it’s easy to get lost in the mudslinging that goes into debates about any bill that touches on reproductive health and its contingent issues (contraceptive use, family planning) in this country. what with the notions of morality and rights, the Church and the State, religion versus the law, that get thrown in for good measure. talaga naman, the weak at heart would rather not say anything. baka nga namang matawag ka pang imoral (which, given the Church’s definition isn’t a bad thing at all), o demonyo.

minsan, mas madaling pagtawanan, the things that are revealed about our institutions in the midst of issues like this. one can’t help but laugh, for example, at the outmoded ways in which the Church views its devotees as: (a) living sexless lives or (b) responsible, compassionate and intelligent adults, who aren’t wont to give in to sexual needs. anyone who does research on this issue will also be brought to sites like this one, where Pro-Life people insist on keeping families smaller by what they call the “mucus method” - where women will keep track of their vaginal discharge, (maybe even touching it and smelling it for good measure, you can never be sure after all), so that they know when they can have sex (which is of course dependent on whether or not they want to have children).

recently though, the laughter has been a pained one. the kind that’s premised on a fear of the Church and its ability to insist on things political using their notion of morality. particularly given the ways in which GMA has tried her best to keep this institution happy - even if only through her silences and wry smiles. it’s even harder to be hopeful when all we hear from her comes from Gov. Joey Salceda, who has the gall to reduce the issue and the government’s stand to this: “There’s very little pressure for drastic change in the policy, which the President says she wants to be consistent,” he said. He added partly in jest, “Apparently, there are no people going out on the streets calling for less sex because it is sinfully delightful.” what a pointless thing to say.

along with the silence, or stupid soundbites, from GMA’s camp, there’s the Church and its believers, coming out in droves, talking about immorality and death, and all the possible evils that a reproductive health bill will bring on. where we talk about population control, they’ll say but the population’s fine, what we need are economic policies to take care of our admittedly growing number. where we talk about impoverished families with too many children, they say but i have eight children, and i’m perfectly happy! where we talk about parents’ right to choose how many children to have, when to stop having children, and how to keep from having children; they’ll point a finger and scream: a culture of sin, a culture of evil! anti-life advocates!

but this is not, cannot simply be, a debate that’s about pro-life versus pro-choice. that debate, to begin with, is premised on an abortion law, not a reproductive health bill. a bill, that in its current version continues to insist that abortion is illegal in this country. when the Church and its cohorts say otherwise, they are lying.

what this bill does call for is medical attention for the half a million women who go through illegal abortions every year, in some godforsaken dirty room in the bowels of our urban spaces. what it does insist on, is the right of every woman to choose for herself what kind of method to use, if she wants to have less children, or none at all, given the sexual relationship she’s embroiled in, within or outside of marriage.

what the Consolidated Reproductive Health Bill knows is that while it would be great to imagine that all Pinoy husbands will not insist on sex when their wives don’t want it, or when their wives say it’s a “bad time” (because you know, my mucus isn’t right); while it’s fantastic and ideal to imagine that the youth aren’t sexually active too early for their age; while it would be great if all single Pinoy adults were sexually responsible; in reality, in truth, these ideals aren’t what we’re working with.

it only takes a more intelligent assessment of the ideologies that surround relationships and marriage in this country to see that this can’t simply be about couples deciding privately how they can grow their families. here, in the land of poverty and miseducation, marriage and patriarchy, couples living in shanties and unable to afford basic services, have 8, 9, 10, 11! children; women die at childbirth, children die before they turn one, more before they turn five; and the women who do want and need to control their pregnancies can’t afford the choices available.

what this highlights, and which discussions on pro-(culture-of-)life forget, is that ultimately, a reproductive health bill is about women and their right to their bodies.

and it is when we speak of women that we must acknowledge their diversity: not all women want children, or want many of them, and some women just enjoy having a husband/lover and the sexual relationship that allows; not all women want to focus on their mucus or the calendar, and risk getting pregnant given the uncertainty of these methods; a majority of women in this country are poor, uneducated or miseducated about their rights and the roles within the family, and don’t know any better than to accede to their husband’s sexual whims and demands; and while their lives seem to be made of the same cloth as your daily soap opera, these women’s lives are real and painfully true.

even when it’s not you or me, na nakakapit na sa patalim, stuck between a rock and a hard place, we must be able to imagine that woman. she who’s more than willing to batter the body and risk one’s life, instead of bringing out another unfed, malnourished baby into the world, and make life more difficult than it already is.

to forget that this is about women’s choices, their bodies and their lives, is to gloss over the fact that women - as much as the children - are victims of the current state of things, too. to forget the woman who is central to the reproductive health bill, is to imagine that we are all the same, that our bodies aren’t our own, that the Church can decide on our bodies for us.

anti-reproductive-health-bill advocates conveniently forget that some women have the luxury of choice and the capacity to spend on these choices. others can only imagine their choice to be among stealing formula milk for another newborn, throwing their pregnant selves down a flight of stairs, or leaving their newborns in a trashcan somewhere in the metro. at least give these women the choice to keep from getting pregnant to begin with. then we can truly say that we promote a culture of life. that we respect life - the child’s, the man’s and the woman’s. regardless of whether they’re rich or poor.

of course this president is torture enough. that grimace that she seems to always have on her face. her capacity at giggling in kilig and laughing at jokes made at the expense of a nation in calamity. and we’re not even talking about her ability to say one thing and do another. and to lie through her teeth.

and then this, a perfect example of how torture is but part and parcel of GMA’s presidency. and how people still suffer for their politics - when it’s the kind that is not one of a heckler’s, or a rightist’s, or that of an America-loving-Pinoy - in the closet and otherwise.

According to the Manila Times editorial today, the NCR director for the Human Rights Commission Dr. Renato Basas has confirmed that various forms of torture have been employed by the GMA administration. And while she has also ratified the U.N. Treaty Against Torture, the editorial also says that obviously

“The unfortunate reality is that absolutely prohibiting the police, the jail managers, the military and others charged with the duty of ensuring that law and order prevail is not among the top priorities of Malacañang.”

A measure as well of GMA’s fear in the military’s power over her, thus the decision to coddle the Palparans of this world and celebrate then as fantastic officers, despite witness upon witness saying otherwise. Proving otherwise.

i caught Storyline’s episode on the desaparecidos of the present. And while sometimes the show’s format doesn’t work (more on this next time), last night, it just did, as it allowed King Catoy to just speak to the camera, with no real sense of an interviewer. Catoy told the story of his 2003 abduction, and spoke of the activists with him who were summarily executed: human rights worker Eden Marcellana and peasant leader Eddie Gumanoy.

what struck too close to home was the fact that he and two others had identified Master Sgt. Donald Caigas as one of their abductors. Caigas would also be the one name that would surface in relation to Karen Empeno’s and Sherlyn Cadapan’s disappearance, and apparent torture and rape. the latter story was witnessed and told by the abducted farmers who would come to be known as the Manalo brothers, Raymund and Reynaldo.

it was Raymund Manalo who claimed that he saw Palparan twice during his three-month detention, before he and his brother escaped to tell their story. in one of those instances, Palparan told him to tell his parents to stop going to protest rallies.

blindfolded, hands tied behind him, and kneeling on the ground, King Catoy was also told the same thing: stop going to rallies, stop whatever it is you’re doing with these activists. stop being yourself.

and everyday, we live through the torture of knowing that many others are disappearing and dying for doing what they do, believing what they will, living a life for justice and democracy that we all should want to live. because people are stolen, are made to disappear, are tortured and raped, and are killed, not simply for their politics. in GMA’s time (as with Marcos’), they are being made to suffer for being themselves.

hazel, a Pinay OFW working as a dancer in Japan cries rape against an American serviceman, three days after she arrived in the land of the rising sun. the case has been dropped by Okinawa police due to “lack of sufficient evidence”. nanay melly, left behind in the philippines, feels helpless, and distance is beside the point. there’s been no government support for her daughter, who would otherwise be seen as a “bagong bayani”, who brings home the bacon, if not the dollars.

mary, a Pinay OFW from Dubai, comes home and decides to get liposuction. the pressure to be thin(ner) than she is, is too much; media images of acceptable women tell her she is otherwise. she dies on the operating table of the Borough Medical Center in Libis Q.C.

in 2006, Pinay nicole got justice in the lower courts, as Lance Corporal Daniel Smith was convicted of raping her. even then, the GMA gov’t allowed for Smith to be kept under US custody in the US Embassy. now, a year and a half later, news has leaked that the Court of Appeals Justice Vasquez Jr., is leaning towards Smith’s acquittal.

juana, an OFW since 2003, was suppose to get her permanent residency in Canada in 2006, as per Canada’s federal live-in caregiver program. as she went through the required medical and criminal clearances, she was found to have cancer. juana asked that the good health requirement be waived for humanitarian reasons, given the fact that she had worked well enough to meet all other requirements for residency. the Canadian gov’t sees her as a liability, a burden to the health care system. now, with stage 4 cancer, the chances remain slim that juana will be granted residency; even slimmer that the Philippine gov’t will help her cause. she has until august 8 to leave Canada.

nanay erlinda cadapan, mother of U.P. student sherlyn who has been missing for two years, finds herself on ANC program “Media in Focus”, beside a female PNP officer who tells her “you are more than welcome in my office anytime, Mrs. Cadapan.” the emptiest line she could possibly hear after two years of searching in vain for sherlyn, and dealing with the police and military’s refusal to cooperate and investigate their own ranks. nanay connie empeño, must feel exactly the same way.

at the end of the segment that featured her, nanay erlinda asks a rhetorical question: bakit po kaya si ces drilon, sampung araw lang ay nahanap na ng gobyerno, samantalang ang aking anak na dalawang taon nang nawawala, at napakarami po naming witnesses, ay hindi ninyo kami matulungan sa paghahanap?

to which host cheche lazaro, maybe surprised that her colleague ces was being dragged into the discussion, or maybe aghast that this woman dared put a media personality on the same level as a student activist, or even that nanay erlinda dared pinpoint a clear discrepancy between how hi-profile personalities and the everyday person is treated by gov’t, says: ano po bang gusto ninyong gawin ng gobyerno para sa kaso ninyo?

as if the answers aren’t obvious enough. as if media itself isn’t guilty of creating the kinds of lives that real women have in this country; or isn’t guilty of perpetuating the notion that we don’t have answers to such cut and dried questions.

as if we didn’t know that if gov’t really cared for its women, then none of them - none of us - would be in the news. for being other than what we want to be, away from home and family, and our sense of selves.

(and it is for these very reasons, that we are hard put to celebrate successes such as this one. via tonyo and adobo:)

i did say i was aching to write about Rogue Magazine’s independence day issue, but was overtaken by the NHI’s accusations, Joey Mead’s naked body, and Argee Guevarra’s defense.

suffice it to say that it was as i expected of a high-end P180-peso english “literary lifestyle” magazine, and their notion of the “State of the Nation” — the title of the month’s issue. save for Lourd de Veyra’s literary piece on an imagined exchange between two friends, one in Dubai and another in the Philippines, there is no mention AT ALL of the crises that beset this country.

and while the editor’s piece for the month did talk about the need for heroes, as an introduction to their Honor Roll of Nine Portraits of Philippine Pride, all it talked about was corruption in a general sense, alongside the other “pressing and dangerous problems” that beset the nation: “poverty, health care, human rights, the environment, education, and crime”.

at a time when you have a president like GMA who can wax clean and innocent about corruption and all the other six problems they mention, generalizations are the last things we need. these are also the easiest to wax nationalistic about, the easiest words to use to pretend we are concerned with nation and its state.

when in truth we aren’t.

the Honor Roll is a hodgepodge of middle to upper class ex- and present gov’t officials, academicians and NGO people, some of whom took a stand by saying no to corruption and resigning from gov’t office, others by establishing some NGO or other, and yet others by writing column after column on being Filipino. and while the choices are highly debatable (something that the magazine is open to, given that the editor’s note also asks that readers start sending in their choices for what they imagine will be an annual Honor Roll), what it more importantly reveals is the kind of change and heroism that the magazine asserts as relevant at this point.

it is of change that is superficial, the kind that puts a band-aid on what have been the incurable diseases that beset this country. it’s not systemic nor societal change, not even a change in attitude or perception about the kinds of lives we live, in the context of a nation in crisis.

which brings us back to the fact that this issue of Rogue, while it touts itself as the “State of the Nation” issue, is really just proof that what keeps the upper classes comfy in their beds or computer seats, is their notion of nation. reading through this magazine, it doesn’t seem at all like we live in the same nation, nor that there’s a bigger nation that Rogue is part of. more than anything, it sells itself as a global magazine with philippine interests. that is, philippine upper class interests.

truth be told, those images of Smokey Mountain (for the de Veyra piece) seem trivialized in light of the photojournalistic piece on the Aurora Borealis in Alaska, the long article on the elite life that Steve Psinakis lives (which promotes his autobiography), and the feature on revolution according to Pinoy punk - which did not at all interview the punks on the ground, i.e., the mass following of local punk who are understandably enamored by the notion of anarchy in the midst of their hunger.

or maybe this is the nation for the upper classes. and it’s why they - we - can pretend that things are fine, even in the midst of rising prices and every other crisis related to that. maybe this is why there’s been an influx of foreign concert acts, a rise in the number of glossy magazines, the rise of expensive American and European stores in Greenbelt 5.

because in third world Philippines, there is this tiny pocket of the first world that continues to thrive. and to them, the state of the nation remains within the tiny circles they move in, and the even smaller spaces they inhabit. magazines like Rogue included.

i was aching to write about the independence month issue of Rogue Magazine, for reasons farthest from what has made it controversial the past two days. the National Historical Institute’s historians have pointed a finger at the cover and called it “bastos”. and while i’m a flag-loving Pinay - I bought everything that had a philippine flag on it during the centennial celebrations, never mind that it had Ramos’ “Philippines 2000″ as well - i didn’t think anything of that cover. in fact it was the reason why I even picked up the magazine and thought it was worth buying.

which, according to the press release of Rogue’s editors, was precisely their point. They used the flag on their cover so that their “state of the nation” issue would appeal to younger readers. so yes, this cover understandably achieved its goal:

and while i didn’t find anything offensive by the use of the flag on the woman’s body - it actually looked fantastic and was such a great idea, i wouldn’t go so far as saying that it was a statement on corruption - ang OA naman, and what a stretch. that defensive statement came from cover story writer Argee Guevarra, and if you listen to him wax activist about the criticism of NHI, you’d actually believe that his article was about corruption and the current state of the nation.

when in fact, it isn’t. it’s far from it. what Guevarra wrote is a retrospective on Mead’s life, what she’s dreams of doing for the country (including doing one-hour workshops about going green and organic, and about relationships - how nationalistic! anuba!), and the fact that she loves Loren Legarda and ehem ehem Gloria Macapagal Arroyo - aba, anti-corruption nga.

Guevarra also made it a point to highlight the fact that Mead is in fact a del Pilar, as in Marcelo H. del Pilar, which apparently gave him enough reason to imagine Mead playing the role of Gabriela Silang - another stretch, but go figure.

so really, between Guevarra’s defense and the magazine’s admission that this was just a jab at their market’s fancies, if not their amusement with the sensational, i’m wanting to see how far the NHI will take their charge of “kabastusan”. but then again, it would do them well to first clarify what “bastos” is.

because it is the age of “Pilipinas Kong Mahal” stamped on every Philippine flag hanging all over the metro, a violation of the law as well, but which government spent on in this time of crisis. it’s also the time of Bayan ni Juan, an ABS-CBN anniversary enterprise, of selling their notion of “giving back” to the less fortunate, and asserting their social responsibility by using the philippine flag in various renderings as backdrop (for their TV ads and website), and which begs the question: how much of this is a tax shield? and really, a Lopez company such as this talking about helping others, in this age of high Meralco rates?

that has to be kabastusan in itself, hindi ba?