Women’s Image: In the Name of the Father

Biographical Perspective

As a child, individual’s differences, biological and physical, means you are either girl or a boy, ate or kuya, Nanay or Tatay, Ale or Mama or Lola or Lolo. Gender was not a word then, and even the word sex or sexuality was beyond child’s understanding.

The roles that associated with male and female are socially presented at home and in school. Law enforcers (police officers) and carpenters are male. Being a school teacher is not entirely for female because my Lolo and my Titas were teachers but the profession is dominated by female because most of my Ma'ams are female. Most mothers, like my Nanay, are “plain housewives” that practiced societies traditions of women's established roles — like cooking and preparing meals, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and keeping our home clean.

As we grow up, we learn more through socialization and added more male roles like tubero, kartero, barbero, kargador and basurero (what do you call the female counterpart of these), and few female roles like manicurista, labandera, and tindera. But working mothers are not new to me. When I was a child, I always accompanied my Lola selling clothes and dresses to our cousin’s place, an agricultural barrio, where female helps in farming and other related agricultural activity.

Man as Public, Woman as Domestic

My Lola was more active in her social life, she had a religious group and was always being invited to lead a prayer for “Padasal” in the barrio. During the late 70’s, my Lola was also active in organizing events for their Women’s Circle, a group being organized by our Kapitan de Barangay, a woman. I think the Women’s Circle was a project of Imelda Marcos, the First lady at that time.

On a patriarchal or masculine view that man should be in public and women should be domestic, which reinforces more social division and gender inequality, then women should have all the rights to protest and be heard. Being domestic is being personal, and what is personal is also political. Being political involves the whole society. As the feminist movement insistence that, “What goes on behind the closed doors of the domestic sphere has everything to do with what goes on outside it.”

In our neighborhood, women becoming a public figure or having a freedom from being domestic was not depended on challenging or protesting male societal dominance or the influence of our female Kapitan de Barangay or the image of the First Lady as an empowered and powerful woman - maybe an effect by the second wave feminist movement in the US. But maybe, it’s all because of Imelda, our First Lady then. Then, we have to thank her for that.

It has been natural in our neighborhood to see women who drinks liquor (outside their home, in the streets) or drinking liquor with men. During the “drinking session”, women sing and dance as if they were celebrating their freedom. Or maybe it was a challenge then to be free from the imposition of curfew hours during the martial law era. Maybe, women then were learning to live in a man’s world , as traditional saying goes.

Women's Identity is Constructed in Relation to History

And Religion and Culture Construct differences in Gender.

Before the coming of the Spaniards, native unmarried Filipino women, in their stage of puberty, were encouraged by their cultural orientation at the time to participate freely in sexual activities. Early Filipino tribal men had five or more wives, practicing polygamy, a marital ethnic norm of the archipelago at the time. Adornments in male sex organs were also being used in sexual activity.

When Spanish came to the Philippines, the Roman Catholic Church influenced the legal, political and religious views on sexuality and altered ancient culture. Premarital sex and masturbation, according to Catholic Church, were immoral behavior. With the influence of religion, Filipino male should choose to marry virgin women and that woman should maintain their virginity until marriage. Catholic Church patterned the image of Filipina to Virgin Mary.The story of creation, from the book of Genesis, stated that Eve comes from Adam’s flesh. And it was Eve who tempted Adam to taste the “apple of sin.” Premarital sex and having many wives was not a sin or immoral before the coming of the Spaniards.

From Barbara W. Andaya’s book review of “Holy Confrontations, Religion Gender and Sexuality in the Philippines”, published by Manila Institute of Womens Studies, states that: "the battery of tools used by the Church in the re-education process of the Filipino people were promoted through Christian plays, songs, catechisms, sermons, biblical adaptations; priests also made good use of the confessional and compulsory church attendance to identify and condemn unacceptable behavior, forcing compliance by punishments and the threat of hellfire. Possibly the most effective tool was the censorship which Filipinos imposed on themselves, a new culture of guilt that was mostly strikingly manifested in self-flagellation or the culture of guilt on women as they go to church wearing veil in their heads, bowing and looking low."

The Church taught the Filipino people to love God. Church being the instrument or voice of the Lord has the authority to know what is right or wrong and what is evil and good. The Catholic Church promoted the Christian ideas such as "wife's fidelity to her husband", premarital virginity, and the notion of a women’s role as a nurturing mother. Women’s fixed role as mother was determined by their natural and biological capacity to bear children – a Christian view that life is a gift to give life. These ideas and teachings of the church were being passed to mothers, then to their daughters, then to daughter's daughter and so on. Christian women were trained or molded in the same way as an image of the Virgin Mary and being prepared for household work as a good and faithful mother and wife.

During the 17th and 18th century, while France was debating on theological nature of women, equal opportunity, right of suffrages and having the same potential for rational thoughts as men, Catholic church in the Philippines was busy in restructuring the image of Filipina women from ancient freedom of sexual practices to Maria Clara as being illustrated in Jose Rizal’s novel. Maria Clara was not only a creation of Dr. Rizal’s novel but was born and molded by history, religion and culture: as passive, domestic cooks, sex object, confined in a limited space and as subordinate and into the keeping of men.

But great history was always written by great men, that’s what the history says. History is always written by the victors, or the conquerors and colonizers – the superior male. Spanish comes with bible and swords in hand, American comes with chocolates and guns, both came from a traditional Patriarchal society where history is determined by great wars and great men. Great war in history always started with male’s great ego of owning or possessing things, or acquiring objects he doesn’t own, and to accumulate wealth, property and power. Man is always trying to conquer or control and always wanted to be more powerful than other man. There are a number of conquerors in our history and literature (take for example the story of the Fall of Troy) where woman is the object of possession. (Computer games for male are designed in a way how male love to possess and conquer, how to acquire power and to be in control.)

It is said that women in (post)colonial cultures have been termed ‘the twice colonized’, both by the imperial and the male social order. As such, women and the colonized are seen as sharing an experience of oppression and subjugation that has constructed their very beings.

The image of our Filipino women is also a reflection of Philippines being twice colonized (or thrice). Filipina, when entering into marriage, carry the name of the male, the patriarchal tradition of having or carrying the name (surname) of your husband (which is pass on to the sons and daughters). We can say that women are twice being colonized, not by colonizing country but by Patriarchal tradition of male society, by carrying the name of their husband (if they marry) and their father - twice carrying the name of two man (and completely removing the name of the mother). Compared that to male where they carry both their parent's last name - and yes, we can call that inequality.

But there are movements to balance the inequality, the movement in feminism can be one.

GABRIELA, a feminist group representing second wave (?) feminist movement in the Philippines, incorporates the importance of History in their song titled “MARIA,” a challenge to cultural construction of women as passive, as sex objects or domestic cooks. The song identifies heroines such as Lorena Barros, Gabriela Silang, and Tandang Sora to develop feminist consciousness among Filipina. The Lyrics of the song Maria:

Maria

I. Mula ng isilang ka, Maria

Dinanas mo na

Ang mga pang-aaping

‘Di mo makaya

II. Ika’y nalilito,

Ika’y nagtatanong

Bakit ba ganito ang papel

ng mga Maria

III. Maria. Ika’y hindi pangkusina

Hindi pangkama

Ika’y di bagay tingnan

Sa pagnanasa

Ika’y hindi laruan

Pag nagasawa’y iiwan

Ika’y babaeng may karapatan

IV. Maria, Maria iyong pag-aralan

Maria, ang iyong kasaysayan

V. Si Lorena, Gabriela at Tandang Sora

Naaalala niyo pa ba sila

Sila ang huwaran

Nang bagong Pilipina

Sila ay ikaw at ikaw ay sila

VI. Maria, Maria iyong ipaglaban

Maria, Maria ang iyong karapatan

Lessons Learned from FPJ Movies: As Compared to Male Gaze

Male peer groups during puberty period teach you how to look at men’s magazine. It tells you that you are not a boy but a male and your body is different from the female. Then you look at girls and women differently and look at women on the pages of the men’s magazine and silver screen with visual pleasure.

But FPJ (Fernando Poe Jr.) movies don’t teach you how to look at women as being suggested in other male magazine and silver screen. If other filmmakers are using camera as an extension of “male gaze”, I can say that he did not. Not only FPJ movies help you understand and relate your sexual identity and male gender roles, it also shows you that woman is to be protected and rescued from the “goons” and villains that don’t respect women. But also, women or leading ladies in FPJ movies are not leading ladies but a supporting casts to show that FPJ can fight and defeat a number of goons, by fist or by gun. Woman is cast as wife and mother, to somehow show that FPJ is a responsible husband and good provider for the family –a good shepherd… or more of a sheep but can be a lion when provoked and hurt, especially his loved ones. Woman in FPJ movies is not a creation of the masculine gaze, as compared to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, but a creation to support and project the masculinity of man.

Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which was published in 1975, states that in film, women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera (and thus the gaze) comes from factors such as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres.

FPJ movies in representing women rarely shows provocative shots that scan the contour of the women’s body, pouting lips as in magazine ads, curling figure of women with their hands on their neck or face – visual messages hinting, or suggesting, a provocation to touch, or suggesting visual language of desire. FPJ’s visual language doesn’t suggest that women should self-consciously watches themselves because they will be looked at from a male viewpoint. And male, coming from the feminist view, has a voyeuristic way of looking at women.

But it was just me, coming from the viewpoint of a child watching an FPJ movie.

Voices and Choices: Are Women Traditionally Conservative

Studying filmaking teach me how to watch different films. From FPJ movies and other action oriented film to artistic film as they say. In an artistic film, it is only normal to show nude body of a woman, or a sexual intercourse between male and female and not call it pornography. But there is a big difference between art film and pornography film. Art film tells a story, and each film elements are arrange not to satisfy sexual desire of one sexual group or males, which is the main target of visual content of pornography, eliciting male lasciviousness.

It is only right for Feminist group to struggle, not only for equal rights as men, or their voices to be heard, and have the freedom of choice (reproductive rights) but also to combat the way how there are being represented in the mass media, especially in visual media. But, there’s always two contradictory sides regarding the subject on women’s conservatism. Take for example the contradictory views on abortion. Is abortion a choice of liberated women and anti-abortion reinforces the traditional sexual conservatism of women? Are women traditionally sexually conservative? Or, are Filipino women traditionally sexually conservative? Let’s go back to our ancient women before the Spanish and it contradicts the meaning of conservatism. Maybe we can view that conservatism is just the cloth that the Catholic Church is trying to cover our ancient tradition.

From the Image of the Church to Image of Mass Media

Our film censors are so conservative in terms of showing vital and private parts of the human body - one of the changes and influences brought by the Catholic Church. Our society has been balancing on being conservative enough in saying that private should not be presented in public. Or what’s private or personal between husband and wife should stay in domestic place - a Patriarchal statement coming from the Catholic Church. But the image of women is changing because of effects of feminist movements and other movements calling for gender equality . It is changing, from the old image molded and restructured by the church to modern women as being represented in today's mass media.

But are we advertising women as sex in today's mass media? Women are the sex (which is different in meaning from its counterpart which is masculine) which is constantly questioned, explained and defined. Visual advertising now used all parts of the women’s body to sell a product. A shot of a nice and beautiful polished nail of a women, hand on her cheek, can take away the concentration and focus of male driving in EDSA

Take for example the effect of visual desire (male gaze?) of Debra Winger’s nude (breast) shot in the film “The Sheltering Sky”. The image can be different from the same nude half body shot of Rosanna Roces in “Selya” (a film by Carlos Siguion-Reyna). Or the sexual activity between Nicolas Cage and his partner, Elizabeth Sue in the film “Leaving Las Vegas” is different between the shot of Daniel Fernando and Anna Marie Guitierez in the film “Scorpio Nights”. Scorpio Nights is building its story on sexual desire itself while “Leaving Las Vegas” is building its visual story on not desiring to live or just to live.

Comparing local cinema to Hollywood, in particular, the effect of Rosanna Roces on the screen is different than Debra Winger maybe because Rosanna is being package and molded by the media as a sexy actress and Debra is more on drama film. Most of her films are sexy films or erotic as some press people described. When she appears on the screen, male audiences are expecting that she will show her nude body and or she will be having a sexual intercourse with male. I don’t know if the film “Selya” is trying to repackage the image of Rosanna from a sexy actress to dramatic actress. But the result of ticket sale shows that audiences prefer Rosanna as a sexy actress or sex object at that time. And considering the time and effort of the press people and movie producers to project and package Rosanna as a sexy actress, one film is not enough to erase the old image, it will take time (as in making a tradition) as the Catholic Church have done in restructuring the image of ancient Filipina to a Maria Clara

Lualhati Bautista’s writing, like “Dekada 70”, as a voice within a woman is one example of second wave (or third) feminist movement here in the Philippines. I’ve watchedthe film adaptation of “Dekada 70” and registered in my mind Amanda Bartolomes’ dialogue, “You’re just my wife,” repeating what her husband just said and her husband’s dialogue, “Well honey, it’s a man’s world.”

(Dekada 70 is a story of a mother to all five boys in raising her family during the time of Martial Law. A family within a society during Martial law or military law and being ruled by a dictator - suggesting what the husband says in the movie that it’s a man’s world. But the story ended where there’s a change in political climate, the 1986 EDSA Revolution and the emergence of a new leader, a woman.)

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Sources:

Wikipedia

Female Desires, Rosalind Coward

Social Construction of Gender

Feminist Theory, Wikipedia

Post Colonial Masculinities, Derek Stanovsky

Gender, Answers.com

Notes On Male Gaze, David Chandler