Category: sex

duterte, pemberton, HIV-AIDS

it was the first time i’d ever heard digong duterte speaking lengthily on anything, so i was totally unprepared for all of it.  yes, the puntanginas and other cuatro letras and the libog and bathroom and bayag talk  shocked me at first, pero sabay halakhak everytime.  i think i forgave him very quickly for the ‘tanginas because, well, he was cursing mostly at stuff i have myself cursed at in private (except for the pope), and it was somewhat cathartic, haha.

but beyond the oral ejaculations he was talking a lot of sense, he knows, he has lived, mindanao history, and is rightfully pissed off at imperial manila and whoever made a fish out of moro hero lapulapu LOL.  however, the sex talk and the going-to-confession and related stories were not as easy to forgive, napaka-for-adults-only, what if the kids are listening?  my nanay was very old school.

the very next day, as i was listening to the olongapo judge’s ruling on the killing of sex worker jennifer laude by US marine scott pemberton  — JUNK EDCA! — and hearing more sex talk, if on a different plane and in a different language from duterte’s — fuck, oral sex, blow, penis, vagina — the synchronocity struck me, and the thought occurred that this could be a good thing.  the start of a process of desensitization to sex talk, because we NEED to talk about sex.  real sex education, in the vernacular, is the only way we can stop HIV-AIDS from spreading and becoming full-blown.

PHILIPPINE HIV EPIDEMIC UPDATE (2015)
UN AIDS

The rapid rise in HIV infections nationwide, with some 21 new cases reported every day per DOH records4, has made the Philippines one of only a handful of countries at risk of a full-blown AIDS epidemic if it is unable to address the problem on time. The 646 new cases reported last February is the highest number since the Philippines’ first case in 1984, according to the DOH. The numbers in six cities — Quezon City, Manila, Caloocan, Cebu, Davao and Cagayan de Oro—already exceed the national prevalence rate of 3.5 percent4. While HIV is spread primarily through unsafe sexual contact, it can also be contracted through the sharing of dirty needles during drug use.

Increasing prevalence in key populations. National HIV prevalence remains under 0.1%, but rapidly expanding among key affected populations (KAP)2. By 2013, HIV prevalence reached 5% to 8% among males who have sex with males (MSM) in the cities of Cebu, Quezon and Manila; 53% among people who inject drugs (PWID) and 5% among female sex workers (FSW) in Cebu City1.

More are infected. The number of cases reported has shown a steep increase in the recent years – from less than 1 case a day in 2006 to 21 cases a day by March 20151. The actual cases are estimated to be at least double of those reported. The Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC) has projected that the total number of HIV cases in the Philippines could reach 37,000 [as high as 54,000] by 20152. 12,000 of those will be needing treatment2 which could cost the Philippine Health Insurance around P360 million ($8.4 million).

Those infected are young with a median age of 27. HIV infection among 15-24 years old increased more-than ten-fold, from 44 in 2006 to 995 in 20151. The period of initiation to sex and drug use among key affected populations is as early as from 14 years old2.

Male to male transmission had significantly increased. Sex is still the main mode of transmission with, 85% of new cases were reportedly through male-to-male sex in 20151.

More local transmission. HIV cases among Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) continue to increase (395 cases in 2013 – highest ever) despite the decrease in proportion of OFW to the total cases from 42% in 2006 to 11% in 2013 indicating that local transmission has outpaced infections reportedly contracted overseas.1

Very Low Prevention Coverage mostly below national targets of 80% since 2005; specifically 63% for establishment-based Female Sex Workers, 38% for freelance FSW, 23% for Males Who Have Sex wth Males (MSM) and 11% among people who inject drugs (PWID). Low number of Key Affected Persons (KAP) are tested for HIV (merely 14%) and zero for key affected populations under the age of 18.

High-risk practices among KAP continues. Knowledge levels (index of basic HIV knowledge including misconceptions) among Key Affected Persons was only 32%, with those aged 15 to 17 years, even lower.

basic HIV knowledge, including misconceptions, of gay and bisexuals, female sex workers, needle-using druggies, is only 32%, and even lower than that for teen-agers.  sa madaling salita, kulang na kulang ang sex education.  the departments of education and of health will, of course, claim that all students get sex education, but the question is, what kind?

In a recent media forum, people living with HIV (PLHIV) advocate Wanggo Gallaga said there is an immediate need for schools to include sex education modules in order to encourage those with risky sexual behaviors to practice safe sex.

“What we have to do is to educate people properly. It has to start earlier. When it comes to health, education is very shallow. Biology lang ang tinuturo sa schools e. We don’t talk about consequences of sex,” said Gallaga. 

yes.  it’s not enough to teach about reproductive body parts and how babies are made.  kailangan din ituro ang tungkol sa libog and hormones, vaginal and anal sex, and the consequences of unprotected sex, besides unwanted pregnancies, as in sexually transmitted diseases, the worst of which is human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection that untreated leads to the painfully deadly Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

most important, these teaching modules should be not only in english but also in tagalog and taglish, and gayspeak na rin, as well as in the dialects of target audiences, which should include young and old, male and female, gay and bisexual, specially the sexually active who engage in casual sex / exchange bodily fluids with different partners.

read godofredo u. stuart’s Sex Education: The Comic Failure of Language and marlon james sales’ Sex and the Missionary Position: The Grammar of Philippine Colonial Sexualities as a Locus of Translation.

sex education is key to preventing an HIV-AIDS epidemic.  government agencies (DEPED and DOH) simply have to get on the job, the sooner the better.  for certain the bishops will raise a howl.  let them.  it might even be a good sign that all they’re apoplectic about right now is the cursing at the pope, the adultery committed with two wives and two girlfriends, and the allegation of sexual abuse by jesuits.  i haven’t heard anyone decrying the bayag and libog talk.  maybe they can’t find the words.  while we have all the words we need.

*

772 cases of HIV/AIDS recorded in June, the highest ever in one month – DOH
Living with HIV in the Philippines
The Predictable Failure of HIV/AIDS Education in the Philippines

Sex and the Missionary Position: The Grammar of Philippine Colonial Sexualities as a Locus of Translation

Marlon James Sales
Monash University, Australia

Introduction
The written history of Hispanic Philippines is a story wrought in translation. Colonial accounts about this Southeast Asian archipelago attempted to make sense of its people and their cultures by translating them for a European readership in a period that spanned more than three centuries. While there were indeed a number of colonial administrators, travellers and other lay chroniclers who mentioned the country in their writings, it is in the texts penned by missionary priests that we find the earliest and most extensive intent to systematize the understanding of Filipinos on the basis of their languages and customs. From the very beginning of Spain’s colonial expansion in Asia in the 1500s until the last year of the Empire in 1898 when the Philippines was finally ceded to the United States, members of various religious orders wrote histories that recounted how their brothers in the cloth preached the Christian doctrine to different ethnolinguistic groups in the country and the rest of the Asian continent. They similarly wrote grammars and dictionaries, the primary purpose of which was to help ministers in the administration of the sacraments and rituals of the Roman Church in the islands’ many vernaculars.

Read on…

HIV alert… the vernacular of sex

448 fresh HIV cases reported for the first month of the year … 118 of the new HIV patients belong to the 15 to 24 age bracket. … 50% or 224 patients are from Metro Manila, 16% from the Calabarzon, 7% from Davao region, 4% from Western Visayas … epic failure of sex education, such as it is.

SEX EDUCATION: Comic Failure of Language
By Godofredo U. Stuart, MD

As language, Filipino is very expressive and illustrative. I often marvel at its descriptive powers, a single word that will need half a dozen or more English words to describe: umaampiyas. Or words that wax poetic: takip-silim, agaw dilim, bukang liwayway. It’s a language that lends to the Pinoys’ penchant and delight for word play, never at a loss in coining words that become mainstream: trapos, epal, promdi. Its vowel-rich words lend to the staccato and cadence of Rap music. But when it comes to the language of sex, the vernacular fails—dreadfully—and looks to English for rescue.

The failure is widespread—in schools, in media, and homes. A failure that is both comic and stupid.  Read on…

woody’s woes

Considering how long and how often it has happened, Western culture should find it easy to separate art from artist — to judge a particular work of art apart from the behavior, even reprehensible behavior, of its creator.

The ongoing tragedy of filmmaker Woody Allen and his family suggests maybe it’s not so easy anymore, especially not when everyone and their wacky brother can weigh in on social media. That in turn could affect how Allen’s peers judge his latest Oscar-nominated film, Blue Jasmine, and its Oscar-nominated stars.

the women, especially, are out in full force.  read The Dylan Farrow case and the power of internet 

Yes, you do have the usual clueless old white dudes who are content to recycle the same old sexist slurs. The nuts-and-sluts defense lives! … though in this case it’s being used against Mia rather than Dylan.

But what’s wonderful is that we’ve also heard from women like Ann Friedman, Amanda Marcotte, Katie McDonough, Jessica Winter, Emily McCombs and Natalie Shure. They address the case from different angles, but the one the thing they all have in common is that their writing is grounded in their experience as women, their utilization of feminism as a tool of analysis, and their commitment to challenging rape culture myths.

Back in the 1990s, you never saw very many female opinion columnists writing about these issues — not in most mainstream media outlets, at least. In liberal magazines like The Nation or Mother Jones you could enjoy Katha Pollitt or Molly Ivins, but even in those places, women’s voices were badly outnumbered by men’s. That so many vibrant feminist writers now have platforms on web outlets is a wonderful thing.

woody sure is getting a beating.  barbara walters tried to vouch for him in The View as a loving and caring father, but wow was she was pounced on.  like joyce carol oates twitted after: One might as readily step into the spinning propellors of an airplane as to engage in publicly ‘discussing’ Dylan Farrow/ Woody Allen issue.  oates herself got flak for tweeting : Though Woody Allen has been much denounced, very likely many of his denouncers greatly admire Nabokov’s “Lolita.” No contradiction? and In the Woody Allen case, as in cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, the remedy is for the victim to bring suit against the abuser.

to my surprise, even dissident feminist and art scholar camille paglia, who is known to take up the cudgels for men on certain issues, says she is inclined to believe dylan’s letter.  just the same this essay she wrote for Newsday back in 1992, published in Vamps and Tramps (1994), resonates.

Woody Allen Agonistes

Two weeks ago, the discreet twelve-year relationship between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow exploded into public attention in a media firestorm of charges and countercharges. Day after day, screaming headlines documented the revelations: Allen had filed for custody of the couple’s three small children; he had been accused of molestation of one of them in Connecticut; he admitted a sexual liaison with Farrow’s adopted Korean daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, whose age has been variously reported as nineteen or twenty-one.

After an initial period of confusion, most sensible people seemed willing to suspend judgment for the moment on the child abuse charge, in the absence of hard evidence. But on talk shows and in the print media, there was a thunderous chorus of condemnation of Allen for his relationship with Soon-Yi. Family therapists, feminists, and church-going conservatives called it callous, lecherous, incestuous, decadent. Woody Allen, one of feminism’s great white hopes for the ideal “sensitive male,” had flunked out. The lovable nerd was just another leering Nero.

This controversy is a perfect thermometer for taking the temperature of the American psyche. Twenty-five years after the sexual revolution, what have we learned about ourselves? Practically nothing. Contrary to feminist propaganda, we have not found the answer to any important sexual issue. In fact, as the century ends, we have barely begin to pose the questions correctly.

At his press conference two weeks ago, Woody Allen said there is “no logic” to falling in love. This ancient wisdom about the Dionysian irrationality of our emotional lives is documented in the earliest Greek and Roman love poetry. It is a great spiritual truth sadly missing from the ugly, clumsy ideology of current feminism, which is obsessed with social-welfare cliches of oppression, victimization and “care-giving.”

Woody Allen is an artist. To whom does he owe ultimate responsibility? Since Romanticism, we have expected the artist not to celebrate God, king, family, and established values but to break taboos, to explore his or her deepest, most socially forbidden self. Though his films have weakened recently, Allen is one of the central analysts of contemporary American manners and sexual experience. It is outrageous that therapists, bystanders, and pundits of every stripe have used this painful crisis to strike hysterical poses of moral superiority over him.

Picasso, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Madonna, Robert Mapplethorpe: during the past decade, each of these important artists has been denounced by holier-than-thou groups, from feminists to the Moral Majority, for their unsettling themes or bohemian lifestyles. This provincial American abuse of artists must end. Neither art nor the artist will ever conform to bourgeois decorum or tidy moral codes. Originality is by definition rule-breaking.

Allen’s films, like Bananas, Love and Death, and Annie Hall, often show the comic inadequacy of words, reason, or good intentions to deal with the storminess of sex and love. In Broadway Danny Rose, he himself plays a gentle, earnest, compassionate bumbler overwhelmed by a flamboyant, vengeful Italian firecracker, wonderfully portrayed by Mia Farrow.

Farrow seems to have carried this unexpected flair for Italian theatricality into her present life drama, in which she has managed to exert maximum power while deftly avoiding overt public statements. Dispatching a host of adult and pint-sized proxies as skillfully as Shakespeare’s volatile Cleopatra, Farrow has fused Puccini heroines: she is both the pining, abandoned mother, Madame Butterfly, and the tempestuous, jealous diva, Tosca, who uses any weapon that comes to hand.

There has been an undertone of perversity or kinkiness in Farrow’s sexual personae from the start of her career. Her May/December marriage to Frank Sinatra still astonishes. Who can forget the first yacht-deck photo of the hard-bitten casino roue next to the androgynous gossamer waif? (Sinatra’s ex, Ava Gardner, snapped, “I always knew Frank would end up with a boy.”) In Secret Ceremony Farrow played a delusional girl-woman projecting a homoerotic incest fantasy onto a very patient Elizabeth Taylor. In Rosemary’s Baby she fought for her pregnancy against the forces of darkness and oddly nosy neighbors on Central Park West.

Motherhood is a far more complex phenomenon than the current brand of neat-as-pie yuppie feminism admits. Motherhood may unleash primal instincts for possession and territoriality beyond morality. Hovering vulturelike over the whole affair is Farrow’s dowager queen mother, actress Maureen O’Sullivan, hurling Junoesque thunderbolts at Allen (in her words, an “evil” man) from her stronghold on the West Coast. Farrow’s sprawling, multiracial household is in its own way tribal and matriarchal.

Allen is being impugned as an “immature” satyr with a Lolita fixation, like those other small-statured collectors of nymphets, Charlie Chaplin and Roman Polanski. The pursuit of youth and beauty has also been an integral part of highly accomplished gay male life for centuries. Allen has the right to seek his muse wherever he may find her. The quiet, dreamy Soon-Yi, paternalistically trashed by the bleeding-heart commentators as “helpless,” “passive,” and “naive,” may represent simplicity and emotional truth to Allen. Such insights, even if transient, are priceless to an artist.

Is it incest? Legally, no. Psychologically, yes. But incest is a universal theme in a world mythology that we have never come to terms with. Doing the research for Sexual Personae, I was stunned at the frequency of incest in Romantic literature. And incest permeates the two greatest plays ever written, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality is a century old, yet it remains unabsorbed. Most parents could not function at home if they fully accepted their children’s sexuality. Our horrified fascination with the Allen/Farrow scandal comes partly from our own repressions. Similarly, the child-abuse witch-hunts focusing on day-care centers in recent years are baseless hallucinations, eruptions from our vestigial Anglo-Saxon puritanism.

Woody Allen’s love life began in the shadow of the potent Jewish mother, then evolved through brunette and blonde shiksa goddesses to an Asian Mona Lisa. Thus it is ironic that he who moved so far romantically from his Jewish roots should still end up accused of incest. Like Oedipus, he could not escape his fate.

This sorry episode in the showbiz chronicles has much to teach us. Don’t send your Valentines with a Betty Crocker stamp. Cruelty and brutality lie just beneath the surface of love. Intimacy and incest may be psychologically intertwined. Power relations may generate eroticism. Perhaps – bad news for sexual harassment rules – hierarchy can never be completely desexed.

At his press conference, Woody Allen looked haggard and rumpled, like a graduate student flushed out of an all-night study session. In giving anguished testimony about the mystery, compulsion, and folly of sexual attraction, he has recovered and renewed his cultural status: the artist as scapegoat, illuminating our lives through his own suffering.