments of the city it remains a haven for nature and thereby, the birds.

UP campus at dusk is also my absolutely most wonderful place to be. As far back as I can remember I would take walks in the Campus at twilight.

All the birds I saw where sweet and seemingly non-aggressive creatures. Except that someone said that the bulbuls flew away because a kingfisher came. But it did not seem as if there was any harm done.

Anyway, I prefer to keep my fantasy of those sweet harmless birds. I have to deal with an an unethical woman in my work life these days, and I have much to do before I can stop working with her. So it was a treat to be away from the mud-slinging, innuendos and hypocrisy of pot-bellied, yellow-spined, chattering humans to watch those sweet, yellow-bellied, white-throated and long-tailed birds and hear their odes to nature.

I think I will buy me one of those fancy things and set it up in my UP office. My only real goal: to spot a yellow-bellied something or other for myself.

Hierarchies

2008-10-19T01:02:00.000-07:00

My work involves a fair amount of travel abroad. I guess this makes me a business traveler. But I am not rewarded with multimillion dollar bonuses and perks like the heads of those investment banks who have managed to imperil the world's financial systems. I am not rewarded like those World Bank people who have caused so much misery by their failed economic policies. I am not even rewarded like those police generals of the Philippines who went to an Interpol conference in Russia recently and were caught carrying 100,000 EUROS which they said was the unspent portion of their contingency fund.

In short, I am sour graping because I always travel coach. Always. So I make grape juice out of sour grapes. Outward bound, I am often seated beside the seaman or nanny or cleaning woman working abroad. I have learned many things from them and sometimes have been of some help. I will never forget the young woman who was going to Singapore to become a maid and who was upset about a last minute payment demanded by the recruiter at the boarding gate. She had no money and was also unsure about why they checked in her bag. Though I was not getting off at Singapore, I had an unused phone card from a previous visit. I gave that to her, US$ 20 that I could spare and my mobile number. I also assured her that her bag would be at the airport and explained to her how airport procedures work. Crisis counseling all the way to Singapore.

But my real intellectual treat is going home. Naturally the economy section is full of Filipinos. Up there in the sky; under the flag of whatever nation the airline is registered in; made equal by the fact that we are all given the same service and privileges of economy class; divested for the moment of our degrees and ranks and most of our possessions---Filipinos still manage to impose on themselves a sophisticated form of social stratification. It took me years of travel to figure out but it is there. Of course the lowest rung is occupied by overseas Filipino workers in blue collar jobs. This rung is further stratified by the type of blue collar work of course, with the women entertainers looked down upon. The next rung is occupied by the viajeras who are based in the Philippines and go off to Singapore or Hongkong to buy things for their shops. The next rung is occupied by returning white collar workers and students. Next, people who have more or less permanent jobs in the US, Europe or Canada and are on the way to citizenship. Then, Filipinos who have become citizens of these nations. Also at the top are Filipinas who have gained their citizenship by marrying Canadian or American or European men. This is a special category because many of the mixed race couples are in first of business class if the man is wealthy. But people try to distinguish white collar Filipinas who married white collar foreigners from gold diggers who married a foreigner.

I am sorry to be so blunt. None of these categories are my own and I certainly decry the fact that female entertainers of any sort are put down. I do not think that everyone in the plane subscribes to this nonsense, though I doubt whether anyone is completely unconscious of it. Was not this sort of elitism in air travel by a former columnist the subject of protest sometime this year?

Anyway, the intellectual treat involves observing how this system is put into place. How culture and behavior are caught up in a system of signification that re-establishes class and gender differences.

I will never forget the Filipino woman who spent our entire trip from San Francisco warning her white male seatmate about the heat, the chaos and irrationality of "people in Manila". From her exaggerated American twang, I figured she was not a second generation Filipino American, but a newly naturalized one. Her loud comments eventually led me to confirm this.

I will never forget as well the time when the Narita-Manila section of my flight from the US got severely delayed. Classes fell immediately in with each other as we spent the long hours of waiting together. OFWs hang around with other OFWs. Seamen banded with other seamen who flirted and patronized with the Japayukis. The Fil-Americans and Fil-Europeans stayed together. I decided to hang around with the OFWs who assumed I worked as a nanny until someone decided to clarify the off-vibe they were getting by asking me what exactly I did. When they learned I was teaching at a university, the social relations changed a bit. Luckily where I teach has a reputation for serving the Filipino people. Filipinos being very gracious and friendly folk, I was "re-accepted" into the group. But they treated me not as a familiar but with mixed amounts of deference for my position and amusement at my obvious choice of hanging out with them. Seamen began offering me imported cigarettes and the women started offering me cologne at the 6th hour of our waiting. Unlike the columnist mentioned earlier, I prefer the honesty of simple folk to the pretentiousness of the spoiled Filipino elite. At least with this bunch, no privileges are assumed, none of us are spoiled by the benefits of unmerited entitlements. Indeed, we all had a sense that we there despite the absence of anyone's helping hand.

My point is that our poor, feudal and oppressive society survives on schooling people from an early age in the intricacies of a hierachical social system. The children of the poor are taught early to fall into subordinate positions and subservient attitudes. This is a scourge on the self esteem of the majority poor. It is also a scourge on the moral foundations of the children of the Filipino wealthy.

Most of all it is a scourge on our well being as a nation because democracy thrives only when each person believes deeply that they are of equal worth and have access to the same basic privileges.

Yesterday a poll came out that the majority of Filipinos are supportive of reproductive health initiatives and the proposed reproductive health bill being deliberated in Congress, despite their understanding of the Roman Catholic Church's opposition. In response a Roman Catholic Bishop said that morality was not a popularity contest. He forgets that the Church also says that each person's conscience is fundamental to moral judgment and must be respected greatly.
This is one of the most profoundly democratic element of the Church's teachings. Indeed, the sense of the faithful is meant to guide the Church. The Bishops are guilty of a horrendous sense of elitism and have been that way since the time of Spanish colonialism. The Church's patriarchy survives because the Bishops believe we are all their caciques in the fields of moral righteousness.

Letter to the Editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

2008-09-05T00:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Editor,

I have been following the Inquirer's coverage on the reproductive health controversy over the past weeks. I wish to commend the commentary by John J. Caroll, S.J., entitled, "Facts and fallacies in the population debate"(http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20080905-158759/Facts-and-fallacies-in-the-population-debate). I admire his willingness to correct "loose argumentation" on the part of those who he believes are arguing for the position of the Roman Catholic Church.

I agree with Fr. Carroll on most of his points. As early as 1994 at the UN International Conference of Population and Development, I had already agreed with former Philippine ambassador to the Holy See, Henrietta “Tita” T. De Villa, that women advocates should have a sincere dialogue with the Bishops on the matter. That dialogue never materialized. But if it does, Fr. Carroll should be one of the participants.

The Inquirer is also to be commended when it confirmed the complaint of Prof. Ernie Pernia (http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/letterstotheeditor/view/20080904-158540/Letter-based-on-faulty-report) that their reporter had misquoted the UP School of Economics (UPSE) position (http://www.econ.upd.edu.ph/papers/Population_Poverty_Politics_RHBill.pdf) on the relation between poverty and family size. This is important because the letter of to the editor of Marita F. Wasan (http://archive.inquirer.net/view.php?db=1&story_id=156355) took exception to the UPSE paper on the basis of the inaccuracy. Fr. Carroll in his article corrects Kit Tatad's argumentation about the same thing.

If nothing else, the debate reminds everyone to check facts. I do not think this is a requirement merely for journalists and academics. I think it is a requirement of good citizenship. National debates guided by clear argumentation and factual accuracy can be the only basis for an enlightened social policy on these and other controversial matters.

Thus, my disappointment that in a letter to the editor that came out on the same day as Fr. Carroll’s commentary (http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/letterstotheeditor/view/20080905-158777/Best-way-to-avoid-AIDS-STDs-pregnancies), Imelda LL. Areolla makes the factually inaccurate claim that the use of condoms will not stop the spread of HIV and that, "The microscopic holes in condoms are large enough for the AIDS virus to pass through."

The World Health Organization has condemned this misinformation saying, ‘These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million.’ It said ‘consistent and correct’ condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90%. There may be breakage or slippage of condoms – but not holes through which the virus can pass. (For a summary of the scientific information and the WHO position on the matter of condom use and HIV prevention go to:http://www.who.int/3by5/en/Condom_statement.pdf)

Ms. Areolla's article also resorts to the loose argumentation Fr. Carroll decries. First, she misrepresents HIV-AIDS prevention programs as mainly condom distribution. The literature shows that several programmatic elements are recommended (in some programs this includes an emphasis on abstinence and chastity). The scientific literature on “abstinence only” programs also shows that these do not prevent pre-marital sex, let alone sexually transmitted infections.

Secondly, her idea that sex education simply tells adolescents that sex is safe when they use contraceptives is wrong. She further gives the false impression that the adolescent sex education advocated by the medical community is one that does not emphasize values. Sex education for adolescents should teach them about the biology and physiology of many aspects of sexuality and should be explicit about sexual intercourse, prevention of transmission of sexually transmitted infections and contraception. When I teach to various audiences, I also include a discussion about moral frameworks (both secular and religious) that people might want to consider when looking at these matters. Whether only Catholic values of reticence about sexual acts, abstinence before marriage and non-contraception in marriage should prevail in a secular education system is another matter altogether.

My last point is that the Inquirer itself (and the entire profession of journalism) needs to remain self-reflective about what the Inquirer terms as “balanced views”. Is it “balanced” to give equal treatment to views supported by weight of scientific data (e.g. condoms prevent HIV-AIDS) and views supported by the inevitably errant experiments in science (e.g condoms have holes that allow the virus to pass through)? I would argue that giving both views equal space, leads to dangerous results, and does not uphold the highest standards of journalism.

Governor Palin

2008-09-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

Whoa. A woman candidate for Vice President on the Republican ticket! Hello, 21st century.

She is a member of "feminists for life" or something like that. Conservatives are funny that way. They have managed to make feminism a bad word, yet are not afraid to use it if it will make them pretty. Anyway this pro-life woman is also pro-gun. Tricky ground. I understand pro-gun advocates uphold people's rights to bear guns as a form of self-defense and legitimate hunting. So the nuance here is that she defends the life that is in fetuses but not the life in legitimately hunted Alaskan wolves?

I have no idea what she has against wolves. Except maybe that wild women and wolves have been put together in the popular imagination by feminist writers. Kidding aside, I do wonder what she intends to do with the fact that gun ownership leads to the killings of human beings. Does she know for example that fetuses die when husbands shoot their pregnant wives with those guns they are supposed to use to defend themselves and hunt? What shall we do? Allow fetuses to bear guns? Fetuses are persons remember? That is why they are supposed to be protected from their mother's bad intentions even when in the mother's wombs. (And give those mothers some family values while we are at it!)

I assume that she is for the family values that those Republicans keep talking about. Here is the family values story: mother, father, children. Children not told too much about sex. Innocent children abstain from sex which they know nothing about. Innocent children fall in love in romantic asexual way to persons of the opposite sex. They fall in love at some appropriate age. The appropriate age being older for the man (he has to sow a few wild oats you know, boys being boys) than the woman (that biological clock ticks and urges women to complete their womanhood by becoming mothers). The love deepens, becomes committed. They seek God's blessing of this God-created love by marriage. They discover sex during marriage. They realize heterosexual sex is precisely the God-given way of sex because heterosexual sex is the only way to create God-given children. They have fun sex within marriage only. Fun sex (with no contraceptives if they are Catholic) may lead to children (inevitable if they have no contraceptives) whom they will accept with boundless joy each and every time.

But then there is this news report that her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. She intends to keep the child according to reports and marry the father. Oh, okay?!? Here is the nuance then: if the child gets some of the story line wrong (the part about discovering sex only after marriage) she may redeem herself by catching up with the storyline--marry the guy so we can all have the happy ending we want.

Pro-family values. Palin's children have to understand that mother and father know best. I hope her daughter has learned this lesson now.

I hope all those other kids have learned their lesson now. You get to be parents first, then you can ignore the lessons that your children's lives are actually trying to teach you. Child learns lessons from parents--- period. It isn't a two-way street.

I see this all the time. The gay, lesbian and bisexual kids I have to help so that they can survive in families who insist that they tow the conservative family values storyline. The post-botched-illegal-abortion care I have to provide children of the pro-life families. All of this done in secret, so that their mothers can smile at me confidently when they label me immoral for upholding reproductive and sexual rights.

But is Palin conservative enough? After all, what is she doing in the Governor's office? This is so unlike the ideal of conservative family values: the stay-at-home mother. Perhaps the nuance is: she is Governor because she had to leave the home in order to go drill for oil in the Arctic.

I wonder why conservatives love virginity and prisitine cleanliness more in women than in business and politics.

But then, no one should listen to brown-faced, third world me. After all I should mind my own business. Except that the last time I looked the Republicans launched a "war on terror" that has changed the politics of Islam even in Mindanao, and sought to curtail women's reproductive rights in the United Nations. I also can't help myself from caring about idiocies that put American security at greater risk while they proclaim that they are doing these things to protect Americans. Hey, I have quite a number of friends living in the U.S. Hey, I honestly feel strong solidarity for all the peoples of the world, including American citizens. Hey, it is to my detriment when powerful nations do stupid things in the world.

Am I supposed to be happy with Governor Palin's claim that her candidacy has to do with women breaking the glass ceiling? Does she really think that this invocation of hers will rally those 16 million who voted for Hillary, to vote for the Republican ticket instead?

It's not so 21st century after all. Memo to John McCain: we don't need women in the White House. We need feminists there. The one's that don't misuse the term by labeling themselves feminist, and go on to uphold patriarchy at every turn.

Palin's nomination is a cynical attempt to rally the women's vote while pandering to the conservatives. For shame!

Coming home

2008-09-01T01:24:00.000-07:00

“All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Yesterday I had a nostalgic dream while sleeping off jet lag. I dreamt that my brother, who in his later years was estranged from the family in our own unhappy way, was alive and well. He was also his good self, the part I no longer saw for the last decade of his life.

He had come to pick me up from an apartment where I was staying. Why I was staying apart, is not in the dream. And where I was staying was unclear. But we walked through the neighborhood as we had done so many times during my childhood---me following him so we could get home. He showed me a new shortcut too.

The house was empty when we got there but I had the sense that soon, my mother and father and my sister would be in. An ordinary day in the life of one of those usually happy families which are the same world over.

And that was the end if the dream. But the waking up was difficult. My brother, father and mother are no longer alive, and waking up made me realize how much I have lost just because life has taken its course.

We have been plodding on, my sister and I, the last two standing. The way we see it, we have a bit more to go. Ordinarily we are brave girls. Ordinarily there can be no bellyaching between us because life remains worth living and joyful. We are also under very strict instructions from my mother (the kind of instructions drilled into you from your first breastfeeding) that sentimentality about one's particular life situation is nothing more than self-conceit. Being human and alive is wonderful, joyous and marvelous. However there are, as Omar Khayam has said, "millions of bubbles like us". Nothing is very interesting or uplifting about anyone's particular bubble.

The dream reminds me of yet another of mother's admirable traits: she was an agnostic who was not afraid to die. She joked about it on the day of her death to her cardiologist, "this is a serious condition I have, right? It could kill me?" And it did.

She would look at the fear of death in our Catholic dominated society and say, "if I knew there was an afterlife why would I be afraid to die? I don't know for sure, and yet I am ready."

When asked about dying, my father took a different tack. He told me that all life comes from a limited set of carbon atoms. He says it would be selfish to keep our carbon atoms to ourselves forever and not give other life forms a chance.

So why do I break my mother's rules and write about this dream, so peculiar to me and therefore so uninteresting to others? Because it reminded about a principle of living well: do not be afraid to die.

This is not an appeal for dangerous behavior. It is an appeal for liberating the self from conceit and supersition. Many religious traditions and my non-religious agnostic one, remind us that many fears (and a whole lot of irritating behavior and bad manners) are born out of thinking that you are more important than the minor blip that you really are in the cosmic story.

My dream reminds me that immortality would become unbearable because life, for all it's joys, is also wearying.

So I will, as a poet once said, warm my hands before the fire of life, but depart without fuss when the fire wanes.

Tonight though, I hope I will have that dream I have about flying. I fly, really fly.

What would we do without our dreams?

Simple Pleasures

2008-07-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

There is a well-known ad campaign that goes something like: tickets to the Beijing Olympics--several thousand dollars. Smile on the face of your loved one to whom you give the tickets---priceless.

Credit card companies fit a description formulated by Oscar Wilde: "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." The ad campaign however, makes it appear that one particular credit card company understands the difference between values and prices.

Except that it doesn't. The ad is yet another example of how capitalism manages to coopt our needs for human connection. The ad campaign is trying to convince us that priceless experiences nevertheless come with a price, a price with an interest rate.

Perhaps we had better look to other wisdom. It is very common nowadays to read in blogs, self-help books and those inspirational things we get in the email about pleasures that require little or no expenditure. You know the lists: listening to the cry of a newborn baby, the smell of newly cut grass, watching the ocean. As the song says, "the best things in life are free."

Except that they are not. Women risk their lives, especially poor women, to give birth. And hearing the cry of a newborn is only a simple pleasure if you are not the one who will need to feed clean and cuddle the babe. As for newly cut grass--someone has to mow the lawn first, usually for minimum wage. I also find that men have more time to enjoy simple pleasures like watching the ocean, because they work less hours at home.

For me, the next best thing to enjoying myself, is seeing other people enjoy themselves. Unlike the moralists I have no real objection to shopping or lazing about. I am not guilty of doing these things, because I just do them without guilt. Indeed my innocent enjoyments range from the simple, to the complicated, to the unclassifiable. After all, how does one classify the joys of long-standing friendships or the ecstasy that comes with realizing you are sexually attracted to someone? How does one classify the jubilation my friends feel at making life difficult for the the World Bank, The IMF the G8 or the WTO? Simple, complicated? Both? I wish for myself and others a plethora of polymorphous passions.

I problematize pleasures not because I am a moralist who is afraid of the effects of unbridled sexuality. I problematize pleasure because I would rather drink the wine without the hangover. It is also better to have sex without getting the sexually transmitted infection or the unwanted pregnancy. Also, the pleasure of the occasional shopping spree lasts longer if one is confident of being able to pay the credit card company later. I say occasional by the way, not because I am middle class and can only afford occasional shopping sprees. I say occasional because consumerism is an addiction, just as much as alcoholism, just as much as those egotistical power plays that many mistake for sex. I also find that lazing around is best enjoyed when one isn't resentful about unfair workloads or guilty about unshared work. I find that life is best enjoyed when it is well-examined and dedicated.

The moralists, the fascists and the capitalists are afraid that we might think our pleasures through and pleasure our thinking too much. If we did, we might realize that the latte they are serving at ridiculous prices at the multinational chain doesn't really taste that good; the designer bag that we must have, looks like a gaudy collage of leather scraps. If we did we would realize the Osama Bin Laden and George Bush are believers in the same sexual and political economy upheld by the Vatican. If we did, we might realize that free pleasures (guilt free and priceless) are more likely to be found in human cooperation and sharing rather than individualism and competition. If we did we would realize that under systems of injustice and alienation, creativity demands transgression and subversion demands pleasure.

Does that sound like I am howling at the moon? So be it. Excuse me please while I go a-howling. Howling at the moon with my girlfriends: priceless.

Let me be wanton

2008-07-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

According to Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines is merely doing its duty as moral guardians by making lawmakers aware of their opposition to contraceptives. It's up to the lawmakers to decide whether to heed their moral injunctions.

I might add that it really is up to the lawmakers to decide to heed the Bishops' call. It's up to the lawmakers to decide to accept the condemnatory messages on their cellular phones and the phones of their parents, sibling and children, should they decide not to heed the Church. It's up to the lawmakers to live with the lies and bad propaganda against them when they run for office on a reproductive health platform. It's up to the pro-women lawmakers to put up with pastoral letters read against them especially during elections.

It is also up to the Filipino people to obey the Church when Gloria decides to stop contraceptive policies and programs as quid pro quo for the Bishop's refusal to condemn her lying, cheating and stealing. Indeed our ever-so-democratic CBCP leaves it up to all of us, Catholic and non-Catholic, believers and unbelievers, to decide not to access the reproductive health services they have made non-existent by their bullying and not to use contraceptives we can't find because of their interference.

This reminds me that the medieval Church's inquisitor Torquemada, was beset by the same zeal for guarding Christian virtue as he oversaw the torture of heretics.

Like the victims of Torquemada I am wondering several things:

1) When was it that I decided that the Catholic Church would be my moral guardian? I wish I had known this during times when a tremendous infusion of CASH in my bankbook would have solved certain moral dilemmas. And don't tell me this is not the CBCP way, numerous commentators from Jose Rizal to Fr. Robert Reyes have noted that the Church has tended to resolve its moral dilemnas by looking at who gives them indulgencia. I certainly hope they can give (me) as good as they get (from Gloria.)

2) To what court do I apply to be free of the Church's moral guardianship? Last I looked even my sainted but agnostic parents had lost all guardianship rights when I turned 21.

You know what irritates me the most? It is to have these intellectual and spiritual dwarves squat all over my heavenly sharehold. Let us not forget that all intelligences tend to be correlated. The dumb in science, mathematics and logic also tend to be the dumb in moral reasoning.

Shall we take a sample of Catholic sermons current, past or future to gauge the IQ levels of the Catholic clergy? Every time I get unwittingly dragged into a mass, I end up being the only one that listens to the priest. This is because the smart brethren, who know more about these things, prefer to smoke outside, attend to their text messages or gape at the hot body or hot designer clothes of the penitents across the aisle.

I shall leave for another post the many moral-logical abysses that I have descended into on the happenstance of celebrating priests. But here's a favorite one: "dear brothers and sisters in Christ let us praise the Lord because our sister Consuelo's daughter, Concepcion, has finally become President of.." As Consuelo is wealthy, by the way, the Thanksgiving Mass for President Concepcion is officiated by an Archbishop, no less.

I see it everywhere in this country:

Praise the Lord my daughter topped the bar.
Praise the Lord without him I would not be so very, very, successful.
Pray for me brethren, I have long wanted to give my wife and children a good home because the Lord says I should be a good father, so please make me the CEO of my firm.

I always wonder why they always praise the Lord for things they want to brag about and never about something truly praiseworthy like "praise the Lord I have a brain and a heart that stops me from using piety as an excuse for conceit."

I always wonder why we are more often asked to pray for someone's self interest (the job, the exam, the bigger house) rather than their self-development: "Lord give me the strength to know that like any mother, you expect me to take care of my survival needs. Thank you that you have given me the brains and the heart to do so. There is such joy in practicing human autonomy. Thank you for this joy."

Let me be clear: my nearest and dearest ask this agnostic to pray for their daughters exams or husband's hospital stays, or whatever. This agnostic prays hard to the Goddess she thinks might be there, (right beside Bertrand Russel's teapot, the one that circles the earth) for their sakes. However this agnostic does not think that such intimate aspects of family support and family bragging should be raised to the level of communal spiritual practice.

The Philippine Catholic Church encourages an infantilized and unthinking spirituality. The same horrible spirituality that was so passionately resisted by Jose Rizal and the heroes of the anti-clerical revolution of 1896. If the Bishops really are moral and life-affirming guardians, then our people would not be in the moral swamp we are in.

Bishop Lagdameo honey, if you're going to guard my morality, I'd rather be wanton.

Cannot host the holy host

2008-07-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

Because of my previous blog entry, I have received suggestions from friends about people who should not take in the communion wafer:

1) Catholic priests who:

a) have had sexual liaisons with adults. (Note: some of us think we should allow Catholic priests to marry the man or woman of their choice, so it isn't the sex part per se but the hippocrisy.)

b) who are pedophiles (Note: while being permissive of many sexual/erotic expressions I draw the line at practices where consent is clearly absent or cannot be truly given: rape and sexual harassment, pedophilia, intercourse with animals.)

c) are sexual harassers, rapists, abusive.

d) suddenly remember their vow of celibacy when they decide to abandon their pregnant lovers

e) take their girlfriends for an abortion. (Trust me on this. The medical community knows. Our vow of confidentiality keeps us from telling.)

2) anyone using a modern contraceptive.

3) anyone who is divorced.

I hope this contributes to the efforts of the Catholic Church on this matter. I argue that all of these suggestions are consistent with Humanae Vitae and its views on the sacredness of life, except the notes on 1) a) and b). For the heathen out there, you should know that the threat of non-communion for politicians pushing for reproductive health bills, are in line with the previously mentioned papal pronouncement. The Church celebrates the 4o year anniversary of said document this June. Friends, let's all help the Church here. Please send in your suggestions as to whom we should add to the list. Read Humanae Vitae first, ok?

On the other hand, my irredeemable gay friends have informed me that some of their gay friends have reacted to the threat of denying communion to legislators advocating reproductive rights by saying, "I won't let that Bishop enter my beauty parlor either." Given the state of things, I expect priests will start wearing bad haircuts soon. As I am in helpful mode, this is a bit upsetting to me. But as this is looking like a man-on-man sort of thing (gays and Catholic bishops are men), I leave this to them. I am hoping that they can solve it within the parameters of brotherly love. (None of you get back to me to say, "Eiew". "Eiew" is uncalled for within the parameters of brotherly love.)

Finally, my friend Tom, whom I shall rely on to attend the above-mentioned dialogue, suggests that those who have gained the right to take in a few more calories by abstaining from the wafer, take this popular multivitamin that is marketed as an aphrodisiac instead.

No wafers for the lawmakers?

2008-07-13T23:51:00.001-07:00

Today's headlines in the Manila newspaper I subscribe to says, "anti-life pols must be refused communion". The article continues: "Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado has issued a pastoral letter saying that politicians who consistently campaign for and endorse permissive abortion should be taught about the Church position."

I am so excited. I am thinking, finally the Philippine Catholic Church will refuse communion to:

1) Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her bad economic policies that are causing joblessness, malnutrition and hunger. They also might refuse to give her communion for her steady erosion of he people's trust in our social institutions and our democratic processes. It does not take a high IQ to know that because of her actions, we are indeed on the road to disharmony, contention, chaos, disease and death.

2) Refuse communion to the NBN-ZTE, Northrail scalawags and other corrupt officials. As a doctor, working on women's health rights and as an academic involved in the outreach programs of my university, I have interacted through the years with the personnel of the Departments of Health and Education. These are huge government bureaucracies with people on the frontlines. These are good civil servants who must deal with the needs of ordinary folk. Through the years the main problem remains the same: the health and education budgets are meager. Criminally meager. The budgets are so small compared to the needs of our people that to describe the amounts as "anti-life" would be no exaggeration. Gloria's economic professors will tell her that the real road to "asensong mararamdaman" (progress you can feel) is to massively invest in social services including women's reproductive health.

3) Refuse communion to the representatives and senators who participate in 1) and 2). As an aside I would personally refuse them communion for murdering the English language and the reputation of the Filipino people. I still recall their impassioned, pompous, grammatically- disastrous speeches during the ouster of Speaker de Venecia. Again, I am not exaggerating. A good number of the speeches were downright unintelligible. But I digress.

So I await the massive savings that the Catholic Church will have on refusing these people the wafer. After all, refusing communion to all the corrupt would be refusing communion to the majority of our politicians.

But no, I misunderstood. It turns out that it is the legislators sponsoring reproductive health bills who are being threatened. Methinks the Archbishop has lost his way.

I must say that I respect the right of the Catholic Church (or any religion) to decide about matters of faith. I really have no comment to make about that debate regarding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Should they declare it to be o or a billion, it is of no great moment to me.

But should they tell me to stop buying pins because angels dance on pinheads; should they refuse to give wafers to pin manufacturers; should they refuse communion to lawmakers attempting to put standards on pin manufacture---well excuse me Archbishops. Now you enter into secular space and I am allowed to ask you less respectful questions like---are you daft?

Here, in secular space, my good Archbishops, you deserve no more and no less than the rest of us. You deserve to be confronted with scientific fact and evidence and called to account when you misrepresent and mislead.

So tell me Archbishop Dozado, who told you that giving women full reproductive health services is anti-life? Do you know how many women's lives are lost because they are denied these services? Do you not read the literature? What right have you to attempt to dictate social policy on the basis of such ignorance?

Here from secular space I can remind you that to attempt to intimidate representatives of the people from doing their duty (the right of couples to determine the number of their children is in our constitution) is probably a criminal undertaking.

Please also be reminded to behave with a bit more humility. Some of the people you are threatening aren't even Catholic and have no idea what it is you are threatening them with.

Hey Bishop---leave the few legislators I can respect alone.

Why that blog title?

2008-07-10T23:35:00.000-07:00

Because I think of myself as subversive. I have grown old in subversion. Began at 15 when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines. Overnight the legal student organization I was a member of became an illegal, one. What the heck, if he wanted it that way, he could have it that way. I joined the anti-dictatorship underground. He called us, for his entire dictatorship, subversives.

Fast forward: like many an activist who has joined the academe, I have an interest in development theory and practice.

So why pleasure? Because I have noticed a lack of regard for pleasures and happiness in the theory and practice of subversion and development. Aha, there's another nexus, methinks subversion is development is subversion is..

Just a thought: Am I revealing my age by that term, "subversive?" What is the term, post-cold war? Terrorist?Maybe. But then I am a pacifist: terrorist pacifist? Pacifist terrorist?

See? Better to remain the subversive who is interested in increasing human pleasure and happiness.