Tumba Lata

The truth about my father

2012-01-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

Once I went to an island with my Aunt without the knowledge of my father. Only my mother knew. My mother thought he won’t be home that night. When he did, he was surprised not to find me. He asked for me. Where is Merilyn? They could not tell him the truth. My sister said, he isn’t home yet, Amah. He is still out, downtown. My father said, Damn. Okay, I will wait for him before I take my meal. So he waited for me a long while. Until night. Then he said, where did he go? You go with me, we will look for him! My sister said, I don’t know, Amah, where in town he went. My mother could not stand it anymore, she told him the truth. My father got furious, he turned the house upside down. He said, Produce my son! If he isn’t home yet tomorrow, I will kill all of you! I will burn this house down!!!

Then he called. He told my aunts, You bring my son back! I give you until tomorrow, or your sister will be dead! He meant his wife, yes, my mother.

Then he spoke to me.

I said, Hello? He said, What do you want? That you come home and find your mother dead? Or you come home right at this moment? I packed up right away. My mother was going to die. I would rather that my father died instead of my mother.

Khumz goes to a rally

2012-01-18T01:06:00.001-08:00

stick it down their asses day

2012-01-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

2012-01-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

lesbianismo, mga NGOs, at mga imam sa Jolo

2011-12-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

Actually, alam din naman ng mga ustadzes sa Jolo yung mga nagli-live in. Alam yan nila lahat. Pero wala rin naman silang ginagawa.

Tumba Lata: Okay. Ano sa palagay mo ang main obstacles to providing support to LGBT people who may be victims of violence?

Ussah: Wala man obstacles, basta huwag lang pangalanan.

Radz: Oo.

TL: The moment you name it, na lesbian ito, magri-react lahat?

Ussah: Oo. Saka marami pa ring fanatics diyan sa Jolo. Pag lesbian siya nagpu-fall pa rin siya sa women, tapos, pag bakla naman dun pa rin siya sa men. Ganun.

TL: Which no longer hold. Di ba? Na categories?

TL: Anyway, in what way would you be able to help liban pa sa guidance and counseling? Pauutangin? Kasi magbi-birthday yung girlfriend.

Ussah: Patayin ko siya.

TL: Haha.

Ussah: Para sa akin, kung human rights violations ang issue, kahit wala na siguro iyang mga office or whatever, dahil yung lines of communications, yung technology ngayon, may internet, may cellphones, pag may mangyayari, alam nila kung sino yung puwede nilang takbuhan o tawagan, kahit nandun sa Davao o sa Manila. Kahit huwag ka nang mag-setup ng kuwan sa Jolo.

TL: You wouldn’t recommend talaga na…parang don’t rock the boat talaga?

Ussah: Ya. Parang ganun.

TL: Mahirap? They’ll gang up on you?

Ussah: Oo.

TL: Tapos, tutal, wala din naman existing local policy o religious fatwah na may penalties for homosexuals, wala naman, di ba?

Ussah: Meron siguro.

TL: Like, gina-ban ba nila from attending worship ang mga homosexuals?

Ussah: Wala. Hindi.

TL: But the homosexuals themselves do not go to the mosque. That’s what I know.

Ussah: Kasi, tingnan mo. Kahit naman homosexuals, Shei, pag pumunta sa mosque to pray, ang attire nila, attire din ng mga lalaki. Tapos yung mga lesbians, ganun din, attire din ng mga babae, covered din lahat sila, kaya walang kuan, di ba.

Radz: Wala naman sa Sulu o sa Muslim na ang mga bakla at tomboys… hindi ba katulad sa city na papasyal para… katulad namin. Nirerespeto din namin kultura namin, kaya hindi umabot na nakikialam ang mga ulama o ano. Nasa pagkatao na rin yun ng tomboy.

Ussah: Actually, alam din naman ng mga ustadzes sa Jolo yung mga nagli-live in? Alam yan nila lahat. Pero wala rin naman silang ginagawa.

Radz: Hindi rin naman pinapakita pagdating sa...

Ussah: Ang effect lang, kung nakikita, sa babae. Kasi kung nakakarelasyon ng tomboy, parang bababa talaga yung kuan mo.

TL: Yung fetching price mo.

Ussah: Oo. Kasi kuan yan, kapin tumbuy. Ganun ang sinasabi.

TL: Parang left-over ng tomboy?

Ussah: Oo.

TL: Ganun din ang mga Bisaya, e. Nakonsumo na na sa tomboy.

Ussah: Tapos, Shei, naririnig ko yung mga sinasabi ng mga lalaki, Ah, sabi nila, pag pumatol na yan sa tomboy, kahit mapangasawa mo pa yan, may time din na iiwanan ka (laughter), babalikan yun…ganun!

TL: Bakit yan? Hahahaha.

Radz: Ang mga lalaki naa-attract man din sa tomboys. Nata-challenge yan sila sa lesbians.

Ussah: Oo. Siyempre. Challenge yan sa kanila.

TL: They find it provocative. Parang mga gago, they think that lesbians are sexually available to them and they find it provocative na you walk around wearing your tomboy badge, I’m sexually unavailable to you! parang ganun. Haha.

Ussah: Tapos, naka-make love ka na dun sa guy, tapos naka-moan ka…haha, ang ego nila lomobo talaga, parang, wow ang tomboy nag-moan!

TL: Ang tomboy gilamian hahaha. Iyan si Mherz, pag-uwi nila, muntik na yang makipagbugbugan kasi yung mga porter sa pantalan, nagpupumilit ba na buhatin ang bag niya, dih ba, dih ba, tapos nagpupumilit talaga. Pinagsabihan siya ng magpakababae ka na kasi, ba, baka maligawan pa kita. Sukoa ni Mherz, uy, muntik na silang magbuntalan, buti na lang may mga kasama siya, inawat. Ano yan, common yan na joke. Sasabihan mo, huwag kang magsalita nang ganyan, marinig ka niyan, bubugbugin ka. Tapos, sasabihin sa iyo na, ay, kung maganda lang yan, siya ang lamog sa akin. Ganyan ba, mga sexist na mga assumptions. Nga lamian ang tomboy makipagseks sa lalaki, hindi lang nila alam.

Radz: Meron din mga babae na hindi talaga nila kayang pumatol sa tomboy.

Ussah: Okay lang yun, di ba? Para sa akin, yun ang straight.

Radz: meron din lalaki na hindi talaga nila kaya, kahit blow job, hindi nila kayang magpaganun sa bakla. It means, straight talaga sila. Yun ang para sa akin, straight.

Ussah: Pero magpa-blow job sila sa wives nila?

Radz: Oo. Okay lang yan. Pero huwag lang sa bakla. Para sa akin, yun, Shei, ang straight.

TL: Homophobic para sa akin yun!

Ussah: Pero kung kaya mo na, ma-tolerate mo na na makipagseks sa lesbian, hindi ka na one hundred percent na straight.

Radz: Okay yung ganun. Para sa akin naman, okay lang sa akin na lalaki papatol sa tomboy, pero kung tomboy papatol sa kapwa niya tomboy, para sa akin abnormal na yun.

TL: Oo, kasi nga ang heteronormative na relasyon, yung man-woman.

Ussah: Oo.

TL: So para sa iyo, yung tomboy at saka girl, man-woman, heteronormative pa rin yun.

Radz: Oo.

TL: Pag nagtomboy to tomboy na?

Radz: Nah, hindi na.

TL: Abnormal na.

Radz: Oo.

TL: Baliktad tayo,

Ussah: What she is saying is, pag babae siya, tapos papatol sa isang lesbian, tapos butch din naman, parang yung tingin niya lalaki yung butch. Biyadtu? Siguro ganun din. Same pa rin siya.

Radz: Example, siya, mahaba ang hair niya. Tapos, papatol siya sa tomboy, yung butch talaga, lalaki. Tapos, pagkatapos ng ilang taon, papatol na siya sa long hair na katulad niya? Abnormal yun sa akin.

Ussah: Hahahahaha.

TL: Hindi a.

Radz: Ayaw ko. Yun talaga ang hindi ko ma-accept.

TL: Ah, ganun. Talaga? Ano siya, heterosexual.

TL: Ako naman maiinsulto ako pag ang girlfriend ko, from being a lesbian... and when I say from being a lesbian, nakipagrelasyon sa akin, o kaya nakipagrelasyon sa kapwa babae, tapos naging ano siya, suddenly…

Radz: Nag-asawa siya ng lalaki?

TL: That’s the ultimate turn-off sa akin. Shiiit, insulto!

Ussah: Sa kanya, okay lang.

Radz: Ang ayaw ko lang, girl ko siya, tapos, sexy, nalaman ko na sexy din ang pinatulan niya. Parang… pareho na kami.

TL: Feeling mo, naalasan ako? Ngayon, kakumpetensiya ko na siya?

Ussah: Actually, parang ganun ang naging experience niya.

Radz: Hindi ko man alam. Siguro kung alam ko lang, kahit tsismis-tsismis lang, na ganun siya, hindi ko siya magiging girlfriend. Pag alam ko na tomboy siya.

Ussah: Pero before, yung ex-girlfriend niya? Girl talaga. Long hair.

TL: It could be kasi na… magulo naman kasi ang buhay e. Sometimes kasi life itself teaches you. Suddenly…

Radz: Hindi. Sa akin kasi, bakit mo pinatagal, parang ganun kahabahaba ng…

Ussah: Ilang years kayo noon, eleven?

TL: At that time siguro, hindi pa niya nadiscover na she's capable of loving another woman.

Radz: Kasi ako, ako, ha. Conservative ang nanay at tatay ko. Pero alam ko na tomboy ako. Humanap talaga ako ng paraan na hindi masaktan ang parents ko. Pero alam ko na tomboy ako. Dati sa elementary, sabi ko, baka nakiki-join lang ako. Nung high school ako naramdaman ko na humahangad ako sa babae, pero dinidiscuss ko pa rin sa sarili ko na, Ah, baka paglaki ko baka gusto ko, ganun. Dini-deny ko pa rin. Hanggang tinry ko pa rin na merong magkagusto sa akin para malaman ko talaga kung ano ba talaga ang feeling ko. Maraming nanligaw sa akin pero ayaw ko talaga. Nung nag-college ako, nagkaroon ako ng babae na karelasyon. Hanggang nalaman ng parents ko, nagalit sila sa akin. Sinubukan ko pa rin na… para maistop. Pero hindi ako happy. Alam ko talaga na tomboy ako. Bakit patagalin natin kung tomboy talaga tayo? Tayo naman ang nakakaalam, e, kung saan talaga ang feeling natin. Ano ba ang gusto natin? Hindi yan parang gamot o parang science na kailangan mo pang obserbahan, para malaman mo kung ano ka talaga.

Ussah: Ikaw. Sa iyo. Siya, nagdecide siya na lesbian siya at the age of 40.

TL: Ya. Pero bata pa ako, may mga attraction na ako sa mga babae. Kaya lang, hindi ko ma-place. Haha, hindi ko maintindihan bakit nagpapalpitate ang heart ko, bakit nanggiginaw ako, but I could not imagine myself making love with another woman, hindi ko alam na sexual yun o romantic.

Ussah: In hati niya, meron pa rin, kasi bata pa siya, nararamdaman na niya.

Ussah: Oo, pero nagkaroon ka ng relasyon sa lalaki?

TL: Oo.

Radz: O. Kumbaga, naiintindihan ko na happy yung ano niya. E, ako, hindi mo matawag na bisexual ako.

Ussah: Pero si Shei hindi siya bisexual.

TL: I would not call myself bisexual.

Ussah: Napagdaanan niya lang yun, pero sa gitna nun…

TL: Ang feeling ko kasi, parang it's compulsory to be a girl, kaya naging girl ako.

Radz: Ah. Ah, ganun?

TL: Kaya rin siguro sa mga naging boyfriends ko, hindi rin ako mag-enjoy talaga.

Radz: Ah, hundred percent, kuwan ka na. Hindi katulad ng ex-partner ko na before, kami, alam ko na ang dami niyang boyfriends. Tapos, ngayong kami na, pumapasok din ang mga lalaki, parang dumidiga. Ang hindi ko maintindihan kasi, kung tomboy ka, bakit mo pa pinatagal nang ganun katagal?

TL: E kasi, some are not born tomboys e. Yung iba later na…

Ussah: Sa later part kasi ng relationship nila, parang may napi-feel na siya, pero dini-deny niya.

Radz: Oo. Dini-deny ko na… kung tomboy itong pinili ko…

Ussah: Parang nagkaroon na ba siya ng mga pagseselos sa mga friends na mga girls.

TL: Sa mga attentions niya sa girls.

Ussah: Oo.

Radz: Sinasabi ko sa sarili ko na hindi naman siguro ito papatol sa akin kung tomboy ito. Okay lang siguro kung papatol siya sa akin na tinago ko ang pagkatomboy ko. Sinasabi ko sa sarili ko, hindi ito tomboy.

Ussah: To the point na mineet siya ng asawa ng isa sa mga friends nila, kinausap siya na sabihan yung partner niya na huwag nang sasamasama sa asawa. Pero during that time nasa stage of denial pa rin siya, na misinterpreted lang ng mga tao yung partner niya.

TL: Hahaha!

Ussah: Nung wala na sila, marami na yung mga kuwento-kuwento ng mga tao. Ganito, sabi nila, hindi lang namin sinyeyr sa iyo kasi ganito ganyan.

Radz: Pero hindi pa rin ako… sabi ko sa sarili ko, bakit ngayon lang nila sasabihin? Para matahimik ako, dineretso ko talaga siya.

Ussah: Pero there was a time na ilang beses mo rin siyang kinonfront, nagdeny siya sa iyo, ano.

Radz: Nagdeny.

Ussah: Nag-ano pa siya. Sinong me sabi niyan? Gusto niya raw atakehin. Parang ganyan.

Radz: May anak naman yung babae na yun e. So ibig sabihin, siya ang nag-stand na lalaki. At saka andaming feedbacks after sa nangyari sa amin. Kaya naniwala ako. Baka after ten years na naman o eleven years, baka papatol na naman siya ng tomboy. And then iikot na naman. Baka papatol na naman siya ng lalaki. And then after ten years, babae na naman.

Radz: E, buhay na niya yun.

Ussah: Ganun, Shei. Tapos ang mga friends kong lesbians, sila ang providers sa relationship. Ganun. Lalaki talaga sila. Tapos yung girlfriends nila, babae talaga sila. Kasi yung girlfriends nila ang mag take care ng bahay, magluluto, maglalaba, mga ganun. Parang man-woman relationship talaga. Kaya minsan, pag naririnig ko yung mga lesbians diyan sa city, parang… may confusion din ako, naku-confuse din ako. Para bang bakit ka makipagrelasyon, tapos hindi nyo alam kung sino sa inyo ang babae at lalaki?

TL: Kasi akala natin, yung lehitimong relasyon lang, yung man-woman. All the rest imitation na lang, parang mga peke.

Ussah: Okay lang sa akin, kahit lesbian may karelasyon, parang accepted ko, kasi nakikita ko, parang lalaki din siya, e. Tapos yung girlfriend niya babae, huwag lang magdidate sa…

TL: Tomboy din.

Ussah: Oo. Kasi parang hindi ko na maintindihan.

Radz: Yung nagdi-date ang babae sa boy, tapos nagdi-date rin sa tomboy? Parang hindi ko ma… Pero meron ako mga kilala na conservative ang pamilya, pag sa public pareho daw sila magdamit, ganyan, pero pag dala-dalawa lang sila, dun na malaman kung sino ang tomboy dun.

TL: Role-playing ang tawag dun.

Radz: Pero ang hindi ko rin maintindihan yung tomboy kayo pareho.

TL: Haha.

Ussah: Isa pa sa hindi ko rin maintindihan sa mga lesbians. Ang mga lesbians parang… lalaki rin kami, ganyan. Tapos, may maririnig ako, may makikita ako, yung lesbian nagkagusto sa isang lesbian. Sabi ninyo lalaki kayo, tapos bakit, may nakita ka bang yung lalaki nagkagusto sa isang lalaki? Wala. Pag lesbian, lesbian.

TL: Hindi, e. Sa akin, I fall in love for so many reasons. Mainlab ako sa kanya because of her brains, nainlab ako sa kanya dahil sa may sinabi siya o may ginawa siya na… incidental lang yun na ang hugis ng katawan niya mataba na girl na naglilipstick, incidental lang yun na tomboy siya. Parang ganun. Pero ang consistent lang, babae siya, she has a female genitalia. Yun lang.

Ussah: Ganun? Siguro kuan pa rin, no, cultural background pa rin.

TL: Siguro. Kasi yun ang nakasanayan natin.

TL: Yung mga butch lesbians, yung mga tomboys sa Davao, parang may term din sila sa amin, kasi hindi ako butchy masiyado e, androgynous ako e, kung minsan masculine, natatawg na Sir o otoh, pero kung minsan napapagkamalang… mukhang girl naman. Para sa kanila, hindi ako totoong lesbian, alanganin ako. Parang baklang lesbian. Oo! Ganun sa taga-Link, kasi mga ano talaga sila, butch-femme butch-femme talaga ang pattern nila. Kung minsan it makes me uncomfortable. Basta ang kaya kong mahalin, babae, babae lahat. Pero incidentally also, karamihan… isa lang yata… hindi isa… sa high school at college pa ako, yung nakaka-attract sa akin, na naglalaway ako, hahaha, yung mga seksing babae na long hair, tapos, maganda ang katawan, maganda ang legs. Pero siguro, dahil galing ako sa feminist movement, ayaw ko ng mga sexual objectification of women, mga ganyan, parang may political status yung masculine na babae, kasi, hindi ka lang babae, kundi you also assume… yung skills ng men meron ka rin, yung physical strength nila meron ka din, kaya may preference ako sa mga ganyan. So, except sa first, nung nainlab na ako na sabi ko this time I could now imagine myself making love with a woman… yun siya yung girl, babae manamit, after that, karamihan, butch. Mas butch kesa sa akin.

Ussah: Yucks! Kadiri ano?

TL: Oo. Mas butch kesa sa akin.

Radz: Maimagine mo maya kaw biya…

TL: Tapos ang tendency nila, gagawin nila akong girl. Ako naman, okay lang. Okay lang.

Ussah: Hahaha.

TL: Pag minsan gaganyan-ganyan din ako, pero mas sila yung… Hey, behave! Hahaha.
Shiiit! Makalimot man ko usahay. Molakaw ko sa dalan mo-swagger ko.

Radz: Baka inaano mo lang, baka sinasabi mo lang na lesbian ka, pero girl ka. Girl ka na ayaw mo sa lalaki. Pero girl ka sa tomboy.

TL: Okay lang yun. Matanggap ko yun.

Ussah: Ano? Pano?

Radz: Girl siya. Pero inaano niya, akala niya, siya ba in certified lesbian talaga.

TL: Hihihi. Yucks! Certified lesbian!(Laughter)

Radz: Hindi. Ayaw mo sa lalaki, aha, pero mas gusto mo, ikaw, makipagrelasyon sa tomboy.

Ussah: Certified lesbian pa rin.

Radz: Lesbian siya na partner ng tomboy.

Ussah: Ah.

TL: Pero if I had an opportunity, nag-muscle building talaga ako. Naiinggit ako sa mga young tomboys na physically strong. Pero in a way, may katotohanan dun sa sinabi ni Mona kasi karamihan sa mga ano ko, I play the... kumbaga sa Chinese, ano ba yan, yin-yang? I play the desired… yung desired nila na [opposite role].

Radz: Hahaha. Ganun?

TL: Oo. Pag nagrereklamo na. Like, ako ang strong! Okay, ako ang cute. Hihi. Pero hindi, e. Hindi pa rin, nag-aaway pa rin kami. Kung minsan mas ako ang aggressive.

Ussah: Hindi ko maintindihan. Hihihi!

TL: Oo. Role-playing kasi yun, e. Stereotypes. Stereotypes yun, e. We tend to be rigid in our roles. Pero ang totoong buhay hindi ganun e.

Si Mherz at ang Usaping SOGI sa isla ng mga Tado

2011-11-29T15:11:00.000-08:00

Sinabi niya sa akin na magbago na ako. Sabi ko, hindi ganun kadali para baguhin ko yung style ko pati yung tingin ko sa sarili ko.

Sheilfa: So, ano uli tingin mo sa sarili mo, masculine? Feminine? Kasi last time di ba sabi mo feminine ka?

Mherz: Feminine.

Sheilfa: Dahil?

Mherz: Dahil…

Sheilfa: Ano ba yung feminine?

Mherz: Ewan ko.

Sheilfa: Tingnan mo. Yung feminine yung girl
kung kumilos…

Mherz: Patay…

Sheilfa: Yung mag-long hair, yung maglipstick, mahinhin. Yun yung feminine. Yung masculine yung lalaki magkilos. Anong tingin mo sa sarili mo, feminine?

Mherz: Masculine nga ako.

Sheilfa: E, ano yung gusto mong… ano yung words o terms na gusto mong gamitin para i-describe ka ng mga tao, o describe mo sa sarili mo?

Mherz: Wala. Ganito lang ako. Kontento na ako sa ganito.

Sheilfa: Ano nga yung ganito? What’s the term? Boy?

Mherz: Oo. Ito.

Sheilfa: Lesbian?

Mherz: Oo. Lesbian lang ako.

Sheilfa: Ano yung word na mas komportable ka? Komportable ka ba tawagin kang timbura?

Mherz: Hindi.

Sheilfa: Hindi. Okay. Lesbian?

Mherz: Hindi.

Sheilfa: Tomboy?

Mherz: Siyempre, hindi.

Sheilfa: So, ano?

Mherz: Kung tawagin ako, sa akin, pangalan ko
lang.

Sheilfa: Okay.

Mherz: Kasi proud ako sa sarili ko na hindi ako lesbian. Kasi para sa akin lalaki lang talaga ako.

Sheilfa: Ah, ganun. Para sa iyo, lalaki ka?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Ah. Kasi pakiramdam mo, kung tawagin kang tomboy, o lesbian, parang alanganin ka?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Okay.

Mherz: Parang masama.

Sheilfa: Hindi kumpleto.

Mherz: Oo. Masama sa tingin…

Sheilfa: Sa luma na pag-iisip yun. Masama ang maging lesbian. Pero…. Hanggang ngayon ganun pa rin?

Mherz: Oo. Ganun pa rin.

Sheilfa: Lalaki? Yun ang gusto mo?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Sige. Kelan mo na-realize na iba ka?

Mherz: Mga 16 pa lang ako.

Sheilfa: Ano yung nakapa-realize sa iyo.

Mherz: Noong binugbog ako ng tatay ko.

Sheilfa: Okay. Dumaan ka rin pala sa pagbugbog
ng tatay mo.

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Hindi ka niya tinthreaten na babarilin ka niya?

Mherz: Hindi. Hindi niya ako ginanun. Sabi lang niya, papatayin kita kasi wala kang silbi sa mundo. Pero hanggang salita lang ba ang tatay ko, hindi rin niya ginagawa.

Sheilfa: Pero nung time na yun binugbog ka niya.

Mherz: Oo. Binugbog ako kasi lasing.

Sheilfa: Umuwi ka nang lasing?

Mherz: Hindi ako yung lasing. Siya yung lasing.

Sheilfa: I see.

Mherz: Oo. Tapos napag-initan niya ako kasi ako
yung unang sumalubong sa kanya.

Sheilfa: Pagsalubong mo sa kanya wala kang sinabi?

Mherz: Wala. Binanatan ako ng suntok. Haha. Walang sinabi. Ganun lang ba. Biya biglaan. Nagulat nga ako. Dinala ako sa bahay. Doon, binugbog ako. Pero wala lang yun sa akin, sanay na ako ba.

Sheilfa: Ah, sa taytayan pa kayo binugbog ka na.

Mherz: Oo. Palabas ako ng bahay. Kasi pag lasing siya, ayaw niya na nakikita niya kami.

Sheilfa: By the time may pangalawang asawa na siya?

Mherz: Oo, Kah.

Sheilfa: Ilang taon ka pala nung mag-asawa uli ang tatay mo?

Mherz: Hindi ko na matandaan kasi bata pa ako…

Sheilfa: May asawa na siyang…

Mherz: Hindi pa nga ako pinapanganak nun. Oo.

Sheilfa: Ilan kayong magkapatid?

Mherz: Walo.

Sheilfa: Sa first wife?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Pang-ilan ka?

Mherz: Pang-apat ako.

Sheilfa: Na-realize mo na iba ka dahil nung
binubugbog ka niya, feeling mo, hindi mo kayang iwanan yung pagkalalaki mo o…

Mherz: Oo. Sinabi niya sa akin na magbago na ako. Sabi ko, hindi ganun kadali para baguhin ko yung style ko pati yung tingin ko sa sarili ko.

Sheilfa: Which is?

Mherz: Nah, sabi niya, walang patutunguhan kung ganyan ka lang, kahit nga, laung niya, yung pag-aaral mo naiwan mo na dahil sa… pag-iisip mo na lalaki ka. Ganun. Sabi ko, hindi ko naman naiwan ang pag-aaral ko dahil dito sa style ko. Tapos, ganun. Pinipilit niya talaga ako.

Sheilfa: Nung time na yun nag-aaral ka pa? Second year?

Mherz: O. Yung time na yun nag-aaral pa ako. Second.

Sheilfa: Yung nanay mo?

Mherz: Yung nanay ko wala. Walang sinabi yun. Okay ako dun. Kasi wala na daw siyang magagawa e, ganito na talaga ako. Buti na lang nga daw buhay pa ako kaysa…

Sheilfa: Kaysa namatay ka na?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Kasi nung time na ito, andami mo nang bugbugan na nadaanan? Nung magstart kang nakipagbugbugan ilang taon ka na?

Mherz: Siguro mga Grade Six na ako, dun ako nag-start.

Sheilfa: Mga barkada mo mga lalaki.

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: By the time na fourteen ka, kunsimido na masiyado ang tatay mo.

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Nung time na yun nagdadala ka na ng
girlfriend sa bahay?

Mherz: Hindi. Hindi pa.

Sheilfa: Sa labas lang?

Mherz: Hindi. Wala pa akong girlfriend noong elementary pa ako.

Sheilfa: Hindi. Noong fourteen ka na.

Mherz: Ah, oo.

Sheilfa: Noong time na binugbog ka niya…

Mherz: Oo. Dumadala na ako ng babae sa bahay.
Minsan nga binugbog niya ako dahil sa babae.

Sheilfa: Ilang beses ka binugbog ng tatay mo?

Mherz: Nakatatlo lang. Nakatatlo lang.

Sheilfa: Ba’t siya tumigil?

Mherz: Kasi wala na talaga siyang… hindi na
talaga niya ako makumbinsi.

Sheilfa: Never na nag-fight back ka?

Mherz: Ano?

Sheilfa: Never na kung bubgugin ka niya lumaban
ka?

Mherz: Hindi ako lumalaban sa tatay ko. Baka barilin ako nun. Hah.

Sheilfa: Ano ba yung tatay mo, konsehal?

Mherz: Oo. Number three.

Sheilfa: So… konsehal kasi siya e, so walang pag-asa na… dahil alam na niya na lesbian, lesbian talaga yan, sa halip na masamain, suportahan?

Mherz: Hindi. Kasi dati, nung una, nung nag-aaral pa ako, gusto niya talaga. Sabi niya, okay na sa kanya na ganito ako basta huwag ko lang pabayaan ang pag-aaral ko. Kasi gusto niya talaga maging pulis ako. Ganun.

Sheilfa: Okay.

Mherz: Tapos, sabi ko sa kanya, oo, gagawin ko.

Sheilfa: Ilang taon ka nung sinabi niya yun? Nung hindi ka pa niya binugbog?

Mherz: Noong Grade Six ako. Nung nag-graduate ako sa Grade Six.

Sheilfa: Okay.

Mherz: Nung naka-graduate nga ako, proud na proud talaga siya sa akin.

Sheilfa: May honor ka ba?

Mherz: Oo. Third. Tapos, yun na ang ginawa ko. Nung naghayskul na ako dun na ako nag-start na magbarkada, magbisyo. Pati pag-aaral ko naiwan ko na. Naano kasi ako ng barkada e. Nabighani ba ako sa mga raket nila.

Sheilfa: Tsiks. Inom. Shabu.

Mherz: Oo. Hindi pa ako nagsa-shabu nun. Hindi pa. Nagshabu ako mga 2007 na.

Sheilfa: Ilang taon ka nun?

Mherz: Siguro mga seventeen. Seventeen ako nun.

Sheilfa: Naging habitual ka ano?

Mherz: Hindi.

Sheilfa: Sabi mo once a month.

Mherz: Hindi.

Sheilfa: Kung wala, hindi mo nami-miss?

Mherz: Kung may trabaho lang ba ako. Para pangtrabaho lang ba. Kunyari, kung may namatay sa amin, bukas yung libing, tapos ngayong gabi yung… Em, unu ba in magjaga ha Tagalug?

Sheilfa: Magguwardiya, mag-vigil.

Mherz: Huun. Nah, ganun.

Sheilfa: So you have to stay awake.

Mherz: Huun. Kasi buong gabi yun ba. Nah, ganun na ang aming gagawin.

Sheilfa: Panggising pa siya, parang kape. Pero later on ginagawa mo yun kung may pagkakataon, like may birthday.

Mherz: Hindi ko yun ginagawa pag may birthday, kasi hindi ka man makakain, pag magtake ka ng shabu ayaw mong kumain. Tapos, biya… malayo lang ba ang iniisip mo. Pag birthday hindi ako nagti-take. Pag ano lang ba, pag may ginagawa kami.

Sheilfa: Anyway, yun ang tingin mo sa sarili mo, pero ang tatay mo, pati yung ibang kaibigan mo, hindi mo masabi na ang tingin nila sa iyo, girl ka, pero ang style mo tomboy.

Mherz: Ano, ang tingin sa akin ng mga kaibigan ko lalaki na ako.

Sheilfa: Okay.

Sheilfa: Sino pa? Iyong… gusto nila, sana iba ka.

Mherz: Madami. Lahat nang pamilya ko.

Sheilfa: Oo no. Kasi nga kung tomboy ka malapit ka sa bisyo, ganun?

Mherz: Oo. Ayaw ba nila yung makasira sa reputasyon. Kasi lahat ng pamilya ko nag-aano yan, nagsasambayang. Ako lang ang hindi.

Sheilfa: Kinu-consider mo ang sarili mo na Muslim?

Mherz: Siyempre, Muslim. Pero hindi ko magagawa na araw-araw magsasambayang.

Sheilfa: Anong tingin mo sa bakla? Noon. At ngayon. Nagbago ba? Mangi? Makasalanan?

Mherz: Hindi. Para sa akin pantay lang. Bakla at mga tomboy, pareho lang yan. Kahit mga lesbians. Makasalanan.

Sheilfa: Kahit naman hindi tomboy at bakla makasalanan din.

Mherz: Lesbians at mga babae.

Sheilfa: Whooa.

Mherz: Sinasabi kasi ng mga tatay ko, kung sila lang daw ang masusunod gusto nila lalaki lang lahat ng mga anak nila. Kasi daw kung babae makasalanan ba.

Sheilfa: Sexually promiscuous, ganun?

Mherz: Hindi. Kasi daw sa… sa ano… yung sa…

Sheilfa: Sa period ng Jaliliyah?

Mherz: Oo. Kasi walang anak na babae daw dun, pinapatay, kasi daw nakakahiya yung babae, nakakabigay ng problema, mabigat talaga.

Sheilfa: Naniniwala ka dun?

Mherz: Oo. Kasi madami naman akong naano na ganyan e. Mga babae. Tapos binibigyan nila yung mga magulang nila ng problema Nakakahiya ba talaga. Tulad ng mga rape. Ganun. Makikipagseks sila sa mga BFs nila tapos mabuntis. Ayaw nilang sabihin sa mga parents nila…

Sheilfa: Hindi mo tinitingnan yan… sige, sige.

Mherz: Lumalantad lang bigla. Di ba nakakahiya na yun?

Sheilfa: Pero hindi mo tinitingnan na ang lalaki makasalanan din? Kasi hindi naman puwedeng gawin yun ng babae nang mag-isa.

Mherz: Oo. Pero… yung mga lalaki kasi…

Sheilfa: Okay lang.

Mherz: Oo. Parang walang bawal sa kanila ba. Walang bawal. Kasi halos lahat naman ng ginagawa ng mga lesbians halos gawain din ng mga lalaki.

Sheilfa: Oo. Kaya ka naging lesbian? Dahil walang bawal sa iyo. Kasi kahit anong gawin ng mga lalaki, okay lang.

Mherz: Oo. Okay lang.

Sheilfa: E hindi kasalanan ng mga babae yun. Kasalanan yun ng mga batas, kasalanan yun ng mga itinuturo sa relihiyon.

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: E, yung relihiyon naman ang nag-interpret naman niyan, yung mga pari at mga imam e. Mga lalaki naman yang mga ganyan e. Siyempre.

Mherz: Sa amin kasi, sabi ng mga imam, bawal talaga ang mga lesbians.

Sheilfa: Kahit sa Catholics ganyan din.

Mherz: Oo. Bawal talaga. Sabi nila, yan yung pinakabawal dito sa mundo ba. Tomboys. Siksah. Siksah man yan. Pag nagkukutbah ba, nakikinig man ako. Ganun yung pinagdedebatehan nila.

Sheilfa: Kahit sa Christian ganun din.

Mherz: Yung mga iba kasi, yung ibang imam, yung pagkilala nila sa mga lesbians, mababa, kasi daw noon daw panahon nun, ano bang tawag sa time na yun, may mga bakla at tomboy na, kaya hindi natin masisisi kung may lalabas, kasi dati pa iyan, laung niya. Alam naman na may mga lesbians na sa amin, pero yung ayaw lang talaga nila, yung may mabalita sila na, tulad ng mga rape, kasi nung last month yadtu may nangreyp kasi na lesbian. Last month lang noong September.

Sheilfa: Saan yan?

Mherz: Sa Tanjung. Sa Zone 3. Dun.

Sheilfa: Talaga?

Mherz: Student sa National High yung babae.

Sheilfa: Ngayon lang? Last month lang?

Mherz: Oo. Pinagtripan talaga siya. Kaya nagiging ganun na kasama yung mga lesbians sa paningin ng mga tao.

Sheilfa: Adik siya? Kilala ninyo?

Mherz: Hindi adik yun. Ganito kasi. Yung MU ng babae nag-away sila.

Sheilfa: Nung nang-rape.

Mherz: Oo. Ng nang-reyp. Nag-away sila dati tapos hindi ba siya lumaban. Tapos tinago niya talaga yung mga sinabi sa kanya nung tomboy. Tapos, sabi niya, may araw ka rin, pagsisisihan mo ito.

Sheilfa: Ganito. Si A at saka si B nag-away. Tapos natalo si B. Tapos sabi niya, darating ang araw pagsisisihan mo ito. Tapos, nakakita siya ng tiempo, gumanti siya.

Mherz: Oo. Dun sa babae.

Sheilfa: Ginagawa ng mga lalaki yan. Araw-araw ginagawa ng lalaki yan. Kaya nga pag sa giyera, itong kampo at itong kampo, itong country at itong country, sa halip na silang mga lalaki ang magpapatayan, ang mga babae ang pinangri-rape. Yun yung ginawa ng tomboy, ginamit yung babae para makaganti sa kapwa tomboy.

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Kasi kung makipag-one on one siya talo siya.

Mherz: Haha. Talo siya. Hindi talaga siya makaiskor. Wala. Wala ba. Ang ginawa niya, kinuha niya yung babae sa school.

Sheilfa: Kinidnap niya?

Mherz: Hindi. Sinabi niya na pinapasundo siya ng boyfriend.

Sheilfa: Hindi alam ng girl na yun na…

Mherz: Hindi alam ng girl na nag-away sila.

Sheilfa: Pero yung pinag-awayan hindi ang girl.

Mherz: Hindi. May ibang isyu. Pero hindi ko na alam.

Sheilfa: Tapos? Pagkasundo sa kanya?

Mherz: Sabi ng babae, saan tayo pupunta? Teka lang muna, kunin ko lang ang bag ko. Tapos namalayan na lang niya na doon na sila sa Zone 3. Sabi niya, bakit tayo pumunta dito? Sabi niya, nandito yung boyfriend mo, laung niya, kasi nagpapa-fresh ba yung mind niya, kasi may problema siya, kaya gusto ka niyang makita. Naniwala naman yung babae. Pagkarating nila dun sa bahay na yun, maliit lang ba yung bahay na yun, maliit lang, dun na… sabi niya, saan na yung… hinanap niya yung boyfriend niya, pero wala. Wala, laung niya, dito yung boyfriend mo.

Sheilfa: Tapos nireyp niya.

Mherz: Hindi pa niya nireyp. Binugbog pa niya. Iparating mo ito, laung niya, sa boyfriend mo, ang mga sinabi ko. Hindi ko na alam yun, kung anong mga sinabi. Kasi hindi makapagsalita yung pasyente e. Na-trauma ba siya. Fifty-fifty yun nung nadala sa ospital.

Mherz: Sa Port Area yun nakatira. Tapos fourth year high school. Mga kaibigan namin yun. Pati yung babae kaibigan rin namin yun.

Sheilfa: Sinong nagkuwento sa iyo?

Mherz: Siya. Siya yung nagkuwento sa akin nung nasa ospital siya. Doon pa sa Jolo. Sa Public. Tapos nandun kami. Sakto talaga na nandun ako kasi ang kapatid ng kaibigan ko naadmit din. Anak siya ng imam. Mas matanda sa akin.

MM: Mas matanda sa iyo?

Mherz: Sa mukha lang ba. Hindi ko alam kung mas matanda sa akin, kasi…

Sheilfa: Malanjang?

Mherz: Huun. Maganda in baran niya, aha?

Sheilfa: Yung nangreyp sa kanya, malaki rin yung katawan niya?

Mherz: Hindi. Kasinlaki ko rin yung nangreyp sa kanya, pero apat sila.

MM: Tomboy?

Mherz: Oo.

MM: Kaibanan ha basketbol?

Mherz: Oo. Duha sila tomboy taga-Busbus, pagkaubus in hambuuk tomboy ha SSC nagiskul, third year high school.

Sheilfa: Anong sinakyan nila, motorcycle?

Mherz: O.

Sheilfa: Kasi di ba maraming rapes noon? Tapos wala talagang ni isa na nahuli o napenalize, di ba? They got away with it. So these tomboys naman, gaya-gaya sa mga ganitong katarantaduhan.

Mherz: Kaya nga.

Sheilfa: Hindi mo alam ang mga pangalan?

Mherz: Hindi ko alam ang pangalan.

Sheilfa: Ito yung mga tomboys na nakikita ninyo tuwing nagpapraktis?

Mherz: Oo. At saka kaibigan din namin ang mga iyan pero hindi masiyadong close.

Mherz: Kiyapasuan ba.

Sheilfa: Napag-initan. Ginagawa yun ng mga lalaki e. Pag hindi siya makaganti sa kapwa niya lalaki, yung girlfriend o kapatid yung gantihan. Ano ba iyang mga ganyan, tinatago? Hindi kinakalat? Kahihiyan sa babae?

Mherz: Hindi. Ikinalat din kasi humihingi nga ng tulong ang amah ng babae, kasi nung time na nasa ospital yung anak niya, tapos dun siya sa bahay, pinuntahan siya ng uncle ng tomboy para pagsabihan na huwag unu ba in ipasaplag, Em.

Sheilfa: I-spread.

Mherz: Ganun. Huwag i-expose ba, huwag magsabi sa lahat. Lalong-lalo na, laung niya, huwag kang magdidemanda kasi kaya kitang patayin, kahit ngayon. Walang nagawa yung tatay ng babae kasi wala silang lakas.

Sheilfa: Parang repetition ito noong… ganito lagi noon e, noong 2009 series of rape. Tapos, ngayon naman lesbians yung nang-rape. Ang sama ano.

Mherz: Lesbians yung nang-rape.

Sheilfa: Ano ang implikasyon niyan sa atin sa pag-organize ng lesbians. Shiiit.

Mherz: Ang sama ng mga tomboys sa Jolo.

Sheilfa: Kaya nga, baka kailangan yung alternatibong klase ng pagkatomboy, di ba.

Mherz: Yung iba ngang lesbians namementa ng mga babae.

Sheilfa: Kasama na si Rhidz dun?

Mherz: Hindi.

Sheilfa: Kasama ka dun?

Mherz: Eeeey! Sepais!

Sheilfa: Ano yung sepais?

Mherz: Wala. Susmaryosep ba.

MM: Never.

Sheilfa: Meron pala kayong never. Totoo yun na during the series of rapes in 2009, trabaho ng mga lesbians yung magtiktik, magtiktik is magbigay ng information sa mga rapists na ganito ang skedyul niya, ganito oras sa school siya. Yung mag-espy ba, tapos, giving information sa rapists. Totoo yun?

Mherz: Noon? Hindi lang nirireyp, palaging binibenta pa.

Sheilfa: Lagi talaga yan?

Mherz: Oo. Lagi.

Sheilfa: Sila yung mga bugaw? Kasi sa Davao yung mga bugaw, bakla.

Mherz: Noon, bakla, tomboy, puwede. Lalaki, babae, puwede.

Sheilfa: Kahit sino nangbubugaw?

Mherz: Oo. Minsan nga yung nanay mo pa yung bumebenta sa iyo.

Sheilfa: Oo. Totoo yan.

Sheilfa: Marami kang alam na ganyan?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Okay.

Sheilfa: Okay. So no coming-out issues ka. Ang kinuwento mo dun sa diskriminasyon and violence, Mherz, yun lang mga dalawang cases lang yata yun. Pero sinabi mo na maraming beses ka na nabugbog. Pero yung detalye, yun lang last kang nabugbog sa swimming pool, saka yung… bakit ka tumatawa, Balang? Masaya si Balang, o, dahil nabugbog ka sa swimming pool.

Mherz: Hindi yun siya pang-last, yung nabugbog ako sa swimming pool.

Sheilfa: After sa swimming pool, nabugbog ka uli? Mga ilang beses? Kaya mainitin ang ulo mo, Mhers, symptom ng brain injury yan e, irritability. Brain-damaged na kaw, Mherz, kangug na kaw.

Mherz: Brain-damaged.

Nhadz: Hahaha.

Sheilfa: Tawa naman ito nang tawa, akala mo siya, hindi siraulo.

Mherz: Hahaha.

Sheilfa: Si Alex daw siraulo. Sino ba ang hindi siraulo dito.

Mherz: Dati na yung siraulo. Hindi kangug yun si Alex. Baliw na nga, e.

Sheilfa: Saka nili-live niya talaga yung ano niya, no. Kung ano yung maisipan niya, gawin niya talaga. Baliw talaga siya. Kesa naman magmadre ka, tulad ni Maam kahapon. Lesbian na mga madre. So nakailang bugbog ka pagkatapos nung sa swimming pool?

Mherz: Nakaupat.

Sheilfa: Okay. This time, sino? Naano siguro sila, dahil, di ba , sabi mo, first time mo na napuruhan ka? Siguro may nagbalita, uy, hindi naman pala invincible ang lintek na tomboy na iyan, ulitin natin. So na-threetimes ka.

Mherz: Oo. Tapos, nagkamali sila.

Sheilfa: Dahil? Nakaganti ka?

Mherz: In fact, muntik akong makamatay ng tao.

Sheilfa: Kelan yun, Mherz?

Mherz: Pag-uwi natin sa Zambo.

MM: Pag-uwi natin from Zamboanga, Kah.

Sheilfa: Talaga? Anong nangyari?

Mherz: Sa pantalan pa lang nakahanap na ako ng away.

Sheilfa: Pa’no?

Mherz: Naglilibor siya na hindi naman ako nagpapalibor sa kanya. Sabi niya, magbabae ka na lang kasi para magustuhan pa kita. Putangina mo, sabi ko. Tapos, ginanyan ako, putangina, lalaban ka? Tapos, sabi ko, bakit, akala mo, hindi? Tapos, inawat na kami ng guard.

Sheilfa: Ay, sayang.

Mherz: Bakit sayang?

Sheilfa: Walang aksiyon e. Bitin.

MM: Gusto mo ng aksiyon?

Sheilfa: Oo. Gusto ko ng aksiyon.

MM: Sige, batukan mo. (Laughter)

Sheilfa: Once yun. Yung pangalawa?

Mherz: Dun sa amin. Kaibigan ng kapatid kong babae.

Sheilfa: Yung si Nadsilina?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Ilang taon yung kapatid mo?

Mherz: Ewan ko.

Sheilfa: Tarantado 'to. Siguro hindi mo rin alam kung ilang taon ka, ano?

Mherz: Hindi kasi ako nakikinig sa mga ano. Wala akong pakialam sa kanila.

Sheilfa: Alright.

Mherz: Selfish kasi ako.

Sheilfa: Ano, ano?

Mherz: Selfish.

Sheilfa: Oo. Selfish.

Mherz: Oo. Dun sa bahay. Pero pag sa mga friends, hindi ako selfish.

Sheilfa: Kawawa naman nanay mo. Saka mga kapatid mo. Pero never mind. Okay. Pangalawang bugbog.

Mherz: Nililigawan niya kasi ang kapatid ko. Haha. Ayaw ko, kasi bata pa yung kapatid ko ba. Sabi niya daw, bakit siya nakikialam e, hindi ko naman siya pinapakialamn, hindi naman siya ang nililigawan ko. Ayaw din sa kanya ng kapatid ko kaya nagsasabi sa akin, pinipilit niya ba ako, Kah. Pagkatapos, hindi pa tapos si Nadz magsalita pumunta na agad ako sa bahay nung lalaki. Tapos pagkalabas, pagtawag ko, sabi ko, halika ba rito. Tapos, paglapit niya sa akin, nagsuntukan na kami kaagad. Dinala kami sa baryo.

Sheilfa: Saan mo siya sinuntok?

Mherz: Dito.

Sheilfa: Nablack-eye yun.

Mherz: Oo. Sabi nga sa baryo, nakakahiya ka, kalalaki mong tao, naano ka, laung niya, ng babae.

Sheilfa: Hahahaha. Nagsuntukan kayo? Lumaban talaga siya?

Mherz: Oo. Nagsuntukan talaga kami. Sabi ng konsehal, basagulera talaga yan, kababaeng tao. No comment lang ako.

Sheilfa: Hindi kayo gi-blotter?

Mherz: Hindi. Ba’t naman sila magba-blotter sa akin? Papatayin sila ng mga relatives ko.

Sheilfa: Alright.

Mherz: Masama kasi yung mga relatives ko. Kaya ganito ako. Mayabang.

Mherz: Kasi kinakampihan talaga ako. Pinapakitaan ba ako ng kampi. Kahit nga kasalanan ko, kinakampihan ako.

Sheilfa: Kaya lumaki ang ulo mo.

Mherz: Sabi ng nanay ko, huwag nyong kampihan yan, pabayaan nyo yang patayin ng tao.

Sheilfa: Pero di ba, kasi sa Tausug, source of pride nyo yan, di ba, yung may miembro kayo na matapang. Parang maratabat nyo yun, di ba ganun yun?

Mherz: Pero balewala lang. Kasi gusto ng tatay ko talaga na may magtanggol sa akin. Kasi pag nalaman ng tatay ko na nakahanap ako ng away, tapos pinabayaan lang ako ng mga relatives namin, magagalit, magwawala siguro sa amin. Kaya takot din mga kapatid niya.

Sheilfa: Yung pangatlo?

Nhadz: Sa Takut-takut, meron. Sabi nung bata, te, pulma. Tapos, nagbalik siya. Anong sabi mo, pulma?

Sheilfa: Wala yun. Hindi man yun bugbugan. Threat of violence lang yun.

Nhadz: Muntik na niyang bugbugin yung bata. Tapos, inawat ko, grabe man.

Sheilfa: Ilang taon yung bata?

Mherz: Tatlo. Apat. Ah, madami.

Nhadz: Madami.

Mherz: Nagbibinti kasi sila. Tapos, binigay ko kay Nhadz yung cp. Sabi ko, Nhadz, o. Yung nagkukuwentuhan tayo? Nung tumawag ka? Sabi ko, Nhadz, si Kah Serpa, nakipag-usap sa akin. Tapos, sabi nung bata, Pulma. Bumalik ako. Sabi ko, sino ang pinagsabihan mo ng pulma? Sabi niya, hindi ikaw, bukun ikaw, laung niya, haha.

Nhadz: Eksplisyun lang yun, te. Eksplisyun lang ba.

Mherz: Kasi, sakto, paglapit ko kay Nhadz, pagkabigay ko ng cellphone, sabi niya, Pulma. Sino ba naman hindi magduda? Di ba? Haha.

Sheilfa: Mga ilang taon yung mga bata?

Mherz: Malaki yun. Malaki pa sa akin. Hindi ko binugbog ba, ginanyan ko lang, o. Tapos, tinulak ko lang yung isa.

Sheilfa: Ilan sila?

Mherz: Madami ba. Haha. Sabi ko, kayo, lalaban kayo? Sabi ko ganyan.

Sheilfa: Haha! Mga ilang taon?

Mherz: Sabi, ang yabang mo talaga. Malaki yun. Malaki pa sa akin. Malaki ang mga katawan. Oo, malaki kaysa sa akin. Pero umalis na lang kasi ayaw nila ng gulo.

Nhadz: Pulma!

Mherz: Pinagsabihan kasi ako ng pulma.

Sheilfa: Yung mga girlfriends mo at mga taong malapit sa iyo, ano-anong mga natanggap nilang threat dahil sa relasyon nila sa iyo. May mga experiences ba sila na nang dahil sa relasyon ninyo binabastos sila?

Mherz: Wala.

Sheilfa: Yung parents ng babae, hindi ka rin… di ba yung sa unang pagbugbog sa iyo ng tatay niya dahil hindi siya umuwi for ano yun, three nights…

Mherz: One night lang yun.

Sheilfa: One night? Dapat pala paulit-ulit na interviews. Nagbabago yung datos e.

Mherz: Ewan ko. Kasi nung nag-interbyu ka nun, wala ako sa ano ba.

Sheilfa: So walang threat na i-harm yung mga close sa iyo? O yung tatay mo ba hindi ka pinagsabihan ng, Wala kang mamanahin sa akin dahil sa pagkatomboy mo, o iyong palayasin ka?

Mherz: Wala. Hindi. Wala naman akong mamanahin dun e.

Sheilfa: Tsek.

Mherz: Yung pagkababaero niya na lang yung mamanahin ko, puwede na yun.

Sheilfa: Oo. Babaero ang tatay mo ano, ilan ang asawa?

Mherz: Dami. May anak pa siya sa Brigade. Anak ng puta.

Sheilfa: Bisaya? May puta siya? Anong ibig sabihin nung may babae sa Brigade, babaeng sa brigade naghahanap-buhay?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Yung customers niya, mga sundalo?

Mherz: Oo. Customer niya ba, tapos, nagkaroon sila ng anak. Tatlo. Matagal silang nagkarelasyon. Tapos, hindi niya daw maiwan.

Sheilfa: Ano yan, Zamboanguena?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: So may tatlong anak yung babae na iba-ibang lalaki.

Mherz: Hindi. Sa tatay ko lang.

Sheilfa: Sa tatay mo, tatlo ang anak niya?

Mherz: Oo. Nalaman namin nga nung… dinala na niya sa bahay, binahay na niya yung babae. Pinanindigan niya din yung ginawa niya, kasi daw may anak.

Sheilfa: Ah, iyan yung pangalawang asawa?

Mherz: Hindi. Pangatlo na.

Sheilfa: Akala ko dalawa lang yung asawa ng tatay mo.

Mherz: Hindi. Madami. Kaya lang hindi niya pinapakasalan. Bale, ano ba, kabet-kabet lang. Dinala niya sa amin yung babae, kasi may mga anak na daw sila, kasi natatakot siya sa karma.

Sheilfa: Wala namang nagsabi sa iyo, na ikaw, tarantado ka talaga, ipaganun kita.

Mherz: Wala. Pero nun, pinagsabihan ako ng kapatid ng tatay ko na ipa-mental.

Sheilfa: Hahaha. Ilang taon ka nun?

Mherz: Ganito na ako kalaki. 2009. Nandun kasi sila sa Manila. Sa San Mateo sila ngayon. Tapos nagpunta sila dito, pagkakita nila sa akin, Bakit ka naging tomboy? Kasi noong una silang pumunta dito nun, parang hindi pa ako formal na tomboy talaga, tinatago ko pa.

Sheilfa: Ilang taon yang hindi ka pa formal na tomboy? Akala ko ba ipinanganak kang tomboy?

Mherz: Grade Two. Ipinanganak akong tomboy pero tinago ko pa muna. Kasi strict talaga yung mga tita ko, hindi katulad ng mga magulang ko. Kasi sila yung nagpapaaral sa akin.

Sheilfa: Sila yung Tita mo na nag-adopt sa iyo?

Mherz: Oo.

Sheilfa: Yung tomboy rin?

Mherz: Hindi.

Sheilfa: Sabi mo, awn inaun mu nag-adopt kaymuh, awn asawa niya babae.

Mherz: Sa mother side ko yun.Iba pa yun. Kapatid ng tatay ko yan, strict talaga sila, yung sa relatives ng tatay ko.

Sheilfa: Dahil sa parang…diskontento mo sa buhay mo, nagda-drugs ka, sigarilyo, palainom, tama bang sabihin yun? Restless ka kasi e. Tapos, rebelde. Tapos minsan dahil kasama yun sa pagiging tomboy mo. Kasi nga lalaki ka. So pumasok ka sa kung ano-anong bisyo tulad ng drugs. No? Walang kang attempted suicide?

Mherz: Wala.

Sheilfa: Hindi mo inisip na gusto mo patayin ang sarili mo?

Mherz: Hindi!

Sheilfa: Pero madalas marami kang taong gustong patayin?

Mherz: Oo. Ganun.

Sheilfa: Haha.

Mherz: Gusto ko ako lang mag-isa ang matitira dito sa mundo.

Sheilfa: Hahahaha!

Mherz: Takot akong mamatay.

Sheilfa: Ganun?

Mherz: Oo. Kaya ako basagulero dahil ayaw kong maunahan ako. Kapag nakikipag-away ako gusto ko patayin yung kaaway ko, ayaw ko na ako yung patayin. Kasi takot akong mamatay.

2011-11-14T21:31:00.001-08:00

Would you rather be a thief or a prostitute?

2011-09-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

an excerpt from a speakout session with Jolo lesbians

(note: except for susan, sheva, nadia and berkis, most other names are aliases)

Sherfa: You have male friends?

Alex: None. They scare me.

Sherfa: They might rape you?

Alex: Yes.

Sherfa: Did old men try to make a pass at you?

Alex: Yes. Sometimes.

Sherfa: At the port? Where?

Alex: On the path way.

Sherfa: Oh. Like this.

Alex: Scares me. I complained, I went to the law.

Susan: To the barangay council.

Alex: We were on the footwalk, he went after my ass.

Sherfa: Your ass?

Alex: Yes. Like this, like this, like this? I got really scared, I reported to the barangay. But only to teach him a lesson, I don’t want to get the money.

Sherfa: Wait. He grabbed your ass, then his hand went to your side and your breasts?

Alex: No. Only my back.

Sherfa: Then he gave you money?

Alex: No. I complained to the where was that?

Susan: Only to the barangay captain, we informed them. She did not take the money. He is also poor.

Sherfa: Ah, just to teach him a lesson. And if he do it again?

Alex: Then I will take the money.

Sherfa: You will get the money, make him pay? Yes, that’s right, because we have a law against sexual harassment, he should be fined.

Alex: Because they have this, you know, they will give you money and then say, let’s go there.

Sherfa: Is that so?

Susan: Like you buy the girl.

Sherfa: They give you money, and then, take you to the dark?

Susan and Alex: Yes.

Sherfa: And if you go with them? They will rape you? And for how much do they pay for that?

Alex: I don’t know.

Sherfa: You don’t know?

Susan: Who?

Sherfa: Things like that, it happens all the time here?

Susan: Yes. Happens all the time.

Sherfa: Where do they do it, at the dock?

Susan: At the docking area, uhuh?

Alex: Yes, sometimes. Nothing you can about them, you see, it’s their life. Better this, they say, rather than steal.

Susan: Yes.

Sherfa: Really.

Sherfa: Come again? Better a prostitute than a thief?

Susan: Haha. Yes.

Alex: Even if we give ourselves for their use, it’s our body.

Sherfa: What’s that again?

Susan: Even if she makes herself available to them, it’s still her own body she is selling, not someone else’s.

Sherfa: So long as she doesn’t steal?

Susan: Yes.

Alex: Now that’s really a sin against God.

Alex: Well, even prostitution is also a sin against God.

Sheva: Hahahaha.

Sherfa: Yes. So prostitution is just as sinful? But stealing is a worse offense than prostitution?

Susan: Yes.

Sherfa: Because if you sell yourself, you lose. Right? You will be less yourself. But if you steal, you take something from a fellow being. But if you engage in paid sex…

Alex: It is just you.

Sherfa: Yes. Like you make of yourself a commodity. Something will be taken off you.

Alex: Yes, your virginity.

Sherfa: How about the others, what do you think?

Sheva: Me I would rather steal than be like that.

Sherfa: Really? Well, yes. Besides, it depends who you rob.

Alex: If I have to speak for my own life, I would rather be a whore, Sir.

Sherfa: Me, it depends on who I must cheat.

Alex: Me, I would rather be a whore. I much prefer to be a whore, Sir.

Sheva: Then be a whore, help yourself.

Susan: We’re not with you.

Alex: If God says, ahah, you’re going to be a whore that’s your calling. It’s better to be a whore, huh?

Sherfa: Okay, alright. (laughter)

Alex: Let us all be whores. The truth is, we do God a big offense. Then people will talk, they will gossip. That’s true, Sir Alex, hmm? But for us, no matter what they say, even if they shame us to death, it is our own body.

Sherfa: Yes.

Alex: You will be jailed, anyway. And once in jail, hah, they can do anything they like to you. See? Amounts to the same thing.

Sherfa: Right. If you steal and get jailed, the police will rape you, anyway.

Alex: Right. So better be a whore, let’s all be whores, ha, better be whores, let’s all be whores.

Sherfa: They won’t put you to jail for that.

Alex: Yes. The money you make, it’s yours to spend. Hand it to your mother.

Sherfa: So you would rather be a whore.

Alex: If I were to speak for myself, if I will do, it’s nice to be a whore. It’s more shameful to steal.

Sherfa: Also more difficult. So much easier to be a whore than to be a thief.

Sheva: Hey. Wait.

Sherfa: Yes, Sheva.

Sheva: It’s not nice to be a whore, please. People will speak ill of you.

Sherfa: Same thing if you steal, people will also speak ill of you.

Nadia: But it’s so much worse if you become a prostitute. Especially in…

Alex: Neither is better, ba, they’re the same.

Sherfa: In paid sex there is exchange.

Chorus: Yes.

Sherfa: There is trade, how do I say it. You give him….

Alex: Your body.

Sherfa: Yes. Your body… pleasure, whatever you callit, there is trade. Okay? Nah.I have prostitute friends who say, this is just a job. The problem is if you get STD. If you get AIDS.

Nadia: But prostitution is really sick, evil. Then the men will talk about you, they know that you are a whore.

Alex: Nah, if you are a gambler, same thing.

Nadia: People will now look down on you once you are a prostitute.

Sherfa: If you steal, same thing. (Everybody speaking at the same time.)

Alex: Oh, for me, they’re all the same.

Sherfa: Me, too. Same.

Sherfa: You can also be a prostitute and at the same time… err… but men, you see, they’re all bastards, sometimes they won’t even pay you for services rendered. After they use you, they pay you with an insult.

Nadia: That’s what I mean.

Sherfa: They’ll spit at you.

Nadia: That’s what I meant!

Sherfa: Shortchange you.

Nadia: That’s what I mean!

Sherfa: So some prostitutes, what they do is, steal from their customers when they are asleep. And if the customer complains to the manager, sorry the prostitute. She will be bruited about as bad service, and that she’s an ugly bitch, she stinks, and then she didn’t get paid, and she goes to jail. That’s for low-class prostitution, okay? But in high-class na prostitution, among the call girls? Hah, they want prostitution legalized so that they can choose their customers and make sure that their customers are clean. But among the low-class prostitutes, a sorry lot they really are. Maybe the only difference is, if you’re into prostitution, people think you’re immoral. But if you steal, you can be forgiven as, ah, she just needed money for a loaf of bread.

Nadia: Yes. Correct. That’s what I mean.

Sherfa: But prostitutes won’t be prostitutes had they other means to make a living. I’m talking about low-end prostitutes iyan, ha. Most of them have children out of wedlock, abandoned by their lovers or husbands, and they have no other means to survive. What to do, take on laundry, they can’t live on doing laundry, so they go to prostitution.

Sherfa: But if you are a woman who wants to marry decently, don’t do paid sex. But one woman said that marriage is just like prostitution. The only difference is that you only have one customer to service. And you have to be perfect for that one customer, so that he will love you for life. Then there are prostitutes who marry their customers. Their customers fall in love with them and they leave prostitution behind and try to live decent. But there are women I know who are treated worse than whores by their husbands, they would tell me that after their husbands use them, they will insult and spit at them, and yet they are still married to these men, they take it all, they say, because their husbands got work and they don’t. So, what’s the difference? Isn’t that a form of prostitution? Good if you find for yourself a decent man. But in our society, please understand that, no sexual relationship is decent outside marriage and reproduction. So there. But let’s go back to… okay, so you really want to be a prostitute?

Alex: Prostitute. Be a prostitute.

Sherfa: You are just saying that because you’re mad at your father. My tomboy friends in Davao, they would tell me, I have become a tomboy because I don’t want to be like my mother, she’s like a breeding factory for my father. Then if she chooses to be a girl, people will just call her whore for not staying home. She is not allowed to go out, just to stay put.

Sheva: It’s shameful. Shameful.

Sherfa: But if she stays home like a good girl, they make of her their househelp, laundrymat, dishwasher, babysitter of her mother’s babies, so she decided to be a tomboy, she said.

Susan: You want to be a prostitute?

Alex: I want to be a prostitute.

Sherfa: You want to be a prostitute? You go to Thailand. There’s an NGO there that … (laughter) How about you?

Susan: Yes. They’re both the same.

Sherfa: They’re no choice ba. Same shit.

Berkis: I would rather be a thief than a whore.

Sherfa: Stealing is so much harder.

Berkis: Yes.

Em-em: Really shameful.

Berkis: Yes.

Alex: Depends.

Em-em: If you steal, there’s a chance not to be found out.

Sherfa: Depends on who you steal from. But if you rob a bank, nah, you’re dead. But if you go for paid sex and choose your customers? You will never be caught.

Em-em: It’s okay to be a whore if you have no family. You go abroad where no family will find out, then I go for that.

Sherfa: Hahaaa! Then you go to The Netherlands.

Susan: You go to America, be a whore there.

Alex: If I have no family, no elders who place their trust in me.

Sherfa: What did you say?

Nadz: If family lost trust in her.

Sherfa: Ah, for as long as there are those who have faith in you, you will not get into prostitution?

Alex: Will not get into prostitution.

Sherfa: Well, then go on selling cigarettes.

Alex: Yes. And sea urchins.

....

(roughly translated. for the tagalog transcript see preceding blog post)

Unu in mas keri, magnakaw atawa magputa?

2011-09-09T00:43:00.000-07:00

(an excerpt from a speakout with Jolo lesbians)

Sherfa: May mga lalaki kang kaibigan?

Alex: Wala. Matakot ako.

Sherfa: Baka reypin ka?

Alex: Oo.

Sherfa: May mga matatandang lalaki magtsansing sa iyo?

Alex: Meron. Kung minsan.

Sherfa: Sa pantalan? Saan?

Alex: Sa daan ba.

Sherfa: Ay, yung magganyan.

Alex: Matakot ako iyan. Pinagsabihan ko, pumunta ako doon sa sara.

Susan: Sa baryo. Barangay.

Alex: Sa taytayan kami, ginanyan ang aking buli.

Sherfa: Ang puwet mo?

Alex: Oo. Ganyan, ganyan, ganyan? Natakot talaga ako, nagsumbong ako. Pero para
turuan lang, ayaw kong magkuha ng pera.

Sherfa: Teka. Hinawakan niya iyong ano mo, hanggang side, hanggang suso?

Alex: Hindi. Sa likod lang.

Sherfa: Tapos binigyan ka ng pera?

Alex: Wala. Sinumbong ko sa... ano ba iyon?

Susan: Sa barangay captain lang, ipinaalam. Hindi niya tinanggap ang pera. Mahirap din ba.

Sherfa: Ah, turuan lang. Tapos, pag ulitin niya?

Alex: Kunan ko na siya ng pera.

Sherfa: Kunin mo na yung pera, pabayarin na? Oo, tama yun, kasi may batas sa sexual harassment, mamultahan sila.

Alex: Kasi meron sila ganyan ba, bigyan ka ng pera tapos sabi niya, doon tayo pumunta sa tiyu-tiyu.

Sherfa: Ah, ganun?

Susan: Parang babayaran mo ang babae.

Sherfa: Bigyan ka ng pera, tapos, punta tayo doon sa madilim?

Susan and Alex: Oo.

Sherfa: Pag sumama ka? Reypin ka doon? Magkano naman yung mga ganyan?

Alex: Ewan ko.

Sherfa: Hindi mo alam?

Susan: Sino?

Sherfa: Yang mga ganyan marami yan dito?

Susan: Oo. Marami yan dito.

Sherfa: Saan nangyayari, sa pantalan?

Susan: Meron sa jambatan, aha?

Alex: Oo, meron sa jambatan. Wala ka nang magawa sa kanila, kasi buhay nila iyon. Mabuti pa, sabi nila, magputa na tayo, huwag lang magnakaw.

Susan: Oo.

Sherfa: Really.

Sherfa: Ano yun? Buti pa magprosti kaysa magnakaw?

Susan: Haha. Oo.

Alex: Kahit tayo magpagamit katawan lang natin iyon.

Sherfa: Ano yun?

Susan: Kahit siya magpagamit katawan niya pa rin ang ibinenta niya.

Sherfa: Huwag lang magnakaw?

Susan: Oo.

Alex: Masama yan talaga sa Diyos.

Alex: Kahit naman magputa masama din.

Sheva: Hahahaha.

Sherfa: Oo. Kahit magputa masama rin? Pero mas masama iyong magnakaw kaysa sa magputa?

Susan: Oo.

Sherfa: Kasi kung magputa ka ikaw ang lugi. Di ba? Kasi may mawawala sa iyo. Sa pagnakaw, iyong kapwa mo iyong ninakawan mo. Pag nagputa ka…

Alex: Sarili mo yun.

Sherfa: Oo. Parang pinuhunan mo. Ikaw ang mabawasan.

Alex: Oo, mawawala ang vergen.

Sherfa: Ano sa inyo?

Sheva: Sa akin mas gusto ko ang magnakaw kaysa magganun.

Sherfa: Ganun? Oo, no. At saka depende yun kung sino ang nanakawan mo.

Alex: Kung sa buhay ko, gusto ko magputa, Kuya.

Sherfa: Ako, depende kung sino ang nanakawan ko.

Alex: Ako, mas gusto ko magputa. Mas gusto ko magputa, Kuya.

Sheva: Ikaw na lang, ikaw na lang.

Susan: Ikaw ra.

Alex: Pag sinabi ng Diyos, aha, ikaw magputa. Mas maganda magputa na lang tayo, ha?

Sherfa: Oo, sige. (laughter)

Alex: Magputa na tayo. Ang totoo, sabihin natin malaki ang kasalanan natin. Tapos, karamihan sa mga tao, magtsismis, ha, makialam, ehe? Ganyan, Kuya Alex. Pero sa atin, kahit pa tayo hiyain, katawan mo iyon.

Sherfa: Oo.

Alex: Ma-jail ka pa, nah, mapreso. Nah. Pag doon ka na sa jail, doon ka ra reypin… nah, pareho lang.

Sherfa: Nah, oo. Pag nagnakaw ka, nah, reypin ka rin naman ng mga pulis.

Alex: Nah, oo. Kaya mas maganda pa magputa na tayo, magputa tayo, aha, magputa na kita.

Sherfa: Hindi ka ikukulong.

Alex: Oo. Pera mo iyon, ipanggastos mo na. Ibigay mo na lang sa nanay mo.

Sherfa: So mas gusto mo, magputa ka na.

Alex: Pag ako ba, pag puwede ako, maganda magputa. Mas ikakahiya ko ang magnakaw.

Sherfa: Mas mahirap rin magnakaw. Mas madali magputa kaysa magnakaw.

Sheva: Uy. Hintay ka.

Sherfa: Ano? Sheva?

Sheva: Nah. Hindi mas maganda ang magputa, aha. Pangit ang sasabihin ng mga tao sa iyo pag nagputa ka.

Sherfa: Nah, masama din ang sasabihin ng mga tao pag nagnakaw ka.

Nadia: Nah. Mas grabe in magputa. Lalo na...

Alex: Wala bang mapagpipilian, pareho lang.

Sherfa: Pero sa pagputa may palitan ba.

Chorus: Huun.

Sherfa: May exchange, ano ba ito. Bigyan mo siya…

Alex: Katawan.

Sherfa: Oo. Katawan…otog, whatever you callit, may trade. Okay? Nah. May mga kaibigan ako mga prosti, sabi nila, nah trabaho lang ito. Ang problema ba niyan kung mag-STD ka. Kung magka-AIDS ka.

Nadia: Iyong magputa kasi, masama, pangit. Tapos, pag-usapan ka ng mga lalaki, alam nila na puta ka.

Alex: Nah, pag sugarol ka, ganun din.

Nadia: Pangit na kasi ang tingin ng mga tao sa iyo pag puta ka.

Sherfa: Pag nagnakaw ka, ganun din. (Lahat sabay-sabay na nagsasalita.)

Alex: Nah, para sa akin, pareho lang ba.

Sherfa: Ako rin, pareho lang.

Sherfa: Puwede din na magprosti ka, tapos… ehe… iyang mga lalaki sinusuwerte yan sila, pag minsan hindi ka pa bayaran nang mabuti. Pagkatapos ka nila gamitin, insultuhin ka pa.

Nadia: Yun na nga.

Sherfa: Duduraan ka pa.

Nadia: Yun na nga!

Sherfa: Babaratin ka pa.

Nadia: Yun na nga!

Sherfa: Ang ginagawa ng ibang prosti, ninanakawan nila ang customer nila.

Sherfa: Tapos pag ang customer magreklamo sa manedyer, yung prosti ang kawawa. Tsismis na siya na bad service siya, sabihin pa na pangit siya, na mabaho siya, tapos hindi pa siya nabayaran, tapos siya pa yung makulong. Yan yung sa mga low-class na prostitution ha? Pero yung sa mga high-class na prostitution, iyong mga call girls? Nah, gusto nilang gawing legal ang prostitution para makapili sila ng customer nila na masiguro nila na malilinis. Ang kaibahan siguro, kung prosti ka, parang ang tingin sa iyo, ang sama-sama na, makasalanan ka. Pero kung nagnakaw ka, puwede nilang sabihin na, ah, naghihirap lang yun.

Nadia: Oo. Korek. Yun na nga.

Sherfa: Pero karamihan sa mga prostitutes hindi rin sila magprostitute kung hindi rin sila naghihirap. Iyon mga low-class prostitutes iyan, ha. Karamihan sa kanila inanakan ng lalaki, tapos wala silang ibang hanapbuhay. Maglabandera sila, hindi ka man makabuhay ng anak kung maglabandera, so magprostitute na lang sila.

Sherfa: Pero kung ikaw na babae ka, gusto mo mag-asawa nang matino, huwag ka magprosti.

Sherfa: Sabi ng isang babae, ang pag-aasawa daw, parang pagproprosti din yun. Ang kaibahan lang daw, isa lang yung customer mo, isa lang ang siniserbisyuhan mo. Tapos, dapat magpakabait ka talaga. Para ang customer mo na iisa palanggain ka nang husto. Iyong ibang prostitute naman, inaasawa nila iyong customer nila. Mainlab sa kanila ang customer nila, so iyon na yung asawahin nila. Lalabas sila sa trabaho na prostitution tapos magpakadisente sila. Pero may mga ibang babae naman na kahit binabastos na sila at binababoy ng mga asawa nila…

Sherfa: May mga babae na magsasabi sa akin na pagkatapos silang iyutin insultuhin sila, iyong ganyan, pero tinitiis lang nila dahil iyong asawa nila may trabaho, sila wala. Kaya nga parang ano din, anong kaibahan noon sa prostitution? Ang sa prostitution lang marami kang customer. Pa’no yun, kung makaasawa ka ng barumbado, na siya iyong bumubuhay sa iyo, pero wala kang magawa kundi magpabuhay sa kanya, parang prostitution na rin yun. Kung makakita ka ng disenteng lalaki, suwerte mo. Pero sa atin kasi, sa lipunan natin, wala kasing ginagalang na sexual relationship sa labas ng pamilya at pag-aasawa eh. Kaya hayun.

Pero ano ba, sige, balik tayo doon sa ano mo, sa…. mas gusto mo talaga magputa?

Alex: Puta. Magputa.

Sherfa: Sabi mo lang yun dahil galit ka sa tatay mo. Iyong ibang mga tomboy doon sa Davao sasabihin sa akin, naging tomboy ako dahil ayaw kong matulad sa nanay ko, ginagawa siyang anakan ng tatay ko. Tapos kung maging babae naman daw siya tawagin lang siyang bigaan, tawagin siyang pokpok. Hindi siya makapasyal kasi, uy, dito ka lang sa bahay, ganun.

Sheva: Nakakahiya. Nakakahiya.

Sherfa: E, kung magpakabait naman siya dito sa bahay ginagawa naman siyang labandera, dishwasher, tig-alaga ng mga anak ng nanay niya, magpakatomboy na lang daw siya.

Susan: Gusto mong magputa?

Alex: Gusto kong magputa.

Sherfa: Gusto mong magputa? Pumunta ka sa Thailand. May NGO doon na… (laughter) Ikaw?

Susan: Oo. Parehas din yung dalawa.

Sherfa: Parehas na mahirap ba.

Berkis: Mas gusto ko magnakaw kaysa magputa.

Sherfa: Mas mahirap din ba magnakaw.

Berkis: Oo.

Em-em: Nakakahiya talaga.

Berkis: Oo.

Alex: Depend ra.

Em-em: Kung magnakaw makaligtas pa ba.

Sherfa: Depende anong nakawan mo. Kung banko ang nakawan mo, nah, patay kaw. Pero kung magprosti ka tapos magpili ka lang ng rich na customers? Nah, hindi ka mahuhuli kahit kaylan.

Em-em: Okay lang magputa basta walang kamag-anak na makakita. Mangibang-bansa. Keri pa.

Sherfa: Hahaaa! Nah, mag-abroad kayo sa Netherlands.

Susan: Pumunta ka sa America, magputa ka doon.

Alex: Pang walang mga kamag-anak, pag wala nang mga matatanda na umaasa sa akin.

Sherfa: Ano iyon?

Nadz: Hindi pinagkakatiwalaan.

Sherfa: Ah, habang may nagtitiwala sa iyo, hindi ka muna magputa?

Alex: Hindi magputa.

Sherfa: Nah, magbenta ka muna ng sigarilyo.

Alex: O. Iban tehe-tehe.

Out Front Out Loud

2011-08-31T22:03:00.000-07:00

The reason people don’t take to fags, many girls say, is because they’re soo…loud, so foul-mouthed, so pamati! If girls don’t want them in the women’s rest rooms it’s because they can turn into a hornet’s nest any placid place they land in, be it a dining area, a night bar, a salon, a class room or the congress.

Sorry for the girls who get pissed off with loudspeakerpower quality faggotry, but understand that it’s a stiff competition out there, boudoir politics at its crispiest, and as far as the pageantry committee is concerned, nothing is so foul, so mean. No, I am not surprised that territorial rows occur at all in the girls’ turfs at the malls and university toilets between the second sex and the third sex, happens all the time, everywhere.

What once instigated Iwag, an organization for gay men and male trans, to lobby for a city ordinance providing for a separate CR for the turd sex are the harassments from both from men and women who don’t want them anywhere near where they piss. The men don’t consider gays men, and the women don’t consider them women, and they cannot possibly piss in between the doors, so a comfort room of their own might help.

The cross-over lesbians, of course, don’t complain and do not make the same demand. They don’t use the men’s room; they go to the women’s room and most cannot recall a moment when they were unceremoniously sent out by anyone there. Unlike the bakla most dykes don’t get inside girl comfies like an invasion force from Pluto, Venus or Jupiter, they slouch and look down till their heads hit the wall, and so the girls are not offended or in the least displaced.

Comparatively speaking, most lesbians abide by the rules, one of which is to go straight to the latrine and not tarry at the dressing room to ogle at the girls. That way they don’t get sniped at or verbally mauled by the "fairer" sex crowding in front of the mirror. The same cannot be said of the male transvestites who arrive like an army of make-over wannabes, announcing to one and all that they are the new sex symbol, in fact, the new woman. What reigning beauty titlist would not be pissed unnerved with such a claim.

If you ask me, I appreciate very much loudspeakerpower faggotry. If you or your ancestors worked so hard to win the freedoms that progeny now enjoys, including surviving water cure, a hundred lashes and a score of kicks in the gut and groin, I believe you have every right to be mermaid, femme fatale, sex goddess and every other hoaxes you can conjure out of your body politic: You have every right to be pamati.

Look. It’s a dismally square world overpopulated with morons and bores. Why fall in? Why work so hard only to be tolerated and accepted by those whose human qualities and integrity you highly doubt? You have some shit to throw, don’t you? Why not be loud be strong. In the first place, aren’t you a fag because you dared to differ?

And talking about foul-mouthed high-decibeled parades and concerts, try getting inside a net cafe filled to the rafters with high school boys. Sit at bar or a turo-turo for dinner or a beer. Ride a jeepney to any point in the city. And here comes a gang of boys from a high school or college nearby. Your luck if they found an audience in you, their putanginas ripping the air. But of course that is not loud. That is not foul. Try telling them to shut up, stop badmouthing their girlfriends in front of their girlfriends’ friend. It they will not turn on you. You’re out of order. If bad comes to worse, you will be mauled.

If the problem is homophobia and discrimination, is a separate CR the solution?

Not likely. It might only bring on more problems. Their taken-for-granted right to use the women’s bathroom may now be rescinded. Now entering the women’s room might constitute an intrusion just because there’s one bathroom for her sex to crowd in. It might only further abet discrimination against homosexuals. How are we to teach each other to live with each other if we segregate and divide ourselves into different categories and species of bathroom users?

It has been safe for women to share bathroom facilities with lesbians, hasn’t it? Why take that back now? Maybe. But if the fags do not feel safe using the same room that the men use, surely, they are entitled to another room, right?

flowers grow on the septic tank

2011-08-01T21:21:00.001-07:00

Si Bleep at si Bleep-Bleep

2011-07-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

TL: kaye where you been

KA: heya. work. my shift is 8pm-5am

TL: oh

TL: convergys?

KA: yup convergys

TL: so you writing?

KA: not yet just listening to music

KA: im trying to relax. i have mild fever due to allergic rhinitis that turned into a sore throat

KA: or could be ENT since my ears hurt which can be related to the throat thing again

TL: haha

TL: A high school classmate chatted me up last night. She asked, What? You don't live permanently in one place? To the tune of You don't have house and lot? Really?

KA: House and lot is overrated. It's for domesticity.

TL: And the worst that could happen to you is die from a heart attack for overconsumption or fall off the stairs.

TL: I would rather die from AIDS than that.

KA: Renting is fine.

KA: I like your Bohemian existence.

TL: I don't live it though. It's all literary.

TL: It's all fictional.

KA: Everything is literary.

TL: Ya it is.

KA: I like to see myself as this elusive lothario. but it doesn't make it so.

KA: I also fall in love and get turned down.

KA: I don't want to die a lame death.

TL: But on the other hand I don't want to die from AIDS. Ang sakit kaya nun.

KA: I want to die wrestling a lion. now isn't that masculine? lol

TL: Like cervical ca.

KA: True.

KA: I dont want to die period.

TL: Ugh lets not talk about ailments or we will be ill with ailments

KA: I agree haha

TL: I don't want to get sick period

TL: I am doing an opinion survey: what's ur take about this gay marriage equality

TL: Lord i shouldn't be bothering myself with this but i suppose we have to contribute to the fucking discourse of the day.

KA: I support it.

TL: Okay good.

TL: But what are the caveats.

KA: It's the usual monogamous paradigm for those who want it.

KA: I don't subscribe to monogamy anymore, but for those who want it, bahala sila.

KA: It's like saying, If you dont like gay marriage or abortion then don't have it and shut the fuck up.

TL: Ya. I don't like coupledoms, nuclear families, the fucking private club with God above.

KA: Yeah, the family bullshit...warning signs of fundamentalism. I stay away from organizations that have key words like "protecting-the-family-" in it. Smells of fundamentalism.

TL: But why not campaign for an anti-discrimination bill that would encompass issues outside of the fucking partnership paradigm, that also sees and includes, lesbians or gays who are alone, for instance.

KA: You know what i think sheilf

TL: Sure

KA: This monogamous paradigm is designed to please the women. straight women.

TL: How so

KA: Everytime i meet men and women, i always ask them this question: If you were to meet a lover that promises romance and intimacy, everything you ever dreamed of, but the catch is that you will lose that lover in two years. Would you still pursue it?

KA: Most straight women said no. most men say yes.

TL: Straight women answer that way because they're afraid they will forfeit the only "happiness" (read as "security" as guaranteed by the institution of marriage and family) they ever know or found. "Straight" men answer that way MAINLY because it is a matter of privilege, with little risk of losing the stupid wife and huhuhu-daddy children.

KA: It could also be biological...women prefer men who will stay to provide and protect for the offspring.

TL: Men have no duties to be good wives.

KA: Men's role is to propagate the species and women to nurture

TL: Straight women who are financially independent would not answer that way.

KA: I agree.

TL: Unless they have breast ca. I'm joking. No, Kaye, I don't buy that.

TL: But then i am for cloning haha

TL: You read Marge Piercy?

KA: But still, there's a biological-genetic imprint in women's psychology, independent or not, which makes them attracted to men who are strong and commitment-material.

TL: He she it. Future fiction.

TL: There's that imprint mainly because they never have had the opportunity to KNOW otherwise.

KA: There was actually a psychological study on that. Women are attracted to strong men who will stay with them because of the qualities that they will provide protection and shelter, food, etc.

KA: Caveman stuff.

TL: Their material condition as mother breastfeeder maternity wards managers and men's babysitters etc. made that imprint. That's why i am for cloning. :-)

TL: There ought to be many ways of reproducing the species.

KA: True.

TL: Rather, of reproducing or NOT reproducing the species.

KA: But I am more in the area of the science of attraction, not reproduction lol

TL: Rather than reproducing the "family" ad infinitum.

TL: Reproducing our kind lord. Our daughters will rise in rebellion.

KA: Haha

TL: :-)

KA: And this all leads me back to the fact that women like bleep and bleep-bleep are looking for long-term monogamous relationships lol.

TL: Science of attraction whats that again.

TL: Are they? You never know.

KA: The science of attraction is that women are attracted to confident people. But the real challenge is what to do post-coital.

TL: I wud like to believe that Bleep-Bleep would want to be a boxer if she's had another career choice.

KA: Haha

TL: Do a sarah duterte act, you know hahaha

TL: But boxing for women was never promising.

TL: So monogamy na lang.

TL: But of course Bleep-Bleep wouldn't call it that either.

TL: Romance, love, whatever.

KA: You'll be surprised how people can get very romantic. Most women I know, they say something else, then mean another thing.

TL: Kaye, why do you always speak of women in the third person? Such dissociation. Are they really the inferior sex?

.......................

Si Ramille at ang usaping SOGI

2011-07-06T05:12:00.000-07:00

photo: Payat Pa Ako Noon, Paano Na Sila Ngayon album

Time out for talk shows at ang mga guests natin ay ang mga artista ng Paradang LaGaBaTa na buong pusong nagtiwalang magpaambus interbyu sa atin.

Scene 1, Act 1

Tumba Lata: Istart na tayo? Omg, panic mode ako, they turned off the aircon, I can't find the remote!

Ramille Andag: Hahahahahaha! Saan ka ba? Bakit wala lahat ng creature comforts! Hahahaha.

TL: Wala. They have a conference somewhere and I’m here naiwan sa office along with two other aliens, we just found out they turned off the main switches. Water at air.

RA: Hahahaha

TL: Hahahaha. Water conservation measure yata at power trip.

RA: Hahahahahaha. I love the analysis! Power trip!

TL: Power conservation. I can't concentrate tuloy, lack of oxygen girl-interrupted.

RA: Hahahaha

TL: Anti-squatting nila. I’m borrowing office space kasi, pati wifi access. Crashed down netbuk super werla.

RA: Hahahahaha! Cite UDHR kapatid!

TL: Oo nga, ano. Asan na kasi ang UNHRcom.

RA: Hahahaha

TL: So ano na ngayon ang SOGI mo? Andaming tanong nun ha, Apat yun. Ano ang sexual mo... ano ang orientation...

RA: So gay. Hahahaha.

TL: So gay!

RA: Honestly, Sheilfs, I think that as an identity, TG still needs to be discussed more locally, so people can identify with it more.

RA: Homosexual. :-) :-) That I can say. TG for me remains to be discussed in an almost academic manner, wala pa yung so what is TG in the Philippine experience? Am I making sense?

TL: Masiyado kang seryosooo!

RA: Hahahahahahahaha dibah?

TL: Supersense.

TL: Ano na lang type mo.

RA: Type na partner? I fall for all kinds of people but it doesn't mean I go to bed with each kind Hahahahahaha, malaki ang chance na hindi nila ako feel. Hahahaha
:-P:-P

TL: Bakit hindi ka nila feel? Is it the size? Of your brain?

RA: Hahahahaha. Maybe they were just raised to think in boxes. But everyday is an opportunity to break boxes.

TL: Btw, I did not ask for your permission, if you noticed.

RA: Hey, it’s ok, ano ba, between us friends, interview ethics can be suspended.

TL: Kasi ethics ng mga walang ethics, if you ask for permission you will not be granted. So go ahead na, ask forgiveness later.

TL: It’s is easier daw to ask forgiveness than permission, true?

RA: Go ako diyan.

RA: Or maybe as a people we are more forgiving. O hasty lang hahahaha.

TL: I used your picture am I forgiven?

RA: Hahahaha. Ok lang I saw it and read the article : ) : ) love love hahaha

TL: Ahahah

TL: Iedit ko nga sana yun as in sinensor.

RA: Hahahahaha tempered?

TL: Oo tempered.

TL: Kasi dapat fictional yun.

TL: Tapos the most important character sana doon ay dead. Dead na, hindi dedma.

RA: Hahahaha tagos ng dugo!

TL: Alam mo yun, iyong line ni Tita V sa movie, I should kill someone.Tita VW, hindi Ate V. The Hours. Nicole Kidman.

RA: Ate Vi said that also though.

TL: Ha? Which movie? Pasensiya, Ate Guy ako e.

RA: Ay, ako din kaya hahahahaha. Because Ate Guy presents a more complex personality and an interesting backstory.

TL: Tsektsektsek!!!! Kapatiiiiid talaga kita!

RA: Di ba? Imagine, magbenta ng tubig sa riles ng tren???

TL: Oo no. Tapos mapulis sa NYC ba iyon.

RA: Pag umuuwi ako dati sa samar, sa mga bus stops sa Bicol gusto ko magbenta ng ice water hahahaha.

TL: Uy may tsansa pa

RA: Magbenta ng ice water? Hahahahahaha

TL: Ako rito kung minsan gusto kong mamasada. Taxi o jeepney.

TL: Taxi na lang.

RA: Oo hahaha.

RA: Hahahahaha winner ang mga iniisip nating mga options hahahahaha

TL: Tapos nung minsan umuwi ako paturo sana ako magdrayb ng motor kasi ikako magdrayb na lang ako ng traysikel kesa manilbihan sa UNCHR o sa UNDP. Hindi naman ako tinuruan. Pakainin na lang daw nila ako huwag lang akong magkakalat sa kalsada ng Tacurong Sultan Kudarat.

RA: Hindi pa sila alipin ng bundy clock.

TL: Oo. One last question na lang kapatid.

RA: May kilala ako from Tacurong. Mariz.

TL: San kayo nagkita. Ano ang sex nun. San siya ngayon.

RA: Sa UP. Girl, straight.

RA: NGO worker din, I think.

TL: Ay. Boring.

RA: Hahahaha.

TL: Kala ko traysikol drayber. O dispatser.

RA: Hahahahahaha

TL: Last question

RA: Fire, kapatis.

TL: Teka. Ano nga iyong tanong mo dun sa article ni Jules Falquet?

RA: Di pala yun.

TL: Kapatis? Hahaha. Hindi kasuka? Kaasim ng sikmura?

RA: Kaisang lalagyan ng sawsawan

TL: Hahahahaha

RA: Ang tanong ko ay if the most mature relationship is an open one, how important na is marriage? Especially in the light of same sex marriage. Actually mas gusto ko ang same sex partnerships.

TL: I went out saglit. For water and air. Naku nasagot mo na lahat Ate Guy wala na akong itatanong pa!

RA: Hahahahahaha

TL: Stumped dead, ikanga. :-o:-o

RA: Anong take mo sa same sex marriages Sheilfs? O ako naman ang nagtanong, ha, hahaha.

TL: (Hindi nakasagot)

RA: Haha

RA: Tool for oppression?

TL: Yan nga ang iniiwasan kong isagot e.

RA: Hahahahahahaha

TL: Napakapatently radfem naman yata nun, as in old feminism na yan, sabi nga ni...di ko alam sino nagsabi nun, si Anna Leah Sarabia ba o si iyong syota niya.

TL: Gusto ko magsama kami nang walang kasal. No property claims.

RA: Very true.

RA: And patently radfem.

TL: Hahaha. Leche kaaa! You are labeling me!

TL: That’s very politically incorrect of you!!!

RA: Hahahahaha nope, natawa lang ako dun. Love you sheilfs hahaha.

RA: Pero ako din kapatid! Di ba dapat ganun?

TL: At saka gusto ko room rooms rooooms BIG ROOOOMS for love. Multiple sclerosis bang tawag dun?

RA: Ako din. Equality. We should be able to visit our partners when they are sick, they could make us their beneficiaries, and vice versa. Dahil at the end of the day, love is all that will matter may kasal man or o wala.

TL: Tsek.

TL: Sabi nung isang friend ko she will go insane daw pag more than one. Kung marami, kung polyamorous, mawewerla na daw siya. Ewan ko mawewerla saan, baka sa selos.

RA: That really takes a lot of maturity.

TL: Yep.

RA: Not that I am capable of that na hahahaha

TL: Kasi we are all selfish jealous bitches butches

RA: Hahahaha of bitches and butches

TL: Oo nga parang ang dali kung iimagine. I mean kung sa teorya.

RA: And it’s a liberating idea, kapatid.

TL: Pero pagdating sa buhay... nay, we always fail.

RA: Oo. Sana walang selos, only love and understanding.

TL: Boring din kaya iyon. Walang drama walang violence hahaha.

RA: Wala kasingaway? Hahahahaha!

TL: Dapat me dramatic moments.

RA: Hahahaha. Puwedeng simulated violence na lang?

TL: May mamamatay, may iiyak hahaha.

RA: Hahahahaha!

TL: Status quo status quo!

RA: Hahahahahaha

TL: Status quo na lang pro-romance hahaha

RA: Habang may tatsulok...

TL: Ay ayaw ko. Mas masaya circle. O kaya swivel door. One leaves as one enters. Eeek serial monogamy yun, kaw yun.

RA: Pro love! Ay, sandali, tunog baby powder! Hahaha

RA: Airports! Arrivals and departures, but most of the time is spent waiting.

TL: Oo nga, not flying. And we fly zipped up from the bottom to the top life is a BIG BORE talaga no

RA: Love complicates things? Life in general is complicated pala. Love results in inequalities hahahahaha

Si Ceegay, si Karlo at si Derrida

2011-07-04T00:14:00.000-07:00

photo: ramille andag

KASI NGA raw, kailangan pa rin. Isang paraan ito para ugain at buwagin mula sa ilalim ang institusyon ng matrimonyo pati na ang makapangyarihang Simbahan na sumusuporta rito. Kaya raw siya radikal, hindi konserbatibo.

Ang aming pinag-uusapan, ang minumungkahing LGBT right to marriage equality. Ayon sa diskursong ito, kung may karapatan magmahal, mag-asawa at magsama ang mga istreyt, e di ganoon din ang mga gay at transpeople. Iyong transpeople, shortcut ko sa mga nag-cross over. Di bale na kung ipinanganak silang bakla o tomboy, basta crossover pa rin sila.

Basta iyong mga tumawid sa sexual o gender identity borders, mga nagpalit ng isip tungkol sa kasarian at kahalayang kinikilingan.

Nagpalit ng isip? Nang parang nagpapalit ng damit?
Hindi. Nang parang nagpapalit ng sombrero.

Parang si Ramille. Papalitpalit, pabagobago ng isip. Boy na ipinanganak, girl nang mamulat, lesbiana nung isang araw, deadma ngayon. As in ded na raw ang kanyang puso.

Ang tawag ni Karlo sa mga ganun, sa mga papalitpalit ng isip, at ari, o inaaring ari, mad hats. Pa'no inlab kasi si Karlo kay Johny Depp. Sino ba ang hindi. Wala pa yata akong nakakasalubong na aktor o girl, tomboy o bakla matanda o bata na hindi inlab kay Johny Depp.

O kay Mad Hatter. Interchangeable naman sila, eh. By magic.

Oo. Not on account of gender-is-fluid ek-ek.

Si Karlo, ma-appreciate mo talaga siya. Can catch can follow agad ba.

O baka ganun lang talaga siya ka poetically evolved.

Politically evolved.

Hindi a. Poetically evolved.

Wala lang. Mas gusto ko lang gamitin poetically. Panangga, panalungat sa anti-artist anti-poet attitudes with capital A ng mga aktibista at mga pulitika na ang tingin sa mga makata ay hindi maaasahan sa larangan ng digmaang-bayan.

Ah, oo. Tama.
See? Ganun si Karlo. Agreeable at agreeing lagi. Batukan ko kaya.

Reklamo niya, bakit raw ako he nang he kung ang tinutukoy ko ay si Ceegay, eh she raw naman si Ceegay, since birth.

Oo nga.

Biologically she si Ceegay, eksplika ni Karlo.
Which doesn't mean na ipinganak siyang babae, kung pa'nong si Maribik at si Ging ay ipinanganak na tomboy. It's a tomboy! sabi raw nung midwife na tumiwarik at pumalo sa mga puwet nila pagkapanganak sa kanila.

Pero si Karlo ang sex niya, indifferent. Kung puwede lang siguro, kung hindi siya polite, sasabihin niyang wala talaga akong pakialam. Panalo iyon, di ba. Ibig sabihin hindi nakasentro doon ang kamalayan niya.

Sabi ko lang iyon sa kanya. Gusto ko lang isipin na wala siyang kasarian kumbaga. Kasi nga you never know. Parang si Angely. Ayaw malabel na lesbian o bisexual, like it makes her less of the being that she's being at.

Para raw kasi akong Stanfilco lahat ng tao nilalabel ko bago i-ship out.

Yan siya misogynist. Bitayin. Yan racist. Sunugin. Iyan Chinese chauvinist... akin yan.

Gusto kong kumanta, sabay kendeng, kahit hindi talaga ako marunong kumendeng.

Little boxes... little boxes... made of ticky tacky little boxes... on the hillside... theres a pink one and a green one... and they all look just the same... and we are all the same

Para que at iproblematize, sabi ni Jeremiah.

Si Jeremy, siya iyong masunog man ang Roma okay lang sa kanya, basta ba kapiling niya ang Acer laptop niya.

“Madhats?” aniya. Late reaction pa. Akala niya, heterosexual siya. Nanay raw kasi siya kaya yun na. Wala na siyang layf after that, salamat. Pero iyong iri-rethink pa niya ang sexual orientation niya, puwede ba, pag-isipan niya na lang daw kung papano niya imapa ang kanyang di-masulat-sulat na nobela.

Jeremiah ang totoo niyang pangalan. Kapag naiinis ako Gerry ang tawag ko sa kanya. Kapag natutuwa Darling.

Kanina lang napudpod yata daliri ko katiteks sa kanya. Wala raw siyang pakialam sa mga LGBT-LGBT na iyan, may greater concerns raw siya, hindi raw relevant sa kanya ang marriage equality rights na hinihiling ng mga nag-iingay ngayon sa kalsada, para ano at ipu-problematize niya.

Nag-alsa ang fingernails ko.

Nasa kapeterya ako, nagtitiyaga sa kape at sigarilyo habang nanunuod ng martsa-rali sa TV.

Hindi teorya ang Derrida mo, ikako, ang PoMo ay sintoma ng dekadensiya at kawalan ng katiyakang kaisipan.

Sabi niya, how can that be, it attacks not only capitalist structures but all kinds of structures! It attacks everything, everything! Lahat ng isms, pati feminism at post-feminism, including feudalism at primitive ism!

Te, itanong mo pa kay Paglia, balahura iyon, charlatan pa, pero kahit siya sasang-ayon na walang structure ang primitive society, pramis pa.

Pero ang nai-imagine ko sa attack-attack structures niya, termites. Di yata malayo sa opinyon ko iyon sa mga decon yuppies na kilala ko. Puro lab ang pinagkakaabalahan, mga salot sa lipunan. Pero si Jeremy? PoMo?

I love Jacques, uy.

Ang akala niya, first lab ko si Marx, Sheryl Crow version. The first cut is the deepest... The reason raw kung kaya Che and she cannot get along sometimes is because she's a deconstructionist and a Derridian at that and doesn’t believe and cannot live inside any structure including your marriage see? Whether lesbian or whatever marriage it's an oppressive structure all structures are oppressive and Marxists are structuralists.

Ang gaga. Your marriage nang your marriage e sa aming dalawa siya iyong married in the last sampu hanggang dalawampung years sa sobra isang lalaki at ako iyong kahit kelan kahit isang araw o isang linggo ay hindi pumasok sa marriage marriage ko.

Hindi raw kaya. Autistic raw kaya ang husband niya, no eye contact sila, kaya she cannot be possibly still married.

But Derrida is dead, Sheilfa. So is Susan Sontag, and I'm not feeling very well myself. At isinubsob uli ang ulo sa laptop niya.

Mas not feeling well kaya ako.

Kaya ko nga niri-rekrut si Karlo. Magpakalesbian na sana siya ba, para makasali siya sa aming grupo. Malay ko, maiibigan siya ni Nico.

Parang male raw kasi siya, lalaki yata, kaya yata may gelpren siya na bakla ang kasarian. Pero mad hat rin siya. O siguro, gusto ko lang isipin na mad hat rin siya, para may makakausap pa naman ako maski papano, exasperating kaya ako, sabi nung last na walang-puso na kausap ko.

Every Time I See A Lady

2011-06-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

by Kristine Kaye Antonio

On the far end of the room, a colleague tries to stay awake in her seat, her knees touching her chin. She doesn't appear to be crying. I went to her.

An office mate comes to work, sits on her desk and starts to cry. I took one look at her and turned away to go on with my own business. It has always been like this for the past few months. Everytime I see a lady cry in front of me, I get panicky. Somehow I have developed anxiety everytime I am faced with emotions coming from women. Guilt? But why? For all the pain I have caused women, including my mother? A Freudian could say that. But whatever it really is, I don't know.

On the far end of the room, a colleague tries to stay awake in her seat, her knees touching her chin. She doesn't appear to be crying so I went to her.

"What's with the fetal position?” I ask. “Are you okay?"

She looks up at me, "I'm sick...", she says weakly.

"Like a fever?" I ask. It has been raining for the past couple of days and she commutes from Cavite to Makati everyday. The storm must have caught up with her.

"Yes", she replies.

I must admit, I am a bit attracted to the sick girl, Lora. Aside from the fact that she's beautiful and well-spoken, she's also half-Jamaican. She opened up and told me she's bisexual after she learned I'm gay, and we've since been playfully grabbing each other's ass. You'll hear more about her. A very interesting character.

My predisposition towards women is fatal. Even my mother, who can be very liberal about these things, sometimes worries. Why did I choose this path, why not try relating with a man, why why why.

Because I love women. I love their lips, their hips, their laughter and the way they nurture, care, intuit, maybe even the way they bitch. I love their secrets, their fantasies, and especially the way their faces contort when they are in the throes of passion. Women are magnificent creatures. I have never met a woman I haven't fallen in love with, whether it's for five years or for five minutes.

Next week, my friend Miko is coming to town to celebrate my birthday with me. Like how the Americans celebrate their Independence Day, my birthday will also be a weekend-long celebration. Niko had promised to take me to this underground music scene and we will celebrate my birthday in true hedonistic fashion. The goal is to do it with a lady who knows at least one of the three: Lacan, Derrida, Foucault.

On fags and pro-choice

2011-05-27T23:17:00.001-07:00

Fags butting in in the contraception-abortion debate: Do they like for women to manufacture good-quality babies for them, too? Can't they begin their gay parenthood activism post-partum? Or at least post-mortem?

A camp-out at Bud Datu

2011-05-04T01:39:00.001-07:00

Berkis is annoyed. She wants to kill the girls.

Jealousy.

First, she didn’t want to go to Bud Datu. Never did she wish to step on the F---ing White House there now the living quarters of American GIs. Second, she had hoped or often fantasized that if she goes up there and pay those darn soldiers a visit, she would come down with their heads slung around her neck, because... oh, she’s not supposed to be friends with them, those American imperialists, the bastards, they’re the satru, the enemy, them with their strings of crimes written all over the islands. Bud Datu, Bud Daho, Bud Bagsak, and recently, Padiwan and so on. But now she had to and she did, for the girls, she likes to believe, because they wanted some fun.

Yes, some fun. A camp-out. An all-lesbian hiking and camp-out up the top of old Bud Datu where they could see all of Jolo from behind state-of-the-art binoculars so generously lent to them by handsome young soldiers. And she did, she did see all of Jolo through American GIs’ lenses and yes, from that height, from that top view, it was easy to see, they could bomb Jolo if they liked.

But that’s not the fun story this piece is about.

They had to be escorted up the mountain by two young handsome-looking soldiers. They fetched the girls and what fine time the girls had flirting with the soldiers. "They forgot they’re dykes and behaved liked shitty chicks!" She laughed.

Or maybe they didn’t, they just like the game, cross-dressing, changing sex from moment to moment. It’s the fun they fall for, not the boys in fatigue uniforms.

Maybe, she said.

There they went up the mountain trail, giggling and laughing, running and falling, with an eye at their captor-guards, who showed them around the place, gave them a hands-on experience with their health-spa-club gears and and sports facilities. Now their faces are in the military's high-definition cams, and Berkis alone, she likes to think, is not impressed.

Only consolation was this young soldier, who was only 22, and female. She stayed at the background through all the proceedings and watched them with interest, maybe with love. At departure time she went to them and introduced herself as a Yakan Muslim. How glad she was to see them up there, she said, and even gladder to know they’re lesbians, because she’s lesbian, too. She had the girls introduced to another young female soldier. On their way down, two pretty young female soldiers escorted them, and damnation, said Berkis, they forgot to thank the boys they were leaving behind as they each positioned themselves to stay as close as possible to the two guides!

"The consummate flirts! the baisans, the bigaans!," Berkis cursed, but how her voice cracked with what could be pure love and gladness.

On board and all out for lesbian rights

2011-04-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

Tumba Lata moves!

2011-04-28T07:45:00.001-07:00

Tumba Lata-Davao closed shop and is now in Jolo, Sulu.

2011-04-28T06:48:00.001-07:00

You approach the idea with trepidation. If it was ever so hard to organize the lesbians of Davao what makes you think you can do anything in Jolo? Nothing ever grows there except... well, “palaces of corruption”, as one known human rights defender now exiled from the islands once said.

So after the initial interest, we withdrew. Or at least recast our position. We do Violence against Women and there’s a lot of that in the islands, and a third of the victims, at least of the cases we covered, were lesbians. Why do Muslim boys do that? Because these street dykes prowl the streets and go about like they’re sexually unavailable. So the way to beat them is to beat them. Hate crimes, that’s how it is called.

But meeting them one-on-one is another thing. “I became a lesbian because I had to, Aljir said. I had to help my father farm the sea. That’s how we live. From agar-agar farming. You can’t do that when you’re a girl.”

“Me, I had to be a lesbian because I needed to work, to survive,” Alex said. She sells candies, cigarettes and food at the jambatan, the port area that livens up beginning at a little past six when people start coming to the docks. Six o’ clock is no safe hour to go out for girls.

Of course, that’s how it is in most places. Lesbianism as a way out of the “restrictions of femininity”. And when you make an inventory of their employments, they’ve done driving motorcycles and traysikad, konduktol and dispatsil in jeepneys, porter, carpenter, GRO, househelp. And they’re not all work, too. Most do rap and tapdance, some can play the drums and the guitar; and everyone sings at videoke bars if they get the chance.

Indeed, how can one stay a girl when all around you it’s a sewers of poverty, their fathers not making enough to keep them fed or clothed.

It’s a way to rebel against their sex role, against being so much baggage to dispose of until they are married off to men not worth entrusting one’s life to.

“Tomboy na ang mga iyan bago pa natin naisip na organisahin sila,” says Berkis. “Matagal na iyon alam ng mga magulang nila. Matuwa pa nga dapat ang mga ustadzes na gina-guide sila kaysa pabayaan, na siyang ginagawa ng karamihan dito. Kaysa sa mapahamak, ma-rape ng mga lalaki o mabuntis at maabuso lang. Iyong mga nagsasabi na bad influence ang magdala dito ng lesbian-lesbian sa Sulu dahil naisipan nating magtayo ng programa para sa lesbians, siguro nag-aadik na iyan sila at nagha-hallucinate na at kung ano-ano ang ginagawang isyu na hindi naman isyu.”

They took what was given (for Berkis)

2011-04-23T03:26:00.000-07:00

What we cannot midwive
They birthed and made live
In the pit of their breath
In the wounds of the heart
In the violence of their words

Oh the hate in their eyes
The daggers in their voices
They want my blood my blood
And call it love

Oh their brutish need
Their savage hunger
And yet they went
For what was asked of them

For what they could give for it
For what they could take from it
Which could only be stolen
For the hope they long lost

For the love they never had

an excerpt from a play

2011-01-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

BOY-GIRL AND GELPREN NI MOMMY

(Dadamputin ng batang lalaki ang bola at lalaro-laruin. Papansinin siya ng kapatid.)

ABIGAIL: Huwag mong laruin iyan, hindi sa Mommy yan, no. Mapapagalitan ka, sige ka!

MIKHAIL: Naglalaro lang e. O, catch mo.

(Itatapon ang bola sa kapatid, tatama ito sa likuran ng sopa at gugulong sa sahig. Walang dadampot nito. Aabutin ni Mikhail ng nakasabit na badminton racket.)

Tennis na lang tayo.

ABIGAIL: Engot! Badminton iyan, no, hindi tennis.

MIKHAIL: (Lalaro-laruin mag-isa ang racket at shuttlecock.) Pareho lang iyon.

ABIGAIL: Hindi pareho, no. Ang layo, no. Ang tange talaga nito.
(Iaakyat nito ang mga paa sa sopa.) Laro ka nang laro diyan e, parang wala kang problema.

(Ipapatong ni Mikhail ang racket at shuttlecock sa shoerack. Uupo sa tabi ng kapatid, manunuod uli ng telebisyon.)

ABIGAIL: Palagay mo, mabait kaya siya?

MIKHAIL: (Kikibit-balikat.) Ewan.

ABIGAIL: Pa’no kung ayaw niya sa atin?

MIKHAIL: E di uwi tayo sa atin.

(Magri-ring ang telepono, matitigilan sila pareho, saka mag-unahan sa pagdampot. Mauuna si Abigail.)

ABIGAIL: Hello? (Mapapatda, biglang tatakpan ang bunganga ng isang kamay.) Ah, o-opo. Si Mommy po? Teka po, sandali lang po. (Magsisenyas ito sa kapatid, ituturo ang picture frame sa ibabaw ng telebisyon, saka ang mouthpiece ng telepono, bubulong.) S- si ano!

MIKHAIL: (Aagawin ang telepono.) Hello, sino po sila? Ah… opo. Tatawagin ko po. (Kay Abigail) Tawagin mo na si Mommy, daliii! (Sa telepono) Sandali po, tinatawag na po. (Itutulak ang kapatid.)Lakad na, tawagin mo na!

ABIGAIL: Ang daya naman e, ako pang inutusan. (Sisigaw.) Mommy! Telephone!!!

PIA: (Papasok ng sala na ipinapahid sa binti ang dalawang kamay.) Sino?

MIKHAIL AT
ABIGAIL: Si Jun.

MIKHAIL: Yung friend mo. (Iaabot sa ina ang telepono.)

PIA: Honey? (Magtitinginan ang magkapatid pagkarinig ng honey. Lalayo sila sa ina, hila-hila ang mga paa na mauaupo sa sopa, parang mga tuod na palihim makikinig.) Ganun ba? O sige. Ah, ganun ba? Huwag mong tagalan at gusto ka makilala ng mga anak ko. Maghapon natulog kahapon pero napagod at buong araw naman kami namasyal at nagshopping kanina… Haha. Okay. Okay. (Ibababa nito ang phone, masaya ang mukha.) Mali-late si June, mauna na raw tayong kumain at kausap pa niya ang coach nila. (Tutungo sa kusina. Mapapansin ang racket na nakapatong sa shoerack, isusukbit ito sa dingding, saka tutungo sa kusina.)

ABIGAIL: (Paanas.) Narinig mo?

MIKHAIL: Ang laki ng boses. (Gagayahin ang narinig.) Hello, si Jun. Ikaw ba si Mikhail? Ang mommy n’yo puwedeng makausap?

ABIGAIL: Sabi ko sa iyo, girlfriend ni Mommy yun, e. Honey pa ang tawag, narinig mo?

MIKHAIL: (Tatayo, lalapit sa telebisyon, titingnan ang picture frame na nakapatong rito.) E, ano kung gelpren. Parang si Aisa Seguerra, girl ang gelpren.

ABIGAIL: Ay, tange. Siyempre no, pag girlfriend, e di, girl! Pag boy, e di, boyfriend!

MIKHAIL: (Dadamputin ang frame.) Maganda naman siya a.

ABIGAIL: (Kunyari may hawak na telepono, lalakihan at bababaan ang boses.) Hello, ikaw ba si Abigail? Si Jun to. Ang mommy mo puwedeng makausap? (Lalapit sa kapatid.) Tingnan mo, o. Nag-aakbayan pa sila.

MIKHAIL: E, ano.

ABIGAIL: E, pa’no kung asawahin na siya ni Mommy?

MIKHAIL: (Kikibit-balikat.) Maganda naman siya a. Parang girl, tingnan mo.

ABIGAIL: Parang boy! Pa’no maging girl, ang igsi ng buhok at mas matangkad pa kay Mommy! Si Mommy ang girl, no.

MIKHAIL: E, di boy-girl.

ABIGAIL: Anong boy-girl!?!

MIKHAIL: (Kikibit-balikat na ibabalik ang picture frame sa ibabaw ng TV set.)Bahala sila.

ABIGAIL: Anong bahala sila!

MIKHAIL: Bahala na. (Magdadampot ng photo album at bubuklatin.)

ABIGAIL: Anong bahala na!?! Ang ibig sabihin nu'n… tama si Papa. (Pabulong) Masamang babae si Mommy!

MIKHAIL: (Kikibit-balikat.) Ganu’n naman ang matatanda e. Masasama.

.....

Did you know how crowded Limbo is?

2010-10-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

Catholic opponents of reproductive freedom for women remain fixated on the minority of cases of induced abortion, incurious about the vast majority of cases.

We do not know and we may never know how many conceptions are wasted. Some ovarian cysts, we do not know what proportion, are caused by the fertilization of ova which have failed to escape from the follicle. Until the microscopic examination of ovaries removed at surgery is undertaken as a matter of course, we shall continue to have no idea how common an event this is. Many ovarian cysts balloon up only to subside, possibly indicating the reabsorption of such pregnancies. Other kinds of early pregnancy wastage occur because the fertilized ovum fails to be gathered into the fallopian tube and wanders off into the peritoneal cavity to be eventually reabsorbed. A commoner and much more mysterious kind of early pregnancy wastage is caused by a "shortened luteal phase". In a normal pregnancy the ruptured follicle changes into the corpus luteum which secretes the progesterone needed for the maintenance of the pregnancy and the suppression of further ovulation; if conception does not occur the corpus luteum is shed at menstruation. If the luteal phase is accelerated, the process of sloughing begins before the fertilized ovum has a chance to implant in the uterus wall. Women who suffer from this kind of infertility are, in fact, habitual aborters.

Germaine Greer
Sex and Destiny The Politics of Human Fertility

She comes with horns and tail

2010-10-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

She comes with horns and tail
And yet no nightmare made of air
On film such lissomeness
She carries heaven when she walks
On all fours she is
The metamorphosis
True to the touch
And true only to her looks
Hair done or undone
Till a man can swear
She comes with horns not the moon
And tail not the comet
Someone no woman has met
In the mirror

Cezar Ruis Aquino

Streetgirls and lesbianism

2010-07-22T01:49:00.000-07:00

"They say that the girls at Bankerohan are going crazy over lesbians for the sex. But we don't know what they're talking about!"

More and more girls are taking to the streets. A good number are dykes.

The phenomenon can be easily understood: the street's counter culture makes a good breeding place for toughies, and where families fail to provide protective shelters for growing girls, "choosing to be boys" can be a nice escape route. Tomboys, unlike girls, are freer in many ways and can fend for themselves, and but for the catcalls and the verbal abuse they had to take in ample amount when walking down the road, for the most part they really have more fun.

But of course, parents are concerned their daughters are into this "unnatural thing". But most concur that their daughters are safer with girls than with boys. Fifty-year old Alicia says she's not distressed with her 20-year old daughter's having a girlfriend. "It's not really the dirty thing people think it to be. Whatever they're doing, they'll outgrow it. Mostly it's just friendship between girls."

Sexual encounters with lesbians, when they get to the news at all, often get tabloid treatment. In educated circles, and even in educated women circles, the noxious stereotype that lesbians rape women in quite unallayed. While seduction and rape of women by lesbians do occur, especially where most sexual transactions are patterned after patriarchal behaviors, what makes lesbian sex and lesbian relationships the bigger crime they are often painted to be is the lesbophobia that so frame them. Sure, it does happen, but that says nothing about the social position of lesbians. In a macho society, it is the men that too often get away with raping women, more so, with raping lesbians.

Most lesbians actually have no word for discrimination. Davao's young lesbians, for example, don't think they have to share the older lesbians' disadvantaged position. "You just have to behave well and people will respect you," 18-year old Nads says. "But if you start acting smart and call attention to yourself, then you get problems."

She says she's been dating girls since she was 13 and has had eight girlfriends to date. She would fetch them from school and walk them home and never did people harass them. While her mother had long taken to the fact that she's a tomboy, her father has steadfastly objected and told her, time and again, to leave her dirty shameful ways. Girls going with girls, to her father's eyes, is sinful, abominable.

Contrary to her father's suspicions, Nads says that she has had no sexual activities with any of her girlfriends. "I really don't know how. They say that the girls at Bankerohan are going crazy over lesbians for the sex. But we don't know what they're talking about!" For one, there is just no space to do sex in. At school they have to wear their uniforms, stay neat and behave properly or they'd be sent home. At home they're jam-packed with the rest of their sibling and there are the babies that their mothers keep on dumping on their laps. "We only get to see our girlfriends if we meet them early evening, between school and home. Then we have to hide some place in the dark just for us to be able to hold hands and get close."

While admitting to the "unnaturalness" of girl-to-girl relationships, most mothers would rather have their daughters go with other girls where they're less likely to get raped or abused. Alicia insists she would rather that her daughter is a tomboy than pregnant. "They're young. It's just a temporary stage they will someday leave when they get married or become mothers themselves. I was once like them and had a girlfriend, and now both I and my girlfriend had gotten married, too."

Not all the young dykes share the optimism, though. Sixteen-year old Michelle says that being a lesbian gave her a way out.

"When I was a girl I got all the blame. My mother used to get very angry and would call me whore for going out with boys. She said to not ever come home pregnant or she'll bash me in the head. But she's the one that keeps on getting herself pregnant. There are ten of us now and I just don't know when will the babies ever stop coming. I'm just tired of looking after wailing babies. So I said the best way not to become a whore or like my mother is to be a tomboy."

Women in the militias

2010-06-10T03:34:00.001-07:00

Lollipops

2010-05-28T23:53:00.001-07:00

28 May 2010

Dear Shi,

Hassan: "May surprise ka Mama?" Meaning, something sweet, brown, sticky that will make him happy.

Quiet. For a little while. Para me matapos ka na gawa.

Tanong ko sa sarili ko, "Me surprise ka, Mimi, para sa self mo?"

Gusto ko sana, lollipop.
.
Halika ka man, Shi, close your eyes, feet together, hands folded at your tum-tum (tummy). Tapos, imagine the prettiest lollipop you would like to have.

Ayaw ko nung rounded, sticky ,milky type. The thing where the cover is glued to the stem (yung hawakan ba). Marami sa Gaisano ng ganun. Meron naman galing China, glossy wrapper, neon colored ang handle, na umiilaw pag sina suck mo ang lollipop. 10 pesos.
The transparent, less sweet ones are ok. You meet them at Pediatricians' clinics. Above-mentioned are short-stemmed. The monstrously huge, kalo-ud sweet, with spiral designs are in Fun Houses. They come with long stems (made of plastic).

The best variety I've tasted are the home-made ones. Didto kina Aling Baray. Promise, da best. Wrapped in plastic, long-stemmed (made of bamboo stick), flat, round and tastes like yema. Pag birthday, the stem is designed with loops of multicolored Japanese paper strips, me palawit na paper cutouts (sunflower ang pinaka guapa).

Ang sarap nun, Shi.

Yun ang gusto kong surprise.

Take a walk. Bring your favorite cloth string bag. Hindi pwede plastic na transparent.

Tapos, hunt for your dream Lollipop. Like eating one, hunting for the best is also a solitary exercise. May take you days.

Once your bag is half-full or full, sit them in your beloved table. May arrange them in circles, in rows or put them haphazardly. They make good companions. May stare at them. Or they can stare at you. Perfect, isn't it?

Put your feet up. After a careful deliberation, choose the first pick. Remove the wrapper ever so carefully. Twirl the stem between your thumb and index finger - for luck. Then, moisten the sides (to wash away some packaging taste). May lick-pop it out or suck-lick then pop it out or run it over the top of the teeth or cheek to cheek. Different ways to do it. Do not do so absentmindedly. Must savor and enjoy it. Best if done alone.

Or you may share it with da pipol there. Beneficial for those who know 'reverence'.

Shi, bring the monster lollipop to a most scary (meaning boring) meeting with hyenas.

If you can't stand it anymore. Them, this life, yourself.

The lollipop (now consumed) takes the task of silencing the species (Darn, Barnacle Heads!), position the stem to its fighting form. Tapos, itusok sa mata. If not enough, dupla-i sa both eyes. Ha.

I feel good already.

Respectfully yours,
Mimi

Mas Exciting Ba ang Sexlayf ng mga Lesbians?

2010-05-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

Tumba Lata: Ang mas interes ko pa gay politics sa Manila. Do you even want to talk about it?

Anna Leah: Which gay politics you want to talk about, ang mga intrigahan ng mga lesbiana sa Manila? [Laughter]

Maria: Ang question ko ay, exciting ba ang sex life ninyo?

TL: Meron ba?

Anna Leah: That depends on your partner. What’s the difference, ba.

Maria: Kasi, alam mo na that you’re lesbians di ba, so… tapos di ba lesbians are such a small group in Philippine society, di ba, kaya mas may choice kayo ng sexual partners, di ba?

Anna Leah: No. Iyon ba’ng iniisip mo?

Maria: Ini-imagine ko lang naman iyon. Hindi rin totoo? Hindi automatically exciting?

Anna Leah: No! There’s nothing automatic about sex no matter what your sexual orientation is!

Maria: Okay.

Anna Maria: It’s much more difficult nga e kung lesbiana ka kasi hindi mo alam. Kung alam mo naman, 95 percent tago, o kung hindi naman tago, merong pang okay, but we cannot do this, we cannot do that. It’s tiring. And then there’s the role playing.

Maria: Meron role-playing?

Anna Leah: More! Ako, I cannot accept this kasi galing ako sa feminist movement. Playing boy and playing girl and all of that na it’s kind of ridiculous na.

TL: Yeah. Kasi na-raise sa heterosexual mold. I hate it.

Anna Leah: Ya. In one place I went to, sa New Zealand ba yun o sa Sydney, kasi may isang grupo diyan na mga Pinay lesbians. They are more open dun, pero they have this role-playing! They’re so old-fashioned. May butches, may femmes, tapos ang tingin nila, yung butch girlfriends lang nila ang lesbian, kung ikaw ang femme, ikaw lang ang maganda.

TL: Ya. Napaka-heterosexual. My gosh, kaya ka nga naging lesbian eh…

Maria: Akala ko wala na yang ganun.

Anna Leah: In the olden time! I’m talking about the olden time! It was like that eh. They’re so old-fashioned.

Sheilfa: Ya. And so ignorant.

Maria: Hahaha.

TL: Dito sa Dabaw ganyan. Yung mga girlfirend ng mga taga-Link, halimbawa, tingin nila sa sarili nila hindi sila lesbian, normal sila, yung butch boypren ang lesbian.

Maria: Bakit ang anak ko gay, dalawa silang magan... dalawa silang pogi. Pag tinatanong ko sinong lalaki sa kanila, wala raw.

Anna Leah: Ya. Sa younger set iyan. Sa old-style hindi ganyan. But those who grew up sa feminist at post-feminist period, siyempre, hindi na ganyan.

Sheilfa: Meron ding parehong lesbians. Pero…

Maria: So you can be natural about it na?

Anna Leah: Oo, you can dress in whatever way you like with all the affects. But a lot are still like that. Majority of young lesbians are still like that. In so many ways they are still very conservative. Because they love to go to church, they feel guilty of whatever it is they're doing, they think they have this long litany of sins to confess… I mean, what’s this!!! To think they’re supposed to be younger than us, ha. [Laughter] But you see, some of them are in the Charismatic! Some are born-again!

Sheilfa: That’s true.

Anna Leah: Majority, 95 percent of young lesbians are still like that. Pero yung mga nakapunta na sa Amerika, siyempe hindi ganun.

Maria: Mas matatag na?

Anna Leah: Not necessarily. Most of them still cannot do what they really have to do. Sa mga iilang quarters lang, only inside the women’s movements. But not outside.

Maria: Can you also say that of yourselves? You cannot go outside? [to TL] Ikaw, kaya mo?

TL: Ako kaya ko, pero kung ang partner ko ayaw, mahirap iyon. You cannot be.

Anna Leah: Ya. If your partner can’t, it cannot be.

Maria: You see? Sabagay anak ko, iyan din problema nila ng partner niya eh. Sabi nga niya, siguro antayin lang kung magkaroon na ng stable na hanapbuhay…

Anna Leah: Ya, that’s one thing I realized. When I saw the… iyong first exposure ko kasi sa lesbian life, sa Regumi, it was in a way self-sufficient. Sa Tokyo in Japan, Regumi Studio.

TL: Ha? Ano yun?

Anna Leah: Re-gu-mi. I don’t know what gumi means anymore but the Re there stands for resbians.

TL: Really? Regumi Studio?

Anna Leah: That doesn’t exist anymore. They were about my age or a little younger. Mga artists, writers, at the time some were students pa, kaya they somehow had their own means of earning money, so even if they were living with their parents, if they had to leave they could leave.

Maria: That’s not only for lesbians, that’s for any body who wants to stand in their own feet and raise their fists and make an opinion.

Anna Leah: In any society where the family is very dominant. That’s the reason why there’s a small percentage of migrant workers who are not poor but still want to leave the country. Their reason for leaving is not economic. They are constricted in a society where the family is very dominant.

Maria: Pero alam mo, Anna, iyong pinagdaanan natin, tayo na nakipaghiwalay, thinking back? Ang hirap! I shut everyone off in my family. I never got their support! Not that I minded. But I don’t know why naman…

Anna Leah: They’re worried because they’re thinking of what will people say.

Maria: Ya. And not only that but also what will happen to your life now.

Anna Leah: Ya. Ako kasi, I felt as a parent. Among parents of gays and lesbians that’s very strong.

Maria: Ako ganyan din. When I learned that my son was gay, I said it’s my fault, I made mistakes in the decisions that I made. I failed as a parent. Sabi ng anak ko, ‘Ma, huwag mo naman agawin sa ken ang eksena, ako ang dumadaan nito…’ [Laughter] That really put me in my place!

Anna Leah: Ako naman yung guilt ko as a separated mother. Did I become so self-indulgent sa sarili kong mga problema kung kaya hindi ko na naasikaso mga anak ko.

Maria: Ya. Sa mga decisions na ginawa natin. Bumabalik talaga sa atin iyan, no.

Anna Leah: We tried our best! That’s all we could do!

Maria: Pero kung hindi natin ginawa yung mga ginawa natin, baka patay na rin tayo. If not physically, baka spiritually!

Anna Leah: Oo. The thing is, to do something more. What else could I do now?

Maria: Pero ikaw, nung nakipaghiwalay ka, it was not because lesbian ka?

Anna Leah: No! I discovered that I was lesbian later on na. Pero siyempre para [sa ex-husband ko], it was my fault. Siyempre i-justify niya, kahit pa at the time may anak na siya [sa ibang babae]. Hay… ngayon nga kapag nakikinig ako sa mga kuwento ng ibang babae, sabi ko, parang pareho lang kami [Laughter], hindi nga lang ako binato. Pero iyong mga pang-iinsulto…pareho lang!

Maria: Baka hindi ka lang binato dahil di ka niya kayang batuhin. O baka pag tumagal pa kayo, kung nag-stay ka pa baka nabato ka na rin niya.

Anna Leah: Ya.

TL: Oo.

Maria: If it took longer baka binato ka rin kasi gitgitan na kayo eh.

Do not for one moment

2010-05-18T00:53:00.000-07:00

Always remember this: Do not for one moment think that in this patriarchal order every victory we win will be permanent. The backlash may even come from your allies and friends. But never doubt that every thing we achieve, no matter how small is breaking a chip on the wall of male supremacists, and one day this wall will come crumbling down. I read the drama of church pedophilia with delight while I watch every careful statement of Hillary Clinton on the role of women's empowerment in fighting terrorism. These are not small events. They are major earthquakes under the ocean. But then, even one huge tsunami does not demolish everything. It will take several big waves.

Anna Leah Sarabia

Online with K, an ambush interview

2010-05-17T02:19:00.000-07:00

TL: Puwede kita interbyuhin?
K: Personal?
TL: Personal and not so personal.
K: Sige, go. Sana hindi mag brown out.
TL: Mahirap ba maging lesbian? To be young and lesbian.
K: No, I don't find it difficult. Like the basic lesbian part?
TL: What’s the basic lesbian part?
K: Liking a girl? No, it’s not difficult.
TL: Including loving a girl and making love with a girl?
K: YES. I don't find it difficult.
TL: Do we think of lovemaking as a private act?
K: To me it's very private.
TL: Rephrase: When you make love with another woman do you think of society?
K: Hahaha. No.
TL: Do you feel like you got one over the rest of society?
K: No, I don't think that way.
TL: Yung feeling na you defy society or that you defy death itself meron ka ganun?
K: During the first times, actually I felt like I was defying society. I felt like I have something unique and it was good. Unique in a good way.
TL: So what's the hard part? Loving another girl and having it published in Tumba Lata?
K: The hard part was having a family that's against it. And my family is a big part of me.
TL: You tried sitting down with your family? Negotiate? Or is it an unspoken thing?
Unspeakable?
K: I tried negotiating, yes. They said naman that they'll eventually come to accept it. My aunt is a butch, and she lives with us.
TL: I see.
K: But not now. And that I should not push it or rub it in their faces, say by bringing my gf home.
TL: Suppose I ask you to manage Tumbalata, is that kind of visibility difficult?
K: Yes, it's difficult.
TL: Why?
K: Because I have this thing against organizations which I sometimes don't understand. Parang I'm okay on my own.
TL: You don’t like institutional lesbianism? Institutional feminism?
K: Like pag may rally sa school, it's easy for me to say "Yeah, I feel you, I totally understand you," but I can't go out there and participate with them. Institutional lesbianism? Hahaha. May ganun ba?
TL: I see. And you also don't like organization people? Bumper sticker politics?
K: Not naman that I don't like. Indifferent lang siguro. I think young people nowadays, they're too busy. Especially yuppies no? Or they think they're busier than they really are.
TL: So what's your idea of feminist practice? Lord, tell me if I’m beginning to sound like a manifesto.
K: Okay ra. Hehe. Feminist practice... Forgive me for being too simplistic sometimes, but I think it's just knowing what you deserve and how you should be treated and not letting people walk over you just because you're a woman.
TL: And how do we claim such entitlements? Or are those rights or entitlements? Or okay, eto na lang. Is visibility important to you?
K: Visibility, yes. Kaya lang ang hirap kasi pag nasa net. Tech-savvy pa naman si Papa.
TL: Okay. Tell me about what you think of most feminists. Then tell me about what you think of older lesbians those ugly dykes.
K: Haha. Most feminists are okay. I've met feminists of different kinds, may radical, may "soft", may learned o bookish lang, may pulitiko. So I have different perceptions of them.
TL: Aray. Parang class A, class B no. Parang saging sa Stanfilco. Hahaha.
K: In general, feminists are doing a good job, simply by speaking out every time they see an opportunity to do so.
TL: Which ones can you work with? None? They’re all the same cantankerous bitches? Those gaggles of protesters.
K: Older lesbians? I've lived with an older lesbian, my aunt, for like more than 10 years. I think they're just like younger lesbians. I can't work with radical feminists, I really can't. They're so angsty. And bad vibesey. So I can't work right.
TL: Oh God. You talking about me? Gabriela? By radical do you mean those advocating for armed struggle or…
K: By radical I mean the ones who sweat the little things and are always angry. Are you always angry?
TL: All the time! Haha.
K: I'm more of the soft one kasi. I can't handle the rage.
TL: Seriously, I leave the classification to others. I just do what I can. I also like rage. Jesus Christ. In myself, and in others.
K: I think the best way to go with feminism is awareness, education.
TL: So what are the little things.
K: For example, I like it when you write about feminism. I like reading feminist literature. I like it when we talk about feminism over coffee, on a relaxed afternoon. BUT if somebody raises her voice, I won't be able to engage with that person properly.
TL: Okay.
K: Even if we declared ourselves feminists five minutes ago.
TL: I’m beginning to enjoy this conversation. People here at the office all went out to the rally. You think I should go? Haha. I didn’t already.
K: Ano’ng rally?
TL: Gabriela yata. Sa Rizal Park daw. Medyo alam ko na man ano maririnig ko, so di nalang siguro ako pupunta. You like bitching?
K: Oo, wag na lang, ang init. Aircon ba diyan where you’re sitting?
TP: Aircon po. Feeling ko nga kaya nila ako gusto sumama para maturnoff na lahat ng aircons rito hahaha.
K: O diha nalang ka. Hayahay. Bitching. Mahimo kong hypocrite ani da. I think I like bitching, when I am in my element. Haha. When I think I'm right and I have a lot of supporting data.
TP: Let’s talk about love and feminism.
K: ♥. :)
TL: If your darling sweetiepies you, you don’t feel like a throwback to, you know, Snowwhite and the seven dwarfs? Dwarfs not dwarves, naku, magagalit sa ken pamangkin ko nito.
K: Wala ko kasabot. :)
TL: How’s the role playing like?
K: The man-woman role playing?
TL: Does she play man you play managable sweet lil darling? Di naman ganun no, kastraitjacket naman na stereotyping. And how do you bitch with her.
K: At first it was difficult.
TL: I really don’t assume that just because you play girl you’re subordinate. On the contrary?
K: It's my first time to like a butch. But now I'm used to it. She likes playing man. She's introsexual. She thinks she's a man inside a woman's body.
TL: When is it oppressive? If ever.
K: Well, it has never been oppressive. Di naman umabot sa ganun na point. And I know her history. Since she was like three, she liked playing with the boy's toys. And at Grade 2, she had a girl crush. So she knew.
TL: Are butch lesbians better than lipstick lesbians? In what ways.
K: Neither is better. :)
TL: Neither is a better lover? Thought butches are great in bed, aren’t we?
K: Parang same lang. :) Pag mahal mo, yun na yun.
TL: Okay.
TL: You had had relationships with boys din, di ba?
K: Yes, I had relationshipss with boys din. I’ve had four bfs.
TL: In what ways are boys better than girls. Karelasyonwise. I rather like male bashing 101. Lesbian entitlement hah.
K: First time ko nakipaglive in.
TL: You were never into a live-in arrangement before?
K: Never.
TL: So now, ano sources of conflict ninyo? Do you quarrel about money? Insecurities dahil she's not good enough for your parents? Things like that. How about hatian ng trabaho? Labada, halimbawa, o bayad sa labandera? Walang ganun?
K: Miscommunication pa ang source of conflict usually. I'm kinda burara. :P. We quarreled about money na rin, pero once lang and we vowed it must never get between us again. Sa chores, thankfully wala talaga. :) In fact, she takes the initiative na mag ayos-ayos. Sa housechores it’s one hundred percent okay talaga. :)
TL: You wash each other's panties? Hahaha. Briefs pala.
K: No. I do the underwear washing. Haha. Coz I like it! :0
TL: So intimate no?
K: Yes, it is. :)
TL: You two are fiercely monogamous too?
K: Fiercely is the term, yes.
TL: Ilang taon na kayo.
K: Me I’m turning 21. She’s turning 27.
TL: No. The relationship. How many ears you’ve had na.
K: Ah. One year and three months. Live-in for eleven months.
TL: Ba’t kaya karamihan sa lesbians parang wlang wear and tear. Most "ideal" partnerships that I know kahit sa history at literature for life!
K: That's true. :) Hey I think you'll like this song. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sarabareilles/fairytale.html
TL: Hey thanks. Sige, will get it. Salamat gyud.
K: No prob :)

Gifts

2010-05-15T03:52:00.001-07:00

My lover returns my life to me
In bits and pieces
A few photographs here and there
The half-inch Chinese jade turtle I loved
An old watch I may have given her
A magazine saved twenty years ago
All forgotten
Left behind in the home I left
They’re yours
She said
Thought you might want them

To have and not know
To lose and not know
To cherish then forget
Like everything else past and present
It’s all there
Mine
Not mine
No longer mine
To be surprised yet not
Old and new
New and old
In the moment all mine

Sa Imong Mata

2010-05-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Kining gipanganak tang guwapa, uy.

Sige, Nong, tutok gyud. Unya mopilit nang imong mata sa akong dughan. Tawon, luoy sab. Nalibat na siya. Dali diri, Nong. Luag-luag diri.

Kadalo ba’g pasahero ning draybera, uy. Punuon man gyud. Maglisod baya ta unya’g untay sa atong kamot.

Kana. Nibalhin na siya. Sige, Nong, tapad. Duot. Maayo kay nagduka nang atong tapad, libre ta ani unya. Wa na. Nikamang na iyang kamot.

Sige, Nong. Alsaha kanang blawsa kay luag-luag man na. Kana, sige, palikod-likod sa ka. Abaw si Inday, mosipat ra ba. Dili tawon ni nako uyab, Day. Nanguyab pa lang ni nako.

Uy. Giganahan man. Gitik baya. Ako tawon na’ng bilbil, Nong. Abi nimo’g ikaw ray naay ingon ana? Ups. Animal ka. Mangluspad baya ta. Mosaka pa gani nang imong kamot, mosyagit na ko. Sige, Day. Tutuki gyud, pakauwawi gyud. Dah lagi. Nikanaug lagi iyang kamot. Naulaw ka? Hastilan, hapuon diay dayon, kato pa lang gani. Hups. Pagkamaayo pud aning draybera, da. Mura’g demonyo kun mopadagan, murag Satanas kun makatunob sa breyk. Mosirko baya ta. Maynalang, tambukon ni si Manong. Uy, diri ra ka, Day? Wa na miy luk-awt ani. Na, hala, sige, babay. Kaguwapo sa imong wallet, Pierre Cardin man gyud, pero di malimod sa imong agtang nga student ID ra og resibo sa pinrenda nimong kulintas ug sa mga binayran mos eskuwelahan ang iyang unod ana. Lami pud ka’g lubot, Day, naghining-hining pa gyud imong legs, pero paita ning kinabuhia, mura’g walay higayon atong gugma.

Kining mga estudyante. Painglis-inglis nga mura’g mga maya. Nia pay mga bayot nga sa kadaghang mahimong awaton sa mga babaye ang mga way pulos pay maoy puniton. Modato gyud og samot ang Mendez ug Rusty Lopez. Magpointy shoes nga ang mga kamagko nang-awas sa tumbanan. Samuk mo. Klaro ra ba sa inyong mga alimutaw nga hangol mo’g kalipay. Maypang mopiyong oy, samtang naay dughan diri nga way nanag-iya. Humok-humok ra ba sa aping ning iyang panapton. Dockers. Ma-dockers gyud ka unya, Nong. Ups. Mapaso baya ta sa imong ginhawa. Huh. Tagad ka kay sa unhan manaog na ko. Mayo didto kay daghang tawo ug daghang taksing naghulat kanako. Siyaro’g di ka mingawon nako ron. Sige, kana. Paningkamot gyud, Nong, isaka pa. Ups, mura’g maayo to, dah. Ayaw lang palabii kay maduplaan ta gyud ka unya. Taym sa. Taym. Pabasla ra gud ko, uhm. Preno. Preno, Nong, preno.

“Huuuh! Hastilan ning syudara, uy. Puwerteng iganga. Didto tas Gaisano Mall, Dong. Diri ta agi sa likod para short cut.”

Daw bi, atong tan-awon. Mura’g baga-baga ni, dah. Ayay, puro yellow. Twelve thousand and seven hundred seventy pesos. Hah. Kaimpas na jud ka’g renta sa balay, Kol, magawad na jud nimo imong cellphone nagbakasyon sa Rosver, makapalit pa jud ka’g bag-ong brief, ug makapada kag pang-tuition. Ingon pa lagi ko nga arangan tong dagwaya to. Siguro naplatan lang to’g awto, ba. Daghana’g credit card, o. Uy. Non-government organization! Ha! Tinuod man kaha na ilang ginasulti nga daghang kwarta kining mga NGO. Consultant. Unsa kaha nang consultant, sama kaha sa doktor nga maglingkod ka og lima ka minutos, ngutana-ngutana unsa imong gibati, hikap-hikapon imong liog ug agtang, unya resitahan ka’g amoxicillin ug mefenamic acid, bayad dayon ka og two hundred nga check-up fee? Ay, bahala sila.

Pero anugon, dah. Kay mura’g lami man to siya. Buotan baya’g nawong ug dako-dako baya’g kaha. Kalisod lang, kay anaa mo sa sulod ka nangguot nga dyipni udto-adlawng dako, taman unsa ra man inyong dangatan ana. Tingali, kun kami rang duha adto, sa bugnaw-bugnaw nga lugar, mas dako siguro ko’g makubra.

Si Ice Cream at si Sammy Davis Jr.

2010-05-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

Salamat sa mga Tumba Lata. Mamatay pud ko ug basa lalo na pagintindi.

Kabalo ka, nakit-an naku usab ang gipadala nimu sa una nga kopya sa hfm (Oct-Dec 2002). Naalala mo pa? Dekada Otsenta: Ganito Kami Noon. Eto si Has, praktis kami basa, sabi niya, Bakit nabalot ng tape ang katawan ng babae?

Napakinggan mo na si Sammy Davis Jr.? "Who can I turn to? When nobody loves me. My heart wants to know and so, I must go where destiny leads me. . ."

Gusto mo ba ang ice cream? Remember ang kinakanta sa public elementary school? "Kung ang ulan ay malapot na sorbetes. Oh, kay sarap ng ulan. Ako'y lalabas na buka ang bibig. Ahh, Ahhh, Ahhh, ahhh, Ahhh. Oh, kay sarap ng ulan." Naisip ko, parang ganun pwedeng i-picture ang buhay ko na kasama si Has.

At merong ding madidilim na oras, ha. Pag me ulan. Kinasasama lang talaga ng loob ko na parang nauubusan ako ng oras para sa sarili ko. At nasisisi ko ang demands ni Has sa panahon ko. Mama, please... Mama, pwedeng ganito.... Mama, ako naman manonood. Kapuy ,uy.

Next time, you lick your ice cream, think of sticky, cold, smooth ice cream falling down on you, like raindrops.

Mimi

Beautiful people, beautiful places

2010-05-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

thanks to: suzannah maclay, pancho lara, ayie oyala, karen kaye rivero and king oey for the photos

The Crazy Crier: The Other Version

2010-04-13T19:08:00.001-07:00

by
The Monica Palacios

Growing up, my mother would tell me scary stories of the Latino folklore character known as La Llorona Loca—ang babaye nga sige’g nguynguy. According to my mother, “…this woman drowned her children—apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed—a little pissed off…” And as the story goes, La Llorona Loca, realizing she had done this horrible act, tried to deal with her crazed sorrow by searching and crying desperately for her children. The story also states that, as she wailed, she wore a long white gown and, I’m guessing, low heels—remember, she’s searching.

I have always been fascinated by the legendary Llorona Loca, and I knew there had to be more to her. Was she trying to wean herself from caffeine when this notorious incident happened? What was her astrological sign? And did she know about networking? My curious mind led me to the Llorona Loca Archives at UCLA and there, my friends, I found a story that was never told to me. I now present it to you.

Many years ago, in Mexico, lived a very beautiful woman by the name of Caliente! Every man wanted her—every woman wanted to be like her. She would walk down the street and the men would shout out (in Spanish, of course):

Ay, Inday…
Day, dali diri Day.
Pahikap Ga.

Yeah! She was really beautiful!!!

But there was something different about her, something that the townspeople could not figure out. As beautiful as she was, she had never married. She was never seen with a man. And this girl was thirty years old! So it was like—you know—what’s up? The townspeople would whisper among themselves:

Lack of male companionship.
She wears spurs—on her house slippers.
She’s always eyeing the girls. I bet she’s a PE teacher!

One glorious day, a stranger rode into town, looking for a woman. The stranger galloped down the main drag when all of a sudden, the stranger caught the eye of Caliente, who was sitting on her porch balancing her checkbook. Their eyes locked. Caliente walked towards the stranger. The stranger took off her hat—that’s right—I said her hat. Her black curly locks fell down to her leather chaps. Caliente dropped her checkbook. The stranger, who was looking mighty fine and very voluptuous to Caliente said, “If you want something good, you will ride with me and you will be my woman, mi mujer!” Caliente quickly jumped on the stranger’s horse and the new couple briskly rode out of town. They had no choice—they were being chased by many macho Mexican dudes.

The women stopped in Tijuana, got married by a curandera (a baylan or local witch in our country) and eventually settled down in Bakersfield. Happy, in love, and always “doing it.” Until the morning came when La Stranger (as she was affectionately called by Caliente because her real name was Petronilia de la Chihuahua y qué!), took Caliente to their favorite spot by the river. Caliente was looking as radiant as ever, dressed all in white, her skin aglow and her lips red with passion. La Stranger put Caliente’s hand in hers, and said, “Mi vida, I am like the river, I am the happiest when I’m moving.”

Caliente gave La Stranger a perplexed look , “Cut the crap. Get to the point!”

La Stranger smiled, “Mi reina, every Wednesday during the last six months, while you were at your Latina: I am Woman, You Are Scum support group, I was having an affair with—with—Trixie!”

Caliente brought La Stranger’s hand to her mouth and bit it. “Puta! Trixie is such a sleaze ball! She’ll do anything with anybody for a quarter!”

La Stranger chuckled and said. “I know. Yeah, that’s Trixie.”

Jealousy filled Caliente’s body from head to toe. La Stranger could see the fire in Caliente’s eyes. (She kind of looked like my Mom when I came home drunk from my friend’s teenager girlfriend.) La Stranger blurted out, “Now, look Baby, let’s talk. Let’s get into a feeling circle.”

Caliente slapped La Stranger, who then said, “Okay, let’s not get into a feeling circle. You can have the property.”

By now, Caliente could no longer control herself. She jumped at La Stranger and pushed her into the river, holding her head down until La Stranger’s body went limp. Caliente, realizing that she had done this horrible act, started to scream and cry uncontrollably until she fainted into the river and died. I’m sorry to bring you down folks, but that’s life.

Two hours later, a group of women on a boat returning from a sexual healing weekend, spotted the two floating bodies and buried them together by the riverbank. A week after the burial, a villager was getting water from the river and was startled by the eerie cry of a woman. At first he thought it was just another Celine Dion music but as he listened closely, he could hear something about “a stranger”. He tiptoed towards the cry and a woman appeared from the bushes, dressed all in white and wearing clogs. He jumped back and gasped, “Clogs? Hala, ka-seventies bah uy.” The ghostlike woman sobbed and walked to him and asked, “Yots, have you seen La Stranger?”

The villager dropped his pail of water and scampered away arms flapping in the air.

From this time on, the people heard and saw this woman almost every night—searching, crying desperately for La Stranger. Her crying was so hysterical that everyone began to get annoyed with her and just dismissed her, calling her La Llorona Loca, Ang buang-buang nga bangagan.

Potrait of a man by Loren Cameron

2010-04-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

“We didn’t feel it was a matter of choice. We just had to.”

I suppose I have told the same old story countless times now. I mean, every transsexual man I’ve ever met tells the same story. “I never felt like a girl; I played with boys’ toys and liked boys’ games, etc.” Then a rehash about pubescent anxiety, how your body betrays you and you begin to develop very clever coping mechanisms to manage the stress. Like bad posture to hide your budding breasts and big boots and baggy shirts—and lesbianism, if you’re lucky.

That was my story, anyway. I figured out early on that I had somehow gotten a square peg, and I wasn’t too happy about it. Right from the start this skin of mine just didn’t fit. Maybe it was because Mom was going through a divorce when she carried me in her womb. Maybe she was having some survival issues, causing her to put me awash in testosterone.

Or maybe it was those GI Joes I played with. Did you ever have one? They had the best uniforms. Lots of outfits to choose from—and boots, don’t forget boots. Big guns and grenades and cool scars. (Scars. I see a real early influence here.) Or it could be that I noticed I always got KP duty and was never promoted above the rank of private when I played Army with the boys on my block. Girls were never allowed to go into combat.

I don’t really know what felt so out of whack, and I don’t think I really care. I guess there are as many reasons why a transsexual is transsexual as there are people in the world. All that matters is that it’s my body and I can do what I want with it.

It’s too bad that my days in Lesbiana had to come to an end. After about ten years of Butch Camp, I graduated to Boy World, big time. All of a sudden, one year I woke up and realized that the boobs had to go. What’s more, I wanted a beard too. And a nice, hard, lean body to go with it. A penis? I would settle for an oversize clitoris; it was cheaper, and it works better.

I guess that means I wanted to be a man. But that felt so alien in the beginning of my change. I was still very socialized as Butch Lesbian. (That isn’t the same as Female. Do you get it?) I felt like a boy in the first few years, and I looked like one too: lots of pimples and a breaking voice, a bad temper and a randy disposition. I remember once occasion when I was shopping for clothes with my girlfriend Isabella. She was High Femme (I was still into femmes in those days), a few inches taller, and a little older than I was. We were in the boys’ clothing department at Macy’s, which was the only place I could find shirts to fit me. (Besides, I was in my second adolescence.( The salesperson looked at Isabella and then at me and said, “Oh, is that your son?” I was mortified. I was twenty-nine years old; Isabella was thirty-six. People used to think she was some kind of pervert or something. She was a real trouper, stayed with me through teenage zits, disapproving lesbians, and hetero assumptions. Life was pretty weird in those first years of transition, but it was exciting as well.

It was then that I picked up a camera for the first time. Around -93, I guess. I was taking really bad snapshots of myself to send to friends and family. You know, the kind that are sort of out of focus and lop off the top of your head because you’re holding the camera at arm’s length. I really got it that visuals are essential to help the folks back home keep up with me as I went through this strange body transformation, this chemical and surgical reinvention of myself. That’s when I realized that visuals were useful in helping everybody else understand it too.

I knew I had to photograph us. Transsexuals, I mean. Us—that’s what was new and different about the idea. I was going to be a photographer who was like them. I believed that we needed that, to see images of ourselves by one of us whose eye through the lens looked for a reflection. Self-portraiture. An eye that didn’t see anything odd or freakish.An eye that looked for beauty.

I began meeting more transsexual people, listening to their stories of change, and I started taking their pictures. I took more photos of myself and watched eagerly as the hormones, body building, and chest surgery sculpted my female form more and more into a male one. I was proud of what I saw, in me and in them. We all had one thing in common, if nothing else: We were hell-bent on becoming the people we believed ourselves to be. We had to; we didn’t feel it was a matter of choice.

By 1996 my book Body Alchemy was published. It’s a collection of photographs that will show you just about everything you ever wanted to know about female-to-male bodies and is chock-full of proud, handsome trans men. I have tried to represent some measure of my community in an effort to provide bolstering and informative images with text for both trans and nontrans readers. I feel it has been a needed contribution in a new wave of transsexual activism, very much a part of a burgeoning movement that began about the time I was figuring out what an f-stop was.

Finally, nearly twelve years later, I am feeling just fine. I look in the mirror, and I see the man I’ve worked so hard to grow up to be. My body has the muscular and hard build like those comic-book heroes and I always wanted to look like. (Well, maybe not quite as big, especially in the crotch. Did you ever notice how big they look in those tights?) My beard, at long last, has filled in, while my head begins to bald, and my photography career goes skipping down its path. I’ve got a delicious pup of a girlfriend (partner) who, ironically (or maybe not so ironically), is a very handsome butch, indeed. Everybody thinks that Stephanie is my son—or my boy—and that I am some kind of old pervert queer. I tell you: Being a man can be a very confusing thing sometimes.

The Advocate
May 25, 1999, Liberation Publication, Inc.

On Homosexuality, Women's Slavery, Etc.

2010-04-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

Some might call them "Judeo-Islamo-Christian" (PoB or People of the Book) Laws. Latter-day retrograde upstanding citizens may be interested.

On her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny and informative:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law.

I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.

When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination . End of debate. It's in the Bible --end of argument!

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how best to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev. 1:9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. Clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wriggle room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev. 24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus,
Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education
University of Virginia

Poetry by Lia Lopez-Chua

2010-04-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Reluctant Enemy

I
Thrown together we have fought
Ancient rivals
Savages of the highest order
We invented metaphors
Sharp as claws
Deep cuts
Wounds that speak in the present tense

II
Then there was silence
This thing we call our daily life sailed on it
A slow boat rocking away the furious years
We each went about our separate lives
The cooking the cleaning the children
Five of mine and five of yours
A long line of voices and their vast echoes between us
Until our own voices echoed less
And less in each other’s thought

III
Sometimes it seemed the silence
Would keep us apart forever
And I could rejoice
Then without warning
The mind insists on being a river
Carrying with it anything that floats
Today it was you standing by the stairs almost
Forty years ago maybe
Hands on your hips
Screaming my name as if it choked you
Your face ripped apart by anger

IV
Could it be real
All that you said
That I am

Pardon me but I do not know what this is all about

I have searched myself for my faults
What did I do
Or is it just me with all my faults
Though none against you

V
I used to think
This hurt is never going away
A hundred years from now
In a landscape without us
Even in my own absence I will not be without you

VI
Today I am seventy years old
And you are gone
Only after you died did I learn your birthday
Was the day before mine
You would have been fifty-nine
But you are gone

In the last seven years
We had been making up
Rehearsing
Slowly
Cautiously
Short visits
Little gifts
Dinners in the presence of many family members and friends
We will have the rest of our lives to perfect this we will
not

VII
I remember on one of your trips from abroad
You brought home the finest
Peace offering
A long spread of shimmering rubies
Silk so light and luxuriant
I remember saying it was too beautiful
And you said it was the only color
To wrap the very best of wishes

VIII
Eight years you have been gone
Tomorrow I will be seventy-eight
Like the weight I carry
Brunt of my years
Your random presence
I am tired and have these
Mixed feelings
What were the fights about anyway
Have I really done what it took
To fan that rage that burned down every path
We would later have tried to find to reach each other
Where we have attempted crossing
Without finding each other on either side

IX
When I learned you do not have much time left
I went to bed and wept
Then I got up and made you a delicious dish
Misua
Sprinkled with fragrant toasted shallot and fresh Chinese celery
With the broth just so and the tenderloin thinly sliced
So it melts as you chew
I do not want you to go

X
My firstborn asked
Why not forgive and forget
Decades have rolled in and out
Births and deaths and fortunes made and lost
Have mapped their stories to our lives
Secretly transforming the configuration of our own stories
Where you and I used to stand
That patch of slime is gone
In its place an herb garden my grandson tends

Love too happens
Or that space in us unknown to us
Dark and fertile as our tropical soil
Where small gestures fall and blossom unattended
And later haunt us
Like unrequited love
Like the time you braved a family affair to see my daughter
To sit in a corner all by yourself
At my family affair

XI
I could have embraced you
And never look back
Could I

It is no longer about hate all-consuming it really had to go if I am to live
Or even that brooding petty thief called grudge
Though stealing a little here and a little there
Ends up stealing more soul than I can spare

It is perhaps out of the habit of distance
Where things are left where they are
First out of conviction then predilection
Then it is just the way it is
A crime of habit
Mindless and without promise

The couple, this painful problem: Towards a materialist analysis of lesbian loving arrangements

2010-01-28T01:03:00.000-08:00

If I love you because you are
My love, my accomplice and everything,
And in the street we walk arm in arm
Then there's more than just the two of us...

(with the voice of Tania Libertad)

This article is a draft translation of a paper presented at the Fifth Lesbian Studies International Conference, "All About Love", organized by the Bagdam Lesbian Space in Toulouse, France on14-17 April 2006. For the complete copy with footnotes please email us at: sheilfa@yahoo.com. A French version may be requested from the symposium documents. Or please contact the author at this address: juliosorro@gmail.com.

Jules Falquet

In France today as in few other countries, it seems that lesbians have managed to win some victories: a certain visibility, along with the beginning of what looks like "respectability", e.g., the recognition of marriages between women through what is known as PACS or Civil Partnership Pact of Solidarity. It also appears today that we now can freely live our “different” “sexual preference”. To some extent, this symposium is proof of this: today in 2006, two hundred lesbians peacefully get together in this prosperous city southwest France to talk, of all things, Love!

Does this mean we have compromised our values and ways of organizing our lives and have ourselves become typically part of the “western” straight (heterosexual), patriarchal, bourgeois love, couples and families? No. Rejecting this now dominant and “very attractive discourse,” we assert that exploitation based on gender, class and “race” has been reinforced by the advance of the neoliberal project. We live precarious and almost impoverished lives, our movements are being strictly limited by laws increasingly restricting immigration, while our daily life is militarized. The system is increasingly crowded, stifling, deadly. Resistance, therefore, is still the order of the day.

It is vital therefore that we take an internationalist perspective, because what happens to each individual, locally, in our personal relationships, is intimately linked with the overall picture of lesbians and women in the world. But this perspective is not sufficient unless it is accompanied by a materialist reflection. We can do this by analyzing the broader international feminist movement that exists today: the global march of women, as studied by the French sociologist Galerand Elsa (2006), which has among its demands the respect for "sexual preference". Galerand shows in her research how this genuine demand reflects a dematerialization of our struggles, as lesbianism has now been lowered to the level of a mere "sexual preference" and hides the fact that sexuality is a central element of the social relations of gender, in this case, domination of men and heterosexuality. On the contrary, I think the many “fixes” of love and sex that we are building (to adopt the expression of the Italian anthropologist Paola Tabet are closely linked to the material situation in which we find ourselves. And I think these “fixes” can enhance the system or, conversely, contribute to change.

As a lesbian and a feminist, I believe we must continue on the path of an analysis and pursue a materialist and internationalist struggle: this is how we will meet with other social struggles that are also trying to create a different world. We have much to contribute to society as a whole with respect to critical analysis and alternative project. What I try to show in this paper are as follows: 1) that neoliberal globalization seeks to reinforce a “neo-nuclear couple” model; 2) that long ago many lesbians and feminists have criticized this model; and 3) that further analysis is needed and new concrete alternatives have to be implemented, informed by deeper collective and individual thinking, drawing inspiration from other struggles that occurred and occur on the planet.

I. Changes in the family under the neoliberal framework

Obviously, the analysis presented here is very general and does not reflect the infinite complexity of the global situation. The family, which is one of the key institutions through which different patriarchal systems are crystallized and reproduced, take extremely diverse forms depending on location, class, “race”, generation or even the legal status of its members. As stressed by many Black feminists and other known social theorists (such as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Sheryl Clarke, Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman), the family can be a sanctuary of relative peace and source of necessary economic support against racism and classism of global society. But despite the diversity of existing family structures, it seems that neoliberal globalization has imposed everywhere the ideal of what we call the “neo-nuclear” family, as sometimes reproduced or rewritten in same-sex families. In reality, this means that this neo-nuclear family, unlike the extended family of the peasant model, for example, has no material basis for self-sufficiency (it does not produce what it eats or wears). This neo-nuclear family can likewise only exist as an isolated “protection unit” against “global society” without becoming a source of resistance to the system or as basis for other types of associations, communities or alternative social structures. Moreover, this neo-nuclear family is inescapably based on some deeply-held bourgeois and “western” patriarchal idea of love, focused on the couple. In this paper, I will therefore speak about a new model of family.

Material effects of neoliberalism

The precariousness and impoverishment of the vast majority of women and lesbians in the world are first of all consequences of the advance of neoliberalism, which is reinforcing inequalities in the international labor market according to criteria of gender, class, “race” and citizenship.

Certainly, part of the middle and upper classes are still able to escape the crushing machinery. Installed between blindness and a cowardly flight, this fraction of the population seems able to make individualistic retreats and attain "private happiness". Sexuality and sexual relationships are conceptualized primarily in terms of law and as non-political individual activities, linked to hedonistic pleasure. Most only want to find a mate and form a family that is her "private sanctuary of peace" against fierce capitalist competition and violence (including racism and lesbophobia) that dominate public life.

However, most of the world population today are still deprived of such privilege by virtue of their "race", nationality, class, gender, or political bias, among others, and live precarious lives, often drastically impoverished and forced to leave domicile and migrate, domestically or internationally. And as they do so, various kinds of “economic-sexual” arrangements are produced or resorted to, involving all sorts of “family decisions” which contract women out to marriage or some other form of “protection”, sexual servitude, domestic work, care giving, and other such monetary arrangements. For example, “transactional households” multiply and almost a third of such households worldwide are headed by women (Bisilliat, 1996). Tabet observes that more and more women also turn to "new-type" prostitution as internet agencies brides, opting not so much out of love as for sex “marriages” with men in richer countries as their visas.

To form a couple and to stay in it, it appears then, is the main guarantee of a minimum stability for the vast majority of women worldwide. This is nothing new; this trend is however being strengthened and amended under the neoliberal context under new laws and a tougher economic logic.

Laws are crucial, since in many cases, these are what prevent “single” women (usually women more independent and autonomous) to obtain their rights. "Single" women are almost systematically discriminated against by the tax systems and laws governing social policies. More restrictive immigration laws hurt: not only do these make travel applications harder for women (unless they migrate for domestic or sex work), but also place them in total dependence on one prospective partner, making full legal autonomy rarely possible for migrant women. In France, for example, Lesselier (2003) describes this situation as "double violence" and there are initial observations pointing that lesbian migrants are not spared of this legal pressure to conjugality (Alrassace & Falquet, 2007). Finally, the same laws on domestic partnerships for lesbian couples, if they exist, play an ambiguous role. Certainly, these laws can "help" some lesbians to promptly resolve property-related problems, but to have rights, do we have to accept the state requirement for us to enter into lasting and monogamous unions? What happens if we don't want to "marry"? or if nobody wants to "marry" with us?

The tightening of economic logic also pushes "single" women to pair. To pay the increasingly expensive rent and bills as services are privatized and to compensate for low salaries and unemployment, pairing arrangements then becomes a matter of mathematics: expenditure divided by two equals better economics. As more extensive social, family and community networks are being destroyed, all the more that we succumb to the neo-nuclear family. As we age, threats to our social security also become more and more real. Even middle-class women are directly threatened by the dismantling of health systems and pensions. More women are brutally faced with the prospect of misery and abandonment, especially those without children or a partner without the rest of society feeling in the least outraged.

Ideological and cultural effects of neoliberalism

As more and more people fall under the pressures of neoliberalism, the monogamy-based “neo-nuclear” family thus becomes an ideal and a more felt material necessity. It has become more and more a standard and an imposition.

First, it becomes an ideal as “western” cultural hegemony is strengthened, thanks to mass media propaganda which propagates the universal model of the young, rich and “pretty” white heterosexual couple enjoying perfect health. This model is very much present in advertising, popular magazines and soap operas.

Second, the monogamous pair becomes more and more the standard as societies with strong religious traditions take a rightward shift and turn reactionary. The period of the "sexual revolution" (variously called "westernization" or "modernization" of values, depending on country) once attained or enjoyed in previous decades, is now denounced and denigrated as a degenerate age having allegedly caused excessive and extensive damage. The way back is thus favorably advanced, with special help from Pope John Paul II who gave all the powers possible to the Opus Dei in the Catholic Church. All the other monotheistic countries mostly take the same rightward direction. This is especially evident in the United States, with the return to retrograde moral order (as exemplified by renewed campaigns promoting virginity and abolishing abortion rights, among others). Although many “nontraditional” loving families and arrangements are in place, these practices are condemned and accused of all evils as more conservative values are glorified.

Finally, staying in a couple often becomes a burden and a quasi-obligation for many women under the dual framework of strengthening nationalism and patriarchal morality. As demonstrated by the Israeli sociologist Nira Yuval Davis (1998), nationalism seeks to strengthen the “it's between us” culture and implies greater control over the female population: they are either prohibited or restricted from going out, and are required to marry and have the greatest possible number of children. As for moral order, the Mexican lesbian activist Tinoco Chuy, discussing among others the growing wave of "femicide "in Mexico and Central America, relates: "A similar pattern is observed in the murder of these hundreds of women: These women are “single” and are either without children, husbands, owners, or employers: those who are considered worthless and who no one claims; and those who have attempted to travel "alone" or live "alone". We must analyze the many ways the oppressive coupling system is summarily imposed on us and we must understand how such system is tuned to the gradual extermination of women who are trying to live in other ways, how bent it is on making us accept things, telling us that these other ways are reprehensible and not permitted, and that for choosing these we must be made to pay. This persecution of "single" women leaves us no choice but to stay in monogamy, owned property and among those in the list of private goods. Otherwise, those we offend will have every right and the moral position to order us out and get rid of us.

Globally, we see on the ideological level a real triumph of the heterosexual couple and its essentializing, under the "triumph of masculinity" as described by the Chilean feminist Margarita Pisano (2001). Under this model the heterosexual couple is simultaneously established as the central symbolic figure in a disturbing mixture of anthropological, psychological-psychoanalytical and political speeches as the basis of a "normal" and “healthy” family and "democratic" society. The model of political equality is also being promoted in parallel with this neoliberal privatization and plays an important role in this peddling of the healthy and democratic society. Some of the arguments used to justify it unfortunately took place even within feminism, reinforcing the idea that the ideal of an equal couple is not real and is no longer preferred nor attainable. This discourse rests on an imaginary heterosexist binary deeply centered in the image of a Father and Mother of the Nation, in other words a model of the “natural” and ahistorical heterosexual couple. So much of this ideal are harder and harder to manage and increasingly difficult to imagine in the great family of the neoliberal democracy where the rule of arms is imposed if necessary, as is happening in the Middle East.

II. A long history of criticism of love, marriage and the couple

Lesbian and feminist analysis: love and marriage as oppressive

For some time, many feminists, both straight and lesbian, have produced a body of highly critical analysis of the ideology of love and the institution of marriage. In France for example, in the mid-nineteenth century, a young follower of the St Simonian utopian current named Claire Demar, wrote A call from a woman to the people (1833) and A law for the future denouncing marriage as a form of prostitution and claiming with full freedom a love force for women. In the same years, Flora Tristan, a woman of Peruvian and Spanish origin, was forced to flee an armed and violent husband (the Code of Napoleon had just been reinstituted prohibiting divorce), and chose to lead a semi-clandestine and nomadic life for years rather than live a pathetic wife’s life. In her first book, On the need to give a warm welcome to estranged women (1833) she proposed that society should be organized to be able to collectively deal with and give support to women fleeing intolerable living conditions or simply wanting to know the world outside traditional family structures.

In Argentina in the 1880s and 1890s, anarchist feminists, migrant women workers and prostitutes, among others, were well-organized and fiercely criticized marriage (Molyneux, 2003). At the turn of the twentieth century in America, Emma Goldman, another migrant worker and famous anarchist, left some impressive writings about moral and sexual freedoms in her time, although these practices were confined within Cethe narrow framework of heterosexuality (1979 [1931]). Goldman herself never yielded to the powerful calls of monogamy and motherhood, nor denounced her emotional and sexual freedoms. Above all, she never stopped criticizing the reactionary and bourgeois conceptions of her anarchist German, Russian, or American comrades and lovers towards women. Back in France, the radical feminist Madeleine Pelletier, published in 1922 Celibacy a superior state. In the United States, the libertarian vagabond Boxcar Bertha evokes in her Memoirs Hobo communities that thrived during the Great Depression. Although these were mostly male camps developed on the banks of the railroad tracks, these communities were influenced by libertarian ideals, often practicing free love and demanding equality between the sexes (1994). Finally, in Southern China in the 1920s, in the districts of Tak Sun and Kwan Dun Kwantung province, a part of the suddenly financially independent young workers in the silk industry formed a movement called the Girls who do not want family. They refused to marry and bought their dowry. Suffering terrible ostracism, many ended up migrating to Malaysia and Singapore. Heyzer (1981, 229) reports that: "between 1934 and 1938, 190,000 Chinese women had emigrated. In Singapore, many of these women worked as domestics, organizing themselves into associations and did not marry."

Other nihilists and nineteenth-century Russian revolutionaries and later the early twentieth century Russian feminist communists were not far behind (Vera Zassoulitch in Faure, 1978). Alexandra Kollontai in particular displayed a tireless energy in countless meetings with youth workers to present her faith in the "new communist sexual morality" (1920, 1926, among many other publications). Although unfortunately also under a heterosexual framework, she was the first to develop a global and historical-materialist analysis of love taking off from the now-famous reflection of Engels Origin of the family, private property and the state showing how each mode of production creates historically specific forms of love and family organization. Kollontai took pains to explain how, for example, the feudal courtly love which gave way to bourgeois capitalist society was especially oppressive to women. For Kollontai, thanks to the proactive development of loving camaraderie in the new historical period that was beginning to take shape, both women and men would now be able to establish multiple sexual and love relationships, thus creating a strong and supportive social fabric needed for the building of a socialist society.

Open criticism of heterosexuality goes back to the 1970s, with the feminist wave and with Kate Millet in the United States (1971 [1970]) and in France, with groups like the FHAR. In her 1971 message to her followers, Millet especially stigmatizes the bourgeois character of normative love. For their part, many black and lesbian feminists, while critical of White lesbian separatism, debated the real issues affecting Black men and women such as sex roles, relationships, and sexuality (Powell, 1983 in Smith, 2000 [1983], p. 283). Cheryl Clarke states in 1983: "As a black lesbian, I am obliged, and I am committed to destroy heterosexual supremacy.... The more homophobic we are as a people, the farthest we are from any kind of revolution.” (Clarke in Smith, 2000 [1983], p. 201). More recently, the linguist Québec Pascale Noizet assessed the “modern idea of love” as fundamentally heterosexual (1996). The Québec radical lesbian magazine Amazones d'hier, lesbiennes d'aujourd'hui (Amazon yesterday, today's lesbian, which Noizet helped put up), publishes a special issue entitled Questioning the family. For its part, Chile’s Margarita Pisano vigorously attacks the ideal of the congenial model family and the "bad" patriarchal love, fighting instead for the creation of imaginary and alternative practices of emotional and sexual freedom (2001).

Finally, in the analysis of Monique Wittig (2001 [1981]) she suggests the overall coordination between heterosexual ideology (what she calls the "straight mind") and the dimension of the concrete material appropriation of women as theorized by Colette Guillaumin (1992 [2005 in Spanish]). Upon leaving the couple and the heterosexual family, or refusing to enter them, Wittig asserts that lesbians desert the exploitative relationships that create certain kinds of women, such as the "brown slave", to escape from the plantations and create communities of resistance liberated from slave status.

Towards a critique of the exclusivity of the couple

There is of course a great variety in the practices of the couple. There is no pretense here to propose any new regulatory model, all that we are criticizing here is the "model couple" that involves sexual fidelity and the creation of a unique emotional and practical link with a single person. These two elements are closely linked and are often the cause and consequence of shared or mutually interdependent material and economic interests and inevitably involve three main problems that have to do with power relations, problems that exist in heterosexual couples as well. Although sometimes, the fact that these are two women and not a man and a woman reduces the difficulties (as for example in the division of house chores, as two people who have been socialized to do housework can do housework without complaining too much). But sometimes the problems can get compounded especially so when lesbianism involves ostracism and social isolation.

The first of these problems has to do with the issue of division of labor and resources. The imbalance in the division of housework which is quite common in many lesbian households, as noted by the sociologist Raphaële Ferzli (2001), is often related to differences in power (of salary, class, “race”, age, legal status etc.) between the couple. As for the pooling of resources, lesbians have a particular difficulty because most women have scarcer material resources and lack a legal framework, as well as a theoretical and political construct, to address this. Psychologically, our socialization as women inhibits us to receive money or property in connection with a sexual relationship outside marriage: it seldom fails to evoke prostitution, as so aptly demonstrated by Paola Tabet (2004). In the legal level, in most countries it is neither legal nor legitimate for lesbians to "marry" and when it is, they usually do so shyly, as in the case of PACS, where very few lesbians are welcome to it. It means that except in very few cases of enduring and well-established monogamous unions, and in countries where there are laws that allow "union" between women, there is no social recognition of the existence of common material interests between lesbians and the legitimacy of putting together pooled resources. Lesbian sharing thus happens in a sort of no woman's land. Of course, we have created many ways to "help" among lesbians, whether as couples, as ex-partners or as friends, but as far as the formal aspect is concerned, we are almost zero. I believe our creativity would benefit from more public and political debate and strengthen our collective efforts to limit the individual power relations that appear more clearly when handling money.

The second problem has to do with the “enclosure of two". This enclosure, more or less marked, is the result of sexual and emotional exclusivity that this type of couple produces progressively as it consolidates. Although it can be very pleasant and desirable, it potentially carries serious problems. On the one hand, it tends to reduce the social, political, and even labor costs for each. Certainly, as we remember the Peruvian-Chilean Norma Mogrovejo in this symposium, many lesbian groups have benefited from the loving-energy policy of some “historical” couples. But enough heartaches have also affected negatively in many cases, and the fear that the companion falls in love with another woman may be a reason to restrict their political participation. The ideology of jealousy (closely linked to monogamy) plays a central role in keeping women, including lesbians in the house.

Finally, related to the above, there appears the problem of domestic violence. This can be the result of inequalities of power, combined with the condition of "enclosure of two" and jealousy. Moreover, the tension over fidelity (both as obligation due and as expectation) is generally stronger in women because of their socialization, and even more in many lesbians since the repression of lesbianism does not allow many to know enough beside one’s own partner. “Saving” one woman next to one’s self and for one’s self, probably even by force, can thus become an almost vital necessity. All of these combine to explain the occurrence of violence within the lesbian couple, which lesbophobia and the hostility of the rest of society may prevent from being addressed or stopped.

III. Lesbian and feminist alternatives

The question of love and the couple is thus far from frivolous matters reserved only for the idle and the privileged: On the contrary, there exists for marginalized and underprivileged lesbian and women a particularly strong pressure to conform and enter into a couple relationship, whether lesbian or hetero. It is therefore not a coincidence if it is they themselves, more than other groups of women or men, who thought over this painful problem and have tried to build alternatives.

Criticizing the framework

A first set of alternatives is to analyze the context of the couple, and expand from here. Many lesbian couples seek to develop various ways of practicing equality in their relationships, observing greater fairness in the division of work (paid and domestic), and when possible, exercising some degree of sexual freedom. However, if they remain structurally isolated from the rest of society, these attempts are doomed to fail because the couple, although lesbian, is no island off the bigger community whose laws and values confine them.

Many also have touted voluntary celibacy as an alternative. In France, as early as 1700, Gabrielle Suchon wrote a set of texts in favor of celibate life which she then called "life without compromise". This celibacy is sometimes related to a decision of "militant chastity", especially when lesbianism or heterosexuality outside of marriage seems impractical. However, this celibacy had to be at other times lived with displeasure, as a forced episode resorted to by women who openly espouse an active sexual life and the possibility of establishing multiple love relationships, but did not have, under the circumstances they lived in, the opportunity to do so. Often they are women with great intellectual and political passion and strong devotion to their work, such as Alexandra Kollontai, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra David Neel, former Salvadoran guerrilla commander Rebeca Palacios (Harnecker, 1994) or the fictional character of Warda, a guerrilla leader in the Sultanate of Oman in the 1960s (Sonallah, 2002).

Some feminist and lesbian libertarian groups have likewise flourished and attempted other ways of living. In France these are demonstrated in the anarchist collective book Beyond the personal, which discloses the correspondence between Corinne, Françoise, Karine and Martine as presented in the previous lesbian conference in Toulouse (2002). The multiplicity of the concepts used (polygamy, polyfidelity, open relationships, polyamory) and their imperfections reflect the weakness of the discussions, which have now become quite defensive in relation to the years it spoke of (the 1970s). In fact, we have seen in recent decades how the strengthening of conservative thinking and of the bourgeois-patriarchal racist laws has narrowed further what experimental spaces we had had and has made women and lesbian lives increasingly more and more precarious.

Get out of the frame

Like Alexandra Kollontai, who struggled to create a completely new socialist society, and Wittig, who showed us ways as to how lesbian communities may be invented, I think the most realistic and constructive solution is to frankly get out of the frame.

The ideas of Alexandra Kollontai, who affirms that multiple sex and love can build and cement social and political networks and can therefore make alternative projects stronger, must be retaken. So instead of a society composed of enclosed islets of couples and little families absorbed about themselves and often in constant conflict with each other over differing self-interests, we might dream of an alternative social network that allows better pooling of our material, emotional, and sexual resources.

The idea is as Monique Wittig proposes: to bring back and bring to life the imagined community of women warriors, the Amazons – isn’t that terrific! – . Think of the model communities of self-released ex-slaves organized outside the plantation system. This, I propose, is the "best" solution for lesbians to get out of the hetero-patriarchal system: to work together, as much as possible, in big groups rather than try to escape two by two. If the couple can make a force to reckon with, then a broader union must be mathematically superior. We have some models to pick up from, in the examples shown us by the defenders of communal life, as in the concept of a "lesbian nation" promoted and campaigned for by Jill Jonston in the 1970s, or in the lives of working-class lesbians in the 1950s, mainly Black, who in one way or the other, had formed their own communities in small towns and poor neighborhoods where they lived (Davis & Kennedy, 1989; Lorde, 1982).

However, the actual creation of lesbian communities had to confront with many difficulties. First, the hostility of the "outside" heteropatriarchal, capitalist and racist society, and secondly, for us, the lack of clarity about the rules of love, sex and ethics to be adopted. This problem becomes even more painful because we carry with us into these communities values and ideas we had thoroughly learned throughout our socialization: the couple, fidelity, jealousy, insecurity and all our emotional neediness. These difficulties contribute to a risk of inflexibility, intolerance and drowning, which Ti Grace Atkinson (1984) very convincingly complained about. “Separatist” lesbians who tried to form communities experienced a close by the 1980s in France (ARCL, 1987; Lesselier, 1987) and Britain (Green, 1997). We have also seen many feminists and Black lesbians spoke against lesbian separatism, complaining that they do not want to break their ties with race and class. To form a lesbian community does not necessarily imply such a break, but we have to think about how such communities are linked in turn to other social groups.

What's more, repression is always lurking, as proven by the abrupt end of the lesbian community in the state of Morelos (Mexico) around the same time. This is documented by Norma Mogrovejo (2000) in the first thesis published on the lesbian movement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lesbians of this community shared their resources and jointly performed household and agricultural work and organized parties, a documentation center and even self-defense workshops. It seems that it is precisely these self-defense activities that alarmed most the neighborhood and made sure the lesbian community “self-dissolve” before something serious could happen.

As explained by Mogrovejo, this experiment was of particular importance, not only because this endeavor gathered lesbians who are mostly poor and "black", which was more than what the average lesbian organizations at the time did, but also because it pointedly raised the issue of resources and production. The capitalist socialization that values private property and makes many reluctant to share their property constitutes a basic problem and insurmountable barrier to many in the socialist and feminist projects. As regards joint production and material survival, there also exists the need to address the question as to what kind of alternative love and sexual organizations and relationships may be created that are physically feasible. In the urban world where communities are rapidly limited by spatial planning and housing and the difficulty of access to cheap food and in rural areas where half of the women in the world live, it seems "easier" to put into practice more autonomous alternatives. The peasant struggles for the reappropriation of land and natural resources and especially the various ways such modes of economic production have been defended or developed are therefore particularly instructive for us.

The Zapatista movement in Mexico anchors on indigenous socio-cultural practices in which the sense of ownership over land is not private but communal. Community work is at least as important as "family work", but also has a strong sexual division of labor with much of the family work borne by women. This puts forth two questions: One, to what extent can “family work” occur without exploiting the unpaid work of women and children? As Christine Delphy (1998) repeatedly put forward, the "domestic mode of production” is a central pillar of patriarchy. And two, outside of indigenous communities, to what extent some highly individualistic people who have lost almost all sense of community can again find this common will to voluntarily work and share resources? This topic gave a lot of work to both Nicaraguan and Russian revolutionaries, as it did to the neo-rural Larzac in France in the 1970s, and all those who have been trying to implement land reform, or more simply, a rural communal production community.

The same questions apply for the Movimiento de las Sin Tierra (The Landless Peasant Movement) or MST of Brazil: some its members are just “outcasts” from social groups propagating urban individualism. It is interesting to see how this movement succeeds or not in keeping people together as well as in holding on to the ideal of owning and working the land in common, rather than making it produce as part of the "small family farms" based on the model of the patriarchal family. Furthermore, the MST faces very specific questions as regards spatial organization and appropriate housing for the new communities being created. The model farmers’ habitats are scattered and, as such, prove disadvantageous to women since they are mostly isolated in their "home farms ". The "agro-vila" (or city in the countryside) model, wherein the houses are grouped together, is neither satisfactory, since the fields are far away (especially for males) while the excessive closeness to the solars cause fatigue and stress (especially among women). Finally, it appears that the model communities of indigenous peoples of the Amazon give better results, although there remains unresolved issues as everyone’s productive and emotional investments and everyday existence are confined to and centers around the family.

But we must look well into these two movements, and many others, since these attempts tell us a lot about community life which is central to our feminist project: the need to connect everyday life with the productive life and to break the dichotomy of private sphere-public sphere.

Conclusion: Back to love

In this article we see how the idea of lesbian love has led us to examine the deterioration of the situation of women in the world and how this deterioration is linked to the advance of neoliberalism, which often drives many of us to marriage and the very attractive conservative model of the couple not compatible with our participation in collective struggles for social transformation. There have also emerged new strains to these struggles given the dramatic changes and worsening situation facing us worldwide. We also know that as feminists and lesbians from different classes, "races", and nationalities, we can play a part in these struggles and contribute to the building of a rich theoretical and practical legacy as we reach for more enriching alternative ways of life, whether in the immediate future or as utopian ideals.

And love, where then is love in all this? The Mexican lesbian feminist Yan Maria Castro affirms: "As for love, we have to redefine love in its totality. Let us not speak of love while there is a single human being that is exploited by another.” I also believe that love has to do with all the women in the world having a roof to their heads, food, and a decent life, free from exploitation and violence. This should be the main characteristic of our ideal of feminist lesbian love: a love that is purely individual and personal to a certain number of women, but also collective, for ourselves and for our sex. Only this political love will give us enough energy to destroy the existence of that subordinate "class of women" and escape to freedom, not just one at a time or by pair after pair. For this, we must not only analyze heteropatriarchy, the role of the state and its laws, the capitalist system and the racist international division of labor, but also This system in a material and concrete way. We will create complications as we build political alliances and broader social ties with other movements and between us, but we must not stop. We have to imagine and live a different life, beyond the couple, even beyond and way over the lesbian couple.

The fundamental criticism is directed not against the couple but also against the “institutionalized spouse”. One, as the only way of life for human beings; two, as a means to prevent the resurgence of community life forms; three, as a tool to isolate individuals and place them in a vulnerable position; four, as a weapon of social control by placing each individual in an inherently dysfunctional and ineffective structure, canceling the natural autonomy of each subject society; and five, as a means to control women, by hiding the heterosexual relationship as a relationship of domination in the discourse of "sexual preference."

Yan Maria Castro

Translated by Sheilfa Alojamiento with Kristine Kaye Antonio

Three Poems

2010-01-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

photo by
Karen Dias

Boulevard Blues
(for Shane)

that i should find you
at the hungriest year of my life
that you should take none of me
that you should not even look up
and tell me how it is
to be 17 and already with woman
to know freedom
touch of her cunt in your hand
her hair on your lips
dives into the poisoned sea
snakeruns in the highway
among screeching jeepneys
taped wrists blistered mouths
to be laughed out of school
swear to never hold paper again
land on a sidewalk crack
among your sisters the plumbers
and welders’ daughters
to be sitting on a bench in a park
at two o’ clock in the morning
swatting mosquitoes banishing men
to be caught with a bar of soap
in a 24-hour convenience store
to be hauled into a police car
to piss on the floor
and be found out a girl
in a boy’s clothes
to be taken home to your mother

that you should lie there in my way
a shard of glass from last night’s fight
that in my hunger and blindness
i should mistake you for lost
diamond looking for a gold rim
when there was cold steel in your eyes
that should be holding only light
dear, just looking at you hurts
that i should find you at all
that i should be at your mercy
that there should be no mercy

February 2005
Davao City

Pahiwatig

Mamayang gabi ibig kitang
ipagtimpla ng kape.
Sangkutsarang purong-puro sa sang-
kutsaritang asukal na pula.
Tutunawin ko sa naglalagablab
na tubig sa tasang kahalikan
mo. Pampaso sa nanunuyong
lalamunan mo. Maramdaman
mo naman kung gaano
kita kamahal.

October 1995
Dumaguete City

Quotes

Dear Doug,

Moira is right: There is no getting there
together. Like you said, worthwhiler to fornicate
with Tomas. For between our strange-bedded sheets
are daggers we sharpen even in our sleep,
because betrayal, as Mishima wrote,
is the essence of politics, and politics alone hurts,

not Tomas.

2003
Davao City

SO MUCH FOR THE BEAUTIFUL LESBIAN SELF

2010-01-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

It is too bad that I discovered my lesbian self a little late in life. I envy the mold of those who had been there all the time: the male swagger around the hips, the advancing hulk about the shoulders, the steady gaze, the cold voice, the expansive hand movements. A lifetime of dykehood alone could have done that so that now, in their forties or fifties, every chip in the body, every muscle, every fiber announces I am as you see I am, no compromise.

And when I see even the young lesbians of Bankerohan, the porters, the cartpushers, I tell myself that that is the look that is authentic, legit. Nobody can make a mistake about that.

Unfortunately, that is also the cut that my bourgeois friends abhor and would not want to be around with. And so they tell me, in those little moments when they like to express their affection to me, to not be “like those dykes.” I am surprised each time. The brashness and the smugness that come with it.

“Sus Ginuo,” they would say, “the way they roll their sleeves up, you would think they grew penises!” Sometimes I get to tell them that “those lesbians” for sure must have grown something in them, but not penises. They would raise their brows and smile at me indulgently and would say, “Oh yeah? What dear?”

I don’t know, I’d tell them.

And I still don't know.

Maybe muscles, maybe spine, grit, in the face of the heterosexual world’s contempt of and imperviousness to their presence. Maybe an obstinacy, a certain will to survive, to live, maybe just a perspective, a way of looking at the world borne of a physically hard life. Maybe something like what female weightlifter Bevs recognizes in herself and other sturdy women as “a different aura” of strength. People around you see that, smell that, and respect or fear you if you have that, and you don’t need a penis if you have that. You won’t need precision toenails or long hair once you’ve got that, will you?

So my friends, when they notice that I sit with knees a little bit too far apart, or walk in a way that doesn’t become them, or slouch like I didn’t have breasts good enough to tout, they waste no time in making known their concern for me. “You are pretty!”, they say. “Stay like that, don’t crop your hair, don’t wear big shoes!” If I don’t want to offend them, I let them go on and on. Of course, some days it can really get upsetting: leaves me limping home, like they’d chopped off a leg or two.

I have not gotten hold of Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, so I have no idea what that other angry wasp gadded about in that pamphlet. Probably endless color suits enough to guilt-trip Steinem and Naomi Wolf. Claiming sisterhood in America, who embraces a Black lesbian in a white heterosexual society? Diri sa las islas de Filipinas sa siglo beinte-uno, claiming lesbianhood, who will claim you?

I much prefer Cheryl’s spiels better. Dili daw siya ganahan sa hukbo kay didto daw tukion sa ka ayha iyuton. Of course, we were just kidding around, as we’re both serious advocates of SICA, we both like finding the devil in every detail even if we don't always see them in the same place. It’s just that usahay lang gyud tuod, kapuy nang tukiduki, makalangan sa kalipay.

But that’s how things are in the trenches. And that’s how it is in the lesbian sisterhood committee, or in any committee. It’s like you have an open door behind you, open, ajar, because it just spewed you, kay di na sila makateyk nimo, and a closed door before you, munching you, thinking you over because you look so good to be true.

So what can you do but stand there ironing your brows kay walay modapit nimo padulong sa unahan, o kun naa man, dunggab ray imong maaguman, pero ang toa sa imong likod hagbay ra kang gituklod ug gihulog pagawas sa pultahan.

Even as you claim, you are being disclaimed. Ti, both ways unclaimed baggage ka e.

“Lesbian daw siya! Claiming privileged status at a time when society is warming up to gay rights! Ipareyp ra gud sa mga tibu sa Bankerohan, tan-awon nato unsay bation.”

“Kaayo nimo, no? Now you write like you found us? Why, have you been there all along? You theorize us? Our oppression? Our experience? Which you never helped form! Ka-new arrival ba uy, kinsa ka abi nimo, the vanguard party? Si Ferdinand Columbus, si Gloria Anzaldua?

Dah, uy. Kapuy. Binayot. Showbiz kaayo.

Maypang mag-f.

Dykes and Hagfags in Congress: WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS BILL?

2010-01-07T00:44:00.001-08:00

Talisa: Aray. Anti-bakla, Sister. Tanggalin yan.
DC: Don't be harsh on the harsh.
Ersatz Tibu: Unsa may naka-harsh ana. Mahinatagon gani! Inyoha na o. Lanlana. Gif! No stiff competition from here!
John: We love cutthroat competition, Sister. No blood, no glory.
Moira: Touche!
Ersatz Tibu: Over a pathetic penis? You're a disgusting fag!
DC: Or he wouldn't be a fag.
Ellen: Ali diri.
Talisa: Try here.
Claire: Try New York. I'm black and blue.
Jesse: Ain't I too old for this?
Ersatz Tibu: Oh. Is that you, Lady Godiva? I think you can beat them all over the long crawl. You're my bet. Go, Sister, play catch!
Regal: The battle of the has-beens. I'd rather babysit.
Eva: Not joining. Can't be less than I am.
Phines: Me, too. Not joining. Ilalampaso lang ako. I'd rather talk to Anz.
Pinky: Who's Anz?
Ersatz Tibu: Anzaldua. Her adopted baby.
Regal: Not Anzaldua! He's a teddy bear! Bayot pud. Not tomboy.
Ersatz Tibu: At least it's fair. It doesn't hurt Phines. Doesn't bawl, doesn't scream. Doesn't ask for milk or for cell phones and laptops. Doesn't talk back, doesn't think, doesn't breathe. For Goddess' sake, Phines, when you gonna be a lesbian?! Bone up!
Phines: Aray.... pinagalitan na naman ako...
Wise Act: Puwede pag-usapan natin ano gawin sa bill?
Ferdie: Ka-anti-bayot, anti-men uy.
Cheryl: Unsa na lay mahitabo sa akong broad front ana.
Ronald: Masarap iyan. Ayaw nyo?
Ralph: Sige, amin na lang.
Pidot: Wala kayo niyan. Sabagay, nabibili naman iyan sa Cubao. Rubberized, elastic, in different sizes pa.
J. Winterson: Phhht. Size is no object especially when you're talking in terms of inches. The lesbian body is the state-of-the-art vibrator. Shake rattle and roll, wings and all.
Ric de U: Sabagay wala kayong erectile dysfunction.
Riva: I have fought with men in battles. But I can't take them as lovers. They have no finesse in bed.
Ellen: Sometimes I can't even find it. I look and look as I open my legs and become the world and... asa na to!?! Wala lagi...
Ersatz Tibu: Did you look under the bed? Nahog siguro kauban sa duha ka itlog.
AmaDior: I prefer intellectual intercourse.
Chorus: Ang bayot!!!
Ersatz Tibu: No mugging of our kind here, please, we are all sisters in struggle.
Chorus: Ang tomboy!!!
Tintin: Leave Sheilfa alone!!! I still love her!
Rose: Bayot! Out!!!
Wise Act: Seriously, this is too aggressive. Baka magalit ang Gabriela and those of us who are trying to lovingly guide men into the territory.
Talisa: Into gender-sensitivity char. Alin kaya ang mas keri, ang lungkot ng pag-iisa o hirap ng pagsasama?
J. Steinbeck: There's nothing lonelier than a married man.
K. Acker: The truth about men-women relationship is, it's a violent division.
M. Rukeyser: If one woman will speak up, the world will split into two.
Mr V: It will not as it has not. Women have spoken up na and it improves men-women relationship.
Mrs V: Did it? When did that happen?
Ersatz Tibu: You were with me in the province, likely, making coconut farmers gather coconut coir.
Mrs V: You were never with me, you bitch. Or I'm sure I will never go where you go. Did you pay your travel agent the 20k you owe her?
Ersatz Tibu: She is not my travel agent. A man paid for that in miles upon miles on high. Didn't he tell you? That's settled already, why is every woman angry with me? I'm good not bad!
Rose: Kagalot ba!!! Si Sheilfa disente??? Hoy! Makalilimos! Maulaw ka! Macho! Gaga! Twisted!
Ersatz Tibu: Do I know you? I don't even recall you.
Rose: Kaila ko sa imo! Ayaw na padisente! Wa kay uwaw!
A. Walker: I want to put an end to shame. I want to put an end to guilt.
Ersatz Tibu: Mao. Tagaasa kaha ni, taga-Disneyland? Pataka ra og dasmag, ay. Lami hiktan. Mild psychosis ra biya ka. Hapla gyud ka unya.
John and DC (singing to the tune of Ms Saigon): This is the hour.....
Ram and Talisa: Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss!...
Che: Shhh!...
Phines: Para sa akin mas maganda ka.
Ersatz Tibu: Mas guwapa among katabang. Mas brayt pud.
Daphne: Oh? Naa moy katabang?
Ersatz Tibu: Sauna. Katong dili pa uso ang fallen royalties. Free supply mi og katabang. Kanang sige na ganing labawon og trapo akong mama sa akong papa, manghaw-as na na siya og inmate sa prisohan para himoong labandera.
Phines: Ay. Naa diay kay papa.
Moira: Thought you gave birth to yourself.
Ersatz Tibu: Paghilum, Tonia Catatonia.
Mr V: You are always talking about yourselves. Men are oppressed, too. Gender sensitivity should include training women to listen more and more to men. And the child crying within!
Talisa: O my god...
McFadden: In the first place men shouldn't be in women's territory!!! They bring in so much garbage!
John and Douglas: We love garbage!!!
McFadden: Out!!!

.... (sorry, folks, tape exhausted, the rest of the proceedings not recorded)

Huwag Sabihin

2010-01-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

photo by
Ana Moira Lanzona

Huwag sabihing mas maganda
kami ngayon
kesa sa mga aswang ng Salem
O mga birhen ng Betlehem.
Panahon ang me gawa sa amin.
O maaari ring sabihing

Lalaki ang lumilok sa amin.
Sila na mula noon hanggang ngayon
ay me-hawak ng patalim
Tigaukit ng mga nararapat na damdamin
Tiga-iskalpel ng mga bukol sa dibdib
Nagtatakbuhang tumor ng ligalig.

Sila na me-ari ng mga baril
ng walang kapanalunang mga giyera at rebolusyon.
Sila na tinaguriang mahuhusay sa istratehiya,
tagahawan ng kasaysayan, taga-isip,
tagadakila, tagakilala ng Mali sa Tama
ng Babae sa Bakla.

Sila na nagmamay-ari sa amin.
Binili kami. Pinalaya ayon sa maabot ng kanilang
humahangang tingin, ayon sa kaya nilang
asawahin sa pinakamatapang sa amin.
Maghuhugas kami ng plato, magdadrayb ng kotse
magsusuot ng bikini, magmamartsa-rali,

Hahawak ng armalayt, mag-aanak ng lalaki.
Lahat nang ito at marami pang iba
ay walang-salang gagampanan, tutupdin, tulad ng
sanlibo’t-isang mga batas na nalagpasan na namin.
Ang totoong Kami ay mananatiling tago, dakipin,
Itinatakas ang mapanganib sa amin.

SEKS, PAG-AASAWA AT RH SA PUNTO DE VISTA NG MGA TEDURAY

2010-01-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

Pasiunang salita lang po: Ang Tribung Teduray ay isa sa mga minoryang grupo na matatagpuan sa Upi, Maguindanao. Isa sa kanilang kostumbre ay ang duayah (paghintulot sa mga kalalakihan na magkaroon ng mahigit sa isang asawa). Ang teksto sa ibaba ay maliit na bahagi lamang ng isang diskusyon o huntahan (FGD o focus group discussión sa ingles) na ginawa sa Rifao, South Upi noong Enero 04, 2006. Salamat sa Centro Saka Inc. na siyang nagdeploy sa 'ken parang gawin 'tong research.

......

Ofelia: Mga sampong taon siguro parang buang ako ba, hindi ako makaisip nang mabuti. Hanggang sa naisip ko na kung ganito na lang lagi gawain ko, tapos si Mariana, yung kaduayah ko, nagatanim, palay, mais, tapos nag-aalaga pa ng baboy, sabi ko, ako ang kawawa. Kay palagi ako nagalakad, kahit saan na lang ako magpunta. Ngayon hindi na kami nagadrama-dramahan.

Sheilfa: Noon nag-aaway kayo lagi?

Ofelia: Oo.

Sheilfa: Nagsasama kayo sa isang bahay?

Ofelia: Oo.

Sheilfa: Noon, hiwalay kayo ng bahay? Tapos ang asawa ninyo paroon at parito?

Ofelia: Oo. Kung mag-isang buwan doon naman siya sa Barangay Mangga. Kasi nag-aaral iyong anak namin doon.

Sheilfa: Ah. Tapos sa Mangga iyong kaduayah mo. Tapos pag doon ang asawa mo, nabubuang ka, nagseselos ka?

Ofelia: Wala na ngayon.

Sheilfa: Kasi nagsasama na kayo sa isang bahay?

Ofelia: Oo.

Sheilfa: Paano iyon sa isang bahay isang kuwatro kayo?

Ofelia: Halimbawa ito iyong bahay, ginaano-ano namin.

Sheilfa: May division?

Ofelia: Oo.

Sheilfa: Ah, so hindi sa isang kuwarto kayo natutulog?

Ofelia: Hindi naman. Masama naman. (Tawanan)

Sheilfa: Ah, so dapat pag ginagawa nyo iyon, hindi marinig ng isang babae para hindi magselos? Ganyan?

Ofelia: Oo. Ganyan.

Sheilfa: Puwede ba iyan hindi marinig? (Tawanan) Paano iyong pag-arrange… pag ikaw iyong katabi niya ngayong gabi, hindi siya tatabi doon sa isa?

Ofelia: Wala.

Sheilfa: Hindi puwede na sa isang gabi dalawa iyong tabihan niya?

Ofelia: Ang sistema, halimbawa, isang gabi dito siya magtulog sa akin, bukas, doon naman siya sa isa.

Sheilfa: Ah, ganyan.

Dimasino (Unidentified): Para walang lugi! (Tawanan)

Sheilfa: Akala ko, ngayon gabi ikaw muna ang una, ikaw sunod. Bukas ikaw naman ang first, siya second… (Tawanan)

Ofelia: Meron din nakadaan na ganyan.

Sheilfa: Merong ganyan?

Ofelia: Oo.

Zenaida: Sa amin naman, ako ang number two. So, nagligaw ang mister sa akin. So, tinanggap ko naman siya, at sabi ko sa kanya, sagutin kita kung kaya mo ako buhayin. Tapos nagpangako naman siya na nag-asawa ako sa iyo para buhayin ka. Iyan ang kasunduan namin. Ngayon, nagsama kami tatlo, so, kung meron kaming diskasan, mayroon din kaming unawaan. Ganoon ang gawain namin. Tapos, sa trabaho naman din, iba-ibang area. Ang gawain ng mister, magtrabaho doon sa isa, tapos dito naman. May iskedyul. Tapos ang mga anak namin, diyan din magsama, magtulong sa nanay, sa tatay ganun din

Sheilfa: Ah, may farm siya, may farm ka rin?

Zenaida: Oo, ganun ang ginawa. Ang akin lang masabi, iyong akin lang madaanan. Tapos, iyong kasama kong babae, hindi ko siya interbyuhin kasi hindi ko alam ang sa kanya, hindi ko alam ang kanyang naramdaman sa kanyang mister. So, ang akin lang, ngayon, sinabi ko sa mister ko na patuloy ang pamilya natin kung kaya mo matulungan ang bawat isa. Sabi ko sa kanya, kung hindi mo kaya, i-surrender mo, sabihin mo sa misis na hindi ko na kayo kaya, i-surrender ko na kayo sa inyong magulang. Sabi niya, hanggang sa mamatay kami, magsama kaming tatlo. Sabi ko, kaya natin iyan kung magtulung-tulungan tayong tatlo sa trabaho. Iyan lang ang aking masabi sa kuwan namin.

Sheilfa: Tapos sa bahay ninyo, sa magkahiwalay na kuwarto kayo?

Zenaida: Ganun din. Katulad din sa kanya, iba-ibang kuwarto, iba-ibang gamit, iba-ibang pagluto kasi ang mga anak.

Sheilfa: Ilan nga ba ang anak mo?

Zenaida: Apat. Ako ang nagluluto para sa mga anak ko. Iyong sa kanya rin, siya rin ang nagluluto para sa mga anak niya. Hindi naghahalo.

Sheilfa: Hindi halo. Kayo? (kay Ofelia)

Ofelia: Iba. Halimbawa, ako ang makauna, isabay na lang sa pagsaing namin, ako na lang ang nagaluto.

Sheilfa: Ah, ganyan. Tapos, kung siya naman ang mauna magluto, sinasabay din?

Ofelia: Oo. Sabay kami.

Sheilfa: Saan iyong mas tipid, iyong sabay o iyong kanya-kanya?

Zenaida: Sa amin naman, nakadepende sa akin kung anong klase ang pagtipid ko. Iyong sa kanya, kung isang ganta ng bigas kaisa nilang saingin, wala na akong pakialam doon.

Sheilfa: Ah, ganun. Ah, okay. Paano iyong hatian ng kita ng asawa ninyo?

Zenaida: Kung isang ganta…

Dimasino: Salmon.

Sheilfa: Ah, kasi anim na salmon iyong isang ganta?

Ofelia: Oo.

Dimasino: Ang maghati iyon, ang mister. Ang mister nila ang maghati ng bigas, hindi sila.

Sheilfa (kay Ofelia): Kayo, ganun din?

Ofelia: Ako, ako ang maghati. Halimbawa kung may dalawang gantang ang mahanapan ng asawa namin na bigas, tag-isang gantang sa amin. Kung isang ganta, sabi ng duayah ko, ikaw na lang magkuwan diyan, Babu.

Sheilfa: Mabait iyong sa iyo?

Ofelia: Mabait talaga.

Sheilfa: Hmm… ibig sabihin… anong ibig sabihin nun, kapag mabait siya sa iyo?

Ofelia: Kuwan… ang mabait… (speaks in Teduray)

Sheilfa: Sino iyong… wala kayong pinag-aawayan?

Ofelia: Wala.

Sheilfa: Hindi kayo nagseselosan?

Ofelia: Wala na.

Sheilfa: Puwede ba iyon?

Ofelia: Noon.

Sheilfa: Sige, sige. Magkuwento ka sa noon. (Tawanan) Ako hindi ko ma-imagine sa iisang bahay kayo hehaha.

Ofelia: Noon ako talaga ang suplada. Doon ako sa miting, maglayas ako. Doon ako sa mga magulang ko. Mga tatay at nanay ko. Magtampo ako. Tapos ang mga anak ko na apat ginadala ko rin. Tapos magsunod siya sa akin. Sabi ko, huwag ka na magpunta dito, bakit, hindi mo na maubos iyang kuwan ng asawa mo? Sabi ko, sige, mag-ano na kayo, huwag ka nang magpunta sa akin. Ipanghampas ko iyong mga baso namin, mga plato namin, ginabagsak ko talaga. Sabi ko, iyan, itsura mo iyan, parang hindi makapalagay sa akin, ang bahay namin parang dinaanan [ng bagyo] talaga ba. Tapos, mga baro niya, ginapunit-punit ko. Tapos, sabi ng nanay ko, Ofelia, dahan-dahan lang, hindi man galing sa kanya ang nagagawa na ganyan, galing sa magulang niya.

Sheilfa: Sa matatanda.

Ofelia: Tapos sabi niya, para hindi naman masasayang ang dowry nila sa duayah mo. Sabi ko, oo ba, ang dahilan ko lang, sabi ko, masama ang loob ko, parang wala silang respeto sa akin, dapat sana ianad nila ang isip ko, hindi na bigla lang sila mag-asawa. Basta respeto lang ba, ianad nila ang isip ko. Sabi [ng asawa ko] ko, kung gusto mo, hindi ka na magtrabaho, para may makasama ka magtrabaho. Sabi ko, kung hindi mo iyan paalisin, talagang wala tayong kabutihan na tunguhan. Tapos, pag magalit ako, hindi din iyan maglaban ba, tahimik lang.

Sheilfa: Inaaway mo siya?

Ofelia: Oo, inaaway ko talaga.

Sheilfa: Hindi siya maglaban?

Ofelia: Hindi siya maglaban.

Sheilfa (to Zenaida): Ikaw. Ikaw naman.

Zenaida: Para sa akin naman, hindi ako nagselos.

Sheilfa: Ay ako, magseselos talaga ako. Pag may ibang girlfriend… ahhh! (Tawanan)

Zenaida: Hindi ako nagselos kasi nang nag-asawa kami, dati naman siya, alam ko na may dati nang asawa. Ang hinihingi ko lang ba na ang pamilya namin maging maayos. Suportahan ang mga anak, ayaw ko ang magulo. Iyan lang ang akin, hindi ako nagseselos. Kung nagseselos ka, iyan ang simula ng away. Pero nakadepende man sa kasama ko na babae. Kung hindi maganda ang pagdala niya sa akin, iyon ang biglang pag-usapan naman.

Sheilfa: Ah, so kung nag-aaway kayo, pinag-uusapan naman?

Zenaida: Oo. Pinagkausapan.

Sheilfa: Maganda ang pagdala niya sa iyo?

Zenaida: Maganda o hindi, basta kay natanggap natin kasi andiyan tayo.

Sheilfa: Bakit ka pumayag?

Zenaida: Kasi akala ko ang duayah ba maganda ang pagsama ng duayah. Ngayon ko lang natikman na ang duayah pala may kaibahan sa solong pamilya.

Sheilfa: Dahil? Sige, ano ang kaibahan?

Zenaida: May kaibahan. Diyan pa lang sa kita ng mister natin, iyan ang paraan ng away.

Sheilfa: Paghatian ninyo?

Zenaida: Oo.

Sheilfa: Ano siya, sinusuwerte? Dalawa kayo, tapos siya tigkalahati lang sa inyo? Di na, no?

Zenaida: Ang dahilan ng simula ng away, kung ang isang ganta bigas, hindi mahati, iyan ang simulaan ng away. Kaya ang sabi ko, kung kaya natin, huwag nating gamiting dahilan iyan para hindi tayo mag-away. Doon tayo sa legal na kuwan ba, doon sa pormal na pamilya, walang away.

Sheilfa: Mahirap iyan, ano. Ako nga, girlfriend-girlfriend lang, nagseselos na ako. (Tawanan)

Zenaida: Hindi ko alam kung sa kasama ko iyan ang sa isip niya, ang mag-away.

Sheilfa: Ako, sa isip, naku, napapraning ako. Teka, teka, nalulugi yata ako? Mas mahal yata siya? (Tawanan )

Melanie: Parang ang pakiramdam mo, ano, parang kandila na na ginasindi mauupos.

Sheilfa: Oo. Ah!… (Tawanan) Pero… kasi sa kultura natin eh, iyon ang itinuro sa atin na dapat, isa lang, ang isa ay para sa isa lang. Pero depende iyan eh, kasi noong unang panahon hindi uso iyang isang asawa eh. Tapos iyong relasyon, pati babae maraming karelasyon na lalaki, anong tawag nila doon, komonal. Wala kang isang bana, wala kang isang asawa, oo! Kaya hindi alam ng mga lalaki kung sino ang mga anak nila, pero iyong babae, alam niya kung sino ang anak at nagpaanak sa kanya. Pero ang lalaki hindi niya alam! Tapos, anytime puwedeng palayasin ang lalaki pag hindi na siya nagdadala ng pagkain sa pamilya. Tapos pag nag-asawa, ang lalaki sa bahay talaga ng babae nakatira. Makapangayarihan noon ang babae, ang pamilya ng babae. Tapos parang apelyido ng babae ang ginagamit. Parang ang mangyayari, anak ni Zenaida, halimbawa, Norissa ang pangalan ng anak mo, hindi na Norissa Tana, hindi apelyido ng husband mo ang dinadala, hindi ganyan. Ang pagkilala sa iyo, sa pamagitan ng babae. Anak ni Zenaida, anak ni Norissa, ganun.

Zenaida: Ang pamilya ng lalaki parang hindi madala.

Sheilfa: Pero ngayon kasi nagbago na iyong kultura natin, nakasentro na sa lalaki, pinag-aawayan na ang mga lalaki, pero noon ang babae ang mas may kapangayarihan.

Zenaida: Ang sa akin naman, hindi ko na isipin iyon, ang isipin ko lang ang mga anak ko, makaaral sila, mabuti sila, mapaalagaan ko sila, kahit pa halimbawa sa kilohan, kung lugi tayo, kung saan ang lugi, tanggapin ko na, ang alagaan ko lang ang mga anak ko.

Sheilfa: Oo. Ang isipin mo na lang para sa anak mo? Para sa iyo wala.

Zenaida: Oo.

Sheilfa: Sana darating din tayo sa panahon na isipin din natin iyong para sa atin din, ano, hindi lang iyong para sa anak natin.

Ofelia: Oo. Isipin natin ang para sa kinabukasan, kasi kaawa-awa…

Sheilfa: Iyon ang mahirap kapag lalaki lang ang may kita, tayo wala eh. Wala tayong magawa, ano. In fact, kahit hindi natin gusto iyong lalaki, pero dahil may hanapbuhay siya, sige na lang para mabuhay tayo, para may ibuhay tayo sa anak natin. Iyon ang mahirap, no.

Melanie: Lalo, nagadami ang anak, lalo din naga…

Sheilfa: Hindi ka man lang… iyong iba pa, pag magtanggi ka maggawa ng beybi, ihulga ka pa na, sige, maghanap ako ng ibang babae. Imbis na ayaw mo nang mabuntis uli, pabuntis ka naman uli. Ugh!… (Tawanan)

Dimasino: Sabi ng lalaki, baka may ginabigyan ka siguro na iba.

Sheilfa: Sige nga, sige nga ikuwento nyo sa akin.

Dimasino: Ang ano?

Sheilfa: Iyong paggawa ng beybi ba. Iyong family planning ba. Paano kayo tumatanggi. Tumatanggi ba kayo o hindi kayo tumatanggi? Kasi doon sa Sultan Kudarat, nakausap ko iyong mga babae, andami nila, tapos, pag tumanggi daw sila sinusuntok sila dito sa hita ng mga husbands nila, ha, e di wala na silang magawa, paano na lang.

Zenaida: Nangyayari man din iyan.

Sheilfa: Kasi iyang mga lalaki nag-iinuman iyan sila, tapos magkukuwentuhan iyan, Pastilan, Bay, ang akong asawa nagbalibad, dili na makipag… dili na magpaiyot, ana (tawanan). Testingi, Bay, diri, Bay, bun-oga diri, Bay. Mga hubog na, ha. Palahubog ang mga lalaki didto.

Zenaida: Oo.

Sheilfa: Mga 19 yata iyong mga babae, tapos halos lahat sila sinasabi na ganyan ang ginagawa ng mga husbands nila. Kung magbalibad daw sila, sumbagon man daw sila diri, so sige na lang daw. Ingon nako, na, rape man na siya, marital rape na siya sa balaod nato.

Melanie ug Zenaida: Oo.

Sheilfa: Sa siyudad mahulog na siya nga rape sa asawa sa asawa, ana. Unya, ingon sila, nganong rape nga obligasyon man na nato, kay… ana gud, kay lalaki daw tag-iya sa atong lawas, obligasyon daw na nato. Na, ingon nako, tan-awa na tungod anang inyong obligasyon, tapos, sige’g pangutana sa ako, unsay nahibaw-an nimo nga contraceptives? Ingon nako, kamo diha! (Tawanan) Kay sige daw sila og panganak. Ingon nako puwede condom, puwede Depo Provera. Ingon nila, layo kaayo, magpa-injection lang ka, magbaktas pa ka, walay pamasahe. Ingon nako, Ay dah, kanang inyong mga bana na la’y pamulti og otin (Tawanan) samok. Kay kun mag-pills daw, maglabad ilang ulo, basin daghan ilang bation, ana gani. Oo. Unya ang condom dili man daw mag-condom ilang mga bana. Pastilan. Sige na ba, sige na ba, pag-istorya mo kun paano mo magkuwan. Magbalibad mo, dili? Daghan man mo og anak, so dili mo magbalibad?

Zenaida: Kun ako masabi ko sa mister na hintuan mo muna iyan kay lalo magdami ang anak natin, lalo na hindi mo kayang buhayin.

Sheilfa: Sinasabi mo iyan sa kanya?

Zenaida: Oo. Sabihin ko sa kanya.

Sheilfa: Hindi siya pumipilit.

Zenaida: Hindi rin.

Sheilfa: Pag ayaw mo hindi siya nagpupumilit.

Zenaida: Pag ayaw mo, ayaw mo. Hindi rin siya nagpilit.

Sheilfa: Hindi niya ginagamit iyong isang asawa niya? Ayaw mo? Sige, doon ako sa kabila. (Tawanan) Ay, ganyan ang mga boys. Ayaw mo? Kadamidaming babae. Sige, lakaw!

Zenaida: Ako, iba ako. Kahit sa isang araw sampung beses niya gamitin iyong number 1 niya, bahala.

Sheilfa: Ay, oo. Sige, mabuntis din siya ng sampung beses. Diba?

Zenaida: Kahit na sampung beses gamitin niya sa isang oras lang (tawanan) hindi masakit sa akin iyan.

Sheilfa: Ay, talaga?

Zenaida: Oo. Ganyan ako. Ibig sabihin, pag ganun, ang pinag-awayan ninyo, lalaki.

Sheilfa: Oo nga!

Melanie: Siyempre!

Sheilfa: Dapat ang pag-awayan hanapbuhay, hindi lalaki, no? (Tawanan)

Dimasino: Pag-awayan nyo iyong otin na hindi ka man nun mabusog.

Zenaida: Ang pinag-aawayan namin ang kita niya.

Sheilfa: Yun! Hindi ka naman mabusog. Buti kung… Karamihan sa mga lalaki hindi man marunong. Pagkain na lang, no, lagutmon na lang! (Tawanan) Cassava! Mabusog ka pa!

Sampiyon: Iyan, hindi ba, pag duha ka bulan modako ang tiyan (Tawanan)

Sheilfa: Anong klase! Hindi ka mabusog, tapos lalaki ang tiyan mo! Lugi!

Dimasino: Tayo ang lugi

Sheilfa: Ano iyong sinasabi mo, hanapbuhay lang?

Zenaida: Oo. Hanapbuhay.

Sheilfa: Hindi iyong ari ng lalaki.

Zenaida: Kung sa lalaki naman, hindi na ako interesado dahil may anak na ako, apat. Hindi ko kaya gani paano magbuhay ang apat, dagdagan ko pa.

Sheilfa: Oo. Dagdagan mo pa, huwag na lang.

Zenaida: Iyong kabutihan na lang ng aking anak ang isipin ko.

Sheilfa: Oo. Tama, ano. Korek! Praktikal na lang. Kung gusto mo, bahala ka diyan. Iyong ibang Katoliko, ang sabi, bahala siya mambabae, basta ang kita niya, ang income, diri lang sa pamilya. Labot nako kun asa na niya ibutang iyang otin. (Tawanan) Ana man na’ng mga asawa. Basta ang kita diri sa ako, ang suweldo diri sa ako!

Nena: Bahala ang otin mabulok doon. (Tawanan)

Sheilfa: Oo. Magka-AIDS ba iyan, gonorrhea, bahala siya, hala, basta ang suweldo diri sa ako!

Delmarie: Pero ang kinatatakutan doon, kung babaero ang lalaki, baka maapektuhan sa AIDS.

Sheilfa: Iyon na nga. Baka magdala siya ng impeksiyon.

Zenaida: Pero ang sa akin naman, hindi rin ako nagduda na ganun dahil ang lalaki namin, hindi din nagagamit sa ibang babae, doon din sa alam namin.

Sheilfa: Iyon ‘yong maganda sa legal na dalawa iyong asawa. Kasi alam mo kung saan niya ginagamit iyong kanyang ano. Di ba?

Delmarie: Oo. Tama.

Sheilfa: Iyong patago hindi mo alam kung sino ang ginagamit niya, kung babae ba, o lalaki.

Zenaida: O kung hayup niya ang ginagamitan niya. (Tawanan)

Sheilfa: Malay mo baka kalabaw niya iyong… (Tawanan)

Nena: Kung hayup iyong ginagamit niya, eh di lalo itong masira!

Dimasino: Loko lang itong istorya natin.

Sheilfa: May mga pagkakataon na kayo gusto ninyo, ayaw ng asawa ninyo?

Delmarie: Wala. Walang ganoon.

Sheilfa: Sinong nag-iinitiate?

Delmarie: Iyong lalaki lagi.

Sheilfa: Kayo hintay lang? Hindi kayo nangangalabit?

Dimasino: Kung minsan magkalabit din ang babae. (Tawanan)

Zenaida: Alam mo, para sa akin naman, hindi ako ang magkalabit, madagdagan lang ang anak ko. Para wala na akong problema.

Sheilfa: Oo. Ayaw mong madagdagan.

Ofelia: May istorya pa ako. Sabi ng mister, sabi ng mister namin, babae daw ang magyakap. Sabi ko, sino ang nagyakap sa iyo. Ako, sabi ko, simula ng pag-asawa natin hindi man ako nagyakap sa iyo. Sabi niya, mayroon, mayroon nag-istorya sa akin, babae daw ang magyakap. Wala talaga ako nagayakap. (Tawanan)

Sheilfa: Hindi ikaw ang nagyayakap?

Ofelia: Hindi ah. Sabi ko, baka mayroon nagayakap sa iyo?

Sheilfa: Ah, pag niyakap mo iyong asawa mo, ibig sabihin gusto mo?

Ofelia: Oo. Bakit ka pa magyakap sa asawa mo kung hindi mo gusto.

Sheilfa: Ah, tama.

Nena: Lalaki man ang nagayakap, hindi babae. Masama man tingnan kung babae ang nagayakap. (Tawanan)

Marlyn: Ay naku, depende iyan kung nag-unawaan kayo.

Ofelia: Depende iyan kung nagaunawaan kayo.

Marlyn: Siyempre, kung yakapin ka ng lalaki, e di yakapin mo siya.

Delmarie: Kay siyempre, lab mo gud. Hindi man ibig sabihin na pag nagyakapan tuloy na ang masama, may mangyari na. Iyan talaga ang magmahalan.

Nena: Oo. Hindi man iyon masama.

Sheilfa: Oo. Pero kung gusto mong gawin nyo iyon, yakapin mo iyong asawa mo. Iyon na iyong kalabit?

Mga babae: Oo

Sheilfa: Puwede nang gawin ng babae iyon, di ba?

Delmarie: Puwede man.

Sheilfa: Marami naman paraan, di ba. Yakap, ligo. Hehehe.

Dimasino: Oo. Palanggain iyong mister.

Sheilfa: Palanggain, kape.

Dimasino: Pakainin…

Sheilfa: Bahala sila!
……

Pagpaumanhin sa Kasama sa Pakikibaka (para kay Paring Bert, after an in-door conference)

2009-12-30T00:14:00.000-08:00

Sulti nimo, interesting ang buhay ng mga babae.
Siyanga?
Mahirap kang pasalamatan sa iyong mga paninimbang.
May lumabis, may kumulang sa mga opinyong
mas magandang damhin kaysa sa sabihin.
(And why a man should say that to three sitting women is beyond my conception.)

Kelan kaya darating ang siglo ng walang samaang-loob
na pagtatalo. Walang bayag na mauuntog,
walang galit na di-makasabog, walang dapat tangkaing
laging maging behave at maginuo
sa lalaki, sa pari, sa diyos, sa mahal, sa kasama sa pakikibaka,
at sa kapwa-sinungaling-na-babae.
Kelan kaya titigil sa kapanunungkit ng giting
sa pananahimik, sa pakikinig, at pag-oo-oo-nga,
sa pag-ay-siyanga-siyanga?
Kelan kaya kukupas ang kasikatan ng bagong lalaki,
ng bagong tao: anak ng diyos at tatay ng anak;
may dunong, hindi nambubugbog, hindi nanggagahasa
ng mga sapantaha. Hindi nananantsing, hindi nagnanakaw ng galing.

Kelan kaya uuwi ng bahay ang lalaking may heart besides a head,
Lalaking kailangang laging mag-negotiate at mag-renegotiate
ng space-denied, acceptance-refused, lalaking kailangang laging magbuga
ng words without end nang hindi pahahalto kahit kelan forever man,
lalaking laging kailangang nakikialam sa aming mga pasiya.
Kelan kaya di na namin kailangang maging nice kahit matalino,
magaling umispel nang hindi nagiging mahirap ispelingen?
Kelan kaya kami matututong makipagbuno, makipaglaro,
makipagdiscourse at makipag-intercourse sa mahal,
sa asawa, sundalo, maestro, husgado, Libido ng mundo.
Because sa totoo lang, pagod na si kami, at kung maaari lang sana,
mahimo ba, Sir, plis lang gyud, Darleng, Idiot, Animal, Sapat, Alis! Hawa!
Shut up. Lakaw. Panaw. Estoryaha, debateha hanggang umaga
ang imong Ginuo, Santopapa, kaparokya, katoma,

For once
Let us live alone,
For once
Let us laugh alone.
Pasagdi mi!

Notes on the life of a dyke on strike

2009-12-29T23:25:00.000-08:00

The past three months I have been quite gung-ho over a project which, at the rate the world is going, is to my mind long overdue. It’s so long overdue that I sometimes felt it is better forgotten as it had been, but then someone from futureland came up to me talking about a cause worth fighting for and asked if I’d seen this harvey milk movie, because she thinks it is an important movie, and to watch for the part there when the gays had to be forced to out, said she.

Milk, I reckoned then, is a “gay” movie which, in the vocabulary of this country, means gay men, and for sometime before that, I had been keeping away from gay things in this country, including those from Hollywood. I had been feeling that the gay bastards are a little overexposed and most of them are from the entertainment industry, and as such they are part of the glut, and so therefore, they too just worsen the rot and the muddle that politicians and the ABS-CBN soaps and talk shows had sunk the damn country into. So when this young dyke popped out a paper saying she is not holding with these gay guys who like to speak in behalf of lesbians like LGBT is another variety show they are running, it was kind of, Yehah, there’s a good number coming your way, guys, now host it!

What I didn’t expect was that things would get more serious than I was prepared for. Early on I was telling myself it’s just a cultural show we are getting on the road, no need to bleed, just get some of these bright kids to make lesbian films or some other fantastic dance number and that’s all!, but then we got so intense that I went to as far as Paris haranguing people to contribute to a print job or two, which made things worse, because the white radfem bitch that I rather like there will take up nothing short of a feminist lesbian revolution. No, she didn’t volunteer to donate a cache of arms to get the lesbians of Davao into action. She only said, Anything that will make this world a better place, Sheilfa. And anything that will help this world prepare for a feminist lesbian revolution, I am all for it. I had to tell her to shut up and stop yakking about revolutions because all we want here, really, is rent money to help us through, on top of equal entitlement to at least a weekly orgasm, and she said, Orgasm is just one tiny benefit of a feminist lesbian revolution, dear, there are others, like polymorphous love relationships, better housing, better pay…

A crazy crow was what it was turning into as one girl after another excused herself and moved on as if we didn’t know each other once before. But i made up my mind not to feel so sorry very long. For once. By then I had had enough, I must say. Had had enough of things fallen behind me to turn to and learn from.

So that's how this supposedly pro-lesbian blogsite came about, which, I hope you will find a true thing enough. And I really am thankful to Kim for a gift so willingly given.

So now here I am feet to the door.

SA PAG-INUSARA

2009-12-24T01:39:00.000-08:00

Lia Lopez-Chua

Wala na koy ginahangyo pa
Tanan nakong sinugdanan
Ako nang gilumoy
Haw-ang ko puno ko

Matag buntag sa kaadlawon mobakod ko
Isuot nako akong ngan
Pintalan og dakong kayo ang bongbong
Kunohay nasunog ang bay
Tanang bombero nangamatay

Nagadilaab ang bay
Buntag hangtod gabii
Nagpuyo ko sa kainit
Dili masunog, dili mapaso

Akong mga kagahapon nagpadayon
Nanggahi nga mga agub-ug nga nangpilit sa akong panit
Walay ugma nga mangahas hukasan ko
Nakasinina ko wala koy adtoan

PRO-LAYF

2009-12-21T02:39:00.000-08:00

Akoy buot unsay akong dawaton. O dili dawaton.
Unsay padayunon ug dili padayunon.
Walay maayo kun walay dautan nga gibalibaran.
Dili ko nimo maisan, dili nimo minahan.
Dili baka nga paalimahan o gatasan.
Ayaw kong himoang paktorya.
Kamong mga pari, mga obispo ug mga magbabalaud
Walay bisan usa ka diyot nga giamot
Alang sa ikalambo sa akong buot ug gibati,
Busa walay katungod manag-iya sa akong hunahuna
Ug sa akong sabakan.
Ako kini lawas. Akong tibuok kinabuhi ang
Namiligrong nagpuyo diri. Akoy manalipod niini,
Dili kamo.

Marge Piercy

SALVAGED PROSE: INTERVIEW WITH CAROLINA "BOBBY" MALAY

2009-12-21T02:24:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt of an interview lifted from the now defunct
National Midweek dated September 19, 1990. We are reprinting it here because much of what was said then still holds true today.

Feminists must also pay a lot of attention to helping all women realize their rights, because women who are unaware and fearful of change could be the movement’s worst detractors.

Twila Jacobsen (TJ): How has your own consciousness about women’s struggle developed?

Carolina S. Malay (CM): Before joining the movement, my ideas about women’s liberation were quite shallow. As one of the few women reporters at the time, I was flattered to be “one of the boys” even as I enjoyed the attention and solicitude they gave me as a woman. I accepted, as a matter of course, that top jobs would be out of the question for me. Women’s lib was just starting then, but I didn’t feel it was for me. I was only thinking for myself.

Life in the underground turned the indifference around. Being in close contact with ordinary women, and sharing their same life conditions as a mother and wife myself—our daughter was three and half years old and our son just a year old when it became too dangerous for them to be with me— my eyes were opened to the reality of unequal opportunities, feudal values and practices, and the heavier burden that poverty imposes upon women. I developed close friendships with more women than before.

Maybe it was better that my feminist consciousness emerged this way, through immersion in the life of the masses. Because it was part of my actual experience of the revolutionary struggle, I am convinced that women’s oppression in our country today is first of all a function of mass poverty and underdevelopment in general, and secondly of backward attitudes held by men and women alike. We must solve both these problems without one waiting upon the other.

TJ: Has being married to Satur given you any additional advantages or disadvantages regarding your personal role within the popular struggle?

Now that you ask, I think that being married to Satur has not been a decisive factor in determining what kind of work I have done, and how well I have performed my tasks. In the first place, we didn’t see each other even once in the more than nine years that he was in prison, and that half of our entire married life. That I chose to carry on underground instead of surfacing to take up the conventional role of a spouse, probably speaks for itself. I think it’s fair to say that as far as the movement is concerned, my merits and shortcomings have had to do only with myself.

I would note though that it was I who had to make an adjustment to the fact that Satur is a public figure. Some of the limelight falls on me too, something I wouldn’t have volunteered for.

Over and above everything, I want it on record that I have been strengthened in my own work by the quality of our relationship. Satur is a man who does not feel demeaned by “woman’s work.” A strong and caring person, a good father.

TJ: It seems to me that the local media portry you more as “the wife” of a leader rather than a leader in your own right. How does that make you feel, and how does it reflect in your own work?

CM: Feeling secure that I stand as a person and a revolutionary in my own right, and knowing moreover that my husband and our comrades and friends see it that way, I don’t feel I have to take pains to differentiate myself more aggressively in public at this time. However, I certainly don’t want to be confined to being a “human interest” angle. Nothing against “human interest” stories, but when media people interview us, most of the time, they ask Satur the “political” questions and they ask me to fill in the “lighter side.” Wouldn’t you wish for more imagination and less gender stereotyping?

TJ: Can you explain how the National Democratic Front (NDF) sees the struggle of Philippine women within the popular struggle?

CM: Women’s liberation is definitely an operative goal of the national democratic movement. The NDF program of action spells out quite concretely what the movement intends to do about women’s liberation in the given Philippine conditions. This is a program that derives flesh and blood from the struggles, both practical and theoretical, and emotional, that have been launched by progressive and revolutionary Filipino women through the years. What’s more, it is a program that enjoys the support and commitment also of the men.

I can say without hesitation that we in the Philippines can be proud of what has been achieved in the sphere of women organizing. All of us certainly recognize the role and actual contribution of women in all aspects of the revolutionary struggle.

But that is not to say that what we have done is enough. Significant numbers of women are active participant and leaders, but this is not attributable to a consciously feminist perspective making a tangible impact upon the movement’s priorities and options. Feminism has been largely identified with the progressive middle class, and it still has to make its influence felt more strongly among the masses of the poor. You see, organizing among the peasant or working class women has focused more on class issues, economic and political issues. It has tended not to be gender-related.

I do think that the entire revolutionary movement would stand to benefit greatly from an emphasis on feminist organizing and more attention to women’s issues as an integral part of trade-union or peasant organizing, and community organizing. Of course it would be directed against men, but rather against structures, values, attitudes that fetter the development of women as individuals and as members of Philippine society. It would be a challenge to the unique energy and militancy of all feminist organizations to produce the many more activists and cadres who will do this work on a full-time basis. We must not rely on the underground organizations to produce all the results we want to see.

TJ: Within the movement, is it usual to see women in the kitchen and the men around the table talking politics? And is this a problem for the overall movement to address or a separate issue for women?

CM: It is not unusual in the movement to find women in the kitchen and men talking politics. On the other hand, it is not unusual either to find men in the kitchen and women talking politics.

What I am saying is that structurally women can and do break out of the kitchen and bedroom, and this is encouraged. There are enough women in leadership bodies to substantiate that. I get the impression though that customary patterns are harder to break in the case of couples in the movement who maintain a “normal” life. In a milieu where inequality is the norm, even a politicized husband finds it onerous to be unorthodox within the marital relationship. I guess it’s easier in the underground because there is greater pressure in support of the wife.

Still women in the movement have more obstacles to overcome than men. For one thing, men generally feel freer of family concerns and so they have more time available for other work. Child care, to my mind, is the most crucial area. It legitimately makes demands on a mother’s time for years on end, but ideally the responsibility should be equitably shared between both parents, and between them and society. We in the movement have not yet found a satisfactory solution to this problem. There is still too much sacrifice and pain because parents, especially mothers, are forced to choose between a normal family life and full-time revolutionary work.

TJ: How do the many different issues of women here in the Philippines—the peasant farmer, the factory worker, the urban poor, the tribal woman, the Muslim woman—connect with the overall struggle?

CM: Let me give a personal point of view, inasmuch as I can’t presume to speak for everyone because of my limited involvement in the women’s movement.

The struggle for genuine equality between men and women is an important part of the revolutionary struggle—subordinate but essential. It is not something to be postponed for later stage, even as we recognize that the problem can be tackled in a really systematic and thoroughgoing way, only with the emergence of a more fully developed national economy and political democracy.

I believe that consciousness-raising by itself can achieve a lot even now. Many men are ready to accept women’s liberation, although they have to be shown, pressured, to practice it in their everyday lives. At the same time, feminists must also pay a lot of attention to helping all women realize their rights, because women who are unaware and fearful of change could be the movement’s worst detractors.

May seks layf pa kaya si Mama?

2009-12-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

May mga anak na ang akala nila ay wala nang sex life ang kanilang mga magulang. Di nila maisip na interesado pa sa sex ang kanilang mga nanay. Sa kabilang dako, may mga magulang naman na kahit alam nilang ang kanilang mga anak na tinedyer ay curious na curious at atat na atat nang magkaroon ng sexual experience, sa tingin nila, “bata pa” ang kanilang mga anak para sa “ganyang mga bagay”. Akala nila, dahil di pa handa, di pa gagawin o papangarapin.

Sa mga Muslim at iba pang mga napakarelihiyosong mga grupo tulad ng Katoliko Serrado, Iglesia ni Kristo at mga kalipunan ng mga Isinilang Muli, karaniwan nang ipinagpapalagay ng mga lider at mga nakakatanda na dahil mali at makasalanan at labag sa utos ng Diyos ang sex sa mga nabasbasan ng sakramento ng kasal, naturalamente, hindi gagawin ng mababait at masusunuring mga anak ng Panginoon. May mga lesbian, halimbawa, na mula nang maging miyembro ng banal na grupo, hindi na nagseks muli kahit kelanpaman. Sabi raw sa kanila ni Father, puwede mag-live in, pero di puwede ang magseks ang dalawang babae, na sa simula’t sapul, ay di naman talaga sana puwedeng mag-live in o magpakasal, sa ilalim ng batas ng lipunan at simbahan.

Pero sa gusto natin at sa hindi, ang pag-ibig at libog ay bukas para sa lahat. Sabi nga ni D.H. Lawrence, love is for everybody, even for the grasshoppers. At ang pagdadalaga o pagbibinata (adolescence, sa wikang ingles), ay panahon ng paghahanap ng mga bagong karanasan, panahon ng pagi-eksperimento, at malamang, bago tayo naging handa, tapos na po naming ginawa, Nanay, mag-gelpren na po kami. Buti sana kung gelpren lang, e pa’no kung Mommy, minsan lang naming ginawa iyon, pa’nong nangyari iyon, buntis agad, pambihira siya andaya naman!?!

Kaya nga, kung sa tingin ninyo mukhang responsible at matalino naman ang inyong anak sa ibang aspeto ng buhay (sa pag-aaral halimbawa, o sa ballet class, o sa soccer), marahil mainam kung ipagpalagay na rin ninyo na kaya rin nilang maging responsible at matalino pagdating sa seks. Dahil hindi malayo na bago pa man sila makapagtapos ng high school, karamihan sa kanila, tiyak, ay may konti nang karanasan at marami nang nalalaman tungkol sa seks.

Pinakamabuti na tayong mga magulang ay maagang maging handa at ating ipakita na may tiwala tayo sa kanila. Unang-una, hindi dapat matakot kung nagsasalsal o nagma-masturbate ang ating mga anak. At pag sinabing mga anak, basta mga anak po, lahat ng kasarian po, pati bakla at tomboy, po. Walang dinudulot o ibinibigay na sakit o panganib sa kalusugan ang masturbation, nakakatanggal pa nga ng dysmenorrhea, promise pa, kaya huwag takutin o pa-guiltihin ang mga bata tungkol rito. Huwag maniwala sa mga pari at madre pagdating sa seks, lalo na kung di sila sexually active, aba, ano’ng nalalaman nila? (At malay natin sa seks layf nila, no. Buti magsasabi mga iyan ng totoo.) Ang mas mabuting gawin, pag-usapan ang totoong mga panganib kaugnay ng irresponsible sexual intercourse, tulad ng: maagang pagbubuntis na maaaring mauwi sa unsafe abortion, o sa pagkahawa sa sexually transmissible diseases tulad ng gonorrhea o kaya AIDS/HIV.

Bilang mga magulang, may malaki tayong responsibilidad na siguruhing ang ating mga anak ay hindi lalaking ignorante sa mga simpleng katotohanan ng buhay, pati na iyong para sa atin ay parang masakit o mahirap pag-usapan. Kapag sa tingin ninyo mahihiya kayong magdiscuss ng tungkol sa sex kaharap ang inyong mga anak, baka makabubuting pakiusapan ang kaibigan o kapatid na kapalagayang-loob ng inyong mga anak. (Puwede n’yo rin akong tawagan, peboreyt topic ko iyon, mura lang ang consultation fee, pang-blog lang.) Kung mature at bukas ang isip ng mga taga-health center at taga-eskuwelahan, aba, baka puwedeng free consultations na lang. Halos sa lahat ng schools di ba may guidance counselor, kasali na iyon sa binabayarang tuition, di ba. Tiyakin lang na hindi umuwing yanig o lito o umiiyak ang inyong anak. Alam n’yo na, ang iba diyan, sa halip na tutulungan, aba, pagagalitan pa. Kaya nga, mas da best kung kayo na lang ang mag-usap, malay ninyo, baka matuwa pa senyo ang inyong anak, baka bigla kayong ipaglaba at ipaglinis ng bahay, e di pati katulong ninyo maligaya, di ba.

Kapag naman kayo mismo hindi alam kung paano hindi mabuntis kada seks (huwag mahiya, hindi ito katakataka o kahindikhindik na balita sa lipunan na kung saan ipinagbabawal ang artificial contraception), baka naman hindi pa huli para pag-aralan. Pati pa’no makipagseks hindi rin huli na para pag-aralan. (Huwag nyo kong tawagan, busy.) Alang-alang sa mga bata, ikanga ng Parents Club.

Super thoughtful at super maalaga ang lahat ng relihiyon at simbahan kapag tungkol sa kabanalan ng ating kaluluwa, ngunit wala itong ginawa, at walang inaakong pananagutan pagdating sa mga kasalanan at abusong ginawa at patuloy na ginagawa, sa katawan ng babae. Kaya tayo, higit nino man, ang mas nakakaalam at may higit na responsibilidad para alagaan ang ating mga katawan na kaisa-isang tirahan ng ating kaluluwa at ng ating bukas.

Opinion: Kristine Antonio on Abortion

2009-11-30T21:18:00.000-08:00

DESCENDING INTO IRRATIONALITY

"People fail to understand that the status
of a fetus is a matter of subjective opinion,
and the only opinion that counts is that
of the pregnant woman."

It really bothers me when people impose their moral beliefs upon others.

Yesterday (September 8, 2008), I read a feedback column from a reader criticizing Ramon Tulfo's well-meaning attempt to help a girl, raped by her own father, abort her three-month-old pregnancy. This reader, I am sure, is not alone; there must be hundreds of thousands of people who think like him, like the right-wing fundamentalist US vice-president candidate Sarah Palin, for example, who thinks that raped women should not be allowed to have the option of terminating their pregnancies. These people fail to understand that the status of a fetus is a matter of subjective opinion, and the only opinion that counts is that of the pregnant woman. A happily pregnant woman may feel love for her fetus as a special and unique human being, her very own flesh and blood, a welcome and highly anticipated member of her family. She names her fetus, refers to it as a baby, talks to it, sings to it, and so on. But an unhappily pregnant woman may view her fetus with utter dismay, perhaps with revulsion. She cannot bring herself to refer to it as anything other than "it," much less a human being. She is anxious to get rid of this unwelcome intruder, and when she does, she feels great relief. Both of these reactions to a fetus, and all reactions in between, are perfectly valid and natural.

People say life begins at conception when they refer to the abortion and contraceptive issue. What constitutes life anyway, when there is life in every cell of our body? Or maybe the appropriate question would be "What constitutes a human being?". Most of us still confuse ourselves with the words human and human being. Human is an adjective and human being is a noun. Our set of muscle tissues, and our cells are human, but they are not human beings. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to consider a fetus as merely human, and not a human being? I guess the more important thing to think about is that life is a slim chance of occurrence. Had my mother opted to abort me, I wouldn't be here. Had my mother married someone else and not my father, I wouldn't exist. Ultimately, if I hadn’t been born, it wouldn’t matter to me. It wouldn't matter to us had our parents chosen not to conceive us--the same way it wouldn't matter to a fetus if it was aborted. Joyce Arthur, an advocate of reproductive rights simply pointed out that "[t]he non-existent do not regret their non-existence, and when we the living start worrying about the non-existent, then we descend into irrational nonsense."

We still identify ourselves with the fetus, we consider it human life because we all started as fetuses hence the phrase "life begins at conception" could only be translated as "the life of a human being begins at conception". Still, even if a fetus can be said to have a right to life, this does not include the right to use the body of another human being. Our state law does not force us to donate our kidneys even to save someone's life. Same goes with our wombs.

We are not obligated to risk our lives in order to save people from a burning building, however noble that may be.

I hope those people who call themselves pro-life can one day grasp the idea that the choice to terminate a pregnancy belongs solely to the pregnant woman and that the health and welfare of one established human being is more important than other people's personal comforts.

Why Settle for Just One Man?

2009-11-29T04:16:00.000-08:00

Peachie Saguin

Let’s admit it girls: Men are born to be users. They are made to be that way. Women, on the other hand, are born to be used.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not being pathetic. I speak the truth. The plain, simple, sober but honest truth.

While this may sound distasteful, it is not. The thing is, it is for us to know how to deal with it. Discretion is the word, sisters.

In most relationships, women often feel that they are on the losing end. This should not be the case. If men have every right to use and enjoy us women, let them have their way! If that be the law of nature, we might as well ride up to it. So women have everything to lose? In this age of promiscuity??? Pardon the language, but if we know how to grab and enjoy the moment, we wouldn’t end up as losers! Losers are those who do not know what the moment offers. If men can have strings of women, who says we can’t? What’s so difficult about that!?! Why be a doormat when one could be a flying carpet!

The trouble with us, girls, is we are very emotional. We cry over things that are really beyond our control. We have this very big heart overflowing with love and we like to give it only to one man, then we expect too much from that one man, and if that one man does not reciprocate our devotions, we hurt and eat our hearts out. WRONG on the nth degree!

Dears, it’s not the fault of that one poor man if he can only give that much love to us! What we women should do is to try to be like men, and to think like them. What they can do, we women can do so much better. If they could promise the moon and the stars, then we too can promise the heaven, the skies and the endless universe! We give them what they give us. Value for value. And give some more! Then take home the bacon. Because the only way we women will survive is to learn how to play the game.

The bottom line is, let us not depend on one object for happiness. We have so much love in our hearts to be monopolized only by one man. If we try and give all our love only to one man, we are bound to get disappointed. We are doomed.

So dear sisters, the thing is to circulate! It’s a wide, wide world out there to be beholden to one man!

Ninth Life

2009-11-28T03:07:00.000-08:00

Quennie Cabili

because you knew i'd survive,
you shot me
just like how my friend's dad
shot a black cat
for sport.

he was shocked to see it die
right before his eyes.
he said, "i thought you had nine lives!"
he wished he aimed bad
but he had gotten pretty good.

he decided to go to church
to pray
but another black cat crossed his path.
he stepped on the brake
but he was late.

he said to the roadkill, "let me guess,
this must be your ninth life, too?"
he sighed and prayed
for the cat to find peace
and to ward off bad luck.

when he got home, a little black kitten
was waiting by the kitchen. his wife said,
"an orphan. can we keep her?"
he didn't know what to say:
how could he tell her that he can't

risk taking
another ninth life?

Opinion: SB Alojamiento on Women and War

2009-11-27T23:28:00.000-08:00

Of Peace Jades and Massacre Beads

A couple of months back, I went with a group supposedly representing the Christian, Moro and Lumad women of Mindanao. We were to confer with MILF leaders over what we then wrapped up as a Civilian Protection Framework. Before getting there, I had been warned that some spokesman there could really get chauvinistic, couldn’t put up with women’s lobbying and will dismiss us like we’re just noise makers getting in the way of their high-level talks. I knew that already, I said, I met more than enough of that kind.

Among the proposals the women put forward to the MILF leadership was the setting up of a civilian protection body composed of 70 percent women. United Nations declarations uphold that: women participation in conflict resolution, it is called. But the 70 percent figure was far too much, for the men at the head of the table, it sounded like an invitation to get wiped out en masse. Seventy percent? Ba’t napakalaki naman yata? One of the men, apparently concerned and a little perplexed, asked. You are women, you are not armed, what can you do? You are the ones we should be protecting, Islam commands that of us. The gallantry and the sincerity was apparent, but you somehow feel sad because what they were also trying to say, as they say all the time to women, is, You keep out of war, less problem for us.

We argued back that No, when you look at all the wars and revolutions, including the Bangsamoro revolution, it’s actually women who have been protecting the men! If women did not stood by their men, hiding them from the enemies and so forth, all those wars and revolutions would have not been fought or won at all! The most effective peacemakers have always been women, we are the ones who escort the men to safety, crossing rivers and army detachments to get them to the farm, to the market, or to town. If not for us the number of civilian casualties in the ongoing war would have been higher; if we didn’t put our lives on the line putting ourselves between warring men, there would have been more bodies mowed in the hills and in the highways!

The implacable Mike Mastura grudgingly conceded, but was not impressed: Yes, weakness is a deterrent. You don’t shoot down a weak defenseless creature standing before you, said he. He refused to buy the idea, though, or at least did not articulate it, that one refuses to shoot a woman because of her moral position or that because she is presumably more virtuous than anyone. So much for motherhood arguments, how right he is.

It was a bad take for me though. It was one of those dialogues that abhor violence and celebrate women as fairer sex with magic power to effect peace, harmony, good will, so you had to stop yourself from saying, Then give us arms that we may really protect ourselves and protect you as well! Arm us! Would you like that? But that would be a bad lead in an already bad terrain of some hard-to-win argument as that could only take you back to the bedroom and the kitchen and the squalling babies and bleating goats: back to first base of that indestructible essentialist complimentary roles and women’s roles racket that brought you there before them in the first place. And you know moreover that the Moro women there know a little something about armed defense, too. Never mind if they had to wear long gowns and cover their faces and sexy parts if they went to training. Never mind if they cannot go home or run away with the rifles lent them during the hands-on drill.

I recalled this dialogue as I stared at the bodies of women flagged down by bullets during the November 23 massacre and once more I concede to those MILF spokesmen: they are smart and good in thinking how silly and inane women are to think they can do protection work in war territory!

But I never for once really believed that moral suasion has a place in a society or a country where money more than reason reigns, where mucky floods of sentiments govern, rather than clarity of vision and some amount of political conviction. And I cannot buy strategies of struggle that depend so much on the good will of the enemy or of those with power. I don’t believe in the humanity of man, if you’ll excuse the expression.

War is war, greed is greed, politicians are politicians, and guns are guns. It could have been a fascist who said that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun, but who cares, could he be right.

I would rather that women look out if they don’t want to be hostage and collateral damage to all ongoing wars. I would rather that they watch their heads and watch out good than sell peace jades and massacre beads.

SB Alojamiento

A Warrior Unmasked

2009-11-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

photo by Ram Botero

Karen Kay Rivero

We arrive after sunset
You grab my hand and lead me
To our spot near the shore

I follow you
like a warrior
trudging after the tribal chief
in the darkness
all senses sharpen
like the tip of a spear

I am wearing my battle mask
so I may ask you
about your promise
to divorce your Muslim wife

But instead I find myself
listening to the
throb
throb
throb
between my legs
getting louder and louder
like savage drum beats
signaling war

I lose myself
All i can hear
is the thrusts of your hips
rising and falling
sweet violence
between my legs
stabbing into my soul

everything around me
pulsate
and throb

with my face unmasked
i forget
where i am
i forget
the woman warrior i never was
and instead
I want
and wait
for more

009: Two Poems from Lia Lopez-Chua

2009-11-20T18:02:00.000-08:00

MORNING SONG

The light caught your breath
When after a night of trying to write a poem
I quietly opened the door to your bedroom to watch you sleep
You are on your favorite side your face toward me
Your hand clutching a bit of the sheet to your chest
The gentle rise and fall of that hollow below your collarbone
That elegant mansion
Where I like to dwell each time after we made love
In the soft light of familiarity everything belongs where it is
Even your coffee cup slightly off the saucer
Stayed in place all night with the imperfect precision of history
Except that I am already astounded
That there is a whole other landscape
Furled in your breath
Without beginning and without end
Without me
And you belong to more than all that we are together
In another hour I will hear your voice
The day will be returned to me with its comforting sounds
Our dog Antonio barking on his way to the backyard
The sound of the shower running and in a few minutes your hair dryer blowing
In a heartbeat you and I are gone

AS WE ARE

And it is true we have our secrets
and we guard them with the tough
elegance of doors
in the beginning we used to laugh
at how we could walk out of this room
into the streets where we could be seen
and not be seen as we are
on our well-scrubbed faces there is not a trace
not one trace at all
of the many ways we make love

But it is not that
when from the corners of our eyes
the gazes begin to come
and they come with the menace
of men in uniform and arms
we know we are being stripped and searched
and we know there will not be a trace at all
not a trace at all
except that love is a strange thing
it sings its own song to itself
and it sings and sings
regardless of what happens to you and me
and everyone hears it

In the afternoons when we make love
we begin to leave the windows open
to let the steam out we joked
perhaps it is death we defy
that mugging of our souls that will only
go to hell anyway
perhaps it is just the sun and the breeze
and the breath of daylight we want
to be in the broad daylight with the sun and the breeze
where we are as we are as real as the house next door
and as good as the woman in the blue housedress who lives there
who will walk to her infant daughter's bedroom
at exactly three o' clock to change and breastfeed her

Lia Lopez-Chua

008: Negotiating the Meaning of “Lesbians”

2009-11-20T17:57:00.000-08:00

"Today, the line separating feminism and lesbianism is not really a line but a curve. It is my view that although lesbians are included in the feminist discourse, feminists will have difficulty rewiring their priorities to the lesbian slant."

About four years ago, I imagined that there was an existing support group for gays and lesbians in Davao City even though I was not curious enough to check the facts. It started when I was invited to attend a cultural event, a film screening of gay and lesbian short films and documentaries, hosted by an LGBT network rooted in Manila. I immediately assumed that there must be a Davao-based community in existence that raised the gay and lesbian flag, no matter how obscure they were to most part of the constituency. I said national functions could not have achieved such a respectable number of audiences without the support of involved locals. I likewise assumed that if a local group did exist, it was a group that claimed to be representing gays and lesbians as I deduced from the mixed genres the screenings offered. For one, there was a local promotional arm to the event and they were notably gay. Looking back now, I don’t recall any lesbian ‘faces’.

The problem that I had is that I imagined it because it must exist in order to have a local public representative, which I would like. Otherwise, if the group never existed, then the movement must have existed only at the capital and had no local contributors. The truth is, for that particular event there was some collaboration between the national LGBT and some local organizations composed of gays who presented themselves as allies to the lesbian cause. Reason, I suspect, why I was told that this was a gay and lesbian event. At that time, I never wondered what, really, is a lesbian cause. Now I want to know: Were there indeed lesbians who rallied behind the cause? Or was there a presumption of the cause because of the concession that lesbians exist and they too should have a cause? What, by the way, is the cause all about?

In the city level, there is a gender desk under the Mayor’s office mandated to address gender issues through local policy. I have never heard of it until now. Same goes for a lesbian advocacy group called Link and that it never came to be or stayed long because the lesbians behind it were more preoccupied with socio-economic dilemmas and family survival issues. I am vaguely mapping out the events leading up to what we ourselves were about to do a few months ago: organizing our very own lesbian group. And the past implies that for a long time, the lesbians within the locale had been quite mute about the “lesbian cause”, so that they were for the most part clustered with the gays, thanks to the existing LGBT consortium and other forums like the feminist movement.

In order to create a discourse on lesbianism from the lesbians themselves, certain alliances seemed inevitable and crucial, but must undergo scrutiny. One has to do with differentiating feminism from lesbianism, as the two have been used interchangeably in the tenets of bodily autonomy, sex politics, and gender debates. In the film, “If These Walls Could Talk, 2”, the character played by Michelle Williams was in constant dispute with her feminist sisters who were in the beginnings of third wave feminism and who deemed that her (Williams) push for lesbian visibility ought to be sidetracked for purportedly more important feminist agenda. That was in 1972. Today, the line separating feminism and lesbianism is not really a line but a curve. It is my view that although lesbians are included in the feminist discourse (note: especially and only if these lesbians identify themselves as women), feminists will have difficulty rewiring their priorities to the lesbian slant, unless they too are lesbians or have lesbian experiences. In order to identify with an advocacy, it ought to be personal. And the stronger your feelings are about the issue from your gut to your fingertips, the more you are able to defend it. Each person has a narrative that positions them where they stand, therefore, all voices are different. It is not really a question of what is the legitimate view but instead it is the personal history or narrative of the person expressing a view that affects the outcome of the message. The curve illustration I have purports that a margin is too strictly defined for the nature of possibility of the feminist-lesbian alliance, whereas in reality, feminists and lesbians can be sympathetic to shared life experiences in a roundabout way, without necessarily owning the narrative of the other.

The structure of the LGBT movement from the international, to the national, has yet to be digested by the local. The movement is deliberately fashioned to make the minority visible and convince others until it create a critical mass that will affect negotiations at the human rights level.

Starting out our own micro-cell of lesbians in Davao, the LGBT movement seems overwhelming and at times hegemonizing, in terms of discursive behaviour and in its tendency to cluster or “sweep” us under its wing. It is curious how independent micro-cell lesbian groups, such as the one we are organizing here, are subsumed under the LGBT identity just by virtue of the non-heterosexual “bigger collective”. One reason is that the concept of minority had always been examined in the context of democratic precepts and state entities, and that it is democratically possible to fight or deflect various forms of oppression when non-heterosexuals stand together. The distinctions within the LGBT tend to blur from there. However, it is understood that this bigger alliance is only good in resisting heterosexual hegemony. But once the identities behind the LGBT movement are each singled out, the unique individual struggles and inherent conflicting interests will unravel. For now however, suffice it to say that it is possible and most expedient to unite gays or straights with lesbians where their principles and sentiments intersect.

Finally, how come lesbians take so long to get organized? One speculation we discussed was that the majority of lesbians in our area are characteristically non-political, and perhaps, that the more politicized or at least the socially conscious lesbians are a little concentrated among the bourgeosie and the petty bourgeois, particularly professionals and university students exposed to feminist education. We realise, of course, that non-political urban poor lesbians deserve as much representation as the noisy bourgeois. One lesson I have learned from the national LGBT, take for example, the party list Ang Ladlad (The Obvious), is that its leaders are keen on communicating to multi-sector representatives - from the lower-class tomboys who drive jeepneys for a living, to the out socialites and celebrities-. This inclusive but non-partisan approach to their movement empowered Ang Ladlad in the electoral level because like I mentioned earlier, micro-struggles are assumed and subsumed under an even larger purpose that the party is fighting for.

Going back to the locale, a lot of energy needed to be channelled into awareness campaigns because the premise of any lesbian organization is to provide a “space” for lesbians. For our group, there was a loose, intuitive, and somewhat casual way in which the core women were selected. It is the first time I have heard that a lesbian group was being forged by a mix of lesbians, straights, and in-betweens. The point is that whoever or whatever group started out this our so-called lesbian organization can only anticipate it taking a life of its own, or growing beyond its heterogeneous membership.

How can lesbian voices be heard? At the moment, however, it is only practical to gather people who are supportive of the issue and have the energy to ignite the discursive machine. There are still a lot of lesbians that need to be reached and linked up with so that they too can be part of the negotiation. Once they are found, and once we have them with us, the plot will thicken and the discursive wave will eventually break the silence.

There is a tendency for any growing movement to privilege certain discourses and to obscure some others in the process of negotiation. If it is a lesbian space we aspire to, then our organization will have to eventually grow into that.

Kim Loraine Castillo

006: How to deal with lost propositions

2009-11-20T00:53:00.000-08:00

How to deal with lost propositions
(para sa mga gibalibaran)

Closure is a hard thing
to swallow.
Murag nanghubag nga tutunlan
Dili matulon
Tanan nimong mahikit-an
Lisog lumuyon

Taymsa, ngano kahang wa ko ga-cry-cry?
Ah daah…I'm bored with crying
Crying is lying
Emote lang na, matod pa sa mga bayot
Walay nanakit nako
Walay nabandog, walay natandog
Ako gihapon ni
Mga girls ra na sila
Nangagi sa akong atubangan
Samtang nagkagod ko sa akong kaspa
Girls walking, walking by
While I tie my shoe
Wa gani ko gikidhatan o gipahiyuman
Bisag dirty finger wa
Ako ray nanangkong
Toa ra sila nangwalk away
Wa man lang gani ko gibabay-babayan
Just walked out on me, ignored me
Unsay mahimo
Maypa, magheadcount na lang ko!
They're just walking numbers
One quieter than the other
By and by heads will roll
One after the other
Mangamatay ra na sila
Samtang nagkagod ko sa akong kaspa.
Murag mga alibangbang
Dili mabuntagan.
And I would still be here
Not even remembering their names

Samin
(Pasaylo Sylvia Plath)

Wa koy daan nang gihunahuna nimo
Kun unsa ka, mao ra say akong dawaton
Wa man koy gusto nimo
Kun anaa ka, anaa sad ko dinhi.
Dili tika unsaon.
Usa lang ko ka talan-awan
Gigama sa pilak, walay kasingkasing.
Ang manganha sa akong atubangan ako rang pasagdan
Daghan man mo, dili lang ikaw
Kun wala mo kanang bongbong maoy ako istoryahon
Pero usahay inyo siyang salipdan
Pulihan sa inyong mga nawong
Ug sa kangingit nga kanunay magpatunga,
Magbulag kanamo.

Mga baye maoy sige’g mangahi
Manghukas, iladlad nako ilang mga lawas.
Wala koy ginasulti.
Kun unsay ilang ihatag nako, mao ra say akong ibalik nila
Taud-taud ila kong biyaan, mangita og laing kaatbang
Pero mobalik lang gihapon.
Tingali ako gihapon ang ilang labawng tuohan.
Sama nimo.
Wala koy ginapangita.
Wala sad koy gimingawan.
Basta nia ra ko dinhi, nag-atang.
Matinud-anong naghulagway sa inyong mga kabutang.
Unsay inyong makita mao ra say inyong makuha.