Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

sex without love*

If there’s any soundbite that I absolutely hated hearing in relation to the Hayden Koh sex videos, it’s from Boy Abunda, saying that sex, whether on video or not, must be about LOVE.

Goodness. Is this the dark ages? How many women have been oppressed precisely by this notion of love? I love you girl, therefore sleep with me. This dialogue is what has brought women to bed, before they are of an age when they can handle it, before they are even aware of their bodies. This is what has allowed for women’s bodies to be made into objects, because they enter the bedroom and think, oh, I love this man and this must be the way to prove it.

Love is what has allowed women to imagine love triangles to be acceptable, precisely what has kept all these women in Hayden’s bed and on his camera, what has allowed for Vicky Belo to imagine that she must stay, to prove she loves him.

Talk of love in relation to these sex videos is an injustice to love.

But maybe this is really just us, as audience, in over our heads about these sex videos, enamored with the ongoing debate, the continued media coverage, the chismis. It really is so juicy, yes? But all of these seems like we are, as audience, unprepared to deal with sex as sex, period. Ill-equipped to deal with the kind of technology that propagates videos of two people getting it on. Unprepared to look at sex in the eye and view it for what it is: two bodies articulating desire.

For who’s to say there was sex but no love or any emotions, and vice versa? This is only obvious when the act is done with no consent, and that would make it rape, no ifs and buts about it. And yet this isn’t porn either, nor your usual sexy movie. Both of these are done for profit, and presume what it is that the audience wants to see, over and above anything else.

But these Hayden videos have more than consent, and just run-of-the-mill movie sex. It has enjoyment. It has desire. It has libog, in the Pinoy sense of lust-desire-passion-tulo-laway-bodies-against-each-other-bahala-na-si-Batman sense. Only real life – not necessarily true love – would allow for that kind of desire. And two bodies acknowledging that desire, acting on it, enjoying it, is difficult to ignore. And maybe shouldn’t be debased to the level of just a sex video.

Or easily, and simply, oppression of one woman, or two or three. In the aftermath of these videos, we are told to see only the woman’s body, and how she had no idea something like this was going to be released to the public. All we’ve seen, in fact, and considered, are the women’s bodies. What about Hayden? Is he not objectified as well in this whole enterprise of sex videos? Yes, he taped these sexcapades, but it is obvious that he was not the one who released them. That makes him a victim, too. And he is twice victimized by the fact that no one has seen him as victim. I’m not saying Katrina and the other girls aren’t victims, too, I’m saying that they are not the only ones.

But again, to us as audience, Hayden is not victim because we imagine that he is the one in power here. He’s the one in a position to enjoy the sex, the videotaping, the different positions. But what of the women? Did they not enjoy it as well?  Isn’t it possible that in this whole enterprise of sex-video-talk, that we are the ones bringing the discussion to the level of shame and embarrassment?

Isn’t it that it is us, as audience and chismosas, who have oppressed Katrina and Maricris and whoever else will come out in these videos, as women whose lives are now over? And aren’t we the ones to actually, and truly, give Hayden an even bigger ego, as we refuse to even acknowledge that he is oppressed too?

In our insistence that only the woman is oppressed here, aren’t we also allowing for Hayden to get away with it? To get away with imagining his power to be more than it actually is, to be something to be proud of? In the age of masculinity studies and hypermasculinity experimentation, this can be turned around in his favor, you know. And after all, despite the threat of losing his license to practice medicine, he will still find himself a career – if only in the eyes that have objectified him through these videos. And maybe if only as Vicky Belo’s constant man, the one she proves her true love through (an absolute craziness in itself, of course).

In the process, what we fail to do is bring this discussion to the level of sex as truth, as real, and as something that we must all – particularly the women – deal with and be responsible about. In the age of technology, yes, but also in the age of sex without love, or at least questionable/ unstable/dishonest love. Here, women are being taught to have the stomach, the mind, the heart, for every other consequence that happens after the sex. We are being told that we will be alone, with no laws to help us, no reproductive health consciousness to bank on. As such, we must all bring this to the level of responsibility, of talking about it beyond the chismis, of making women – and men – realize that in the end, we do pay. For what our body wants, and for heeding its otherwise normal desires, in the face of a society that has yet to be  mature about sex. And love.

Over and above whether it’s on video or not.

*Title taken from Sharon Olds’ poem :

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the     come to the     God     come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health–just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

From Strike Sparks, Selected Poems 1980-2002. U.S.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Page 24.

komentaryo

sugod mga kafatid!

I can’t help but delight in the ManoloQuezonIII-ChipTsao debacle. First came ChipTsao and his satirical take on the Philippines versus China on the Spratlys. Second was the expected general public sentiment that this was racist, unacceptable, and off with ChipTsao’s head! Third, Manolo writes this status on his Twitter and Facebook via Ping.fm: “All the crap …” Fourth, hindi na kinaya ng powers ng bloggers na sina Dona Victorina at Reyna Elena, hindi lang si ChipTsao, kungdi pati na rin si Manolo. (more…)

komentaryo

in defense of Nicole

This is a translation of the transcript of Joms Salvador’s comments on the unthinking and insensitive soundbites that have come out of Nicole’s last sworn statement.  Click here for the original Filipino version.

I could not help but respond to the views this note on Nicole’s “retraction” has elicited.

First, on the basis of what’s preferable or not, it is true that it would’ve been better had Nicole and her family not “backed out”, if they didn’t get tired and just pushed through with the fight. From any given perspective — as a woman, as a Filipino, even as a victim — no one can say that in the eyes of the public, it was better that Nicole had executed her last affidavit.

But on the point of what is right and what is wrong — a moralistic enterprise that has as its by-products the notions of whether Nicole is scared or brave, selfish or selfless, shameful or decent — this should not be an issue here.

The reason is simple: we are not Nicole, we are not the woman who has had to face the distaste and ambivalence of the public, we are not the Filipina victim who is fighting a rapist, protected by both the US and Philippine governments.

Also, given thatNicole has conceded, has backed out at this point, does this mean that she wasn’t raped at all? If we analyze her affidavit well, she did not say that she wasn’t raped. What she said was this: she wasn’t sure if a rape happened. She said that maybe it was her fault, maybe she did or said something that allowed for her and Smith to become intimate.

Nowhere in the affidavit did Nicole say that she was taking back all the circumstances that surrounded the rape in Subic on November 1 2005: Smith carried a practically unconscious Nicole from the Nepture Bar as if she were a pig; Smith raped Nicole inside a moving Starex van; after which, Smith left Nicole on the sidewalk of Alava Pier, with her pants down and a used condom sticking to her skin. No one has said or proven these to be untrue, no one has said that none of these instances didn’t happen.

The Filipina Nicole was raped on November 1 2005 in Subic Philippines.

American soldier Daniel Smith raped her.

The law and the decision of the Makati Regional Trial Court are clear about Smith’s verdict: Smith took advantage of Nicole’s drunken state. Physical and circumstantial evidence proved that Smith raped Nicole.

Or have people conveniently forgotten this so that they can continue to view and judge Nicole based on the stereotype they so wish her to be?

Lastly, in order to understand Nicole and this last decision she has made, it is important to understand what rape is, and what happens to women victimized by it, especially for the ones like Nicole, who was raped by a soldier of the most powerful imperialist country in the world, who holds the most puppet-government in Asia by the neck.

This is the thing to do, instead of brandishing moralistic rhetoric to blame the victim of rape.

between the Philippine Daily Inquirer, among other major newspapers, posting images of her for all the world to see and calling the affidavit a “retraction” which IT IS NOT; between the conservative old men who fight among themselves (wow, namecalling! how macho!) and who think they are more intelligent than the rest of us because they (1) love to quote from the law (as if this has excused the Americans from trampling on this country time and again) and (2) blame everything on activism (as if they know what it means, when all they prove is that it has now become fashionable to be America-loving anti-activist fascists), and the women and men across generations who have said that Nicole is a disappointment, a waste of our time, a loser. what has become clear is this: we do not understand. and like the American soldier Daniel Smith, we would much rather work on the presumption that Nicole was a woman who deserved what she got (oh, pray tell, which kind of woman is this?), instead of seeing November 1 2005 for what it is: the night that a Filipina named Nicole was raped by American soldier Daniel Smith, period.

rape has nothing to do with the social class, the career, the life of a woman — much less how much she drank — at that point of becoming victim. rape has everything to do with a man eaten up by hubris, and imagining that he can get away with violence.

komentaryo

tungkol kay Nicole ni Joms Salvador

hindi ko mapigilang magkomento sa ilang mga naging pahayag hinggil sa note na ito.

una, sa pamantayan ng ‘preferable’ o hindi, totoo namang mas maganda sana kung hindi “umatras” si nicole at ang kanyang pamilya. kung hindi sana sila napagod at nagtuloy-tuloy na lang sa laban. sa anumang punto de bista — bilang kapwa babae, bilang kapwa Pilipino, o kahit pa bilang biktima — walang puwedeng magkaila na mas maganda at kaayaaya sa mata ng publiko kung hindi inexecute ni nicole yung huli niyang affidavit.

pero sa punto ng tama o mali — iyang moralistikong pagwawasiwas na iyan ng kaugnay ng pamantayang duwag ba o matapang, makasarili ba o selfless, kahiya-hiya ba o marangal — hindi dapat diyan hilahin ang usaping ito.

simple lang ang dahilan: hindi tayo si nicole, hindi tayo ang babaeng kailangang humarap sa alimura o ambivalence ng publiko, hindi tayo ang biktimang pinay na kinakalaban ang isang rapist na protektado kapwa ng gobyerno ng US at ng pilipinas.

pangalawa, kung sumuko man ngayon si nicole, ibig bang sabihin hindi na siya ni-rape? kung uuriratin ang bagong affidavit niya, wala siyang sinabing hindi siya ni-rape. ang sinabi niya ay hindi siya sigurado kung may rape na nangyari. sabi niya baka raw kasalanan niya, baka raw may ginawa o sinabi siya na naging dahilan para maging “intimate” sila ni smith.

wala ni isa man dun sa recent niyang affidavit ang nagsasaad na binabawi niya ang mga sirkumstansya ng rape sa subic noong nov 1, 2005 : binuhat palabas ni smith ang isang halos unconscious na si nicole mula sa neptune bar na parang baboy; ni-rape habang nasa loob ng umaandar na starex van; pagkatapos ay itinapon sa gilid ng daan sa may alava pier na nakababa pa ang pantalon at may nakadikit na gamit na condom. walang bumabawi sa ganitong mga paglalarawan at pagpapatotoong may nangyaring rape. ni-rape si nicole noong 2005 sa subic. at si daniel smith ang nang-rape sa kanya.

malinaw ang sinasabi ng batas at ang desisyon ng makati regional trial court sa verdict nito kay smith: sinamantala ni smith ang ganung state ni nicole. pinatunayan ng physical at circumstancial evidences na ni-rape ni smith si nicole.

o baka naman pati ito kinalimutan na ng ilan para lang sumakto sa iskema ng pagkastigo kay nicole?

huling punto na lang: para maunawaan si nicole at ang naging desisyon niya nitong huli, kailangang unawain kung ano ang rape at ano ang nangyayari sa mga babaeng biktima ng rape, lalo na iyong mga katulad ni nicole na ang nanggahasa ay sundalo ng pinakamakapangyarihang imperyalistang bansa sa daigdig na hawak sa leeg ang pinakatutang gobyerno sa asya.

mas mainam na gawin ito, kaysa magwasiwas ng kung anu-anong moralistikong retorika para manisi ng isang biktima ng rape.

komentaryo

FrancisM! National Artist?

it’s just too much. maybe, too soon.

anyone who has seen me since FrancisM’s death, anyone who has read this blog’s past two entries, would know that I love FrancisM. that i’m a fan, that i respect him as an artist and person, that i admire the kind of convictions that he had, the lines he crossed to prove that he would die for them. (more…)