Let's Talk About Sex. And Women. (Thoughts on Issues Related to the RH Bill.)

by Rowie Azada

I'll start by sharing three insights that struck me at different times in my life.

Insight number 1. When I was in college, we studied the Catholic doctrine on contraception, marriage, and sexuality for a Theology class. I remember thinking to myself that it was very difficult to follow the Catholic doctrine on contraception, but at the same time I was also struck by how much faith it had in the kind of love a husband and a wife could have. The only "Church-approved" methods of family planning--natural "birth control" methods--were entirely dependent on open communication lines between husband and wife, and on a husband's respect for his wife's body and her sexuality. There was also a strong concern that "a man ... may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection" (HV 17, encyclical given in 1968). There were other parts of the doctrine I had many questions about, but I thought that the emphasis on a man's respect for a woman's body was quite cool.

Insight number 2. When I was a fresh graduate, I was hired to translate for an American journalist who was doing a story on contraception in the Philippines. We visited a number of urban poor areas in the Philippines and interviewed women who had eight or more children. We asked the women why they had so many children and their answers were often along the lines of, "E kasi madalas umuuwi ang asawa ko nang lasing, kaya alam mo na ...." Many of the women we interviewed said they had tried the pill but didn't like the side effects they said the pill gave them; when asked why they didn't use a condom instead, they often said, "E ayaw kasi ng asawa ko."

Insight number 3. I read a statistic a few years ago that showed a correlation between a woman's level of education and the number of children she had: the more educated a woman was, the more likely it was that she would have less children. I don't know for certain what the cause of the correlation is, but I'm guessing that maybe a more educated woman has a surer sense of self, and therefore feels more empowered to make decisions about her entire life, including her sexuality.

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Why do so many poorer families have so many children--often far more than they can afford? There are probably many answers to the question, but based on those interviews I did several years ago, it seems that for some families, part of the reason is the dynamic between the husband and wife, the communication--or rather, the lack of communication--about sexuality. My guess is that many women cannot say no to their husbands/sexual partners, or cannot assert their own opinions and views about sex in the bedroom.

It is a shame that in this debate, the Catholic bishops and religious have been focusing only on the issue of contraception, because I think that there is much more in Catholic doctrine that can contribute to the discussion on reproductive health. Reproductive health begins, not in public clinics or barangay health centers or in school, but first and foremost, at home, in sexual relationships. Of course, the State cannot legislate respect between sexual partners (other than prohibiting domestic abuse), but by framing the issue of reproductive health mainly as a debate about contraception, the current participants in the debate are missing the opportunity to draw attention to what I think is at least an equally important issue: the power relations between sexual partners.

Why are women in our culture unable to be frank about sex? Why are men in our culture more vocal about sex? Both are equally misinformed about sex, yet in the power relation between man and woman, the woman acquiesces to the man. Despite all theories that ours is a matriarchal society, this is one area where women lose out.

I remember the last huge art-related controversy in school, around a decade ago. A theater group wanted to stage the Vagina Monologues. However, some administrators (not priests), reacting to the play's strong language, refused to endorse it as an official school activity, and banned it from campus. The group went ahead and staged it, off campus, but the banning caused a huge uproar.

I watched the play and loved it. The next day I talked about it with some friends. "In one of the scenes," I began, "where a character started talking about her 'puerta' ..."

A male friend who had also watched it responded, "A oo, kadiri talaga yung scene na yun ...."

"Kadiri?" I said, surprised. "I thought it was so powerful, so moving ...."

"See, the thing is," I continued, "men have porn and locker room jokes to talk about sex. Women have nothing. When men talk about sex publicly, it's funny. At least, it's funny. When women talk about sex, it's 'kadiri.'"

If we want to increase reproductive health awareness, giving condoms or pills for free at health clinics might help a little. But it won't be enough. Let's go beyond this contraceptive talk. Let's talk about people. Let's talk about relationships. Let's talk about women in relationships and how we can help women speak up.

*picture from http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/