Woman as woman

Courage is the everyday word for it, but I really prefer valor. It connotes more a willingness, a determination, a battle, rather than just the luck-of-the-draw reaction to circumstance, to everyday.

I remember when I was younger, having a resentment of the most valiant picture of woman as mother. Why the mother? I asked. Never leader, president, soldier, worker, thinker. This is the 21st century and haven't we any gone further than being different from man because of a collection of reproductive organs? Biology, yes, renders the woman inferior every time, all the time: the monthly periods, the dysmenorrhea that renders one invalid, the risk of pregnancy, the question of abortion, career vs. family. Of these things, man has been spared.

And though I am not naive enough now to discount the un-feeling girl, the in-different woman--the one who will, without question, without second thought discount marriage, homemaking, the one who will say yes without hesitation to abortion--perhaps it is our biggest achievement to be able to carry life within us, to bear the weight and the pain, and to live with them always: the pain and the weight of creation, the nurturing, letting go.

Perhaps the ultimate feminism lies in motherhood, despite decades of fight. This might be our single claim to valor: that we choose to face the consequence, become aware of it, and deal with it to the best of our abilities, all the while knowing that we have no choice but to let go. Perhaps this is why all the stories begin like this: Once there was a child.


For my friend Ina, the most valiant of women.

this is old news

but it seems that i still haven't kicked my old notions of being saved by a knight on a white horse (this is such an old stereotype. i'm not even a damsel in distress.)

twice this week, modes of transportation that i've depended on have broken down on me. and of course i've always wished that i could call someone, who would say "shit, really? where are you? i'll get you." forgetting that in the end if i just sat a bit and waited or really just started walking, i'd get where i had to go.

[i can hear so many of my friends' voices going, duh.] but really i'm slow. i still believe that stupid fairy tale.

and so this is what responsibility feels like. it's not really a weight or a chain or anything really. it's just the belated notion that yes, you actually do have control over your life. no matter how little it may seem, or how undeserved.

i've been a lazy git for some time. ending up in bad situations that would eventually push me to finally get my ass moving, or luckily enough, have friends pull me out.

i think this is also applies to creation. you have to do the work, no matter what. no white knight of divine inspiration can be depended on.

but this claim of sorts doesn't seem to hide the fact that loneliness, that loneliness is.

left to the house

for sunshine, who labels herself taong-bahay.

which doesn't do justice to who she really is.

Ang Kapatid na Babae ng Ilustrado
ni Joi Barrios

(para kay Josefa Rizal)

Siya'y taong-bahay.
Ang kanyang kapatid na lalaki,
ang ilustrado,
ay naglakbay patungong Espanya,
patungong Europa,
palibot sa mundo.

Siya'y taong-bahay.
Ang kanyang kapatid na lalaki,
ang ilustrado,
ay nagdaos ng mga lihim na pulong,
nagsulat ng mga sanaysay,
nagtatag ng La Liga Filipina.

Siya'y taong-bahay.
Walang babaeng naglakbay
para mag-aral ng medisina o batas.

Siya'y taong-bahay.
Marahil, nagbuburda ng mga bulaklak sa sala,
gamit ang sariling buhok bilang sinulid.
Marahil, nagluluto ng masarap na putahe sa kusina,
nagpapakulo ng tuwalya ng baka at dugo ng baboy.

Siya'y taong-bahay.
Ngunit marahil, nang inanyayahan nila siyang
lumahok sa himagsikan
hiniwa niya ang kanyang balat
at sinulat ang kanyang pangalan
nang pulang-pula.

from: Minatamis at Iba Pang Tula ng Pag-ibig. Anvil Publishing, 1998.

barefoot loving

for ning, who always told me that what she wants to be is barefoot and pregnant.

because really, barefoot doesn't quite say nakapaa.

Pagbati sa Pagsinta
ni Joi Barrios

Nakatindig kong babatiin and pagsinta.
Hindi nakahimlay at nahihimbing
na kailangang gisingin ng halik,
hindi nakaupo't naghihintay
na para bang ang kanyang pagdating
ang kabuuan ng buhay,
hindi nakatingkayad o lumilipad
na nakikipaglaro sa hangin at pangarap.
Nakatayo ako't sumasayad
ang paa sa lupa,
pagka't lagi't lagi,
nakayapak ako kung umibig.

from: Minatamis at Iba Pang Tula ng Pag-ibig. Anvil Publishing, 2008.

on arch enemies

who of course are women, too. though we would like to imagine them to be men. but really, whether we admit it or not, we are made to love certain men to bits, even when they're but figments of our imaginations, even when none of it is real. (and we know he isn't real because in our heads, our man is john lloyd cruz. or derek ramsey. or, sige na nga, jon avila.)

and yet feminism teaches us that we are sisters by virtue of being the same. regardless of which feminist we read, we are told to a certain extent about sisterhood. about empathy and sympathy and taking up other women's causes. we take these causes up because we are the educated, the lucky, the one's in the right places of consciousness and power. and to a certain extent, this is easy.

to look at that woman carrying a child in the streets of the city, begging for change. to give the waitress an extra 20 pesos as tip, just because she had smiled, when others wouldn't have. to exchange chismis with the cashier at the grocery, because she had lingered over the showbiz magazine you had bought, and decided to strike up a conversation. we are allowed to imagine that mother who is pregnant with her eleventh child, at a loss, without food, without basic services, and we are allowed to speak for her and fight for the reproductive health bill.

of course more than anything, what we do is cry for all these women. charity after all is the most basic act that we are taught by school and church and television. we are allowed to forget that beneath it is a superiority complex that we've been taught all too well.

what we have yet to be taught though, is how to handle that woman who doesn't need your charity, or sympathy, or empathy. that woman who decides to break your heart, eat you alive, and leave nothing for the birds. she is the one you are in an ongoing contest with, because she is older and you are younger (or vice versa), maybe because she is living the life you thought you would, or you are exactly that person she can only imagine being. this woman can be your closest friend, or that colleague who decides to spread rumors about you. she can be a cousin, an acquaintance, your boss. she can even be your mother.

sometimes, these women are exactly like us -- powerful and educated and intelligent -- and that always makes it more difficult. sometimes though, you know that these women just don't know any better. they are victims of their own miseducation, find power in the imagination of a happily ever after, which in this day and age means materialism and accumulation and commodification of their very own lives. theirs are the lives that pop culture celebrates as independent and perfect and powerful. these images and these women's soundbites create this competition, one that we are part of by virtue of breathing the same air that they do, whether we like it or not.

we aren't taught by feminism how to deal with any of these women and how they are celebrated in our context. we aren't warned about the women who only care for themselves, who have no sense of doing right by other women just because they are women, who don't care that the lives they live -- the successes they have -- happen at the expense of other women.

when we are taught about sisterhood, and sympathy, and empathy, we aren't warned about apathy. the truth is there are women who have no sense of sisterhood. and then there are women like us, who suffer for believing what we've been taught. that sisterhood is a matter of justice.

on the aftershock of other women

a joy, is what this story was. of the ex-wife, who dares take the "other woman" to task for admitting to having an affair with her husband. of the ex-wife asserting that it was inappropriate, and really, how it was just "uncool".

because even when the story of infidelity has become familiar, it is not something that's easy to swallow. or forget. there is ego (because what else does infidelity highlight but the truth of competition -- and someone winning over you). there is anger (because there is dishonesty and injustice). there is pain (because memory is difficult to erase. or deny). because there is always a victim.

here, where we come from, the other woman is rarely talked about. there was of course that book on learning from your husband's mistress long ago. but more than anything that made fun of the mistress and the stereotypical filipino wife -- an affront to both of them.

otherwise, there is usually silence about the other woman here. we talk about them behind their backs, we whisper amongst ourselves about how certain love affairs started, but we never take these women to task. (or the men, which is subject for another entry all together.) we also rarely hear the other woman speak.

i imagine that this silence has much to do with society siding with the (ex-)wife (or girlfriend), and wanting to save her from any more talk or images of betrayal.

but now is a time when the betrayed is not allowed to forget. because now the other woman hasn't just found her right to speak, she has begun to feel entitled. to re-writing history; to forgetting; to imagining that she is faultless. so she talks about her love story as if she were not, not ever, the other woman. she posts pictures that point to the beginning of her love story, as if it was nothing but beautiful, and honest, and true.

it's not just uncool, it's tasteless.

of course it's entirely possible that all she's doing is revealing that she's in denial about history repeating itself.

moving ...

from pinaywoes.

and starting over now that there are more distances we keep among us.