in defense... (let's stir up something new)
(this is a message i told my good friend, lanz, in a site, where some people say, that whoever joins, is gay. there's nothing wrong with that. but to call a person a hypocrite is something else. come, join me, let's stir something new in this pesky blogspot of mine...)
***
well, i should say, i, myself, was surprised (to now) that you are married.
and you did a great job answering back. i can't make a rebuttal for anybody, in any threads here. but if i am going to do one, i am going to do it for you.
as i reckon, your 'detractors' said something about 'makitid and utak'. they just do not get the point that you are you, as much as we are what we are. and i do not think that LABELLING is such a great deal in the Philippines. really, i have read a lot of threads here making fiery gestures, words beyond comprehension, trying to figure out who's who and what they do in bed.
it's not what we do with whom that matters. it is how we think as a person, and how we think of how other people are.
and YOU do think like what everyone SHOULD be. enjoying one's company does not mean you are one of them--i mean, entirely.
i, myself, do not believe in the saying "tell me who your friends are, and i'll tell you who you are".
if you see me with my straight-as-a-rod friends, you would think that i am straight. when i am with my gay/girl friends, i am still me. i make no difference with whoever i am. (well, there are times, that i might be a little 'playful') *wink* *wink*
i hate labelling. this is what the gay community in the Philippines is lacking. understanding. acceptance.
i mean, who cares if you don your gown, who cares if you wear makeup, who cares if you are such a muscular hunk but a bottom in bed, who cares if you are such a wimpy, limp-wrist straight guy but sure as hell as a heterosexual person, and who cares if you hangs out and enjoys a great gay company?
it is these things that divide people. not just in the gay community, but wherever it is applicable.
we have a language barrier around the world. fine. (even our clocks say different figures at a given time--but it is fine, gosh!)
but, come on, this is not what it is all about. it is about BEING A PERSON.
and being this, being a person, is what makes YOU a person.
i salute you.
i salute all the people who stand up to their words, and more appropriately to what they feel about.
sorry, medyo napahaba. i can't post this in the thread because i know that some not-so-broad-minded-people-who-only-wants-to-label-other-people will make a good striking narrow-minded rebuttal. and i don't like that.
come on, lanz, if they can't understand you, don't try to make them understand. understanding just happens. it does not have to have a reason.
like there is no reason that i should be alive and gay everyday!
catch you later!
High School Musical--well, sige na nga, Zac Efron!
ZAC (and HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL) is my GUILTY PLEASURE, as of the moment!
i am really planning to keep this a secret. i mean, i planned not to write this blog, but i think the time calls for it now.
i first learned about this when i stayed in my second home (in Ayutthaya) in Thailand and there's no HBO, Star Movies, or even Hallmark in their roster of cable channels. so disappointing...
i was unpacking my 3-days' worth of clothes and stuff when this song (from the Disney channel, as I do not have a choice besides F) filled my eardrums. this twinkie cutesy blonde boylet popped on the screen singing a duet with a morena/latina girlet.
yes, i admit, i might be a killer for bronx hiphop, brit club music and rock acts, but i also have the penchant for POP! i immediately liked the song...
fasf forward...
when i learned about the cable movie where it was from, VOILA! i have a copy of the movie in a snap!
HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL.
i luuuuuurrrrv it! seen it four (4) times, and will be seeing it more. i loooooove zac. i've downloaded the whole soundtrack (including reprises from B5) and it's on heavy spin on my ipod. believe it or not, i listen to Breaking Free, We're All in This Together and Start of Something New eight (8) times a day (promise, true yan)... grabe.
and when i went to the bookstore here in bangkok, i saw HSM posters and cover photos in the magazines. I even have zac's pictures (and the whole gang, as well) on my iPod. sarap mag-pantasya ng 19-yr old! hahahahaha.
i definitely love it--malapit na nyang matalo ang Latter Days DVD ko, which i saw 5 times already. hehehehe...
love it love it love it!
have you seen the Asian version of Breaking Free on Disney? (nikki gil is one of them, ayt?).
O. M. G. i am such a child--and i love it!
"We are not meek. We are not weak. We are just Pink!"
It has been a long time since I last featured something about any societal issue. Or have I before?
This one is sure to fire up your nerves.
We start off with the article that got those sparks rant. Former Associate Justice and now Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Isagani Cruz wrote the following on the paper's August 12 issue. Read on... Rant on...
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Published on Page A10 of the August 12, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
By Isagani Cruz
HOMOSEXUALS before were mocked and derided, but now they are regarded with new-found respect and, in many cases, even treated as celebrities. Only recently, the more impressionable among our people wildly welcomed a group of entertainers whose main proud advertisement was that they were “queer.” It seems that the present society has developed a new sense of values that have rejected our religious people’s traditional ideas of propriety and morality on the pretext of being “modern” and “broad-minded.”
The observations I will here make against homosexuals in general do not include the members of their group who have conducted themselves decorously, with proper regard not only for their own persons but also for the gay population in general. A number of our local couturiers, to take but one example, are less than manly but they have behaved in a reserved and discreet manner unlike the vulgar members of the gay community who have degraded and scandalized it. I offer abject apologies to those blameless people I may unintentionally include in my not inclusive criticisms. They have my admiration and respect.
The change in the popular attitude toward homosexuals is not particular to the Philippines. It has become an international trend even in the so-called sophisticated regions with more liberal concepts than in our comparatively conservative society. Gay marriages have been legally recognized in a number of European countries and in some parts of the United States. Queer people -- that’s the sarcastic term for them -- have come out of the closet where before they carefully concealed their condition. The permissive belief now is that homosexuals belong to a separate third sex with equal rights as male and female persons instead of just an illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there.
When I was studying in the Legarda Elementary School in Manila during the last 1930s, the big student population had only one, just one, homosexual. His name was Jose but we all called him Josefa. He was a quiet and friendly boy whom everybody liked to josh but not offensively. In the whole district of Sampaloc where I lived, there was only one homosexual who roamed the streets peddling “kalamay” and “puto” and other treats for snacks. He provided diversion to his genial customers and did not mind their familiar amiable teasing. I think he actually enjoyed being a “binabae” [effeminate].
The change came, I think, when an association of homos dirtied the beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo by parading their kind as the “sagalas” instead of the comely young maidens who should have been chosen to grace the procession. Instead of being outraged by the blasphemy, the watchers were amused and, I suppose, indirectly encouraged the fairies to project themselves. It must have been then that they realized that they were what they were, whether they liked it or not, and that the time for hiding their condition was over.
Now homosexuals are everywhere, coming at first in timorous and eventually alarming and audacious number. Beauty salons now are served mostly by gay attendants including effeminate bearded hairdressers to whom male barbers have lost many of their macho customers. Local shows have their share of “siyoke” [gay men], including actors like the one rejected by a beautiful wife in favor of a more masculine if less handsome partner. And, of course, there are lady-like directors who are probably the reason why every movie and TV drama must have the off-color “bading” [gay] or two to cheapen the proceedings.
And the schools are now fertile ground for the gay invasion. Walking along the University belt one day, I passed by a group of boys chattering among themselves, with one of them exclaiming seriously, “Aalis na ako. Magpapasuso pa ako!” [“I’m leaving. I still have to breastfeed!”] That pansy would have been mauled in the school where my five sons (all machos) studied during the ’70s when all the students were certifiably masculine. Now many of its pupils are gay, and I don’t mean happy. I suppose they have been influenced by such shows as “Brokeback Mountain,” our own “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” (both of which won awards), “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and that talk program of Ellen Degeneres, an admitted lesbian.
Is our population getting to be predominantly pansy? Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues? Let us be warned against the gay population, which is per se a compromise between the strong and the weak and therefore only somewhat and not the absolute of either of the two qualities. Be alert lest the Philippine flag be made of delicate lace and adorned with embroidered frills.
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BUT BUT BUT, of course, our fellow gay countrymen did not let us be unheard. We are not meek! We are not weak! We are just Pink!
Kudos and bravo to our guys Manuel L. Quezon III (does the name ring a bell, yes, the grandson of a former Philippine President) and Jonathan Best for speaking up for all of us.
Hear ye, hear ye!
THE LONG VIEW
The grand inquisitor
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Published on page A15 of the August 14, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
KURT VONNEGUT ONCE OBSERVED, “FOR SOME reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.”
Vonnegut was pointing out the basic immorality of society’s self-proclaimed moral custodians. Hate the sin but love the sinner? But that opens to a possible debate on what is sin.
How much easier, more certain and eminently satisfying to decree, “Kill them all. God will know His own.” The result is the perversion of the finer instincts of religion into a false trinity—faith, hope and bigotry, setting aside charity which represents an inconvenient truth: Christ was friend to prostitutes and tax collectors, and He debated even with the devil. Must Christianity end with Christ?
Retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz says that his vigorous and vicious condemnation of gays,
lesbians and transgendered people is not supposed to incite hatred and intolerance—or to be precise, that he is not invoking a blanket condemnation of all gay people. He only objects to some, not all. For example, he has nothing but the most generous and respectful thoughts for those who conform to what he finds tasteful and tolerable behavior. And what is tasteful and tolerable as far as his wounded sensibilities are concerned? A minority meekly and absolutely surrendering to the tyranny of the majority, a sub-culture reduced to the subhuman, in which the individual is instructed to live out, every day, a total repudiation of the self. Cruz demands the elimination of a diverse and rich culture—one that is as much a mirror of society’s larger complexities as it is an alternative to some of the worst instincts and features of the broader culture for which he has stepped forward as spokesman—because the minority displeases and disgusts him.
He would have me, and everyone else like me be a slave, a fugitive, a hypocrite and, most of all, a
coward. And I find that disgusting. I find it neither reasonable nor acceptable. I do not even find it
understandable. Cruz does not understand us, does not want to, would be unwilling to. Yet he says he hates only some, not all, of us, and expects “some of us” to embrace and thank him?
For what? That he reserves his scorn only for hairdressers and fashion designers? That he respects
me, the writer, but heaps abuse on someone else because that someone uses slang I don’t use, speaks louder than I do, wears what I don’t wear—and those superficial differences are the things that guarantee me (and those who behave otherwise) Cruz’s respect?
I will not embrace him, not for that, much less shake his hand or offer him the opportunity for civilized disagreement. For he is blind to the civilization to which I belong, and to the fundamental identity I share with those he despises. Whether we have a little learning or not, whether we speak in the same manner or not, regardless of what we wear and what mannerisms we choose to exhibit, we are the same, for in the fundamental things—those we choose to love, to have relationships with and with whom we aspire to share a life marked by a measure of domestic bliss and emotional contentment—there is no difference. To permit Cruz to make such distinctions is to grant him
and all those like him an intolerable—because it is fundamentally unjust—power to define myself and those like me.
When he casts the law as an instrument for prosecution, persecution and discrimination, he must
be fought. That he discredits polite behavior by portraying civilized discourse as a fancy disguise for
his uncritical obedience and intolerant enforcement of uniformity; that he defames religion by turning it into an ideology of hate; that he makes a mockery of filial piety by insisting that tyrannical instincts should be cultivated among the elderly and enforced upon their direction—these should inspire not pity for his moral dementia; these must provoke anger. And condemnation.
To be different is to be held in suspicion. The nonconformist is a subversive. Subversion and
rebellion make societies become more generous, more diverse, more compassionate—and an individual more free. For the inability—or unwillingness—to see rebellion as a virtue and not a flaw is what provokes the uncomprehending hostility that makes the anxious herd stifle dissent and stamp out anything different. But humanity is not a herd, and being human demands a vigilance against the kind of provocations that start stampedes.
I will respect anyone’s convictions, but only to the extent you will respect mine. Goodwill inspires the
same; tolerance results in cooperation. But I will not be told whom to love, whom to be friends with, what culture to represent, what mannerisms and interests to adopt and, much less, discard. I will not modify my behavior or limit my pleasures merely to please Cruz or bigots like him. The respect gays, lesbians and transgendered people experience is a brittle kind, but hard-won. Far more has to be won, in terms of actual legislation or in every sphere of our lives where discrimination virtually takes place every day.
The behavior Cruz finds so obnoxious is the price he and everyone else must pay for the pink triangles of the German concentration camps, the labor camps and prison cells of Soviet Russia and Communist China and Cuba, the merciless beatings and taunts endured by so many over so long a time. It is his punishment for representing a society whose instincts remain fundamentally murderous toward anyone different. If he weren’t such a hate-monger, he might realize it’s no
punishment at all, and that society is all the better for the increased prominence of gays.
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Hate-speech as journalism
Published on Page A14 of the August 17, 2006 issue of
the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IN his Aug. 12 column, Isagani A. Cruz ranted about the terrible vulgarity of gay hairdressers and
effeminate schoolboys and he warned the Philippine nation lest it loses its masculine virility. (In 2003, he targeted gays on TV shows in a somewhat less hysterical article.) Cruz waxed nostalgic of the simpler days of his youth when hardly a gay could be spotted on the streets of Manila. Was he born during the Spanish Inquisition?
Cruz offered apologies to the "decorously discreet" homosexuals he respects -- among them the "less than manly" dress designers (who are acceptable as long as they manage to repress their "condition"). If he had the guts he would also have apologized to the distinguished heads of several major Philippine corporations, Catholic and Protestant priests, movie stars, famous athletes, military men and millions of average Filipino men and women who are active homosexuals and lesbians enjoying their "condition" just fine.
Cruz launched himself into plain, old-fashioned bullying and gay-bashing, while trying to pass off
hate-speech as respectable journalism. Social commentators are welcome to criticize gay culture all
they want, we criticize ourselves mercilessly at times and accept criticisms from straight friends and honest critics when appropriate.
But Cruz is not a friend or thoughtful critic. He is a bigot and a hate-monger. He singled out the most vulnerable members of the gay community -- the youth and transgendered and the marginalized workers among them -- who have few options when dealing with their
sexuality. He growled about the "homos" in religious processions and asked if the
Philippines would be converted into a nation of "sexless persons." He fumed that some people are
advocating that homosexuals be given equal rights as "male and female persons."
He menacingly boasted how gays were "mauled" in the 1970s when his five "macho" sons were in school. Despite being a former lawyer, he conveniently ignored the fact that violent gay-bashing is considered a serious hate-crime in most civilized nations.
Sadly, Cruz's self-righteous tirade is pointed to a direction where so many demagogues and hate groups have gone before. The Church in the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition proclaimed homosexuals an abomination in the eyes of God and sent hundreds of thousands of gays to be tortured and burned alive. Offending men were tied together and burned like faggots of wood, hence, our modern-day nickname "faggots."
The Nazis used gas chambers and the Red Guards in Shanghai used baseball bats because they felt bullets were too expensive to waste on "bourgeois degenerates." The American Klu Klux Klan castrated and lynched gays. And now Islamic fundamentalist death squads in Iraq and Iran are beheading gay men and lesbians in the name of their "all-merciful" God.
JONATHAN BEST, Tambo, Parañaque City
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"We are not meek. We are not weak. We are just Pink!"
BESTEST FRIEND!
let's start with the title.
first, i rarely write in an all-caps manner. proof that this blog is of a different tone.
second, BESTEST, ha! talk about uber-redundancy. but hey, the birthday girl and this writing gurl have been using this schword for the longest time now (let's exaggerate a bit there, girl).
next, FRIEND, who does not have a friend? let us spell it out:
F - fun to be with (not just much, but loads and loads and loads of it)
R - reality she bites (keeps me sane, on-the-ground, and me all the same)
I - identifies you with a sniff from 5 miles away (well, you get the picture, aye?)
E - entrances, exits, windows, all the holes (whatever that means) of my personality, she knows
N - no lows, no highs, or in-betweens (just always beside you, no matter what)
D - distance is not a big deal (try 3,000 miles and 2 time zones with 2 hours of chitty-chat!)
our birthday girl celebrates her 18th-birthday-with-10-years-of-experience-of-being-that-young (which makes 28, of course, what a euphemism eh!).
she is my bestest-friend-girl.
she is your taklesa-of-epic-but-lovely-proportions girl.
she is mama soledad's youngest girl.
she is barkadang E!'s IT-girl.
she is papa john's all-my-love-girl.
she is everybody's girl.
well, maybe, Jasmin is a girl no more. now, we've got a name here.
so, Jasmin is the girl of the day!
then, let us see how Jasmin exactly fits into that Bestest Friend category.
well, being together for more than 20 years now (yes, with some moments of being not-together really), would not really be the biggest deal of being the Bestest Friend, but i guess that counts.
she would not normally heed my pleadings of this and that, and would not hear my rants (most of the raves, yeah), because, admit it or not, she only likes me to be positive about things.
and that is the best thing (as of the moment) that she had shared me. having a positive outlook about things--career, family, love, friendship, and shopping--hurdles everything before you even start sweeping the problem off, whatever that problem may be.
to you, girl, Jasmin, my bestest friend, another year is another feather on our caps, another start of a GREATER (note the emphasis there, mare) year ahead.
looking back is a sweet option (learning, reminiscing, noting each detail of the years past, among others), but looking ahead is THE call we have to hear, listen to and heed. it is not just another note on a post-it on your computer screen for things to do, it is a start of a brand new day--a year indeed.
and...
aha!
finally, you're a year ahead na naman...
i love you much! mwah!
