Cleaning House: Reflections on Moral Philosophy

When our little “home office,” that is the room my husband and I have stuffed our books, papers and computers into (being both academics) gets a bit crowded and when the piles of students’ requirements (mine), plates (his) gets a bit too much, my husband’s nesting instincts kick in.

Between us two, he is usually the first one to start clearing out the mess, (although tentatively) separating assorted knickknacks (and toys) that somehow made their way into the room (usually via the seven year old daughter we have) from the stuff that doesn’t get thrown out.

He says he needs the room just “to think” and he finds it hard to do so in the “mess.”

I also “nest” but find I often do so about only twice a year or three times, tops. But nonetheless, I do know and appreciate the look and feel of a completely clean area to study and think in. It does have its rewards having a nook to get your work done, especially when your work like ours, requires a lot of “alone” time and reflection.

Thinking about the nature of thinking I suppose is a bit out there as far as topics go but after recently lecturing about Ethics before a group of lawyers, so many of them much older than I am, a question sort of lingered at the back of mind. We all think but how often do we think about how we think?

It was a Feminist Mary Belenkly who pointed out: “We do not think of the ordinary person as preoccupied with such difficult and profound questions as “What is truth? What is authority? To whom do I listen? What counts for me as evidence? How do I know what I know? Yet to ask these questions and to reflect on our answers is more than an intellectual exercise, for our basic assumptions about the nature and truth and reality and the origins of knowledge shape the way we interact with others, our public and private personae, our sense of control over life’s events, our views of teaching and learning and our conceptions of morality.” (Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice and Mind)

Nowadays, most people hardly get to think about “the ways people think” because that part of us has been snuffed out either by school or the media. Mind you, it never really is a linear process and the snuffing out always depends a lot on the willingness of the person to abandon this part of the thought process and even schools and media have produced stellar exceptions.

Yes, it is often easier (and feels like it) to stop thinking. Heck I should know, I was a law student and whenever relatives and friends (who obviously had some strange idea that surviving law school is such an intellectual feat) asked me how I did it, (survived) I responded by saying: “I stopped thinking and concentrated on studying.”

Yes, I have to admit, that in law school, I often found that thinking was often counter productive to the quest for decent grades. (And by the way, I loved the reactions on people’s faces in response to my statement.)

Is it also because of the dominant culture of wanting things quick and easy that people readily abandon the capacity for reflective thinking? Interestingly it turns out that popular culture isn’t the only culprit in portraying “philosophers” and “thinkers” as some lot of distracted buffoons seriously in need of fixing.

Historians note how Socrates himself was put to trial in part for causing such a stir with his questions about morality (where it comes from and what it is?). Yes, asking such questions, the stuff of philosophy and ethics, it seems, one can be labeled quite the rabble-rouser or in some cases, stir crazy.

When I was first asked to talk about Ethics, Law and Human Rights, I have to admit (at the risk of more labeling by colleagues and friends who have pointed out my obvious ecstasy for the most esoteric things) that I looked forward to it. After all, I knew I wasn’t going to be doing it for the honorarium.

Preparing for that lecture for me was a little bit like “cleaning house,” and even a bit of updating that can be akin to redecorating, since we’re using that metaphor.

It was in many ways, a welcome opportunity to go back and sift through the clutter of forgotten philosophy readings in college, (a lot of them no doubt, also half-digested) and sort them out literally, with my more recently digested information base on human rights and feminism.

On one hand, a part of me knows and realizes that such opportunities, “cleaning house,” is veritably a class issue. To have a house to clean and stuff in it presupposes access to some kind of education and yes, the time and space to do it.

But at the back of my mind (yes, that often very busy place since they say utilitarian thoughts are on the prefrontal lobe, but we’ll get to that later), I think about how isn’t always accurate to assume that people with education think better than those who do not have formal schooling.

To think is actually a choice and while education can often open opportunities like time, space and the means to do it purposively, regrettably, pissing contests all about accumulated information and “knowledge” in the realm of academia doesn’t quite cut it as “thinking.”

I like considering such displays more like “performances” of thought processes. Yes, I think that is a much better, if not more accurate statement.

The most curious thing about thousands of years of human knowledge is that the quest for the best means of arriving at moral choices has often overtaken the very important issues about how what makes up morality itself.

Even the means of arriving at moral choices is almost always most familiar to us only if handed down as a set of step by step rules, or some sort of rigid law or formula we expect to follow, instead of involving purposeful deliberation or long drawn out decision making.

If you really think about it, the codes and rules and norms are at their coldest, barest, abstract and impersonal form when articulated as "the law." As well meaning as we believe ourselves to be in invoking "the law" in many moral contexts, the purpose of a law (despite the best intentions of its proponents) has often come to mean some thing else besides its original intended meaning.

"No matter how well we have understood the usefulness of some physiological organ or other (or a legal institution, a social custom, a political practice, some style in art or in religious cults), we have not, in that process, grasped anything about its origin—no matter how uncomfortable and unpleasant this may sound in elderly ears. From time immemorial people have believed that in demonstrable purposes, the usefulness of a thing, a form, or an institution, they could understand the reasons it came into existence—the eye as something made to see, the hand as something made to grasp. So people also imagined punishment as invented to punish. But all purposes, all uses, are only signs that a will to power has become master over something with less power and has stamped on it its own meaning of some function, and the entire history of a “thing,” an organ, a practice can by this process be seen as a continuing chain of signs of constantly new interpretations and adjustments, whose causes need not be connected to each other—they rather follow and take over from each other under merely contingent circumstances." (From Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneaology of Morals)

I recently came across this article which puts a new spin on what philosophers and anybody concerned with ethics, have long pondered about: what makes moral, moral? Where does morality come from?

According to the article, a recent discovery of scientists about way the ventromedial prefrontal cortex affects "decision-making" and "choices" involving what we consider moral dilemas, can shed some light about the possibly neuroscience explanation for morality. Its located in the brain so to speak.

Scientists have basically mapped out where brain activity lies in so-called cognitive and the more social-emotional ones. Apparently, "the moral debate "reflects an underlying tension between competing subsystems in the brain."

Following the claim of neouroscientists, that the seat of "morality" is actually located in the brain, specifically within the competing subsystems of the brain, they also point out that the socio-emotional seat of the brain is pre-historic, something we inherited from our primate ancestors. The "utilitarian calculus" located in the frontal lobes are supposedly more recently evolved.

The proof scientists offer is simple. People with brain damage, particularly in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, made unusually utilitarian choices when given such problems as: Would you smother your infant to death if while hiding from killers, along with others, your baby starts to cry? Would you throw a seriously injured person off a life boat?

Despite the hoopla however, I don't think the discovery is a cause for declaring the erstwhile domain of philosophers and esrtwhile ethical morality as a dead end. The article discusses how such discoveries have led to recommendations from scientists about manipulating the parts of the brain in cases where the emotive portion of behavior would be "a problem." That other scientists have reacted by urging new bioethical guidelines for research and technology in this area is for me an example of how valid and relevant ethical discussions are in the first place.

One of the alarming recommendations pointed out in one research was the probable use of the technology to scan the brains of soldiers for "emotional interference!"

Honestly, I rather think these kinds of suggestions (not to mention vocabulary!) indicate more of an alarming trend among scientists than actual brain science itself. Emotional interference? I imagine no less than the philosopher David Hume turning in his grave!

When Hume said, "reason is and ought to be the slave of passions," and that "We need a distinctly emotional reaction in order to make a moral pronouncement," he was really on to something. In a way, as the same article points out, the discoveries have also vindicated the emotive part of reasoning as necesarry by the same findings on people with VMPC damage.

An herein lies the paradox. Even supposing that new discoveries are truly useful and beneficial, now that neuroscience has found us a couple of explanations, shall we in the manner societies have privileged law/science/and institutional religion (dogma), now purport that brain science IS THE NEW AUTHORITY on morality?

The author of the article points out tongue in cheek: "What's moral, in the new world, is what's normal, natural, necessary, and neurologically fit."

But the catch is, what is "normal" has changed over history. And as neuroscience itself points out (re: the recently evolved utilitarian calculus located in the frontal lobes), it has changed even in an evolutionary sense. By this reasoning, even the brain cannot be THE authority because even the brain is not unchanging.

This for me actually brings us back to what even the ancient philosophers had to begin with in the very first place and consider: the individual person. Yes, we have (however meanderingly in this post) made it back to ourselves. Our evolution (literally and philosophically speaking) apparently depends a lot on us.

Must Reads:

If you think Friedrich Nietzsche is a bit too heavy, you can also get the drift of what he essentially said in the quote through this conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland.(Scroll down to 364 for the conversation about what "words" mean.)

Beyond Limits: Human Rights Activism Gets a Dose of Feminism

This is the paper I read at the ISIS-WAGI-WOMENLEAD forum at the Miriam College Library Foyer, 10 March 2007. For those who didn't make it to the forum, it was initially thought of as "conversations" between the feminists and the other social movements (not that demarcation lines are hardly ever that clear). I was flanked by no less than two Phds (one of them a double Dr., our resident Guru, Guy Estrada-Claudio; the other Mira Ofreneo, a brilliant Psychologist who can do statistics!) So here is my paper (from which I derived my presentation) I'm posting it despite my better judgment :-) because people asked for a copy after the forum. I actually wrote it the night before the forum from 10:30 to 2 AM and had to find a way to end it at the WAGI office, around 2 hours before the forum, with little success. In a nut shell it addresses how feminisms have changed human rights discourse and how social movements in general would benefit from studying those lessons.

The specter of the totatalitarian/authoritarian state was the one single dominant feature of our socio-cultural and economic and political context, when human rights claiming became a key feature of how progressive movements articulated visions on social justice.

Broad movements working for social change not only found tenets of classical rights and liberal philosophy as useful in articulating our agendas from claims to freedom, to decrying rights violations. Our legal system (particularly our Constitutional tradition) was also built upon the language of liberal democracy. Rights claiming therefore served both a strategic and a practical purpose.

Likewise, the totalitarian and authoritarian state was easily recognized, apart from the monolithic presence in jackboots and fire arms. Indeed, in the absence of “free expression” (and key symbols and means to free expression), THE ENEMY’s (the Marcos regime’s) unquestionable stronghold over the three branches of government, media and the military was also as easily demonstrable.

Fast forward to the present. We, in the various branches of the social movements for change, from the more classical sounding civil libertarian to the defiant feminists, still use human rights language and principles to articulate many aspects of our most basic agendas and even within our visions of social transformation and change.

My modest contribution this afternoon is to invite everyone to take a step back and to reflect on how in continuing to rely on the language and the frame of “human rights,” we in the social movements (and this includes many within women’s human rights claiming movements), need (and this is an urgent need) to keep up with the changed (and still changing) discourse of “human rights,” and in particular, with some of the changes (and ongoing challenges being raised about human rights) facilitated largely by feminists.

(Here I wonder what could possibly be a good enough incentive to convince us to listen to what can just be the ranting (and raving) of a gaggle of crazy feminists? That is apart from the food and drinks?)

I ought to begin with three anecdotes. The first is about something that happened around 3-4 years ago when I was invited to a forum at the Institute of Human Rights at UP Law, as a reactor. I have very a vague recollection of what the topic or theme was but distinctly remember that the main speaker was somebody from a local Human Rights Organization which was quite prominent in the Marcos era.

I remember the speaker began discussing what a human rights violation was and instead of talking about the principle of human dignity, he defined it simply as an act of atrocity perpetrated by the military, police or THE state. By this token, intimate partner and spousal abuse, a.k.a. gender based violence is not a human rights violation? Heck at that point it was not even a felony (a crime), but certainly, with women’s human rights and VAW already official UN language, this kind of comment alarmed me as something seriously wrong around our study and understanding of developing discourse in human rights. (In other words, naiwan sa pansitan)

Another colleague in the panel, another lawyer from an environmental organization who knew me well predicted what my reaction would be. Before the moderator even recognized my raised hand and allowed me to comment, he muttered under his breath: “easy ka lang, Karol…”

I will go back to this story later and tell you how it went from there (non violent naman, mabait naman ako) but the next story is more recent, it was last year’s well publicized gay-bashing by a columnist of the PDI, who also happened to be a former SC Justice and renowned Constitutionalist, Isagani Cruz.

Cruz wrote in his column, lamenting the rising number of openly gay people, particularly gay men whom he clearly detested. In his column, he not only used demeaning references but also boasted (and promoted) how in his day such people were beaten up (and that they deserved such treatment), thus putting them in their proper place.

According to PDI, this column generated the most number of responses they ever had in a long time (esp. on-line) but majority of the responses were negative and against Cruz. (This sort of gives you a glimpse into the demographics of heavy Internet users?)

Yet one of the more poignant responses was from another columnist who on the occasion of chiding Cruz, outed himself in the process. His reaction expressed a lot of the grief and hurt feelings of someone of the receiving end of such hatred expressed by Cruz.

In the ensuing exchange (Cruz picked this reaction to answer), Cruz used no less than the language of freedom and democracy to champion his “RIGHTS” to express his opinion. Waxing lyrical on rights, democracy and quoting Voltaire (Constitutionalist that he was), he spoke of how “free speech” has always protected unpopular views and the right to express them! (One letter in support of Cruz also accused the columnist who outed himself as a bigot for not recognizing the key features of a democracy, that is to say, the contest of ideas)

Again I will come back to this later. The third and final anecdote is something less closer to home but quite relevant. In the currently raging battles around principles of church/state separation, recently (2004) in France, this resulted in a ban on the wearing of the hijab (head scarf) for Muslim women in public. Note this ban covers no other religious article of clothing, let alone symbols worn by men to signify religious identity.

Now where do these stories figure in our discussion?

The first story has to do with how in the course of using the language of human rights, broad social movements and groups of “human rights activists” have clearly fallen into automatically citing human rights law and legal definitions (like mantras/ or perhaps, Harry Potter’s incantations or spells), without much attention to the changed parameters or even characteristic of “human rights” claims and claiming in the last 30 years! (Natulog sa panistan, naiwan na sa kangkungan)

Whenever I begin a talk on human rights, I always make sure to clarify that human rights do not come from law and certainly not all laws are human rights compliant, even as not all human rights have already been articulated in LAW. (local and international)

In so saying, I want to emphasize some of the important changes brought about by the conscious engagement of human rights discourse by feminists:

(1) In debunking the ideology of separate spheres (public/private divide) as something fixed, and as a primary method of women’s exclusion/subordination, traditional human rights characterization of rights as a hierarchy (civil and political primary/over economic, social and cultural which are secondary) was challenged and is no longer the basis of contemporary human rights theory as reflected in the various consensus documents of the UN since CEDAW;
(2) Feminist critiques of rights has also pushed the notion of STATE responsibility much farther than what we began with as the mandate to provide protection/redress/options usually after the fact of violations of rights BUT has in fact for a long time already involved the POSITIVE duties of the STATE to provide enabling conditions for rights exercise…
(3) Pointed feminist critiques of not just human rights BUT likewise of the mechanism of law (and even its methods) of its purported neutrality, (as far as sex and gender are concerned) also facilitated the interrogation of the principle of EQUALITY (a key feature of IHR documents across treaties and rights claiming by sectors). Here feminists use the measure of SUBSTANTIVE equality (results and opportunities) instead of FORMAL or legal equality, that is as found in legal provisions.

Indeed, again if we relate this to my first anecdote regarding the concept of “Human Rights Violations,” we clearly see that activists “frozen” in time (and the legal discipline), seem to have been left out in the developing discourse/engagement of contemporary “rights” theory and practice.

To keep on harping about the STATE (a.k.a the police/military) as the sole bearer of the obligation to respect rights, it is not just VAW which has been overlooked but clearly, commercial individual and corporate interests guilty of unfair labor practices, literally letting many a multi-national company and in general the oh so mythical market forces off the hook!

What is more, by only narrowly acknowledging civil and political rights violations as those which can be acted on (traditional rights hierarchy--- literally why the US ratified ICCPR not ICESCR), classes ESCR as merely as inapplicable for implementation and that in the end, CPRs are the means to ESCR?!

Now if we consider the second anecdote of the gay-bashing Constitutionalist, we ought to note that the hortatory claims of RIGHTS and “democratic ideals,” and no less than the values of freedom have herein been used in the name of perpetrating what has come to be recognized in free expression cases as hate speech.

Note that the case of the gay-bashing ex-SC justice is not an isolated one. If you take a historical look at the groups who have often utilized exhortations of “violations of religious expression” claims, there have always been a number of fundamentalists who have been most vocal. (READ: the NOISIEST)

Recently, for instance, a bill on “conscientious objection” was filed in Congress, proclaiming as its basis, the principle of free religious expression, but in fact giving health professionals, hospitals, clinics and even health insurance companies, the basis to impose their beliefs on patients by not just denying to perform specific medical procedures they object to on the basis of religious belief, but to also refuse to refer them to alternative services or even discuss the whole range of available medical options with patients. The backdrop of this is of course the creeping influence of the Catholic Church hierarchy on policies related to sexual and reproductive health.

Appropriating the language of RIGHTS and freedom (here the paramount right to religious freedom), fundamentalists and conservative religious groups not at all interested in the values of tolerance, pluralism and the co-existence of faiths and secular traditions, are the ones who have literally framed acts that in reality constitute violations of the rights of patients (not to mention clear cut violations of the ethical norms of the health profession), as “rights exercise.”

Again, the there are lessons to be learned from feminist critiques of the liberal philosophical foundations of classical rights theory which have pointed out the pitfalls of rights discourse in framing claims as “contests” and “competitions,“ without necessarily employing an analysis of power relations (whether class, race, gender and ethinicity based as well as across geopolitical boundaries).

As if the contest was between equals, or in this case, even at some point misconstrued as Cruz or the Catholic hospitals and health professionals as the marginalized, the social reality of power, unevenly distributed and exercised along race/class/ethnicity and gender lines is not highlighted!

In the course of the exchanges that ensued after Cruz’ gay-bashing, there was at least one LGBT rights advocate (and here I always like to brag, a former student, although I have no claims to having anything to do with her brilliance) who did the unexpected by not “fighting” Cruz but by telling him the importance of changing his mind about respecting homosexuals, since he felt so strongly about rights. In her letter, she instead emphasized the status of the LGBT as society’s marginalized (their basic rights against discrimination being asked for in a bill even gaining the status of controversy in Congress) and how Cruz, with his education, stature and influence (he gets paid for his expressing his views, he was a Justice of the SC), ought to be someone who in this case, should take the side of the unjustly treated (and legally marginalized)!

This particular situation also shows us again how rights claiming has gone beyond the usual STATE/CITIZEN equation. While certainly the relationship between the STATE and CITIZENS will still figure in human rights discourse, for a long time now, the basis of “rights claims” has hardly ever rested upon the technical and legal aspect of citizenship anymore!

Human Rights are claimable by non-citizens vis a vis a host state (Protocol on Trafficking and the Convention on Migrant Workers) because people are “rights bearers” first and foremost! This is a significant development in “human rights discourse” because what is claimable and what is STATE duty and mandate is not mere protection or sanction (after violation). As earlier mentioned, it is and has been for a long time, the promotion of enabling conditions for rights exercise.

Yet how is this possible in our current context? Broad movements for social transformation including the women’s movements have actually been fashioning the most quintessential of rights claims founded on invoking the responsibilities of what seem to be a WELFARE STATE (more or less).

I’m not saying this is wrong at all but I have been wondering whether it could actually be done better by having a clearer idea about what the STATE is in the here and now, and paying more attention of where we have deployed our energies in engaging the STATE in its various levels.

NGOs and cause oriented groups for instance (the women’s groups deserve special mention here) have gained such expertise on legal advocacy (in particular, legislative advocacy) in the last 15-20 years that the enactment of laws which started out as technical drafts by the NGOs themselves have been enacted as law.

A host of these laws have been various laws legally recognizing various acts of abuse and gender based violations as crimes. From Sexual Harassment, Rape, Trafficking to VAWC, it has been indeed a major step towards the legitimization of women’s rights claims!

Yet, the pattern (both in terms of government support for the measures and in budgeting and prioritization), ought to be paid attention to:

PENAL SANCTIONS and POLICE LED MEASURES YES-
WELFARE/SERVICES and ENABLING CONDITIONS NO-

On one hand, the STATE (not surprisingly) responds readily to the adoption of MORE penal law (reinforcing its POLICE power) than welfare led legislation such as the RH bill!

Indeed, feminists (particularly, feminist lawyers) have warned other feminists about the FRAMING OF women’s claims against violence have been ending up within the ready-made recognizable frames of the VICTIM SUBJECT in law.

In the Philippines for instance, the fact that we harp on how the classification of rape from a crime against chastity was changed to a crime against persons in 1997 has hardly (and unlikely) affected the “LEGITIMACY” of women’s claims in rape. The Subic case, because of its prominence in the public memory and imagination, is the best example.

Nicole was still attacked FOR NOT FITTING THE FRAME OF THE LEGITIMATE VICTIM-SUBJECT who is still at the back of most people’s minds (and in SC rulings), the stereotypical young, and innocent barrio lass; certainly not the fun loving, disco partying woman. Those who claimed to sympathize with her (even after the conviction of Smith) blamed her.

This aspect of RIGHTS claiming is of particular import to pay attention to because even as feminist engagements of LAW (in this case criminal law) deserves full acknowledgement as necessary and vital bases for expounding on women’s claims, we have hardly began to scratch the surface as far as challenging the construction of legal DISCOURSE (and this includes human rights law) in the recognition of the legitimate VICTIM subject or VICTIM claimant!

Clearly, in the case of women, SEXISM pervades the domain of HR claiming and the STATE (as well as the social movements and women’s movements themselves) have a tendency to prefer and invoke STATE POWER OVER instead of POSITIVE STATE duties to enable.

Another classic example of this is the often knee jerk reaction at the LGU levels to adopt and impose curfews on women/children when a spate of sexual violence has taken place. Instead of making the night safe for civilians, in this case, the likely targets vulnerable to such attacks, THE STATE (AS MANY OF US IN THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND IN NGO ADVOCACY WORK) WOULD RATHER HAVE WOMEN AND CHILDREN GIVE UP SOME IF NOT A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF THEIR RIGHTS in exchange for purported security and protection from the State.

In considering the problem of human trafficking for instance, feminists have noted how the US has exploited the problem to serve as the rationale for its agenda of promoting POLICE MONITORING strategies HEAVY on surveillance (with a preference for checkpoints and stringent port control measures).

Again, the same argument of giving up some rights in exchange for protection and assurances of safety is the same META NARRATIVE of adopting PATRIOT ACT template laws in the context of “the war on terror.”

Unlike the past TOTALITARIAN state easily so recognized by its methods and forms of control, today’s state has no clear (nor credible) presence in terms of already dwindling (fast receding) welfare and basic services. No wonder indeed that it is most single-minded in asserting its continuing presence and mandate almost exclusively in military/police terms.

Finally this brings me to the last anecdote. The example of the ban on the hijab in the ever contested notions over state/church separation.

As I mentioned earlier, this interpretation of the principle of state/church separation has, for its primary site, women’s BODIES. Indeed, feminist Allison Jagger notes how women’s bodies are often the emblems upon which cultural identity is asserted. The Muslim women’s head scarf is banned but no other religious article of clothing or accessory has merited such a STATE exercise of regulation/control. After all, in our own laws such as the ban on ABORTION, the legal definition of prostitutes as women, as well as the differential treatment of marital infidelity in the RPC, STATE and LEGAL REGIMES still have very demonstrably SEXIST biases.

Yet clearly, the hijab is not only a sure sign of SEXIM but increasingly one of RACISM and RESSURECTS no less than the POST-COLONIAL SUBJECT!

Here as I run the risk of being misconstrued as implicating myself as coming from a classical NATIONALIST position (after all this is what we have usually pitted as the opposition to COLONIALITY/COLONIALISM), let me make myself clear: I am addressing this critique to ALL of us who dare use Human Rights CLAIMS without any thought or reflection about its baggage of SECULARISM and COLONIALISM.

Again feminists have led in putting forth the critiques of HUMAN RIGHTS articulation of standards as laden with colonial assumptions of “backward cultures,” bundled up with cultures steeped in “religious conservatism,” and asked HOW AS HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATING ACTIVISTS WE HAVE ALSO reinforced a view and notion of CULTURE as static, and in positing “HR” as the alternative to what we have simplistically dismissed as consequences of backward CULTURAL PRACTICES?

Indeed in so doing, how have we have literally framed/touted the HR solution as the alternative, salvation, the promise of MODERNITY (from the WEST)?

Yet surely, SECULAR RIGHTS have conveniently served our ends well. I have to acknowledge that indeed secular HR standards have proven strategic in terms of providing a framework for engaging states for instance to overcome “set cultural practices” through law and policy change (as in the use of the CEDAW) by women’s movements.

Again if we look to the feminist movements for strategic engagements of “rights discourse,” current efforts around articulation and legitimization of “sexual rights” is also in essence a contestation of the limits of classically couched “secular rights claims.”

Think about it. Instead of finding expressions of “religious freedom” through the set narratives and frames of “a wall” of separation between CHURCH and STATE as in banning religious symbols (esp. or only if on women’s bodies?), doesn’t a more genuine interrogation of religious freedom involve delving into the very issues which lie at the core of the “STATE and religious establishment” such as policies against DIVORCE, SAFE, ABORTION, GAY UNIONS, LGBT RIGHTS and BANNING GAY PEOPLE IN THE MILITARY... Surely these issues categorized usually outside the realm of “ethical and moral” discourse when you use secular rights as your basis, are deeply rooted in, major issues of religious differences/ freedom?

How then do we promote the exercise of rights and freedoms in line with the pluralistic values behind the principles of “religious freedom.” (which by the way includes, non-religion) ?

Indeed, at various levels, such FRAMING of issues tends to LIMIT more than prove HR discourse useful.

For one, cases such as the RIGHTS claiming gay bashing ex-justice, the so-called FREEDOM (loving), religiously imposing MEDICAL Professional, and here and now, the EVER PURPORTEDLY PROTECTIONIST STATE invoking no less than OUR PEOPLES’ SAFETY, and OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, and PRESERVING “DEMOCRACY” through the TERROR LAW, continuously present direct challenges to both the substance and forms of our human rights claims --- as well as directly threatens the transformative potential of emergent human rights discourse.

I actually stopped before my last 2 paragraphs, for considerations of brevity (I think I was taking too long already). On the other hand, the first question in the open forum gave me a chance to clarify that indeed, I'm not advocating throwing out the baby with the bath water. That much clear, I do acknowledge the transformative potentials of human rights, particularly at this point where we have already expanded the discourse through our collective engagements of it.

Gasping for Air

Folks at Veritas, the Catholic radio station renowned for it's leading in role in the 1986 People Power uprising gave me a treat yesterday by asking me talk about how I felt about when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was booed and heckled by women government employees at the March 8, International Women's Day celebration by government.Read about it here

I certainly took notice of it and I admit, it made my day. But when folks at Veritas aksed me to actually describe the feeling all I could actually think of was relief (albeit hardly sufficient) like gasping for breath after being suffocated. It was like a breath of fresh air but at the same time, I knew it was a mere whimper in the face of hardship.

I also mentioned that I admired those women and only hope the President won't get back at them as she has been known to get really angry in the past for similar reactions from the defiant, or even irritated concert goers.

At times like this, I do appreciate the patches of democratic space well used to encourage the expression of otherwise marginalized views. For indeed, the semblance of "democratic space" can often delude. Not all "democratic spaces" have spaces enough for dissent. Despite our apparently "thriving" media (now interactive through GSM and blogs among others),the proliferation of game shows, reality TV and live entertainment shows where you can "VOTE" for your favorites, all of these hardly qualifies as empowering "space," let alone simulate meaningful "interaction."

While the technology can facilitate all forms of meaningful connections, interactions and certainly prove to be liberating in many ways, it isn't always used that way. Certainly not by many in the Media profession.

No, live coverage of politicians bickering and grand standing doesn't cut it. Neither does being deluged by brain cell deflating political ads. (Don't these bozos listen to AC Nielsen? Only about 2 politicos who invested heavily on TV ads even made it to the Senate!)

In ending I would like to dedicate this to GMA and all the "pikon" Politicos (including pikon husband of a pikon politiko) who get all riled up when you criticize (say for cheating during elections or having illegal wealth). This comes from Alexander Pope (British and Catholic Poet, 1688-1744)

"Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment and misguide the mind,
what weak head with strongest bias rules, is pride
the never ending vice of fools.

Whatsoever Nature has in worth denied
She gives in large recruits of needful pride,

For as in bodies,thus in souls
We find what wants in blood and spirits swelled with wind

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defense
and fills up all the mighty void of sense."

(From An Essay on Criticism, 1711)

Read more:

Manila Times Report on Murdered Journalists

Learning, Measurement and the Cost of A Good Education: A Mother's Lament

When some of my feminist friends found out I was reading the Harry Potter Books (I just started Book VI, "The Half Blood Prince" now) and calling it my "Harry Potter Review," of course in anticipation of both the next movie (based on Book V) and the seventh Book (supposedly the last in the series), they asked me whether I was reading it for the sake of catching up with my daughter's interests. My daughter is very interested in the Harry Potter novels of course but she's only six. And while she is patiently reading Book I, one paragraph or two, every night (even as I keep telling her to settle for books with bigger print), I end up saying that I'm reading Harry Potter for myself.

Now I know what got my friend Abbie (a mother of three) hooked when she read them way before I did and kept updated, eagerly awaiting each installment. I got started this late January when my mother returned from the US with a gift from my sister, for my daughter: Volumes 1-6.

Of course it doesn't hurt that the way I have been going through the books has been getting my daughter more and more interested in reading them.

At some fancy progressive elementary school she recently took entrance exams for, my little girl (according to the test) showed a very high aptitude for language and reading/writing ability. It showed she was among the top of the batch which completed the exams. But the results for her "Math" exams were (again as reflected by the test scores), nothing short of dismal.

I know I am well informed enough to realize that children ought not to be "judged" according to their purported test scores, or even at this very early age, by their "grades." Heck, I teach law and I know my best students aren't always the ones with the perfect grades.

The strange part of it was, one of the sections in her Math exam had a "0" score, which probably meant she missed answering out an entire portion!

It took an old friend of mine (who has undergraduate and graduate degrees in Education at UP) to set me straight: EXAMS are also ALL ABOUT SKILLS in TAKING EXAMS.

I can't imagine how it has come to this. Nowadays, little pre-schoolers entering Grade I in the big schools are being asked to answer exams with the format of NCEE and other intermediate type of exams with questions on a separate booklet, and the computer/machine tallied answers on a separate sheet where answers are filled in by "shading!"

I remember my own Grade I entrance exam as something more similar to the pre-school/kindergarten workbook type of exams! Would I have passed my own entrance exam if I took one like that at Grade I?

Of course one of possible reasons for this "heavy drama," is because it involves my kid. I have to lay that much out. Yes, it matters because its my daughter. But it is also quite a wake up call.

Some friends (and mothers and fathers I met during the exam period) have been articulating the same concerns. It is so hard to choose a good school which can offer a good education (and an affordable price tag) nowadays.

In the Philippines of course, our most qualified teachers (especially the primary school and elementary school teachers) have been for many years the most recruited to work outside the country. And not all of them end up teaching. A lot have accepted work as domestic helpers, with the worst job conditions, and often ten to sixteen times their pay as educators.

Nowadays, the good and quality education schools also charge an arm and a leg (from each parent) and putting your child through anything less on the other hand, feels so much of an unfair risk to take.

Having worked with NGO and the academe all my life, I suddenly find myself reviewing my own (now I think selfish) job options. Having refused (avoided) to do "work" that I don't care much for (READ:not related to my causes) in exchange for "pay," now seems to me, nothing more than a luxury I can no longer afford.

But this is so not the drama (as one of my daughter's favorite cartoon characters would say). Perhaps I am taking it a bit all too seriously.

How can any entrance exam ever fairly measure how my little daughter, even before she turned six, is able to express her values on religious tolerance (There is a really good children's Book to get children started talking about this See here; or how she knows the first Emperor of China was Qin Xi Huang Di); how deeply she is interested in the pyramids of Egypt and wants to find out more about Cleopatra, and tells anybody interested enough about the story of ISIS and Osiris, how intently (without at all getting turned off by the blood and amniotic fluid) she watched over our labrador, Mira giving birth to her litter of puppies and lovingly cared for Mira and her newborn pups at four in the morning?!

But here it is. Here IS the drama. No less than a mother's lament.

Last Monday, she took another exam, this time in a Catholic school for girls. My little girl observed the uniforms (the usual long skirts below the knees). She stated simply: "If I get to study here, I will run for President of my Class."

I was impressed but also amused and smiled. I asked her why she would be interested. Her answer made my day. My daughter says that her only platform would be "shorter/sexier skirts."