Catching Up on Slowing Down

This is a picture of my family's favorite dish. Well, at least, one of our favorites. It's To's version of something he saw on TV, Penne tossed in fresh pesto and asparagus, served on a bed of spinach and topped with cottage cheese!

Once in a while, I get curious (or self-conscious, take your pick) about the generation and techcnological gap between myself and a younger generation of bloggers. I mentioned before that at a forum on BLOGGING, I pointed out to college students how each of us (particularly, people of different generations) relate to the new media (Internet etc.). I knew they would find it amusing if I mentioned how I pre-edited my posts (especially longer articles, treatises really) on word before I posted them but come to think of it, I never really expected them to laugh as hard as they did, when they did. ;-)

So now I'm trying it "their way" and I am writing as I think. OK so maybe I still pause more often than your Gen-Y (or is it Z?) Blogger (I hate typos and even lapses in subject/verb agreement even more!) and maybe there really isn't any possible comparison. I wanted to write about life in general (hopefully no longer in the abstract as I have been so wont to do in my last few posts) and how I have learned to appreciate those "spaces" (READ: free time) which I used to dread when I was a" 3-4 cups a day caffeinated, double-booking, triple meeting, countless deadlines sort of Women's NGO Executive Director person" of only a year ago.

This morning over breakfast with a friend, I laughed about how in the early days of my "new freedom," I felt quite helpless and literally LOST. I actually carried a laptop around as a sort of "security blanket," since after my term as Executive Director, I actually had no place to call as an "office," outside that of my home office/library. I dreaded the LONG hours of not having as much to do as I did before, even when I actually still had a LOT to do relatively speaking, since I had consultancy projects.

But having to deal with projects one at a time was certainly new to me as a former Executive Director so gradually I found other things to do. I started a website, a blog, and read a lot of books I never had the time to read or finish before. I had my nails done (although I'm really not the type to have them done regularly. I just want them clean) and I took on the task of picking up my daughter from her class at least 3-4 times a week (when I never used to or had to since it has always been my husband's job!)

I took up baking. Now this is an area of raging controversy. I exaggerate of course. Its more like a contestation of notions, that is about what is edible, tasty or passable, "laman tiyan," (literally: stomach filling). I always tell friends about the therapeutic nature of baking, especially when you are a recovering micro-managing institution chief or head of operations. Baking is so exacting (it requires accurate measurements) that it literally set my soul singing when I first tried and failed, and failed, and tried, and finally baked something my labrador liked a lot and eagerly gobbled up. Of course much later, my family also ate what I baked and now I think, I can bake a few basic stuff without disastrous consequences. My little girl actually compared my past baking disasters to a Chevy Chase movie (this is my own fault for letting her watch HBO). My worst baking disaster was when a pyrex baking dish exploded when I took it out of the oven and laid it down on a cold marble countertop. Nobody was hurt (except of course my ego because it was Christmas Eve) and the countertop had a minor burn mark (you can't even see it now).

Now I realize, after all these months and within a year, I have gone a long way from that sense of having lost out on a life "full" of overlapping schedules and "important" events. I no longer carry a heavy laptop (which is the kind I have anyway) and I have comfortably settled into my "new office," which is anywhere in UP in the areas of the UP shopping Center (internet shops), the Chocolate Kiss Cafe (for both social and work related meetings), the UP College of Law Library (Faculty lounge), the UP CSWCD Library, and of course, the CCCC grounds where I also had an opportunity to meet with and get to know a few other Moms like myself. (At one time, when word got out I was a lawyer, I ended up giving legal counseling to a few Moms who were interested in legal advice).

Once in a while I do still get busy because of projects and work but it doesn't compare to what my life was like only a year ago and for five years, that is since co-founding Womenlead in 2000. No, those were good days (and there were undoubtedly bad days too) but I'm happy with it being in the past because I have learned to like the present a great deal.

Freedom and Good Faith: Dreaming up Democracy

When acclaimed Philippine Constitutionalist and former Justice of the Supreme Court, Isagani Cruz called gay people “pansies,” and vented his frustration over what he observed as the commonness and “everydayness” gay people and things gay, he also ridiculed homosexuals exhibiting varying levels of mean spiritedness (apparently in order of their “degrees” of being deemed tolerable by the honorable Justice Cruz).

The irony of course is thanks to him, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT) movement, got yet another opportunity to address discrimination against LGBTs as a human rights issue.

What got my attention though was one reader’s response to another PDI columnist who not only expressed vehement disagreement with the Cruz opinion, but also took the brave leap of “outing” himself on the occasion. The reader chided the columnist supposedly for expecting anything less from “democracy” to the point of accusing the columnist of being "bigoted" for avoiding "honest views" expressed on "his gender." Disagreement and the avowed right to hold opposing views is true enough, often touted as a key feature of modern day democracy.

This in turn got me thinking about a forum I attended last August 22 about the proposed House Bill on “Conscientious Objection,” filed before the 13th Congress.

The Bill purportedly prohibits discrimination against conscientious objectors in the health and medical profession, because of their refusal to provide medical services and procedures they object to as well as any information regarding such services.

The bill also purports to be founded on the hallowed principles “religious freedom” as enshrined in the 1987 Philippine Constitution’s “free exercise clause.”

Dubious Freedom Fighters and the SPIN on Democracy

Just like the reader who defended Cruz’ homophobia as free expression, HB 5028 also utilizes the same “sacred” principles we usually associate with democratic society, that is freedom of religious expression, in its most hallowed sense, in the context of a democracy.

The Bill actually expands the concept of "conscientious objection," as a claim not only for individual persons or health professionals but for entire clinics and hospitals (corporate persons) and likewise applies it not solely to the performance of the so-called "objectionable" medical practice or procedure, but also includes the duty to provide information on the matter objected to.

Even more ironic is that the bill is founded on and purports to invoke the right against "discrimination," on the part of the persons it seeks to provide legal defenses to.

These two situations present current day debates (raging issues), happening over a backdrop of challenged notions of democracy, freedom and even equality, all of them classic notions held sacred in modern "liberal democracy."

On one hand, we have an avowed Constitutionalist able to name drop and quote Voltaire defending what undoubtedly was (in this day and age) "unpopular speech" (his virulent homophobia)and invoking the best of our democratic ideals.

The Bill on conscientious objection also invokes similar principles, this time focusing on "a right against discrimination," which is founded on our core principles on equality and equal protection, to avoid liability from what would otherwise be considered the ethical responsibility of health professionals.

On the surface, these democratic principles are absolutely perfect. That is afterall what they are, idealized notions in the abstract, founded on pure notion of all persons (men, actually as feminists point out), being free and equal.

In fact, arguing in the abstract, doesn't lend to illustrating the real differences any better, in the exchanges.

When the now embattled Justice Cruz defends his unpopular speech and accuses others of seeking to limit his freedom (of expression), he is conveniently skirting (I hope he doesn't mind my use of the term) issue of why he feels entirely justified in perpetrating ill treatment of persons on the basis of sex identity, that is in this case picking on homosexuals. Instead he cries foul at the disagreement expressed over his opinion.

How can it be that his tirrade of hate against gay people enjoys the protection accorded free speech in a democracy when an opinion in turn, expressing a personal experience of hurt and insult stemming from his tirrade, is CENSORSHIP? This is indeed unfortunate.

It isn't any wonder either how now, Ultra-Conservative Catholics are seeking to use the self same notions of freedom and non-discrimination as excuses for committing discrimination against people (their patients!) who may have different religious beliefs.

The key to understanding the various "rights claiming" on either side of purported religious or political fences of course has long been pushed forward by feminists in critiques of liberal philosophy: that is, simply put, an analysis of power relations.

Obviously, the former Justice enjoys a lot of "democratic space," and in fact is one of a few fortunate enough to have both the educational background, influence and privilege to actually get paid to express his views. In the "free market" of ideas, his opinion already holds and occupies a space of privilege. Indeed, despite his wounded claims of having been the target of an undemocratic opposition (supposed naysayers unknowing in the ways of democracy), the LGBT community, as vibrant and articulate its leaders and communities are now, have a long way to go before they can ever achieve acceptance and even enjoy the respect accorded to other human beings!

Likewise, as much as conscientious objection is a valid claim and remains an important feature and aspect of religious freedom, we cannot keep on discussing it in the abstract when in our context, the dominant and powerful Catholic institutions (led by the CBCP) are pushing for policies to delimit other's (non-Catholics and dissenting Catholics'), free expression (i.e. lobbying against the Reproductive Health Bill and contraceptive availability, post-abortion emergency care etc.). It begs asking, "whose conscience" are we speaking of? (Do we purport a monopoly of conscience to a singular religious institution?)

I also remember how in the periods it took for the women's movement to pass a host of laws to address violence against women and sexual harassment as forms of discrimination, we were asked numerous times to prove our case through empirical evidence (which of course women's groups did quite easily.)

When the House Bill on conscientious objection was presented, there was never even a hint of a claim that "discrimination" was being experienced already and was an emerging pattern among conservatice Catholic health practicioners.

Imagine then a situation where a patient wouldn't even have the full gurantee of receiving complete information on the various available treatments and procedures she or he may consider, all because a conscientious objector can by herself or himself decide what procedures and medical practices she or he is open to mentioning!

As one panelist in the forum (Chancellor Marita Reyes of UP Manila) pointed out, health professionals should review and be guided by their oaths upon which they base their ethical guidelines! What sort of unethical behavior would be sanctioning if the all powerful health professional (the doctors) are granted not only the exclusive right to EXERCISE their religion but also to IMPOSE it upon the patient!

Likewise, the challenge of the philosopher (current Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Prof. Zosimo E. Lee) pushes the debate into more meaningful interrogation: What do we mean by conscientious objection? The point being that "conscientious objection" presupposes capacity for thought, deliberation and actual reflection regarding the actual conflicts between a scientific procedure and the foundations of one's faith!

Former Dean, Professor Raul Pangalangan of the College of Law also mapped out the judicial trends on free religious expression, both in the US and local jurisprudence, noting that the proposed bill is unparalled in its scope and seems to be expanding "conscientious objection" to the point of defeating the principle of free exercise. That is, if conscientious objectors in the health professions invoke a right not only to be involved in objectionable procedure but also withold all sorts of information and referral from patients, what happens to the right of patients to health care and medical treatment?

Moreover, the bill's treatment of hospitals (corporate entities) as like individuals and on the level of individuals exercising a right to conscientious objection, is a whole new take on the concept. If a lone health professional in a Catholic Hospital decides to provide emergency post abortion care which the hospital objects to, whose right prevails? Surely, a physician who respects life and comes to the aid of a woman in need of post abortion care can equally assert a right to do as she/he believes and make a medical intervention? Surely this is an exercise of "conscientious objection" within the hospital?

Dreams of Democracy

No doubt, we live in very interesting times. Even the mantra of "democratic ideals" will no longer suffice in guarding against the most manifest forms of discrimination, injustice, violence and plain and simple (run of the mill) ill treatment and bullying. After all, above anything else, these two parallel examples illustrate how the tables are being turned and the language of "democracy" (and the usual symbols we have to represent it) are as easily invoked in all manner of hate speech, fascist propaganda and religious fundamentalism.

It is every bit ironic that a noble notion like freedom can be used as an excuse to oppress others and perpetrate bigotry. Of course because of the limitations of the same "liberal legalism," censorship is something which supposedly occupies the opposite end of whatever form of "free" speech. This is however a trap, a play of legal liberalism.

Censorship, especially, institutional (state and corporate) censorship have never turned out to be worthy solutions, even if invoked with the best of intentions (that is according to its proponents). For when have dominant views ever been censored and marginalized ones preferred? Save perhaps for states like Canada, where such issues are being hotly debated along the often converging lines of free speech-censorship-and anti-discrimination-hate speech divide, most states (as ours), systematically supress the already marginal views out there and privilege the dominant views.

In fact, expressing marginal views (i.e. advocating for gay rights, and an anti-gay discrimination bill) is in huge measure, a form of dissent precisely because it is in the margins of the established order. Given this state of affairs, the strategy of framing the debate as "who is a better libertarian? who is the freedom fighter and who is the censor?" actually avoids the issue plain and simple. The real debate between those who discriminate against others by reason of sex, gender, race, class or ethnicity and those of us who want such forms of oppression to end, lies not in any given "right" (legal or otherwise) to speak, act or believe, but rather on pure and simple everyday ethics. How do we want to live as human beings and how do we treat each other with respect? This is of course unchartered terrain as far as most liberal legal systems go, after all the terrain of ethics is in the everyday, not solely in institutional fora, let alone formal structures. In its most ordinary form, it is courtesy and being a good neighbor which was perhaps in the heated exchanges was best exemplified by Anne Marie Lim (I am proud to say, a former student) who in a statement said: "Cruz has been more privileged than us in some ways, but in the end he is a coequal human being to whom we, as homosexuals, are willing to extend the basic courtesy and respect that he has failed to extend to us.It is not too late. We hope we can have persons like Justice Cruz beside us as we continue to strive for equality for all."


Recommended readings:

More Censorship or Less Discrimination? Sexual Orientation Hate Propaganda in Multiple Perspectives by Jonathan Cohen

This article by Jonathan Cohen outlines the Canadian debacle over the issue of hate speech as discrimination and issues over censorship.

What's Wrong with Democracy: From Athenian Practice to American Worship;Chapter 2 Democracy and Demagogues By Loren J.Samons II

This reading takes a historical approach and grapples with how far different notions around "democracy" have changed, from the ancient Athenian/Greek and Roman practices to current day American civil liberties. Very intersting in this article is how enduring notions such as the electorate (the vote) and majority rule did not necesarrily have the same value and association with ancient democracies.

Gender, Politics and the Internet: Gender in the new discursive space of Blogging

An Examination of the Medium: Gender in a Body-less Space

When the Internet was new (and hardly affordable as it is now, although still by no means, a small expense), like everybody else, feminists focused on the basic politics of access and participation. Who has more access to the internet? Women or men? What is the most predominant use for the Internet? (Everyone of course knows the answers to the questions. 1) Men; 2) Pornography. These questions remain relevant today but such a discussion tends to be premised on a number of notions which urgently need “unpacking,” among them sex (who are women, who are men? More aptly, what is gender/sex in the internet?) and how is “power” exercised in the new discursive spaces of the internet.

Just when feminists and queer theorists were busy taking apart the notions we have of gender by pointing out that it is hardly a FIXED category and that it lies not just in the body or bodily, but is also performed; it is experienced as a relationship and that relationship usually involves a hierarchy, the Internet emerged as a new discursive space in which “gender” is performed and viewed.

Make no mistake, while it is undeniable that dominant ways of viewing and representing the “feminine” and the “masculine,” or for that matter, beauty and the display of bodies representing such ideals, persist on the internet, just as such notions endure over the other (older) medium, Television, a closer look though, will reveal that unlike TV, the internet (however offensively or distastefully done, depending on your own biases), offers a wider variety than TV ever has. Again it is worth noting that dominant stereotypes endure and proliferate, but by the sheer “multi-centeredness” of this medium, there is always another or other views. In so saying, gender, and sex need not (and are often enough, not) fixed in the internet per se. Gender/Sex on the internet, can be ambiguous.

In fact, many feminists, who first wrote about the Internet celebrated this “body less” space as offering fabulous feminist futures (Squires: 1996). In her popular essay entitled: “A Cyborg manifesto: Science, technology and socialist-feminism in the late 20th century,” Donna Harraway (1991) already reflected on the possibilities of the new media on notions of self/identity, particularly in abandoning dualisms, among them, materialism and idealism; nature/culture.

Blogging: Identity, Interactivity and Community

As familiar as we think we are about BLOGS and BLOGGING, it would be foolhardy to think that a “blog” is just an electronic version of a diary. On one level, blogging can be private (since you can control who is able to view your blog) and it is in a sense just like publication (because posting and making it accessible to others, does make it public) but unlike the print on paper form, the technology in which blogging takes place affords us real-time interactivity (connectivity) and over time (given an adequate amount of hits and regularity), makes possible a form of community, and all this with the option of withholding or limiting access to “identity” (both on the part of the blogger and the posters of comments, but more often the posters of nasty comments, we call flamers)

Why people blog and how people blog is as diverse as any topic can get. (Diary-type? Bridgette Jones? (More recently, Petit Anglais) Politics, Religion, Academic, Commercial or otherwise, it is the blogger’s choice even when it is not notably always a conscious one)

The more relevant issues I would like to raise about BLOGGING are the questions around the users’ relationship with the new medium.

“The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind and mute about its encounter with the Guttenberg technology…. Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the dumb stance of the technological idiot. For the “content” of a medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as “content.” The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera. The effect of a movie form is not related to its program content. The “content” of writing or print is speech but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.” (Mac Luhan: 1969)

Marshall MacLuhan said this in 1969 and while the “internet” did not yet exist when he said this warning, the acclaimed “spokesman” of the electronic age may well have been describing computers and his observations, as easily relevant to our discussion on “blogs.”

Self-awareness is often lost on the users (now aptly called consumers) of media, which proliferates. Not only do we take for granted that newspapers, radio and TV as a sources of information, but we privilege these “sources” as reliable above all others. Take any piece of unverified information, package it (ala news or news feature) and publish or air it. What do you get? (Do I hear anybody saying the Philippine Daily Inquirer? That is, among others). Mac Luhan even then constantly warned (and it is in many ways a warning we must still heed: “The medium is the message.”) He pointed out: “Any media has the power of imposing its own assumptions on the unwary.”

A parallel phenomenon in “blogging” can in fact reveal a similar and unfortunate level of unawareness on the part of its users.

Interactivity

In blogspeak, interactivity can refer both to the means (technology) and the exchange (posts and comments). Here we actually see how early on the concept of “feedback” was the first thing offered by site hosts, in a sense, a “space” accorded to the “general public.” Despite the “two-way” exchange denoted by “feedback” however, it wasn’t until blogging (as we know it) when both access and immediacy were made possible to the one giving feedback and in effect seemingly making possible actual and potentially meaningful “exchanges.” On the other hand, while “blogging and the internet” are “new media,” it is very much founded on a VERY old medium: the written word and/or speech.

Mind you, while on one level, “some” blogging can very well lead to a revival or a return to the written word (literacy as we have defined and delimited it), it is unlikely that it would approximate the advent of Guttenberg print in days of old. For one, print (paper) is still relatively inaccessible compared with blogging. Both the Publisher and the Editor are eliminated in most blogs (save for the corporate sponsored ones) and the consumers or the public in blogging is one of a generation saturated and steeped in video, TV and MTV. Hence, not everyone who will read blogs and seek them out (or blog themselves) will be people who like reading books or even “excel” in writing. Ironically, even as most cultures and societies continue to privilege “literacy” (textual), we have a whole new generation of (depending on how you want to view it), differently literates or illiterates in the guttenberg (print) sense.

This to me explains a lot of the stuff that goes on in the blogging world, specifically, “flaming.” Often portrayed as ideological clashes or brushed off as bad manners, one aspect of flaming,certainly seems in every sense, "worlds colliding." In my own observation, people who tend to use the medium as an extension of speech (translating the manners and affect of speech onto the medium) tend to shake up or ruffle the feathers of others who use the medium as an extension of written text, not necesarrily, speech, despite the immediacy. On the other hand, the syntax of Internet users differ across generations of users. In one chat conference I moderated, a particularly emphatic, elder professor, sought to drive home her point and chose [CAPS] to do it. [Note that in the SYNTAX of printed newspapers, CAPS means simply shouting out to denote importance and emphasis, not shouting at] The rest of the participants (of a younger set, and also more used to the syntax of the internet) ended up whispering to me and asking why the Professor was ANGRY at them and shouting. (In the Alternative Class where I shared this piece, the youngsters found it amusing when I told them I draft and pre-edit some of my longer blog entries on word. The fact that they laughed as I expected they would, I think, proves my point: WE USE the new media differently and often these differences go unoticed.)

In blogspeak or net-speak (because it also happens via email), a “flame” is an inflammatory remark or message. [An example on Computing basics-1995 goes as follows: say person 1 posts a comment or blogpost which says, “welfare should be abolished.” Someone who disagrees in turn says, “You have got to be the stupidest person I have come across and I hope you end up on the streets needing weldare to stay alive.”] This is, as is commonly agreed in blogging, a “flame.”

In the same article, they further add: “Flames are often fanned by discussion of politics, feminism, religion, or any other controversial subject.” (All of which I should point out are topics I blog about all the time)

There have been a lot of interesting takes on the “heated exchanges” that can take place within blogs and blogging sites/communities. You may very well guess that a lot of them come up in defense of the abstract ideals we are so familiar with, that is, “free speech,” with all the hortatory claims around unbridled exchanges and the value of debate. How about the oft heard ”democracy is best served with airing more view points and perspectives?”

In the case of yesterday’s televised voting on the impeachment complaint, I am sure you will agree that “more views” by all those disagreeing, debating, combative congressmen (the lot of them lawyers), didn’t exactly necessarily translate to “better.” Let us get this straight: “Debates and exchanges” presuppose thought, not just speech. (Airtime does not translate automatically to quality exchanges)

On the other hand, when you take a look at the average “flame,” or if you have ever been caught in a hailstorm of flaming, (a lot of it hate mail and hate speech) it never feels anything like any recognizable idealized notion of freedom or democracy. More likely, it feels every bit as a personal and hurtful attack, very often by people who as free as they feel in hurling hurtful words and accusations, are unwilling to stand by them (some bloggers have called them ACs or anonymous cowards).

If you think about it, the abstract notions we have of “freedom” and “democracy,” were carved out of human and societal experiences, so far removed from what spaces we have now, specifically the blog.

Remember that in Rights 101 class, classical individual rights are those we claim against the sovereign state. Romantic as our notions are about democracy and “healthy debates,” we raised up these ideals in the context of state censorship. (Which I have to point out, are still important to address and oppose) But in blogging, posts and comments may be controlled or moderated by every able-blogger. While such control is power, it is, nonetheless, diffused, its exercise, no longer always, by a central and all powerful person or institution.

Again, institutional censorship (state and corporate censorship) are still raging and relevant issues. Over all, it is the more insidious types of control (not always blatant censorship) which can have far-reaching consequences.

This brings me to my earlier point. Flaming in the blogging world is characteristic of the “numbness” Mac Luhan describes in people’s relationship with media. Flamers no doubt, take for granted that the one at the other end of the post (the receiving end of the flame) is a human being. Those who “flame” in response to “flames,” do the same. As ideal as the “unbridled” nature and essence of democracy (and the free market) we continue to harp on sound, the technology which makes blogging (on one level, free expression) possible, also allows us the “freedom” to withdraw (identity, access) even as we partake and participate, or delimit /moderate posts, ban flamers and other undesirables. Which is which? Whose freedom prevails? For that matter, why is it framed as a contest? Where does power reside?

This irony is in fact very prevalent than we probably care to notice. “Free speech,” has been the battle cry of those engaging in “hate speech” since the early nineties. It is no surprise that along with politics, feminism and religion, race issues are also considered most likely, “flamebait” as defined by Jon Katz on Slashdot.org, “flamebait are writers or sites most likely to draw the small but angry hordes.”

In discussing the discursive culture of cyberhate, Susan Zickmund (1997) cited how the Internet has transformed the nature of community and identity within the US, and in particular affecting the cohesiveness of erstwhile subversives (i.e. Neo-Nazis, Skinheads) who prior to the Internet operated in isolation.

Blogging with an Edge and beyond: From Consumer to Producer

“The hybrid or meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born. For the parallel between two media holds us on the frontiers between forms that snap us out of the Narcissus-narcosis. The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses. ” (Marshall Mac Luhan: 1969)

Among the many paradoxes that new media has helped surface, or perhaps, merely, highlight, is how increasingly inconsistent our dominant ways of knowing and thinking are becoming with our own evolving sense of self and communities. Let me elaborate from my own “neck of the woods,” that is the community of feminist activists (local and world wide).

Feminists (and feminist blogs) are often singled out as previously mentioned, and considered, garden variety, “falmebait.” Without going into speculation about the myriad of motives behind flamers of feminist sites, it is worthy to mention that engaging new media has facilitated a lot of transformations within feminist cultures and even feminist icons. While your average teenager or even college student will probably not be too enamored with the label feminist, “GIRL POWER” is something she likely supports and believes in.

In the feminist “bloggosphere,” there is hardly one way feminists are now represented. (The ambiguity can be viewed in another way, how can we be ever sure it is feminist in the first place?)

If you remember in recent past, the War in Afghanistan brought to the world’s attention, the web-posting, web site-reporting women of RAWA (The Revolutionary Alliance of Women in Afghanistan), who, clad in their traditional burka because they were consigned to do so and at the same time because they eagerly sought its protection and familiarity in conducting a myriad of covert activity- (i.e. video recording atrocities) RAWA’s sites were at one time flooded by visitors, it crashed several times. Nonetheless, the site offered new ways of looking, new ways of showing us experiences and messages, which would otherwise be filtered through dominant institutional media. Allison Jagger (1998) wrote: “women are frequently taken as emblems of cultural integrity, so that defending beleaguered cultures becomes equated with preserving traditional forms of femininity, especially as these are manifest in traditional female dress and practices of marriage and sexuality.”

This phenomenon for me best illustrates the otherwise untapped potential new media offers, that is in effectively becoming extensions of ourselves (and our senses), we also gain back and experience an altogether new level of “social consciousness,” “In the electric age, we all wear (human)kind as our skin," Mac Luhan observed quite accurately. Likewise, with more recent developments in using the available technologies, (i.e. You Tube, pod-casting etc.) bloggers may not opt to always remain faceless, body-less in due time even if flaming ACs persist.

No doubt, it is in the context of confronting diversity at each turn, instead of an otherwise ordered dual and predictable, universe, in which we blog and in which old notions of self, identity and community are being reworked.

Some Recommended Sites:

Flame Wars and other on-line arguments by Timothy Campbell

One-line Connections: Internet Interpersonal Relationships by Susan B. barnes, Reviewed by Andrew Dalton (2004)

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail at Cnet News.com by Delan McCullagh, January 11, 2006

Irrational: A Rationale

When I first heard that they invented a birth control pill to deal with (do away with?) the monthly "mood swings" I had my doubts.[Read about it here]

After all, it isn't everyday that a happy, healthy, about- to-be-menstruating again (about to be gorging on potato chips) woman can readily give up her Godess given right to go flip, get wacky and yes, lose it, one a month.

Not all women have it so bad (or so good)though. PMS just as the discomforts of menstruating (dismenorrhea etc.)are different for many women. A friend I know can barely walk and stand when it is that time of the month. Other more active women are less bothered by cramps and headaches (apparently they say physical exercise is a major factor).

The new pill may not be all that bad though. Anticipating a deadline, tons of work and a major event, women may opt to forgo the right to go ballistic for that month and take it. I however, don't look forward to it.Let's just say, I have a different order of priorities. :-)

I have though, learned to deal with my PMS and have in fact been more observant about my mood swings. I'm not advocating it so much as an excuse to do mean things to people (and claim PMS in defense) but it would help if people would also take time to understand it (that is meet me, however horrific my mood swing is, half way).

After all, part of the ways women are boxed into social expectations and modes of behavior has a lot to do with what we define as "normal" and acceptable. Indeed, normalcy is itself a gendered norm. The movie "Girl Interrupted" tackled how in the sixties, various behaviors of women were considered psychological disorders. Many years later, we call them parts of what make up "personality." (No, having sex and wanting sex (whether with the opposite or the same sex) is no longer considered a psychological disorder this day and age, that is medically speaking!)

At the risk of offending a lot more people, I tend to have a different take of our own dear Senator Miriam Defensor's pronouncements. 99 percent of the time, Miriam (the brilliant intellectual that she is), makes good sense. If you really listen to what she says, she is usually on to something brilliant because she chooses (often enough) to speak truthfully.Who else but a crazy person would speak the truth after all? (Remember Rizal's wise man Pilosopo Tasio? Wasn't he considered STIR CRAZY?)

Yet media likes it best when Miriam comes on strong and in so saying, "loses" her temper. They also set it up in a way as to focus on and magnify what they think/frame as classic "MIRIAMESQUE." What are we then saying? An angry man is JUST in his anger, an angry woman is just crazy?

Sure, she is not exactly the epitome of clean politics (she used to be at one time though). She unabashedly also attacks the "powers that be" even if they are the hands that happen to feed her (at the moment) so if you ask me, this makes her absolutely consistent and saner than most politicos in my book.

I find societies are cruel to women in more ways than one. Not acknowledging our right to emotional expression (not the least of them outbursts) can be dammn right CRUEL. Likewise, boxing women in and expecting us to ALWAYS be emotional (more than men)also sucks.

The binary between emotion/reason is also a hierarchy.It isn't just a "his" and "hers" categorization of "nature" or "essence." Strong women have been characterized as "masculine," "having balls" and for all intents and purposes, NOT like a woman all throughout history.

On the other side of this, men and boys do also have it bad with all of society's expectations for them not to cry (and sometimes even not to dance! tough guys?)But I won't deal with that here now.

As much as societal norms and codes of proper behaviour do restrict women's emotional outbursts, or even dictate only what is acceptable emotion (i.e. hysterical break-downs seem to be the preferred/sanctioned/expected "female" reaction to sexual violations --- woe to the woman who doesn't respond this way especially during a trial), women's anger has always been characterized (and apparently acknowledged) as powerful.Hell hath no fury? How about how they used to name typhoons?

But societies in general nor "patriarchal institutions" aren't the only ones with issues about women's strength, women's power, and yes, women's anger (let alone, women's crankiness).

In fact, our own cheating President's "anger management" issues have been the subject of so much speculation and debate (with her joining the fray, blaming pills she took in the past for it), we tend to lose sight of the important issue of what has made her angry each and every time. Unlike Miriam, who has gotten riled up about LYING power companies and oil company dealing politicos over alleged losses in the face of billion dollar profits, our President, has elected (pun intended) to get MAD at the truthful statements of her officials (classroom shortage,OWWA funds for repatriation etc.)

If you recall, one of the President's foremost critics, herself a woman (the widow of FPJ), Susan Roces, displayed "righteous" anger at the height of the election cheating scandal. (Who can forget: "Madam President, YOU STOLE THE PRESIDENCY!) As much as I respect that outburst in every sense (because it was truthful), it was also disappointing (though not surprising) to hear that in her heart, Susan thinks the country needs a MALE President and that it (the presidency) is not a woman's place.(And no, I'm not rooting for HER candidacy in particular)

In so doing, many of us have ended up making the cranky President's crankiness, just another story about an "irrational" woman. More likely its just another story about a crooked politician. Unfortunately, they haven't invented a pill for inducing ethical and moral behavior.