sexandsensibilities.com

by Ana Santos

When I was writing a sex and relationship column for a now defunct men’s magazine, I had to be very creative—and not just in the way that you might imagine.

The magazine was owned and published by a devoutly religious family who had very conservative views on the topic my column was about. I was told several times that I had to tone down my articles. In the four years that I was writing that column, I was able to develop my own thesaurus of euphemistic ways of alluding to fornication and safe sex.  (I once shared my thesaurus table during a presentation at an HIV/AIDS conference in Bali and had the audience in stitches. They couldn’t believe it.)

I got a lot of questions during those four years—ones that totally threw me. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I got the usual questions about performance, longevity—all par for the course—it didn’t really surprise me. Some, I found to be actually funny.

But I was also getting very serious questions like what birth control pills to take, where to get tested or how to tell if someone has a sexually transmitted infection.  I felt that these questions were better directed to a health care professional, but then I realized that I myself didn’t know who to refer these questions to. That was the problem: people didn’t know who to ask and were afraid to ask; they were ashamed and embarrassed. They probably felt safe asking someone like a sex and relationship columnist about their sexual health concerns.

It reminded me of a friend who told me that during her first visit to an OB-GYN, she changed her name because her question was sexual in nature. She was single and didn’t want the doctor to think that she was “that kind of girl”. She was probably in her early to mid-20s then.

Another friend experienced vaginal bleeding after the first few times she got intimate with her boyfriend and decided to see the OB-GYN. The doctor, asked for her “contact” history and she vehemently denied any sort of activity, playing the virgin bit so well she might have been picked out for the Bethlehem scene in a Christmas play.

In both cases, the women were so afraid of what other people would think that they went extra mile to hide sexual activity–even if it meant risking a wrong diagnosis.  It was as if going to the doctor was like going to a priest; the doctor’s clinic was like the confessional box where you were supposed to divulge your  deeds and perhaps, even doing the deed (see, the thesaurus of euphemisms for “coupling” comes in handy).  But at least the confessional offered some kind of safe environment where you could find atonement and some sort of relief from guilt. In contrast, the doctor might judge, might get mad and reprimand or que horror!–with Manila being as small as it is—be a family friend!

It was probably to be expected. Girls are educated in rigid Catholic schools, practically raised by nuns; a premium is placed on virginity and the hymen is touted as a symbol of one’s worth. French kissing is a sin and oral sex is only for prostitutes. Only hand holding is allowed.

At the same time, men are measured by their virility. Owning champion sperm and not “firing blanks” are the hallmarks of being a man. So the men are told it is  okay, that the “boys will be boys” thing to do is to count the notches on their bed posts, but the girls should keep their legs crossed at all times. (In that scenario, it makes me wonder who the boys were left to get jiggy with…hhmmmm…)

Was this the effect of hundreds of years under Spanish rule where the friars used the pulpits to pontificate about virtue and morality and then proceeded to raping our great great grandmothers in the backyard?  Then the Americans came and liberated us—literally and figuratively. While they may have left decades ago, their lifestyle and influence remains to be the most lasting. Their fast food chains, their fashion and yes, their TV shows injecting and projecting the “American life” are still very much a part of everyday Philippines.  From the convent, we were thrust into mainstream Hollywood with barely enough time to say a “Hail Mary”.

Every where we look, there are contradictions; manifestations of our deep-seated Madonna/Whore Syndrome from the motels that pepper the city to the potions and herbal concoctions that promise to bring on delayed menstruation sold where else, but outside a church.

On noontime television, there are half-naked girls gyrating on TV game shows. For some time, they were referred to as “giling girls”, gyrating and wriggling to popular songs about a “bulaklak na bumubuka”. The tune and their dance moves were so catchy that even the little kids caught on and tried to copy the dance steps thinking it was cute.

But that is the Pinoy schizophrenic view on sex and anything remotely related to it. Sex is not talked about, but rather, inserted—okay, if that’s too much of a pun—insinuated in every other joke among friends, in the work place (it would be called sexual harassment in other countries), over lunch. The family is to be revered and put above all else, but having mistresses is “acceptable”. A married woman can be accused of adultery for getting intimate with a man who is not her husband, but a man can only be accused of concubinage which necessitates that he co-habit with a woman who is not his wife.

According to clinical psychologists, there are several different ways in which a person can develop the symptoms of schizophrenia and that “inheritance (genes) is involved in 28% of cases”.

Could we then have truly inherited this giggling-and-blushing-on-the-outside-but-writhing-and-raging-on-the-inside from our colonizers?

Clinical studies also show that there is no known cure for schizophrenia. So maybe we’ll keep on going to the confessional instead of the doctor; thinking that’s where we will find answers to questions about reproductive health. We’ll even pay a visit to the motel after Sunday mass (it’s one of the best days for business, they tell me) and then share our worries with a sex and relationship columnist.

Or maybe it’s not a cure that we should aspire for, but just acceptance of our humanity and yes, we can all say out loud—our sexuality; that acknowledging our sexuality is the first step to putting it in its proper place, which does not necessarily mean being promiscuous. That part of accepting our sexuality is recognizing that we have every right to abstain from sex as well as engage in it. Yes, virtue and chastity, as a matter of personal choice is as much a right as being sexually active.

May be we should go even further by recognizing that the primary relationship we need to work on is the one we have with ourselves and that this is the better way of advocating values when it comes to intimate relationships. That self-worth and self-respect are also values we need to protect; whatever your religion, philosophy or personal belief.

These may not be things you would expect to hear from a former sex and relationship columnist.  But either way, I can still refer you to the handy thesaurus I developed in the early years; it still comes pretty handy now that I’ve grown up to be an advocate of sexual health in the context of informed choice.