Manifesto for the Liberated Filipino

I did a blog last month that proposed a "Manifesto for the Liberated Filipina". Man, I was all over that baby, writing a declaration of independence for the feminine kind, urging them up and onward through glass ceilings and glass walls and the brick headed biases of old men who clog up the Church and Senate with long-discredited masculine values.

The Real Liberated JoeAm?

Then readers came along and decked me with a more enlightened awareness. They pointed out that the Philippines is in some ways more advanced than America. Women are everywhere in government, including two recent presidents. There are no glass ceilings in the business community.

  

The only place that women have not cracked the glass ceiling is in the crystal cathedral surrounding the Doctrine of the Catholic Church. No women priests. And in the Catholic dominated laws.

Filipinas have to deal with a lot. They can't get a divorce, so they have to put up with abusive or deadbeat dads hanging around their necks like the biggest, stinkiest albatross in the world. They'd rather have a 22 carat gold necklace, but they have that jerk instead.

Single Filipina mothers have to work. And not just the single moms. How many mothers do you know who aren't pulling their own employment weight? In the Philippines, with its low wage scales, women have to work unless they nabbed an American or grew up rich. That is a very small share of the nation's population. 

But here's the deal. The real gender problem in the Philippines is not the women, or their heart, or their minds, or their efforts.

It is the men.

So being an equal gender enthusiast, Joe Am is obligated to write a proper manifesto for the liberated Filipino. The guy kind.

Who do you consider liberated?

Manny Pacquiao? Tito Sotto? Jejomar Binay? Noynoy Aquino? Piolo Pascual?

What gentlemanly ways do they display? Do you think they'd lay their coat across a puddle so a lady could cross over with dry feet?  Do you think they would hold the door open for a woman?

Or are they too self-absorbed?  Are they more interested in playing with their chickens than taking their sweetie to town? Or drinking with their buddies? Or stealing blogs, like he-man Sotto? Or oligarching away?

I can't figure out Filipino men, myself. They have standards I can't relate to. Sex jokes and chickens and guns and abandoning their babies. I know it is the culture, and I am not supposed to criticize it. And I am not criticizing, really. I'm just saying I feel awkward.

Take chickens. By what justification do we impose pain on even the lowest of animals, and then cheer?

Or sex jokes. Man, my life is private, yours is private, and if you prefer chickens to girls, I don't want to know. And I don't want to make fun of what to me is an extension of love.

The tuba table, I like. The basketball and ragging on each other that the players do, I like. I have even come to respect the rude, aggressive driving. It is more like a dance, a sparring match, a flow of metal finding its way through town. I'm aggressive with the best of them. And I concede when it is wise to do so. A speeding 10 cubic dump truck pumping dust and diesel means yield.

Now the workplace. I think the workplace in the Philippines is like anywhere in the world. There are dedicated workers and there are lazy workers. There are smart workers and there are . . . um . . . other kinds. There are even problem solvers, innovators, high-skill technicians. WAY too many have been lost to high wages overseas.

But there are for sure capable, educated men in the Philippines. Maybe even some polite ones here and there.

But then there is the rest.

Let me do the manifesto, and see what comes out of it.

Manifesto for the Liberated Filipino

I am a liberated Filipino.

• No woman or institution shall have the power to deny me my rights and personal choices. No woman or institution shall assume the right to speak for me. My thoughts belong to me and me alone.

• The essential character of liberated man is a willingness to accept responsibility for his choices. I do, and will. No woman or institution is empowered to suggest otherwise, or to substitute her sense of responsibility for mine. I define my personal ethic. No woman or institution does that for me. 

• The laws of the land protect us all and I shall strive to live within those bounds. If a law is unreasonable, I shall seek to change it.

• The failure of the Philippine State to provide for termination of a failed marriage contract is unreasonable. A personal contract without a termination provision is bondage. Bondage is uncivilized and cruel.

• No woman or institution is permitted to insert judgment over the decisions that I make for myself and my family. That is my realm, and mine alone.

• No woman or institution is permitted to overlay a standard of behavior or lifestyle on me.  Not on my religion or sexual preference or clothes or recreations. These are my choices, my freedoms.

• My body belongs to me. It does not belong to any governmental agency, any church, or any woman or institution. I make the choices for my body. Only me.

• I have the right to decide if I wish to wear a piece of rubber on my dick. No woman or institution is empowered to interfere with my choices.

• No woman or institution shall deny me the right to employment in any field as long as I have the physical strength to accomplish the job. No woman or institution shall have the right to evaluate my work performance on any basis but capability and result.

• My choice of employment is mine to make and no woman or institution is empowered to judge it as suitable or unsuitable. If I choose to be a househusband or a teacher, a street-sweeper or an attorney, a secretary or an executive, no other person is entitled to disparage this choice. Others are entitled to live their lives according to their standards, and I, as a liberated Filipino, am free to live mine.

After saying the oath, which might be something like "You damn right, I'm in!", then organize and litigate into submission any crusty old dinosaur women and institutions that wish to see you held in bondage to outdated values and unkind laws.

• "Men of the Philippines, unite! Throw off the heavy yoke of feminine suppression and oppression! Get thee unstuck from the mighty-bond of female imposition and limitation."

Yeah. I kinda like that! Has a nice finish to it.

Photo source: livejournal