Philippines Demands Apology for Demeaning Filipino Women

How many times do I have to say this:

it's not funny to stereotype or demean Filipino women as sex toys and worthless domestic workers.

And the whole "it's just a joke" reply is darting it's way up the charts as the most pathetic and popular excuse when one is called out for racial and sexist behavior.

Philippines Eyes US Presidential Election

When I was in the Philippines this summer, I could not even tell you how many Filipinos were engaged in political discussions about the US presidential election. They were fiery dialogues too. The Philippines and the United States are like step siblings, a lot of love, a lot of bitterness, and too much history passed between them.

This article is a decent glimpse into that phenomenon.

Finding Filipinas

It can be challenging to find uplifting notes about Filipinas in the news.

When I google "Filipinas in the news," I am disgusted and disheartened to find stories about Filipinas being chopped up and then loaded into a washing machine, or another Pinay being molested or slain, or another being charged with a death sentence after a brutal slaying of a young child in Kuwait.

That's more than enough...Tama na...

And after all of those pleasant fields of affirmation, the very bottom of the page has an advertisement to help connect Pinays with "local and foreign men." (Niiiiiice specificity.)

I shan't be satisfied with a Ramiele Malubay link from WikiPilipinas, as lovely as she is.

For a quick brief of some great accomplishments of a few Filipina womyn, read over here...

Mabuhay!

Bi-Cultural Pinay

This is an essay I wrote for a writing contest whose mission is to uplift the online Filipina image and challenge the destructive online stereotypes of Filipino womyn.  Learn more about the Wikipilipinas: Filipina Stories

Sometimes it is the field between the two roads where the richest soil is toiled.

Where do Filipinas fit in the United States? Where do I want to fit in the United States? Growing up Filipina, bi-cultured, and questioning my identity was an unanswered and fathomless feat. It was not until my mid-twenties when I began to sharpen an under-utilized tool: my voice. Independence, significant relationships, and deepening my career brought a carriage of hard-edged stones as I contemplated heavy issues, such as belonging, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and gender.

I was born and raised with Brown skin and thick black hair in middle-class, blond and brunette Midwest North America. In the classroom, I rebelled against the model minority stereotype in my love of writing, not natural sciences. In any free moment, I wrote poetry, essays, and letters about the world, my world, and dreams of being a journalist. My brothers and I wrestled. I sang Broadway classics with my sister while she played the piano, and my family reunions were legendary in time and food consumption.

Growing up, there were a thousand precious elements of my culture held dear to my Filipina heart, but I related to them differently than my parents. I feared showing my true colors to Philippine-born Filipinas because I didn’t know how to speak Tagalog or dance the Tinikling. I grew up with Filipino food, but I didn’t know how to cook many dishes. I attended Filipino parties and picnics, but did not have many Filipino friends. Belonging to either side was an endless footpath of negotiation and uncertainties.

It can be psychologically, emotionally, and socially destructive to never be fully seen or counted, both literally and metaphorically. Questions about my ethnicity, “Chinese, right?” grew irritating and the proverbial Asian umbrella which grouped Asian women together proved entirely too small for my questions. This enduring isolation led me to separate my Filipina self and operate under conditioned fragments. The more I questioned, the more I unraveled.

Wherever I went, wherever I traveled, the mystery of Filipinas followed. No one really knew what Filipinas were about except what they had briefly observed in the news or the stereotypes projected by popular culture. Filipinas were sexy, docile, domestic workers or mail order brides. They were quiet, submissive, and eager to please. They loved serving their husbands and tending to their children. Filipinas, most importantly, were born in and from the Philippines.

I was none of those things.

I wanted to know who else was out there in the world of Filipinas. In all my education, there were not many resources for Filipina mentors, models, or heroes. In the United States, communities of Filipinos reside primarily in coastal cities, particularly in the west. The majority of programs and opportunities to cultivate and influence the image of the Filipina were never in my grasp. The more I looked into the media, the more I understood how Filipinas were misrepresented. The exploitation, objectification, and sexualization of the Filipina began to hold personal insult and outrage. My angry thoughts grew deafening and eventually unchained themselves from a wall of silence and complacency.

Then, I began to blog.

In the explosion of the online world, blogs have come to hold various meanings and purposes. As it as with any other facet of a corporate driven society, opportunities for financial gain often come at the expense of others. Online businesses have pushed the image of the Filipina as a woman for sale, always ready to meet men, and marry in any circumstance. I contend that any blog, site, or organization that promote ads which feature Filipinas as dependent and/or exchangeable commodity, should be refuted by the entire Filipino community. Our online ethos must commit to decrying this type of marketing and media. If Filipinas do not stand to gain more freedom, respect, and visibility, I will not and do not endorse the blog, site, or organization.

Bloggers need to raise awareness of the social injustices that jail the Filipina spirit (such as global sex trafficking, abuse of domestic workers overseas, immigration issues, and enslaving poverty) and they also need to be aggressive in their denouncement of Filipina commercialization. To enhance the online image is to affirm the authentic presence of the Filipina. It is time for us to come out of the dark with strong voices, accents, poetry, opinions, music, intelligence, theories, and ideas. Bloggers need to do this by promoting work, featuring accomplishments, and highlighting leadership roles held by Filipinas.

My online voice is the one facet of media in which I can contribute to a new definition of the Filipina. She is just like you – filled with conflict, hope, joy, and life. She has a past that rests behind her eyes that holds the power of her foremothers who are presidents, doctors, engineers, poets, mothers, nurses, teachers, policy makers, lawyers, gardeners, and healers. The Filipina is the woman who has risen and fallen in the history of governmental corruption, war, and colonization. She is also the woman who has fought, endured, and organized against oppression. The Filipina is everywhere. She is a powerful force; formed to the contours of her native country, and shaped by whatever citizenship she holds.

As a Filipina blogger, I embrace the opportunity and responsibility to make the unknown known. I accept the challenge to change the online image of Filipinas by introducing my whole self, my own bi-cultured spirit. By expanding the online definition and image of the Filipina diaspora, I hope it transpires into offline empowerment for both myself and other Filipinas around the world.

The State of Brownhood

When I was younger, I hated when my dad pinched my nose. Out of nowhere, in the middle of trying to wield permission to attend a weekend slumber party, his face would grow into a big smile and I'd watch his long brown fingers extend to pinch my little Filipino nose. Hard.

In pain, I'd jerk back, "DAD!" He had problems with gentleness at times. I often wondered if he remembered I was not my brothers, but a smaller framed girl, a very impressionable young girl.

"Your nose is flat," he smiled as if to justify the pinch.

"Yeah, I know. So's yours, " I would retort, rubbing my sore nose.

"The irony of mixed-heritage Filipinos not being accepted as Filipinos is exposed when one considers the pains that Filipinos in the Philippines and abroad take to maintain a standard of appearance that has its roots in colonization: for example, keeping out of the sun so as not to get 'too dark' or pinching the nose to make it less flat," writes Linda A. Rvilla in her article Filipino American Identity: Transcending the Crisis.

I grew up bicultured: in the US, but in a Filipino home raised by Filipino parents. In the long roads of sifting through identity and arriving to a loving appreciation for my culture, never did I anticipate the work of analyzing my own parents' upbringing or their learned inferiority. For every inquiring feminist, all questions begin and end with your family. What runs in their blood also runs in mine.

As I sprinted out to play outdoors, my mother would yell out the summer door, "Don't get too dark!" My father pinching my nose. My round curvy brown body was surrounded by white girls dying to be thin and dieting for attention. It's taken nearly three decades to purge the poison, especially when I read how skin whitening is now on the rise in the Philippines.

The racially imperialistic Western standards of acceptance and beauty are larger issues of globalization, media, and cultural equality. How else does one explain the surge in blepharoplasty - when an Asian person undergoes surgery to widen their eyes? Or how do you explain why so many Asians are elongating their legs? One young woman, after leg-lengthening surgery comments, "It hurts, but it will be worth it to be taller. I'll have more opportunities in life and a better chance of finding a good job and a husband."

The pinched noses and cautions not to get "too dark" remained an unchecked part of my childhood until I began to read magazines and notice the high energy levels for conformity. Where did I fit in? Would I ever fit? The questions were cyclic and relentless. I considered my options. 1) Rearranging my face 2) Pretending I don't have thick straight jet black hair 3) Staying out of the sun for the rest of my life because I tan deeply in less than 10 minutes. I was left with no options but to begin accepting my state of Brownhood. I could spend a lifetime in shame or learn how to fight and love my skin, my color, my eyes, and hair.

In college, I found myself in an elevator with a few White women who kept glancing at me. Familiar with stranger gazes and rude stares, I looked back at them. One asked, "How do you keep your tan so even throughout the year?" It was winter at the time. I replied, "I spend a fortune at Jamaica-Me Tan," and walked out of the elevator.

I chose and continue to choose pride because I never wanted to be tall or White.

And my eyes are wide enough to see the oppression and reality in which western ideals have bled and beat and removed the Asian features and Brown pride out of so many women.

I choose Pinay. I choose me.

Confronting Split Women

Confronting Split Women:
Using Asian Feminist Theology as a
Lens for Bi-Cultured, First Generation F/Peminists

Immigration
The Filipino people are the second largest Asian population and one of the three fastest growing demographics in the United States.1 Despite being second in number only to the Chinese, this population remains largely unknown and virtually invisible in the media and public eye. With is history of colonialism, the Filipino people have struggled to sustain its distinct identity, which is influenced, but not determined by Spanish culture and the United States’ long-term military presence.

The story of Filipino women, Filipinas, or Pinays, is richly unique and diverse. Women of Filipino blood face different forms of hardship and discrimination on separate continents, but demonstrate trademark resilience and strength in times of struggle. Under the suffocating blanket of extreme economic poverty, women living in the Philippines are highly susceptible to fall prey to the international migration of female labor – to become nannies, domestic workers, and sex workers around the globe.2 These women go to such measures for the survival of their families or to escape the economic oppression and lack of employment. On the opposite spectrum, other women who migrate to the United States do so for similar reasons, but under drastically different conditions.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought waves of educated and highlight skilled Filipinas to the United States. For whatever winds that brought them to North America, there are cultural characteristics embedded in Filipinas that become implanted in the soil of their new homes. Religion is one of them. Unlike other Asian countries which have various religions and practices, the Philippines is 85% Roman Catholic.3 For of Filipinos, religion is closely tied to cultural roots and practices – praying novenas and rosaries, and creating makeshift altars in their homes. For many immigrant Filipinas, their spirituality can be a source of strength and comfort as they face discrimination, sexism, isolation and a longing for community.4 Certain Filipino spiritual values, especially establishing a close community and extending and accepting hospitality, can assist Filipinas in dealing with these issues that stem from painful immigration, reports Thelma B. Burgonio-Watson, the first Filipina to be ordained as a Minister of the Word in the Presbyterian Church. These values can help Filipinas deal with “the more individualistic lifestyle of the mainstream American culture” as they strive to form their own identity.

First Generation, Bi-culturalism
Today, one in five Americans is either foreign-born or first-generation, the highest level in the history of the United States. 5 As Filipina immigrants have brought or continue to birth Filipina American children in the US, a new era of cultural fusion has begun. First generation,6 bi-cultural children are growing up in a world of schizophrenic messages and conflict of upbringing.

Due to the influx of Filipinos after the Immigration and Nationality Act, more Filipinas are being born on American soil with Philippine-born parents. This is the first generation of bi-cultured individuals inculcated with both eastern and western influenced lifestyles. These women vary in terms of geography, language, and class. As Filipinos remain a largely hidden people in the United States, and because Filipinos are subject to the same patriarchal oppression as the rest of the world, Filipino women and their complexity remain mysteriously unknown.

Isolation plays a large factor in their invisibility. This population of women and their families are isolated for numerous reasons. As the Immigration and Nationality Act encouraged highly skilled and educated immigrants, especially medical professionals, to work in the United States, the children of these immigrants were quickly moved into middle to high class neighborhoods. Unlike some ethnic communities who face socioeconomic hardship and live in close proximity for support and/or necessity, Filipino families, products of Immigration and Nationality Act that brought highly-skilled professionals to the middle to upper class of the United States, are often left isolated and are left to assimilate or survive on their own. Thus, a two fold problem occurs.

Immigrants themselves are forced to navigate the cultural conflicts with transitions while their children are silently marked cultural hybrids and are forced to find answers for themselves. In the privacy of their homes, Filipino ethos – collectivism, religion - are enforced. Outside the home, in school, or with peers, they may experience feelings of being ostracized, racial discrimination, or their heritage is ignored altogether.7 Ultimately, bicultured Filipinos may grow to resent or deny their own ethnic identity because it causes so much confusion and pain.

Problems of Verbal Identity:
Pinayism/F/Peminism vs. “Asian American”
The benign nature of the term “Asian American” often generalizes and blurs the very distinct lines that exist between Asian cultures, especially Filipino culture. The term “Asian,” conjures up the more popular and familiar races of Asia: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. For Filipino Americans, when swept under the term “Asian American,” they experience difficultly in maintaining an authentic identity, especially when the label nonchalantly groups varying peoples and practices under one unifying and non-specific label. When navigating the “Asian” and the “American” components of the label, it might be more accurate and appropriate to insert a hyphen between the two, to represent the merging of two worlds, two distinct globes full of historical roots, practices, and expectation.

Another semantic challenge exists even within cultural vernacular. Filipinas must confront challenge in identifying themselves in their chosen speech when using the letters “F” of “P.” In the seven major dialects of the Philippines, there is no letter “F” in the alphabet.8 This has led to an increasing debate as to whether identify as Filipina/o or Pilipina/o. With over 300 years of Spanish colonization in its history,9 to use the native “P” sound is an avenue of phonetic dissent to challenge the colonizer’s use of the “F” sound.10 Even in simple name, Filipinas must decide how they want to identify.

Pinay is slang in Tagalog, the main dialect of the Philippines, for a Filipina woman; to describe a woman with Filipino descent. This empowering word has evolved to mean many things, but in more contemporary times, it is used to affirm the Filipnas living in the United States.11 Pinayism is one of the first efforts to theorize the contemporary Filipina experience.
As feminism is largely thought to be consumed by White, liberal, middle-class agendas, many individuals across other races, religions, and ethnicity do not identify with the word “feminism” because of its assuming history of speaking for all women’s experiences and western political affiliation. As other critical voices, such as bell hooks who speaks about African American women, have emerged to widen the scope of women’s experiences, Peminism rises. In the echoes of third world feminist theory, peminism resonates with Gloria Anzaldua who advocates for “mestiza consciousness,” which calls for individuals to “[develop] a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity…She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in pluralistic mode. Not only does she sustain contradiction, she turns the ambivalence into something else.” This is particularly appropriate for first generation, bicultured Pinays who experience split lives in their daily existence.

Another strand of separation for Pinays stems from the mainstream, western feminist thought that has segregated the pivotal role and significance of spirituality from the conversation of feminism. A Filipina must seek out alternative tools to deconstruct and find meaning in her bi-cultured identity, which not only includes, but is heavily linked to her religious and spiritual experiences.

Asian Feminist Theology
“There is no one way to do Asian Feminist Theology, and Asian feminist theologians in recent years have increasingly paid attention to their differences, not just their commonalities.”12 This main tenant of Asian Feminist Theology stands as a critical feature for first generation Filipinas negotiating their spirituality, identity, and religious practice in the context of the United States. Asian Feminist Theology is based upon the Asian women’s perspective, but that perspective comes from all over the world, including Asians who have never been to Asia or their mother country.

In one vein, identifying with Asian Feminist Theology, with the forethought that it must come from women living in or having lived in Asia, could be problematic for first generation, bi-cultured Pinays who face discrimination for not being “Filipino enough” (speaking the language, regular visits to the Philippines) or completely American. Some first generation Pinays may not have ever seen land beyond their own state or country, let alone the Philippines or Asia as a continent.

However, an individual will soon come to understand that Asian Feminist Theology is an open invitation that pushes beyond sweeping terms; it is an arena that intentionally seeks a “multivocal” conversation.13 This conversation can withstand and even welcomes the differences of generation and citizenship. Identity encapsulates much more than birthright. It includes the overlapping layers of family history and migration. For split Filipinas who struggle between the individualistic western culture and the culture that promotes the centrality of family and community, Asian Feminist Theology remedies the notion that Filipinas must be one or the other.

There is no one true identity for first generation Filipinas. They exist on the peripheral, translating their own lives at the connecting door of two worlds. They are not just Asian or just American. They are both and more. Asian Feminist Theology may very well be the most hopeful space a bi-cultured Filipina may find in her efforts to find a place that can hold the natural tension of her duality.

In the effort of bi-cultured Pinays to sift through their catholic upbringing in the United States, Asian Feminist Theology stands as a flexible and essential body of re-examination. “Asian feminist theologians find that they have to reinterpret sin and redemption anew in the contemporary context. The traditional emphasis on the individual and spiritual dimension of sin proves to be less than helpful for women. Women are not just sinners; they are the sinned against too.”14

Even though many Filipinas must painfully co-exist with Catholicism and f/peminism, fleeing the Catholic Church is often not a viable or desirable answer. Theologian Rachel Bundang reflects, “I cannot help but see Allan Figueroa Deck’s characterization of Latino theology as similar to my own stance and project. He writes, ‘Among Latinos the unity of the Church does not revolve around the resolution of differences of creed or doctrine…the commitment out of which they write and teach is not so much the confessional…as much as the cultural and social class commitment of their communities, their gente, their pueblos.’”15

F/Peminist theologians must be able to find a place that can hold the exchange, where the goal is not sameness or resolution; where peace is the space that can withstand the action of living in friction. Rachel Bundang asserts, “Theologies and the study of Asian Americans’ religious experiences in the United States are not yet a point where they can even deal with trying to settle on a name like womanist, mujerista, or teologia de conjuto (collaborative Hispanic Protestant theology)…I do not think that naming, in this case, is as important as the struggle to articulate what is yet unspoken, unseen, unknown.”16

Moving the Unknown Forward
What is unspoken, unseen, and unknown is the contemporary spiritual Filipina experience. The American and European feminist movement in the 1970s called for the expansion of the women’s experience by expressing in the written, narrative form. As the attempt to validate Women Studies in the academic realm continues, many have suggested a cease to the narrative, or at least a decrease in using the narrative as a tool for credibility. The narrative, some feminists argue, does not offer empirical data for Women Studies to be deepened or theorized.
The bi-cultured Filipina has yet to be heard, or even asked about her experience. The limited space in which women of color have had for their stories is an outrage and a disservice to all those working on behalf of women’s liberation. Chung Hyun Kyung, an Asian woman theologian, writes, “Throughout my eleven years of theological training, I have written countless term papers and theological essays for highly educated people who were my teachers…I no longer want to write so-called ‘comprehensive’ theology seeking to answer question of privileged Europeans. I want to do theology in solidarity with and in love for my mother so as to resurrect crucified persons – like her – by giving voice to their hurts and pains.”17

According to theologian Rebecca Chop, ‘knowledge is itself always historical, always related to power and interests, and is open to change and transformation.’18 Asian Feminist Theologians argue that because their experiences have been left out of the theological reflection, they must do their own theology.19 For Asian Feminist Theology to advance the narrative cannot be over; it is just beginning.

For bi-cultured Filipinas to become a part of the theological conversation and to fight their own cultural and systematic oppression, they must put their own life stories forward and speak from the marginalized places in which they reside. They must distinguish themselves and affirm their rights to “do theology” by deeply contemplating and offering their split lives as theological testimony and join the Asian Feminist Theology movement to magnify the pieces of their brokenness and strength.

1 United States Census Bureau, 2000.
2 Ehrenreich, Barbara and Horchschild, Arlie Russell. Global Women: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Hochschild. 2002.
3 Root, Maria P. Filipino Americans: Transforming and Identity. Sage Publications. Thousand Oaks. 1997.
4 Root, pg 328.
5 Fountas, Angela Jane. Waking Up American: Coming of Age Biculturally. Seal Press. Emeryville. 2005.
6 The term “first generation” has been used to describe both immigrants and also those whose parents are immigrants. For consistency, the term “first generation” is used exclusively to refer or describe individuals who are born in the United States, whose parents emigrated from another country.
7 Root, pg 198.
8 Jesus, Melinda L. de. Pinay Power, Peminst Critical Theory: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience. Routledge. New York. 2005.
9 Jesus, pg 14.
10 The Spanish colonizers named the islands “lasIslas Filipinas: after Philip of Spain. In 1898, with the American Takeover, the “F” sound was further enforced.
11 Root, pg 14.
12 Pui-lan, Kwok. Introducing Asian Feminist Theology. The Pilgrim Press. Cleveland. 2000.
13 Pui-lan, pg 10.
14 Pui-lan, 80.
15 Pui-lan, 66.
16 Pui-lan, 67.
17 Pui-lan, 28.
18 Pui-lan, 39.
19 Pui-lan, 39.

Philippines, Birth Control, and Religion

This is a great article about the bursting birth rate in the Philippines and the growing problems with birth control, availability of modern contraception, and a growing population with a president who thinks that natural family planning is going to curb the problems of a developing nation.

In my own struggles of a devout feminist, devout Catholic identity, I cannot fathom how a country is supposed to move out of its poverty when they are growing in population and their economic resources are depleting. The links are definitely worth checking out as well.

This world.

I tell ya.

Sometimes I think we're all going to hell in a handbasket.