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.