Manila: City of Vulgar Prudes

For a newcomer then, a cursory look at Manila seems to insinuate how great a sin it is not to participate in its hedonistic fanfare. The real sin, however, would be to acknowledge its existence in the public sphere, to rouse it from its current hush-hush state, and to turn it into something that could infuriate the priests and shake the country’s theocratic foundations.

But it seems that that really is the thrust that the land is moving forward with—private citizens are taking their voices to the streets, rallying for sensible reproductive health measures and programs from the state—the same state that the church has been preventing from instituting divorce since time immemorial.

The torrent of video scandals and news of unwanted pregnancies in recent years, whether celebrity or pedestrian, seems to not have only served the purpose of entertainment and ridicule. It has also desensitized the people’s prudish morals—with fewer mothers expecting to marry off virgin daughters—and helped them acknowledge that sex is not just a private affair to be kept on mute. It was a national concern. After all, ours is an economy founded on exploited and exported bodies, and a tourism industry with the Filipina on the centerstage—all in the service of the other countries and races that have made us this way in the first place.

It may be something that we’d have to live with for much longer, but at least we’ve begun with the small step of realizing just how prudish we have been these last few centuries, how foolish.


More musings at http://piabenosa.wordpress.com. Pia Benosa is also on Twitter: www.twitter.com/piabeeee