feminism

This week, we talk about feminism with special guests Profs. Guy Claudio, director of the UP Center for Women's Studies and Leloy Claudio, Ateneo de Manila assistant professor. We joined them to celebrate the UP CWS 25th anniversary.

This week, we talk about the claim by Couples for Christ that gender equality in the RH Law goes against their religious freedom. Then, we discuss Soylent, the food replacement drink.

Things are not just what we make them look like, but also what others want or can see in us.

Majority of straight men do not have a proper venue for productive discourse with regard to men’s issues because, in the dominant paradigm of gender politics, straight men are considered to be the privileged oppressors in patriarchal cultures and are, therefore, in no position to voice out grievances, especially grievances about the opposite sex.

The SlutWalk is not about daring men not to feel sexually attracted to women whose fashion sense can induce sexual desire. One of the points of the movement is to dare a patriarchal society to create an environment that accommodates and respects women’s desire to look however they want in spite of other people’s sexual desire.

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

I don’t count myself a feminist, but I felt a strange flurry of indignation, bewilderment, and despair some might accord to a feminist sensibility as I processed my response to certain reasons and logic used to justify (1) the “practicality” of the above quotation as if it does not imply the prevalence of a problematic patriarchal vocabulary and (2) condemnations of the slut walks as if their participants use the term “slut” merely for shock value. To some, that makes me a silly feminist. To me, that simply makes me someone who’s fighting for a free world where sluts, prudes, and everyone in between and beyond, can live in harmony.

I am totally for women speaking out not only against harassment, but also in support of their right to be open about their love for sex, whether mindless or meaningful. What I find very weak about these women’s concept, however, is their dependence on the image of a scantily-clad slut to further such a well-intentioned cause.