Saturday, September 15, 2012

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

27 comments:

  1. The liberated filipino men are being manipulated by liberated filipina women without knowing it! they can't do anything without the women allowing it, the women get them up in the morning and put them to bed at night...lmao

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Poor Filipino husband! The Filipina wife is the boss. She is not always right but she is always the boss.

      -Manila jeepney bumper sticker

      Delete
    2. chohalili, anon, yes, I can certify that as accurate, even if the husband is not Filipino.

      Delete
  2. I'm reading now about a Time article on women and wives withholding sex for a length of time till the men stop the fighting and warring, and Mindanao is mentioned. Fascinating...

    DocB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I rather think if women occupied all the power positions in the world, including dictatorships, it would be a dangerous world.

      Delete
    2. Seems JoeAm is not afraid his wife declaring "sex holiday"?

      DocB

      Delete
    3. I'm hiding this article from her. It takes three passwords to get to it.

      Delete
    4. You don't wanna experience being "outside the kulambo" hah Joe. Or "you'd be in the doghouse" as we macho Fil-Ams tease henpecked husbands in trouble with their wives here in Olympia, Washington'

      Delete
    5. Olympia, we have doghouse here with which I am familiar. Still, for me, as lazy as I am, it is good that my wife is full of authoritarian vigor. It was she who built our house, buying all the materials and managing the workers, whilst all I did was hand her huge wads of money now and then.

      Delete
  3. Look at the positive side, if all the men are subservient to the wife, all we need to fight corruption is threaten the women that we will close the mall, put to jail the gossipers and stop producing beauty products.

    You said, "by what justification do we impose pain on the lowest pf chicken, then we cheer"

    That is more civilize than americans. They let a man carry a pig skin while 12 burly men gang up on him and when he is sacked, the entire nation cheers, except the relatives of the poor guy. Worst, he is not allowed to wear protective gear while the dozen gladiators are clothed in armor.

    Johnny Lin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Johnny, that is true. Football is violent, so is boxing. And American rodeos are notorious for subjugating animals and flinging young steers about with a rope on the neck.

      Perhaps the most honorable man/animal fight I ever saw was in a bull ring in Portugal. The guy on horses or the matador on the ground would stick the bull with a lot of spears, but not kill him. Just prove that they could kill him if they wanted to. Then 10 young men, the darlings of the women in the crowd, uniforms stained in red and brown from prior engagements, would line up one behind the other and the front guy would taunt the bull. The bull would charge the line, and the guy in front would take the charge full bore, draping his body over the bull's head. After the men behind flew about like bowling pins, they'd try to wrestle the bull to submission. At least the bull got his shot at getting even.

      Photo in right column.

      Delete
    2. Joeam,
      Thanks for putting my photoshop pic during my younger days on the the upper left

      Johnny lin

      Delete
    3. Ha. The question is, have you yet liberated your outrageously handsome self? Did you recite the pledge?

      Delete
    4. The pledge: it's better to be henpecked than cuckolded?

      DocB

      Delete
  4. Women are in control because they have 3 omni-“P”otent powers:

    • Power of the Purse
    • Power of the Pottage (food)
    • Power of the Pussy

    The first is What men do; the second is How men survive; and the third is Why men do the first. Men are slaves to work, food and sex. This is the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

    The reason the Church do not need women is because the clergy are women. They have discovered the secret of how women control men, and are trying to imitate them. Notice the basic black dress? They survive with donations from men-workers. Instead of feeding the stomachs of men, they feed the minds of men with heavenly fairy tales. And as to sex, they are women with supposedly constant headaches.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My Maslow book must have been edited by a woman because it did not contain those foundational values in exactly those same terms. Still, I admit it rings starkly accurate. As for the last paragraph, I simply duplicate Doc's reaction, below. It bent my brain in a direction it had never imagined it would go.

      Delete
  5. "The reason the Church do not need women is because the clergy are women." Hahahaha.

    DocB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you the same Edgar Lores, sir, only with a different avatar?

      DocB

      Delete
    2. Very good doc. I think not, now that you point it out.

      Delete
    3. Sorry, Doc B. Yes, I confirm I am the same and the original. I updated my gravatar - to a red teddy bear - to better show to the world the essential lovable me.

      Delete
  6. The Church do not need women. They need men and children to fill their sexual appetite. That is why hunchbacks can be found only in the church because The Priests do it in the back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are despicable Mariano. You are in the wrong blog site. This is The Society of Honor. I am surprised JoeAm did not delete you!

      Delete
    2. I actually thought about the "delete" on this entry. It would be considered obscene by some, I am sure.

      Mariano and I go back a few years. He writes in attack mode, outrageously sometimes. But beneath what I would call his "literary venom" are ideas that are important. I often don't agree with him or his ideas. For instance, I like President Aquino but he calls the President benigno-the-Turd.

      But more often, I find within them striking truths.

      So, if I delete the part I don't like, but leave in the part I do, what kind of honor is there to that?

      On balance, he contributes to the marketplace of ideas in a good way, even if the medicine sometimes tastes worse than cod liver oil.

      Delete
    3. And some day I'm going to write a book about mixed metaphors.

      Delete
  7. I used to be a Filipino. I am now A Liberated Filipino. Filipinos cannot touch me. Filipino government are afraid of me. If I missed to report my whereabouts in any of the American Embassies all over the world, The American Government comes knocking on the host country of my whereabouts.

    If a Filipino is lost OFWing in host country or fly wingless off high-rise Hong-Kong condominium or get raped, benign0-the-Turd offers a pine coffin, a group picture of the family for the agrieved to hang in the sala with a toothy smile.

    Doncha love being a non-Filipino?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mariano, you are in good form today. I can't decide whether to laugh or cry, so I laugh until the tears roll. I love being a citizen of the world, aligned with all peoples.

      Delete

Please take up comments at the new blog site at joeam.com.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.