Your Filipina Pen Pal!

Mr. Smith went to Subic

2006-12-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

Howie Severino writes about some reactions and discussions regarding the Marine rape case.

Marine Convicted of Rape in Philippines

2006-12-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

From SFGate:

Marine Convicted of Rape in Philippines
By PAUL ALEXANDER, Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 4, 2006 11 38 AM

Printable Version
Email This Article
(12-04) 11:38 PST MANILA, Philippines (AP) --

A young U.S. Marine faces 40 years in jail after being convicted Monday of rape in a landmark case that has become a symbol for women's rights and national sovereignty in the Philippines.

Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Benjamin Pozon rejected Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith's claim that the woman was a willing partner, saying she was too drunk to have consented to having sex.

Three other Marines were acquitted of complicity for allegedly cheering on Smith in the back of a moving van.

As the verdict was delivered, cheers and applause broke out in the courtroom, and the 23-year-old woman began weeping as supporters embraced her. "I'm sad that three were acquitted, but I'm also happy because one was convicted," the young woman, who is Filipino, told ABS-CBN television in a telephone interview.

But as the convicted Marine was exiting the courtroom, a scuffle broke out between U.S. Embassy guards and Philippines police as both tried to take Smith away, underscoring the territorial dimension in the case which has consistently made front pages in the past year with lurid details. Filipino guards eventually secured the Marine's custody.

The U.S. Embassy had retained custody of Smith during the prosecution, in line with a treaty governing foreign troops in the former American colony after the closing of U.S. bases in the early 1990s. Although the joint military pact paved the way for U.S. counterterrorism training and was credited with helping local forces make gains against Muslim extremists, some Filipino groups have protested the 1998 pact, claiming it gives U.S. servicemen favorable treatment.

The 23-year-old woman accused Smith, who had just participated in joint military exercises, of forcing himself on her in the back of a moving van after a night of drinking at the former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay. She claimed three Marines cheered him on, before he dumped her on the street with her pants around her ankles.

Smith, 21, of St. Louis, countered that the young woman was a willing participant.

He was ordered to pay her $2,000 in compensatory and moral damages. The other three Marines were charged in the case, but were acquitted and immediately headed back to their unit in Okinawa, Japan, where they could still face military discipline.

The scuffle came as Smith was taken away in handcuffs to be fingerprinted and photographed and to undergo a medical exam. A Philippines police official said it appeared there had been a misunderstanding over whether Smith would remain in U.S. custody during a subsequent appeal. The judge ruled that he would be temporarily held in a Philippines jail in Makati, Manila's financial district.

Zozimo Paredes, head of the Philippines' Visiting Forces Agreement Commission, said the agreement is clear that Smith will have to stay in the Philippines until his appeals are exhausted. He may also have to serve his sentence in the country.

About 100 protesters gathered outside the courthouse, chanting and singing "Bayan Ko," or "My Country," a popular nationalist song. They waved a banner that demanded justice for the woman and the scrapping of the Visiting Forces Agreement.

U.S. men and foreign women face roadblock in walk down the aisle

2006-10-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

An article on the new Imbra law from the International Herald Tribune/New York Times:

U.S. men and foreign women face roadblock in walk down the aisle

By Eduardo Porter The New York Times

Published: October 17, 2006

PALM COAST, Florida Adam Weaver thought everything was set to bring his Colombian fiancée, Yesenia Meza, to the United States.

But Weaver did not count on being hindered by a congressional effort intended to protect women from potential abuse by American men who seek brides from other countries on the Internet. In June, the federal immigration service froze 10,000 visa applications for foreign fiancées because they did not conform with a law that had gone into effect in March.

Weaver and Meza, who were expecting to be together here by now, were caught in the net.

"Smuggling a ton of cocaine into this country," Weaver fumed, "is probably easier than bringing your fiancée."

The law, known as the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, or Imbra, is intended to give foreign women and the U.S. government more information about the men who seek so-called mail-order brides.

"This is an unequal partnership where you have somebody dependent on somebody else in a profound way," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who was a leading sponsor of the law. "It puts women at a significant disadvantage, in a potentially violent situation."

Reports of violence in international marriages, some of them Internet matches, have increased in recent years. In 1998, fewer than 2,500 foreign women applied to become permanent residents under the Violence Against Women Act, which allows abused wives to apply for residence without the support of their husbands. In the fiscal year that ended in September, 9,500 applied.

The government does not keep tabs on international matchmaking, so there are no reliable data on the prevalence of domestic abuse involving mail-order brides. One such case, however, involved Katerina Brunot, a Russian who was 22 when Frank Sheridan, then a 38- year-old plumber, spotted her on a European Connections Web site seven years ago.

After Brunot married Sheridan, it went downhill fast. Her husband kept her a virtual prisoner, beat her, had her put in jail and harassed her. He died in a shootout with a police officer who was trying to arrest him for stalking.

"I think the percentage of men looking for someone from another country who are violent is very high," said Brunot. "Probably most of them want to control because when you are a foreigner you sort of belong to that person."

The new law has angered many men, who rightly argue that there is no definitive evidence that violence is more likely to take place in an international marriage arranged over the Internet than in a domestic one. Unwilling or unable to find a spouse in the United States, some worry that the law could make it more difficult to find a wife abroad.

Under Imbra, dating agencies that specialize in matching American men with women overseas must first obtain information about a man's criminal record and marital history, relay it to the woman and then get her consent before disclosing her contact information. Men must also provide this information to the government when applying for a fiancée visa. Generally, applicants have a lifetime visa limit of two foreign fiancées.

Web sites offer men in affluent countries contacts with women from just about everywhere in the developing world; Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam are among the most popular countries.

The businesses vary in their approaches. Russianladies.com, owned by European Connections, based in Georgia, charges men for membership and requires a fee for sending and receiving e-mail messages.

Two others, A Foreign Affair and Filipina Ladies, organize trips to places like Bangkok, where a dozen men may meet several hundred women.

At the age of 40, Weaver, a construction manager, figured that the only American women who would be interested in him would be divorced, with a former husband and children in the background. Moreover, he said, American women are self-centered, competitive and too critical. "I would prefer a more old-fashioned girl," he said.

Last year, he found Meza, a Colombian 17 years his junior, on the I Love Latins Web site. "Her profile," he wrote in an e-mail message, "was one of the only ones that said, 'I want to know a man who knows about God.'"

Weaver bought Meza a computer, a digital camera and a high-speed connection so they could talk every day by Internet phone.

In September, he visited Meza in Colombia for the third time. "My relationship with Yesenia," he said, "is real and more valid than anything I ever had in my life."

Meza also says she is eager to start her life with Weaver. "In Colombia most men are womanizers and want to dominate women," she said in a telephone interview. "I want a loving man who will treat me like a queen."

So far, however, they have not cleared immigration. A spokesman for the immigration service said most of the backlogged visa applications frozen in June had been processed.

Supporters of the law insist they are not trying to stop marriages between American men and foreign women but say the women should be informed about what they are getting into.

Two matchmaking companies have sought to block the law in court.

Weaver, for all his exasperation over the wait, acknowledges that providing the extra information required by the law may be warranted.

So does Meza. But they do not see why they should have to suffer in the meantime.

"If men are investigated it will be good for all women," Meza said. "But when you are in love and want to go there, you get desperate." (link)

Order greeting cards by November 18

2006-10-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

This is the work of Sharon Hing, who volunteered for Helpers for Domestic Helpers and is running a small fundraiser by turning her paintings in to greeting cards. All proceeds will go to Helpers for Domestic Helpers. More information about what she's doing and the organization can be found on this PDF http://seohing.bol.ucla.edu/HDH.pdf, but I've pulled the ordering information and the greeting cards to this blog post for people who have trouble downloading the PDF.

Ordering information:

Send an email to SharonHing (at) gmail.com by November 18, 2006 to reserve your order with the following information:
Name:
Address:
Phone Numbers (mobile & land line):
How many sets you would like:

She'll be returning to the SF Bay area mid-December and will be delivering the cards and collecting the money then. If you're not in delivery distance there will be an extra fee for postage.

Each set contains one of each design for a total for 4 cards.
1 set - $6.45
2 sets - $10.95
3 sets - $16.40
For orders of 4 sets or more, please request a separate quote in your email.

100% of all sales will go directly to Helpers for Domestic Helpers.

Design #1: I Learned to Speak Up

Gouache on paper. Swept Aside series. 2006. Sharon E. O. Hing
On the back:
Many domestic helpers endure difficult working conditions in order to provide for their own families. One worker who was denied food by her employer says of her ordeal, "It's so hard for me because I have a family and three children at home whom I support by working in Hong Kong." These women, who are often victims of exploitation by employers and employment agencies, remain resilient in the face of such adversities.

Design #2: And My Worth Was Explicitly Numbered

Gouache on paper. Swept Aside series. 2006. Sharon E. O. Hing
On the back:
Domestic workers are often subjected to unreasonable demands in attempts by some employers to monitor every aspect of their lives. The absurdity of the demands and the lengths to which some employers go to repress their helpers reflects a lack of respect for these workers. The irony is these workers often play an important role in the care and upbringing of their employers' children.

Design #3: Tagged

Gouache on paper. Swept Aside series. 2006. Sharon E. O. Hing
On the back:
There are currently 220,000 domestic helpers living in Hong Kong. As a group their presence is undeniable, but they are rarely acknowledged as a crucial element of Hong Kong's economic and cultural success. Their contributions have allowed the city to prosper, yet they are rarely respected and properly acknowledged for their immense contributions to the lives of all Hong Kong residents.

Design #4: Forced Bet

Gouache on paper. Swept Aside series. 2006. Sharon E. O. Hing
On the back:
With their packed lunches in plastic bags and often a deck of cards in hand, domestic helpers line the streets of Hong Kong for a day of relaxation on Sundays, transforming any shaded area into multi-purpose meeting points. Despite their dmanding jobs, many find time to do volunteer work while others find solace in community and religious groups. As workers and community members, their presence enriches the culture and social fabric of the city.

greeting cards benefitting domestic helpers

2006-10-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

I got this from my brother's friend:

Dear Friends,

As some of you know, for the past year I have had the immense privilege of volunteering at Helpers for Domestic Helpers (HDH) in Hong Kong, a legal aid organization dedicated to providing the city's 220,000 domestic helpers with legal assistance and counseling. (http://www.stjohnscathedral.org.hk/domestic.html) This experience has been profoundly moving, and I recognized that I could begin to express my appreciation for this amazing organization with a small-scale fundraiser. I started several series of paintings about the women's often harrowing stories of injustice for my personal record keeping and as a means of processing and coming to terms with their experiences; however, I realized that in sharing these pieces I could help to educate the public about the often overlooked contributions of these workers. Four of these paintings are now featured on greeting cards, which provide a bit of information on the lives of domestic helpers in Hong Kong as well as the work of HDH.

The four designs are non-holiday specific, have blank interiors, and hopefully you will find them appropriate for any type of correspondence. Because we have full sponsorship of the production of the cards, every cent of every sale will go to continuing the important work of HDH.

The cards will be on sale at card fairs and bookstores in Hong Kong, but thanks to the magic of modern technology they can also make it off the island to you. If you are interested in purchasing a set, please email me at your earliest convenience so that I will be sure to bring then to you when I return in December.

All designs, more background information, and an order form can be found in this handy http://seohing.bol.ucla.edu/HDH.pdf.

Please also feel free to print up this information and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your support throughout this entire adventure and I look forward to seeing you all soon!

With love and respect,

Sharon
sharonhing@gmail.com

Super quick info...more can be found in the pdf:

According to the Hong Kong Immigration Department records, there are 220,000 domestic helpers living in Hong Kong. Filipinos comprise 55% of the foreign domestic helper population and the remainder is made up primarily of Indonesians, Indians, Sri Lankans and Nepalese nationals. Most of them are women and as a group their presence in Hong Kong is undeniable, but they are rarely acknowledged as a crucial element of Hong Kong's economic and cultural success as a city. Their presence has allowed the city to prosper and they have helped to raise Hong Kong's next generation of leaders in the community. As opposed to being lauded for their work, however, they are often victims of discrimination, injustice, abuse and exploitation.

International Sex Trade in California

2006-10-10T02:46:00.000-07:00

The SF Chronicle ran a four part special report on the sex-trade industry in California. This one in particular focused on the Korean community and the Asian masseuse parlors that create the front for brothels. The article tells the story of one woman who was able to get out, but who got in after becoming enslaved by her credit card debt back home. They call San Francisco, the "mecca", for sex trade, with a few pushing out into the suburbs.

The Jumping Ladies of Lebanon

2006-09-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

This is not about Filipina pen-pals per se but thought you'd find it interesting nonetheless.

Open Letter re: the "Bebot" Video(s)

2006-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

To Apl.de.Ap, Patricio Ginelsa/KidHeroes, and Xylophone Films:

We, the undersigned, would like to register our deep disappointment at the portrayal of Filipinas and other women in the new music videos for the Black Eyed Peas’ song, “Bebot.” We want to make it clear that we appreciate your efforts to bring Filipina/o Americans into the mainstream and applaud your support of the Little Manila of Stockton. However, as Filipina/o and Filipina/o American artists, academics, and community activists, we are utterly dismayed by the portrayal of hypersexualized Filipina “hoochie-mama” dancers, specifically in the Generation 2 version, the type of representation of women so unfortunately prevalent in today’s hip-hop and rap music videos. The depiction of the 1930s “dime dancers” was also cast in an unproblematized light, as these women seem to exist solely for the sexual pleasure of the manongs.

In general, we value Apl.de.Ap’s willingness to be so openly and richly Filipino, especially when there are other Filipina/o Americans in positions of visibility who do not do the same, and we appreciate the work that he has done with the folks at Xylophone Films; we like their previous video for “The Apl Song,” and we even like the fact that the Generation 1 version of “Bebot” attempts to provide a “history lesson” about some Filipino men in the 1930s. However, the Generation 2 version truly misses the mark on accurate Filipina/o representation, for the following reasons:

1) The video uses three very limited stereotypes of Filipina women: the virgin, the whore, and the shrill mother. We find a double standard in the depiction of the virgin and whore figures, both of which are highly sexualized. Amidst the crowd of midriff-baring, skinny, light-skinned, peroxided Pinays – some practically falling out of their halter tops – there is the little sister played by Jasmine Trias, from whom big brother Apl is constantly fending off Pinoy “playas.” The overprotectiveness is strange considering his idealization of the bebot or “hot chick.” The mother character was also particularly troublesome, but for very different reasons. She seems to play a dehumanized figure, the perpetual foreigner with her exaggerated accent, but on top of that, she is robbed of her femininity in her embarrassingly indelicate treatment of her son and his friends. She is not like a tough or strong mother, but almost like a coarse asexual mother, and it is telling that she is the only female character in the video with a full figure.

2) We feel that these problematic female representations might have to do with the use of the word “Bebot.” We are of course not advocating that Apl change the title of his song, yet we are confused about why a song that has to do with pride in his ethnic/national identity would be titled “Bebot,” a word that suggests male ownership of the sexualized woman – the “hot chick.” What does Filipino pride have to do with bebots? The song seems to be about immigrant experience yet the chorus says “ikaw ang aking bebot” (you are my hot chick). It is actually very disturbing that one’s ethnic/national identity is determined by one’s ownership of women. This system not only turns women into mere symbols but it also excludes women from feeling the same kind of ethnic/national identity. It does not bring down just Filipinas; it brings down all women.

3) Given the unfortunate connection made in this video between Filipino pride and the sexualized female body both lyrically and visually, we can’t help but conclude that the video was created strictly for a heterosexual man’s pleasure. This straight, masculinist perspective is the link that we find between the Generation 1 and Generation 2 videos. The fact that the Pinoy men are surrounded by “hot chicks” both then and now makes this link plain. Yet such a portrayal not only obscures the “real” message about the Little Manila Foundation; it also reduces Pinoy men’s hopes, dreams, and motivations to a single-minded pursuit of sex.

We do understand that Filipino America faces a persistent problem of invisibility in this country. Moreover, as the song is all in Tagalog (a fact that we love, by the way), you face an uphill battle in getting the song and music video(s) into mainstream circulation. However, remedying the invisibility of Filipina/os in the United States should not come at the cost of the dignity and self-respect of at least half the population of Filipino America. Before deciding to write this letter, we felt an incredible amount of ambivalence about speaking out on this issue because, on the one hand, we recognized that this song and video are a milestone for Filipina/os in mainstream media and American pop culture, but on the other hand, we were deeply disturbed by the images of women the video propagates.

In the end we decided that we could not remain silent while seeing image after image of Pinays portrayed as hypersexual beings or as shrill, dehumanized, asexual mother-figures who embarrass their children with their overblown accents and coarseness. The Filipino American community is made up of women with Filipino pride as well, yet there is little room in these videos for us to share this voice and this commitment; instead, the message we get is that we are expected to stand aside and allow ourselves to be exploited for our sexuality while the men go about making their nationalist statements.

While this may sound quite harsh, we believe it is necessary to point out that such depictions make it seem as if you are selling out Filipina women for the sake of gaining mainstream popularity within the United States. Given the already horrific representations of Filipinas all over the world as willing prostitutes, exotic dancers, or domestic servants who are available for sex with their employers, the representation of Pinays in these particular videos can only feed into such stereotypes. We also find it puzzling, given your apparent commitment to preserving the history and dignity of Filipina/os in the United States, because we assume that you also consider such stereotypes offensive to Filipino men as well as women.

Again, we want to reiterate our appreciation for the positive aspects of these videos – the history lesson of the 1936 version, the commitment to community, and the effort to foster a larger awareness of Filipino America in the mainstream – but we ask for your honest attempt to offer more full-spectrum representations of both Filipino men and Filipina women, now and in the future. We would not be writing this letter to you if we did not believe you could make it happen.

Respectfully,

Kiko Benitez
Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature
Univ. of Washington

Rick Bonus
Associate Professor, American Ethnic Studies
Univ. of Washington

Lucy Burns
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies / World Arts and Cultures, UCLA

Fritzie De Mata
Independent scholar

Diana Halog
Undergraduate
UC Berkeley

Luisa A. Igloria
Associate Professor
Creative Writing / English, Old Dominion University

Veronica Montes
Writer

Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Assistant Professor, English
State University of New York--Fredonia

Gladys Nubla
Doctoral student
English, UC Berkeley

Barbara Jane Reyes
Poet and author

Joanne L. Rondilla
Doctoral candidate
Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Rolando B. Tolentino
Visiting Fellow, National University of Singapore
Associate Professor, University of the Philippines Film Institute

Benito Vergara
Asian American Studies / Anthropology, San Francisco State University

Filipina Website

2006-07-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting website run by Filipina wives of non-Filipinos. Here's their intro statement:

Filipina Website

Filipina is an online nonprofit organization for Filipinas who are spouse, fiancee or engaged to Non-Filipinos. Prospective members were contacted through emails and chat page. And now, members from all over the world are gearing up for other venues of getting-to-know each others such as newsletter, newsgroup, chat channel, e-mail list, net meeting and etc...

Filipina structure is beginning to take shape. We invite Filipinas who are married or engaged to non - Filipino to join this friendly and exciting new horizon. If you are new to internet or have never joined a Filipina club in the past, then this organization,(group, list) is also designed for you.

We started this Filipina for the purpose of meeting other Filipinas who are in the same situation as we are.. We are all from the Philippines, and most of us are already reunited with our love ones. Members, are free to exchange each others experiences, joy & happiness, problems and cultural adjustments and the intercultural relationship itself...

But what confuses me is this disclaimer:

Please NOTE:

FILIPINA is not affiliated or associated with any Fil-Ams, Filipinas, Western-Filipina organizations, mailing lists, and groups that deals with Filipina, Filipino women, Pinay, Filipino Wives, mail order brides, money making websites and etc.

Are they critically dissociating themselves from such groups/orgs, or is this a kind of legal statement?

The network seems to be wholly social and not political, although the network also provides a space for the women to give advice about getting visas and whatnot. I also find the photos interesting. What do you all think about this site?

Trafficked women's symptoms akin to torture victims'

2006-06-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Another news article that seems relevant here: a study found that forced sexual and domestic labor induces post-traumatic stress disorder among women (women seem to be the only ones studied). Note that domestic labor is included with sexual labor. This is chilling. Here's the whole article:

Trafficked women's symptoms akin to torture victims'

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Women and girls trafficked for forced sexual or domestic work suffer post-traumatic stress on a par with torture victims, researchers said on Wednesday.

In one of the first studies of health problems of women who have been trafficked, they found 95 percent had been physically or sexually abused and nearly 40 percent had suicidal thoughts.

"This research shows that women who have been trafficked into sex work emerge with very severe pain and injuries and they show psychological health problems that appear to be similar to those documented among victims of torture," said Dr Cathy Zimmerman, the author of the report published by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The International Labor Organization estimates that at least 2.5 million people around the world are in forced labour at any given time.

Zimmerman, a researcher in public health policy, said because of its underground nature it was difficult to get precise numbers.

"This is an international trade that is happening in virtually every corner of the world," she said in an interview.

"The majority believe they are getting a job doing something like waitressing, being a nanny or working in a bar. Most of them are tricked into the situation."

Zimmerman and her team studied 207 women from 14 countries who had been released after being trafficked.

The women, aged 15-45 years old, were being treated in seven countries by aid agencies. Most were between 21-25 years old and 12 percent were under 18.

The vast majority of the women with children were single mothers. Sixty percent experienced some form of violence before being trafficked, and 56 percent reported symptoms suggestive of post traumatic stress disorder. Headaches, fatigue, dizzy spells, back pain, memory problems, anxiety and depression were common.

"If you can image a situation of confinement and abuse and systematic rape over a periods of months or a year it is not surprising that people are coming out with symptoms that might be at similar levels to those persons who are tortured," said Zimmerman.

She added that women needed professional health and support services immediately after they were freed and in the long term. (link)

Stopping Violence Against Women

2006-06-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

This interview made me think of mail-order brides and some of the discussions we've had here: "Stopping Violence Against Women: Eve Ensler and Kimberle Crenshaw on V-Day, Women in Prisons and Breaking the Silence," transcript at DemocracyNow.org, June 21, 2006. I have a lot of respect for Kimberle Crenshaw as well as Eve Ensler.

Excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of women in Juarez, in Mexico, immigrants here in this country, Kimberle Crenshaw, can you talk about immigrants, women and violence?

KIMBERLE CRENSHAW: In fact, one of the -- what we're doing tonight is we're providing a whole range of narratives about women to try to put some of these statistics in a context. You know, all the frame, people tell us -- you can tell people all the statistics you want, but you have to put it in a story.

One of the stories is about immigrant women, and it focuses on the fact that immigrant women are among the most vulnerable to violence, in large part because women who come here, particularly those who come here to marry American citizens, have to stay properly married to them for two years before they can petition for permanent residency status. Many of these women are subject to violence. The last thing these women want to do is call the authorities in, because they're very concerned that they'll lose any opportunity whatsoever to make the United States their permanent home. So we found many women were severely abused, and some were even killed, because of the double effect of the sort of anti-immigration laws and policies that really put people in a position of vulnerability and because of the violence that they experience at home.

So I call this the intersection of oppression. You've got one thing, you've got another thing. And when movements aren't aware of how these things come together, when the immigration movement doesn't really think about, “Well, some of these people are women, and some of these people are subject to violence,” and the anti-violence movement doesn't think, “Well, some of the women who are victimized by violence are also immigrants,” the particular way that they end up being caught between these two different forms of discrimination isn't often recognized. So they're more or less falling between the cracks.

One of the best things coming out of this is we can tell stories like this to make people understand that there are some women who are falling between the cracks, so that our interventions, our policies, the things we advocate for include all the women who are subject to these issues, not just the few that we can immediately think about.

Read the whole interview.

Podcast on global sex trade from Gabriela

2006-05-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

From the GABRIELA website: Kana-Pinay Radio

Mimi Damayo for Governor?

2006-05-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

How would you vote?

What they are saying:

Asian Sex Gazette

Wonkette

Mimi's Diary

Interview with Mimi

Mimi 4 Governor

Mail Order Housewives Movie on TV

2006-05-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I just received the following e-mail from Diana. Please click on the photos to for more information. Have any of you seen/heard of this show? Any suggestions on how to get this off the air?! Also, let's start up some conversation again. Hope to hear from you all soon:)

-joanne

Dear all,

I saw something very disturbing on tv just about 30 minutes ago. My friend and I were watching the TV guide channel trying to decide what to watch. And then something disturbing caught my eye- "Mail Order Housewives: Philippines". I do not know what the movie was about but I can very well guess. If you would like you could either search for it or you can look at the screenshots I have attached. I do not know what exactly can be done- I'm thinking at least a letter campaign or something to OnDemand because I do not think that this should be allowed. I am so angry and yet I feel so upset because these kinds of things hit you like a surprise on the head. At least I am letting you all know and maybe we can decide what to do or you could let me know what would be a good course of action. I cannot take this sitting down.

Sincerely,
Diana Halog

Export Quality: Another Review

2006-05-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

On April 21st, I saw the play Export Quality starring our very own Diana Grace "Goddess of Halology" Quebada Halog, Victoria Meija, Eve Skylar, and Annie Wang. The script was written by the Kataga Women's Collective (Carolyn Cervantes Antonio, Erica Liza Miguel, Dorotea Agustin Mendoza, and Ona Kalima Mirkinson). The play was directed by Katrina Socco.

Loosely based on real life cases, the program gave this information:

On March 23, 1995, Susanna Remerata Blackwell was gunned down by her husband Timothy Blackwell in a Seattle courtroom as she was trying to divorce him. She was 7 months pregnant.

*January 16, 1994, Dr. Jonathon Nyce was convicted of manslaughter. He confessed to smashing Michelle's head on the concrete floor of their garage but contended the killing was an accident.

In Hawaii, the mutilated body of a young Filipina woman, Helen Mendoza Krug, was found in a garage dumpster behind her high-rise apartment building. The murder was committed in front of her 2-year-old son by her husband, Robert Krug.

Jack Reeves, a retired U.S. Army officer, was convicted of killing his fourth wife, Emelita Reeves, a 26 year-old from the Philippines whom he met through an IMB called "Cherry Blossoms." Emelita had confided to family and friends that Reeves physically and sexually abused her, and told friends she planned to leave him the day before she disappeared. Two of Reeves' previous wives also died under suspicious circumstances (drowning and suicide).

(*I wrote a small entry about this case because I saw it on Dateline NBC. You can find that entry here.)

After a conversation with Diana, she explained that the play is brand new and they didn't have a lot of time to put it together (about two weeks). As someone who has worked on similar productions, I totally feel these limitations. Content-wise, I thought the play was strong. Overall, I thought the play was good and with continued work and circulation, it definitely has the potential to spread awareness about this issue. It can also attract a wide range of audiences. Given the time constraints, I also think the performers did well. (Note: Fritzie and I got to the play late and missed Victoria Meija's performance.)

On to some suggestions... In terms of the writing, I felt the language needed some work. In play writing, I feel that there are two components - writing the essence of the story and writing in the tongue. They didn't write in the appropriate tongue. My sense is that the writers were mostly US-based writers (and this was clearly reflected in the language). There's a way in which someone from the Philippines speaks - there are language expressions and speech patterns to pay attention to. Unfortunately, the writing didn't reflect this. Usually, this is where an outside dramaturge factors in. A dramaturge can easily pick up on this and help the writers adjust accordingly. I highly recommend a dramaturge.

Given the time constraints, I do understand that the cast didn't/couldn't do all the things they wanted to do. Completely understandable. However, I do want to make a few comments about the actual performance. I definitely think there needed to be stronger direction, coupled with a better sense of what the play is trying to convey. Each piece has a particular pattern: it shows the women's stories before the marriage, how the marriage changes them, the women talking about their deaths, and then reflections on the death. There needed to be better transitions between each phase. For example, when one is explaining her death, I think this needed to be subtle (as opposed to the violent, angry announcement of death) because when one announces when/how she is going to die, it's a sad, helpless moment. The patterns of emotions needed to be more distinct. For me, this is part direction and part acting.

Not all actresses were Filipina, which is fine. However, with respect to accents, either use one or don't. My feeling is don't try to fake one because audiences can sense when one is faking an accent. Also, don't float in to and out of an accent (this is usually the result of trying to fake an accent). For me, it shows the performer isn't committed to the language, and can be interpreted as a performer's laziness. There's nothing wrong or inauthentic about not using an accent, as long as your actions/performance embody the character.

The final monologue was supposed to be a sixty year-old survivor having a conversation with her 17 year-old daughter on an airplane (so think of an airplane and the confined space of an airplane). On the writing end, the age difference is off. I think the daughter needs to be older - perhaps old enough to have a daughter of her own. That way, the conversation makes sense. While watching, I didn't get a sense of the older woman's age. The story was definitely compelling and the actress knew how to convey the story. However, she didn't act the age, which was unfortunate. Another distraction in the last monologue was there was an extra body on the stage who was supposed to be a 17 year-old daughter (Diana explained that this was in the stage directions and the director wanted to honor that. Totally understandable.). This daughter didn't have any lines, and I felt her body language (her mannerisms) reflected a small child as opposed to a 17 year-old woman (I refuse to believe that 17 year-olds are as immature as most believe). If I were to direct this scene, I would have staged it differently where the audience is the daughter, and like the other monologues, it's just the woman on stage. Again, I would have made the actress act the age (and even physically aged her; baby powder in one's hair to show grey isn't that hard).

I have other opinions, all of which I did share with Diana, since she is committed to this project at the moment. Please do not misconstrue these comments as harsh criticisms. I'm just sharing opinions (as an avid theater lover and former theater person). As I mentioned before, Export Quality has a lot of potential. But like any play-in-progress, it just needs some fine tuning. Anyway....

Below are some news links that are related to the cases that I thought you all would be interested in. Enjoy!

Proposed Law Would Regulate International Marriage Brokers

President signs bill to protect mail-order brides after Washington state cases

A deadly affair

Vows of silence

Saga of slain spouse `a case of a lifetime'

Say I Do... an overdue review

2006-04-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

Now that orals are over, I have some spare time to catch up on commentary about the documentary Say I Do, which I saw a while back. Before I begin, I would like to clarify something... as clearly stated in my own blog, I do not have the time, energy, or effort to respond to stupidity and ignorance - enough said.

For those of you who haven't seen it, Say I Do is a documentary that follows three Filipina mail-order brides and one Filipina who is in the process of getting married. If you want a better synopsis, you know where to click.

I'm not sure where this quote came from, but in my notes, I recorded this phrase: "A paid-for wife is a slave for life." In the film, I felt this phrase was the underlying message. The three couples that were followed were all from Canada, and all lived in remote, snowy parts of Canada. In their respective towns, the Filipinos were mostly mail-order brides. Naturally, when many of these brides found each other, they formed their own small networks.

The first couple is then 39 year-old Bascel and 50 year-old Linden. Of the three, they seemed to be the most happy and stable. They have two daughters and Bascel seems to be a really cute, funny spunky Pinay. Some things that struck me about her interview was when she mentioned that she was sad because for her, she dreamed that marriage was about love and partnership. However, when she got married, she knew she was marrying someone she wasn't in love with. Instead, it seemed like she saw her marriage as something she had to do - like she was just stuck with the guy. On the other hand, she said she was happy because, as she said, "it could be worse." When Bascel said this, it was in reference to her being lucky that her husband didn't abuse her. This struck me because it showed me that she as well aware that many women in her situation undergo various levels of abuse (bet it physical or emotional), and that she was thankful her husband wasn't like that.

They also featured some guy named John who ran an "island girls" website. He explained that the easiest thing to sell a man was a woman - an exotic island woman at that. He showed how they re-touch some of the photos and edit some of the profiles to cater to the demands of the make clientele. I prefer to not elaborate on this.

The second couple was Rick and Gertrude. Gertrude was clearly sad and hated her marriage. Rick is previously divorced and she described him as controlling and violent, but wouldn't elaborate further. For me, her expressions were enough. I don't think I've ever seen someone that miserable. Gertrude stated that she regrets her marriage because she feels like she is hired help and a babysitter to their son. Rick is so controlling that he doesn't give her money or allow her to buy things on her own. She ended up taking babysitting jobs in order to earn money on the side and send balikbayan boxes home. If I remember correctly, she sends a balikbayan box (and money) every month. However, she does this behind Rick's back because she says he'd be angry/violent if he ever found out. Another scene that struck me was watching her with their son Jerod, who looks just like Rick. She speaks to him in Tagalog and when Jerod throws a temper tantrum, she tells him that he's violent just like his dad. I felt horrible for her because you can tell that there's a lot of abuse in her life and she feels trapped. While watching the footage, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if Rick actually saw this documentary and found out about the balikbayan boxes and such. It was really disheartening.

The third couple was Helen and Chris. Chris has been divorced two times before, and they have one daughter together. Although I don't know how old they are, they did have the biggest age difference, as Chris looked like he could be her lolo. Like Gertrude, Helen felt like she was a laborer, a slave as opposed to a wife. Their home didn't have power or running water, so she had to do a lot of manual labor. She also said that Chris was extremely violent and very abusive. In fact, Chris was arrested for spousal abuse. Helen and Chris are now divorced and Helen was granted Canadian citizenship. They were divorced because Helen was eventually taken to a women's shelter because Chris was so abusive. She said that a lot of people tried to help her situation - from nurses in the hospital to neighbors, but she never reported his abusiveness (typical, since many MOBs feel like their citizenship is on the line). In the end, Chris was convicted and while the divorce was underway, Chris filed an order that made it impossible for Helen and their daughter to leave the country (to visit the Philippines). Chris claims that he filed it because he didn't want Helen selling their daughter over there. He claimed that was the kind of woman Helen was. I don't know what type of punishment he received. However, the film did mention that he was in the midst of finding another Filipina wife. (This makes me wonder about his two previous marriages and any of the other women he has and will most likely abuse.)

Finally, the film looked at Emma and Stan, who were currently engaged. It was clear that Emma didn't want to leave, but she has a large family who was depending on her help when she does get married. Stan's ex-wife is also Filipina and he says they had a very bitter divorce. He also said that his biggest fear is Emma meeting other Filipinas in town and them telling her about his ex-wife. However, there is no mention of what was wrong with this first marriage. There was also a scene where Emma was reading letters (I'm not sure if they were from Stan) from possible suitors. Some of these letters were atrocious! I remember references to religion - these men writing to her because her profile said she was Christian and they were looking for a God-fearing, well-behaved Christian. One of the letters even said that he was looking for a woman who understood that a good Christian wife should be submissive to her partner and understand that if she is out of line, her husband has every right to beat her because he is doing it out of love. Their immigration situation is complicated because Stan's first marriage happened in the Philippines, which means he's still legally married to his first wife. That means they can't get married until they get to Canada. Again, Emma, for the most part (even when Stan visits) seems to be completely miserable.

Toward the end of the film, they showed a community meeting of local MOBs to talk about their problems and such. It seemed to be a positive meeting because it was safe space for these women to meet, vent and share their problems, lives, etc. Bascel and Gertrude were at this gathering and I swear, it's the only time you ever see Gertrude smiling. There's a point where the meeting leader says, "Okay, so do we know what we need to do when we go back home to our husbands?" Gertrude happily chimed in, "Yes! File for divorce!" The women laughed, and it was good to see that this church-based community group managed to get these women together just so they could form community and support for each other. I hope the meetings continued.

During the Q&A, I was a little bothered by their opening question, where the organizers mentioned that people are trying to change the term "mail order brides" to "marriage migrants," and what do we think about the name switch. While I respect the question, I kept thinking to myself: So there are clearly issues of slavery, abuse, servitude, depression, etc. that's presented in the film, but all we can begin to talk about is nomenclature?! WTF?! In my anger, I responded that a difference in terminology isn't going to change the situation these women are in. It's not going to change the level of abuse and exploitation they experience. One of the guests in the audience whipped her head around and kinda' snapped at me and asked, "Then what term would you use?!" I turned to her and responded, "I don't believe in sugar-coating a situation. If you really wanted to be correct about this, then this system should be called what it really is: marital slavery. That way, if we call it slavery, there is a chance that people would mobilize towards ending it." For some reason, she didn't seem happy with my response.

Some other things I picked up from the discussion that bothered me was that these women don't have the access to background checks on these men, yet these men do extensive background checks on these women just to make sure they are who they say they are. Also in the case of Chris (and potentially Stan), these men can have multiple mail-order brides (not simultaneously, but from Export Quality, there is a case of this happening) even though, like in Chris's case, they have track records of abuse.

If any of you get the chance to see it, I highly recommend you watch Say I Do because it will give you an understanding of how complicated this system is. It will also (hopefully) give you (us) some sense of what this blog is for. For me, I participate with such an incredible set of women because I feel that we're invested in engaging in critical dialogue about this subject.

Anyway... I've blabbed long enough. Orals are over and passed. Yea! I'm off to get some rest. I'll post more later about Export Quality and the lovely performance about our very own Goddess of Halology.

Export Quality

2006-04-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

FYI: Just wanted to pass this on to those who are interested. If writing goes well, I'll definitely be there. Diana "Goddess of Halology" Halog, one of the Beauty and Power volunteers will be starring in the play. Please pass on this info. Thanks!

On domestic abuse and japayuki

2006-03-29T07:37:00.000-08:00

I recently came back from Atlanta and the annual Asian American studies conference. I noted a couple of things that I learned at the conference that I thought would be interesting for us to think about on this blog.

The first is factual:

Professor Linda Pierce, a mixed-race Filipina who teaches multi-ethnic American literature at the University of Southern Mississippi, told a roundtable of Filipino Americanists that in southern Mississippi, there are quite a few Filipinas with white husbands and therefore a large population of mixed-race Filipino children. She explicitly said that "penpals are the majority of the Filipino American community" here. She also said, and this was really disturbing, that one of the major problems in this community is domestic abuse. It has gotten so bad that the Filipino Society of Mississippi, which Pierce said is in no way a political entity, has had to stage rescues of these Filipina wives from domestic abuse.

The second is more theoretical:

In her discussion of her research in Japan as a japayuki (Filipino slang for a Filipina working as an entertainer in Japan) alongside Filipina migrant workers also working as japayuki, Professor Rhacel Parreñas of UC Davis made some comments about how "the moral panic embedded in" anti-sex trafficking discourse doesn't take into account the desires of the migrant workers themselves. She noted that when Japan, responding to pressure from the United States (presumably including Filipino Americans in league with others working against the sex trafficking industries), re-designated the Filipina japayuki as "trafficked persons" and therefore wouldn't allow them to renew their contracts to work in Japan, many migrant Filipina japayuki in Japan protested against this bill.

I think that Parreñas brings up an important contradiction between these two sides of the trafficking issue, but I was upset by her dismissive term "moral panic" when talking about those who are anti-sex trafficking. The contradiction or tension is something that we've been talking about on this blog already in relation to pen pals, but I think we can all agree that it is a very complicated and thorny issue -- so complicated that it warrants more than a dismissive comment about people having different moralities. On the one hand, we don't want to deny Filipinas agency, but on the other, we also don't want to ignore the structural problems that present them with the narrow choice of living in poverty or marrying a foreigner they barely know (and as the Mississippi example above indicates, this latter can be quite dangerous). To describe anti-sex trafficking discourse as instigating "moral panic" seems to me an uncritical attempt to shut down further investigation of the issue. Sure there were japayuki who protested the bill, but did all of them do it? Who started the protests? And were they protesting because they thought they weren't trafficked people, or simply because they needed the money and the re-designation was a hindrance to this? There are lots of questions I would have asked before making a judgment.

What do you all think? About either of these things?

Ninotchka Rosca

2006-03-28T08:32:00.000-08:00

Hello all!

Yes, I'm still in orals mode. Apologies for using this blog for announcements. I promise that I'll have more interesting things to contribute after the mayhem. I wanted to let you know that I just received this announcement about a talk by Ninotchka Rosca. Here's the info in case any of you are interested in going.

The Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC Berkeley presents a lecture

"Labor Export: Institutionalized Trafficking"

Ninotchka Rosca
Writer & co-founder of the GABRIELA network

Trafficking is not simply a criminal activity. For nations and countries, it is an economic strategy -- only it's called by some other name.

Ninotchka Rosca is a contemporary writer, human rights activist and feminist. Her novel, Twice Blessed, earned the 1993 American Book Award for excellence in literature. A political prisoner under the Marcos regime in the Philippines, Rosca is a founder and the first national chair of GABRIELA, an important Philippine-US women's solidarity mass organization.

Talk organized for the Townsend Center's Geballe Research Opportunities for Undergraduates Program (GROUP) Spring 2006 course "Using People: Human Rights and the Transnational Commodification of Women" (Prof. Pheng Cheah, instructor)

Monday, April 10, 2006
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley

This event is free and open to the public.

2006-03-21T14:11:00.000-08:00

I believe that one of the most dangerous traps we fall into is when we begin attacking each other’s differences of opinion, instead of locating and directing our voices towards the bigger cause of decolonization and critique of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy/WSCP (thank you, bell hooks!). I do not apologize for the jargon because, to me, it speaks of the invisible paradigm of modernist values that implicates all of us regardless of how we are located – whether by geography, class, ethnicity and race, religion, political beliefs, religion, sex and gender and sexual orientation.

What we do have in common in this group is that we have a connection to a homeland’s history and a people – the Philippines and Filipinas. This connection is one of deep affection, empathy, compassion; we have nurtured our sense of Kapwa and our Lakas ng Loob. Decolonization is a belated project for many of us, including old me, but we are growing in our capacity to trust our instincts and intellect as we talk back at this WSCP.

We have always lived “under western eyes” but the power of that gaze is waning.What we know of Empire is that it always destroys everything in its path on its way to self-destruction.

According to Chandra Mohanty, in Feminism Without Borders, white western feminism (which has influenced so many of us) has, in the 21st century, become more conservative and is being challenged by the decolonizing, postcolonial perspectives of “third-world” feminists and indigenous peoples around the world. The potential of a global feminist movement, she writes, lies in making visible the machinations of capital and power that “eats” everything in its path through commodification and consumption.

We know whose bodies get commodified and consumed in this age of corporate globalization: women and children from the “two-thirds world” – trafficked, seduced, compelled, encouraged to enter the global labor market as mail-order-brides, nannies, domestic workers, prostitutes, doctors becoming nurses elsewhere, surgeons ending up as butchers at Safeway, engineers as pencil-pushers, etc.

As I think about the maid of the world (I am the maid of the world and the world has made me dirty – Irene Duller), I think about my sister. As I understand my own location of privilege not only under western eyes, but within it as well, what sorts of questions should I be asking about the kinds of issues and causes that I can embrace so that I am not only a “feminist-as-tourist/voyeur or feminist-as-detached explorer” of “otherness” and “difference” but a feminist whose solidarity with the women and children of the two-thirds world is informed by a critique of this corporate global machinery. What sort of alternative destinations can we imagine for this place that we take up (blog-world)?

Some of the folks we encounter along the way who are either sitting on the fence or on the other side of the fence that I describe above, can be invited to this dialogue. But let us not be shocked or surprised if they do not join us in solidarity. At least they know they can enter the dialogue (respectfully, we hope) and all I can wish for is an awakening inspired by the babaylan spirit.

In Our Own Image

2006-03-21T09:35:00.001-08:00

So who are we and what are we doing on this blog? The fact is, we're all different, and we're not even all women! Because we are all individuals, however, we each approach the issue of the portrayal of Filipinas and Filipinos displayed on Pen Pal and other online sites somewhat differently. One area in which I think we all more or less agree is that we hope for dialogue. And it's true that, at some point, we have come to this dialogue because we have been (will will probably continue to be) angry and saddened by the stereotypical portrayals we've seen of the portrayal of Filipinas online. Emotions tend to run high on this topic. Yet, speaking for myself, in the process of delving into the topic, I've begun to see problems and complexities that I hadn't originally considered.

It's a learning process, and I don't come to this site thinking I know it all, already. Anyway, I've been thinking about the fact that much of what angers me are the stilted, hyper-sexualized and often pedophilic images of Filipinas and Filipinos. After all, a LBFM website would be nothing without its images. --But one can present counter-images, no?

Craving the spotlight?

2006-03-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

Hello all!

Apologies for being MIA. I'm in the THICK of orals prep. Anyway... a dear friend sent this to me and I thought the "pack of coyotes" and our disciples would be interested (that was a joke). If anything, the show itself should be interesting. I'm not sure if the show date is set, but I was told it was sometime towards the end of April. Can the selfish me persuade Miss Gladys to make a bay area trip so we can all get together and watch?

wishful thinking,
joanne

CALLING ALL WOMEN Actors, Dancers!!! LAST ROUND OF AUDITIONS!!!

San Francisco State University Women's Center and GABRIELA Network is hosting a San Francisco Bay Area wide CASTING CALL for the premiere production of...

EXPORT QUALITY
MONOLOGUES LOOSELY BASED ON TRUE STORIES of MAIL ORDER BRIDES

No Theatre Experience Necessary, but definitely a plus.

All proceeds go to benefit Women in the Philippines - The Purple Rose Campaign Against the Sex Trafficking of
Women and Children.

When: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 5:00-8pm
Where: Women's Center, Chavez Student Union @ San Francisco State University
Who: YOU!

For more information please contact Megan-Magali@sfsu.edu or Katrina sfbayarea@gabnet.org
Or call the SFSU women's center at 415.338.2486

Speaking of Mutya Power...

2006-03-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 3PM

IN CONCERT, a rare double feature!
Experience the spellbinding dance theatre of ancient Pilipino rituals and tribal arts: MAGUI MORO ARTISTS & THE MUTYA PROJECT

Alleluia Panis Dance Theater (APDT)
APDT performs a new project called The Mutya Project. Mutya is Tagalog for the essence of creative power, the prana, the chi, the breath, the pearl, life’s pulse in all being. Mutya, a female energy, is a most sacred & powerful magic, the artist’s muse & inspiration. Mutya is also the pearl-like object said to issue from the heart of a banana plant during the holiest day of the year and is believed to be a powerful amulet. The concept of Mutya is often co-opted by enterprising beauty pageant organizers. Collaborators: Ana Hortillosa - Video Art; Anthony Legarda - Costume Design; Francis Wong & Herna Cruz – Music; Jean Vengua - poetry.

Director Alleluia Panis' vision is to create dance/theater works that define the artistic identity of the American Pilipino people. Ms. Panis has received commissioning awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Langton Arts, and Brava! for Women in the Arts. She received the Choreographic Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She is an American Pilipino choreographer in the forefront of contemporary American dance theater informed by issues and concerns of American Pilipinos.

Dancers: Fides Enriquez, Helen Sarafino, Lisa Juachon, Nerinna Valera, Patricia Ong, Stephanie Sampang.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS
701 Mission (@ 3rd Street), San Francisco, CA 94103

BUY ADVANCED ONLINE TICKETS: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3482
BUY ADVANCED WALK UP: TIX Bay Area box office located in Union Square on Powell Street between Geary and Post.
More information:
Kularts, 415.239.0249, or www.myspace.com/kularts
Spring Forward! press release (PDF)

LBFM: Lightly Balding Fucking Males

2006-03-14T00:03:00.000-08:00

OK, I had to bring this comment and post to the top level cuz I want this site to rise to those all important search engine charts.

What I said...
Can we do a photo series where the husbands of the Filipinas are naked in pictures of every day life like at "NAKED! AT f-64"? And then title the website LBFM "Lightly Balding Fucking Males" but then used LBFM all over the site, I bet you we could get on top of the search hit lists!

I looked at the LBFM site and of course these women don't need the "extra money" to be on these sites and OF COURSE they're at least 18! I mean, everyone in the Southeast Asia carries around an ID showing their birthdate and no one ever carries forged documents. That's like saying everyone in a porn video is 21. I don't think I've ever heard anyone admit to any other age than the "legal" one.

10:51 PM

Jean said...
hahahah!! What a great idea, Gura! Something similar to the "kitchen series" in f-64? They can be stirring a pot of pinakbet or something.

But hey, you've done something here: now I can't think of LBFM without displacing the original meaning of it with "Lightly Balding Fucking Males!"

10:57 PM

Various pictures we can have on the LBFM site:

-we can have a scene where they are mowing the lawn and his wife is tending to the flower beds

-a scene from the Philippines where he's standing next to the lechon on the spit, but not the fully cooked one, the pale, just killed lechon pig (this is absolutely my favorite image)

-in a Chinatown or Ranch 99 type marketplace. he's carrying the bags while she's shopping.

-a group of them standing together drinking beer while their wives gather at the other end of the room

What else should we have the LBFMs doing?

NAKED WOMEN!

2006-03-13T20:50:00.001-08:00

Speaking of e-infiltration, as posed by Eileen (see previous post) or subverting the SEO or Search Engine Optimization process -- thanks to one Mr. Beckett I have found an amazing website featuring NAKED WOMEN! NAKED! at f-64.

Both the pictures and the narratives show and tell a lot, but they also raise a lot of questions. Like who ("A ghost in the machine. The only real Jane is the Jane that cannot be known, like the Tao that cannot be known"), how ("We're tired of the Popular Photography look"), what and especially why. I'm interested in how this nakedness and the voyeurism it stimulates differs from the voyeurism we might find on various LBFM websites. Well, to start off with the obvious, there's a feeling of warmth and participation in the f-64 site, that you won't find in the LBFM site...

In the meantime, come on, let's hit that SEO: LBFM! LBFM!

INTERNET INTERVENTION: IN THEIR FACES!

2006-03-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

In the great tradition of our friends at BagongPinay who I am relieved to see is the first line that comes up in a Google search of "Filipina" (followed, unfortunately, by all sorts of sexualized Filipina links), our blog is now inserting its activism in e-space. Here are some of the phrases that have brought visitors to this site. In fact, if you cutnpaste any of the phrases below into a search engine, our vagina dentata shows up amidst sordid company! But it's great to e-infiltrate and subvert from the inside! E-Onward!

Some internet searches where this blog rears its Gabriela head:

filipina sex

disciplining filipina domestic workers

find a pen pal for a child under 11

pretty filipina

filipina organization

filipina wifes websites

secret pal blank form

Defer to men

extremely young filipina

filipino mail order brides

EIGHT YEAR OLD GIRL WROTE NEWSPAPER FOR PENPAL

filipina sex scandals

hospitality industry different table settings in the philippines

18 year old asian penpal

FILIPINA NURSE FROM CANADA

men penpals website 2006

FILIPINA SEX PICTURES

american man seeking filipino pen pals marriage

submissions about beautiful filipinas

women pen pal

when a married woman gets gifts from another man

pinay penpal

"when the warships left manila"

FILIPINA FRIENDS

IMBRA feminists

LBFM TALK*

lbfm* tennis thai

(*LBFM, of course, stands for "Little Brown Fucking Machine")

Announcement of film screening: SAY I DO

2006-03-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

[I'm sorry about displacing Ver's excellent post below!]

For those of you in the Bay Area, Say I Do, the documentary on MOBs that Gura posted about last month, is going to be screened at UC Berkeley on Wednesday, March 8 as part of the International Women's Day celebrations. So it will be free, although donations are encouraged. Being in So Cal, I unfortunately can't be there, but I hope at least one of us is able to see it and give a report. I believe there will be an opportunity for discussion at the screening.

--------------

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY FILM: Say I Do
"A paid-for-wife is a slave for life."

Hosted By:
GABRIELA Network, Berkeley Unit

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8
200 WHEELER
7:00PM
Refreshments served.
Donations of $3-5 welcomed

Description
"I need to find myself a nice submissive young lady who wants and needs to have me control and direct her life. I am age 52, divorced after a long marriage. There is nothing so pleasurable to me as teaching a young woman to submit fully to my wishes... If my wife does not obey me, then I am perfectly willing to punish her in whatever way I think is right...”

Every day, womn and children exported from the Philippines into the mail-order bride and sex trafficking industry are sent to men much like the one described above.

Every day, their plights go unnoticed, ignored by the government.

----

In honor of these womn and all womn fighting for their rights, we celebrate INTERNATIONAL WOMN'S DAY on March 8.

Please join us for a fundraiser and film screening of the mail-order bride documentary, "Say I Do" on

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8
200 WHEELER
7:00PM
Refreshments served.
Donations of $3-5 welcomed and go back to
GABNet's Purple Rose Campaign and other work.

In light of what's going on in the Philippines, it's important for us
to come together to learn, to discuss
and more importantly,
to act.

For more information, contact berkeleyunit.sfbayarea@gabnet.org.

And Now For A Short Commercial Break

2006-03-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve been wanting to contribute a post to this blog since the day Jean (with inspiration from Leny) opened the door for business. So to speak. The experience was not unlike trying to get a word in edgewise during a cocktail party at which the only guests are erudite, well-spoken, and not at all shy. Not surprisingly, I’ve been hiding in a corner with the potted plants.

But now I think the time has come here at Your Filipina Penpal! for a short literary break. And I can do that! Like many other writers, I write in part to make sense of what I’m feeling. And like all of you, my feelings on the subject of MOBs, interracial relationships, poverty, corruption, economics, domestic abuse and whatnot are often really fucking complicated and confusing. And so the only thing for me to do was turn to a story.

I wrote “A Late Lunch at the Lemon Grass Café” sometime last year. It’s narrated by the young twenty-something male child of a Filipina MOB and her American husband. I don’t post it for feedback or praise or criticism, but rather to say what I can’t seem to say nonfiction-ally. I was able to empathize with unlikable characters in a way that took me completely by surprise, and the writing itself helped to clarify my feelings about all these heady subjects. Even if I still can’t quite articulate what they are. And now I’ve gone on too long! Anyhoots, here’s an excerpt:

A LATE LUNCH AT THE LEMON GRASS CAFE

Before I was born, my mother had all of her teeth. This was, in fact, one of the criteria—neatness and literacy being among the others—that my American father used when choosing her for his wife. “Well, Nita, you’re not so pretty, but you sure are sweet,” he used to say. This scant praise, combined with the fact that mom was already thirty years old, was enough to sweep her off her feet, out of Bayawan, and into a ranch-style house forty minutes east of San Francisco. Never mind that dad was twice her age, twice married, and twice before engaged to other small, dark women he’d wooed while on various vacations to the Philippines, Negros Island in particular.

I was conceived immediately following the wedding (which, much to my mother’s permanent shame, did not take place in the Catholic church), and seven months later her teeth started to fall out. Someone told her I leeched all the calcium right out of her chompers. She claims it was worth it to have a son like me.

I bear little resemblance to the half-and-half kids with muted brown skin and pale green eyes who look like rare, exotic birds. This one Filipino-Swedish guy in high school had the girls crying and on their knees he was so damn handsome. Hated that guy. And I’m fat. “Gordo!” my mother screams, happy to have fed me so well. “Like your father, talaga.” She laughs for a moment and then, of course, starts to cry because my father is dead.

My mother’s situation—and how she ended up in it—was obvious to anyone who cared to observe my parents for a few minutes. Whenever they were out together, she endured rude stares and whispered comments from women, especially other Filipinas. I often wondered how many of those superior bitches realized the one simple truth about my mother: she was happy with Dad.

Once, shortly after he died, I asked Mom if she wished she’d just stayed in the Philippines, with people she knew, in a place she still referred to as “home.” “Oh, honey,” she had said, “nothing was gonna happen to me there. No one was gonna love me. At least your Daddy loves me. Oh, sige, you go now. Go have fun,” she said, shooing me out of the room as her eyes began to puddle.

***

I eat in a Thai restaurant on Clement Street—a street that could be mistaken for a street in any Asian city—almost every day. The Lemon Grass Café. It’s three blocks from my “office,” which is really just a dirty apartment converted into an art studio by three greasy-haired pothead guys, average age twenty-two. They publish underground comics and hired me because my drawing samples revealed a “deep understanding of female breast curvature.” This was an important qualification because—without exception—the characters I was being hired to draw would have enormous breasts squashed into lace-up, corset-type garments.

I was honest and admitted to them that my understanding of the female breast was based entirely on my dead father’s extensive collection of pornographic magazines: Mound, Hustler, Twice As Nice, Lust, etc. They just looked at each other and said, “Cool.” It’s a pretty good job.

It’s past three, so the lunch crowd is long gone. The owner’s daughter, a 10-year-old whose pants are always too short, is folding napkins and filling small vases with white flowers to prep for the dinner rush.

I don’t even have to order; my favorite waiter, Pong, just brings me a big, steaming plate of Pad Thai and smiles. I nod and dig in, stopping every once in awhile to take a swig of my iced tea or spit out a shrimp tail. Pong turns the TV channel from home shopping to ESPN and the cook, free for now, ventures out from the kitchen. The other customers leave so that it’s just the three of us, sitting together watching NBA playoff highlights. The two of them high-five each other throughout a Michael Jordan montage that showcases several impossible-to-defend fadeaway jumpers. They look over at me and we share a good laugh. Jesus, what a great lunch.

As usual, my eyes eventually focus on the far wall, where instead of the serene artwork typically found in Asian restaurants—boats floating down lazy rivers, caribou grazing, men in straw hats with scythes slung over their narrow shoulders—Pong likes to hang pictures of pretty flight attendants carefully cut from assorted airline calendars. He’s got Cathay Pacific, Thai Airways, Philippine Airlines, you name it. The girls either wear an uptight navy blue blazer with a little red scarf tied at the neck, or the native garb of their respective countries. Sarongs, colorful headwraps, garish gold earrings, stuff like that. My bosses love it when I spice up a comic book girl by angling her eyes or giving her tawny skin. So when I’m done with my noodles, I pull out my Strathmore sketchpad and a 2B pencil. At the last minute, I grab a 3B, too; it’s good for dark hair.

As I block in the eyes, it occurs to me for the hundredth time that my mother never looked like these women. Not even at, say, the age of 20 when any beauty a woman is likely to be blessed with is on full display like a peacock’s tail. Douglas MacArthur once talked about the “moonbeam delicacy” of Filipinas, and damn if he wasn’t right. No jutting cheekbones or noses that end in a point, just everything soft, soft. I sense Pong staring over my shoulder; hear him gently grunt his approval of my work. He says something in Thai to the cook, who scoots his chair over next to mine.

###

2006-02-28T22:34:00.000-08:00

Here is another perspective on international/interracial/interethnic couples. It is not a dating service but it looks like an attempt to create a cybercommunity of international couples. I went to the Germany country site and didn't find a lot of Filipina-German couples. Then I went to the Philippine site; while it looks like there's quite a few penpal marriages, there seem to be equal number of couples who met under different circumstances than penpal (does IM count as penpal?)

What say you?

FROM THE NETHERLANDS

2006-02-27T13:59:00.000-08:00

So from the Netherlands, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz blogs on this issue (Feb. 26, 2006)-- I'll just excerpt from her post here as I'd like to add it to the discussion:

FROM ROCHITA:
The issue of the M.O.B. is something I find myself confronted with too. While a lot of Filipinas marry for love, there are an equally good number who do marry out of economical reasons.

I do understand about poverty and how the economic situation in the Philippines leads to this "kapit sa patalim" mentality. As one young girl told me, she came here with a man who was old enough to be her grandfather because she wasn't smart enough to land a job and it was her only way out of poverty. Later on, the grandfather type dumped her for a still younger version and she ended up in a relationship with a man who was closer to her chronological age. Her second man was rather bossy, but he did care for her in his way. It was quite a turbulent relationship and when her second husband passed away, she hopped on to the next relationship wagon.

There is another case, which involves a girl married to man who is old enough to be her father. This man - divorced from a Dutch woman - presented quite a docile face at first. This girl when I first met her was a vivacious figure. Once the marriage papers were signed, the man altered. We saw the other side of him.

A typical evening with them would involve him telling invited guests that his wife was worthless, that she was "bobo" (knew nothing/ uneducated ), that he could find a hundred pretty Filipinas to take her place.

Over time, I watched how this vivacious and energetic filipina transformed into a nervous wreck who jumped at the sound of his voice.

We tried to show her that this relationship was an abusive one, but she insisted that unless he hit her, she could not leave him. Her insistence on staying with him stemming from something he'd said about Filipinas marrying only for money and her belief that if she did separate from him, it would justify what he said.

I still struggle with cases like these, and when I encounter situations where I know economics is one of the issues, I can't help feeling so, so, so frustrated.

In a recent workshop given by Stichting Bayanihan ( a support group for Filipinas in the Netherlands ), one of the subjects raised was that of empowerment.

I wonder what a Rik person (as referred to in the Mutya Power blog) would say if his Celine suddenly stood up, brandished a bolo and declared: "I am an empowered woman, Rik. I'm not the submissive you thought I was."

XOXOXO RIGHT BACK ATCHA!

2006-02-23T08:07:00.000-08:00

COUPLETS AND COUPLINGS
--for the husband who penned the essay “Filipina ladies, Asian penpals and my Philippines penpal experience”

1)
When I first started writing Asian Filipina ladies,
I did not know what it meant to have a penpal.

I happened to see pictures of beautiful Filipina ladies
on a website, and I just got this overwhelming desire

to contact them. There is something about a Filipina,
and Asian lady in general, that is so appealing yet hard

to explain at the same time. Is it the traditional values
of a Filipina, or perhaps their beautiful smiles? Or

maybe it is the beautiful long black hair and sweet
disposition that can only be found in an Asian lady

from the Philippines. Whatever it is, once I saw
this website of Asian penpals looking for partners in life

I knew my destiny.

2)
Is this really about my desire to be with an Asian Filipina
penpal, or is it about my dislike for American women?

This is a sore spot for many ladies in this country and I realize
this. Some of my closest and dearest friends are American women.

If you do not believe me, I am sorry but it is true. It is also not
about likes and dislikes. For me it is about compatibility

as a married couple. I just happen to find Asian women more
traditional and less competitive, and that is what I desire.

I know, the old stereotype that I need someone to push around
comes up all the time. Let’s face it, finding a lady to push

around in the USA is not that difficult. I do not need to travel
10,000 miles to find a Filipina for that. What it is about for me

is being able to admit that men and women are different. I know
there are certain things my wife can do better than me, and that

is just the way it will always be. My wife also realizes that I am
better at handling some things. Filipina ladies understand this,

which means there is no need for this constant 50/50 power struggle.

3)
When I went to the Philippines for the first time I saw traditional
values first hand. Asian women as a general rule are very loyal

to their family, so if you want to make it work you better be nice
to her parents, and especially her father. Your pen pal bond

will evaporate into thin air if you make her choose between you
and her family. If a Filipina is forced to choose, you will lose

95% of the time. And even if you win, your life together might be
a living hell.

*****
Notes on Form:
1) The text is almost directly lifted from this earnestly-written drivel as to why Filipinas should be preferred for pen pals from the site “Melinda’s Pen Pals” at http://www.melindaspenpals.com/filipina-penpal-facts.htm.
2) At one point, during multiculturalism’s earlier stages, it was common to see conservative critics dismiss much free verse by poets of color as mere prose chopped up into verse via line breaks. So, I took this prose drivel and chopped it up into a poem. Isn’t it interesting, though, how the form of a poem vs prose can facilitate a second look at a text to emphasize just how drivel-ish it is?
3) I wanna belabor the obvious because though I know my collaborators can get it, the occasional Peep who comes here via Google may not “get” how the couplet form fails at the end of each section (by lapsing into one line only or how, in 3rd section, it becomes truncated). Obviously -- it’s a metaphor.
4) Wink.

Melinda's Pen Pals

2006-02-22T01:39:00.000-08:00

Quite a few pen pal marriages end up starting their own Pen Pal Services. I came across this website.

Some of the more interesting pages from his site (it's mostly the husband that posts on the site):
-Reason for preferring Filipinas
-Various emails they've received
-Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005

The IMBRA law effectively requires all men seeking pen pals to go through a security check before being allowed to contact any women (Section 113 of the Act). Companies that are introductory sites must make sure the men do not have anything on their record regarding domestic violence and a whole long list of other things that may make them prone to creating an abusive relationship.

Another site I ran across was Filipina Wives which is not a pen pal site, but is a gentleman that sells a book regarding Filipina women and Western men relationships. The site includes a pseudo quiz to measure whether seeking a Filipina wife is a good idea or not. His site seemed a bit more balanced in terms of taking on myths.

Some pages there:
-The Problem with "Submission"
-His Mail Order Bride FAQ includes what the INS defines as a "mail order" bride
-Attack on Feminism (men saying they are looking for a Filipina because they are not apt to western Feminist ways

Con men

2006-02-21T13:50:00.000-08:00

"So strong is this pervasive image of the sexually exotic, available Asian woman that, at the time when the fight over Miss Saigon was raging in NY, Christopher Barnes, an African American man in Los Angeles, was scamming thousands of other men by duping them into corresponding with him, under the ruse that he was an Asian woman. In on enine-month period, he conned at least $280,000 from 400 men who thought that he was their Asian pen pal sweetheart....his computer database held over 8,500 men from every state in the nation, from truck drivers to doctors, lawyers, and college professors, who paid money to get letters from his Asian women characters --exchanging letters for more than a year." (Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams, p. 132)

At Ohio State U, Asian women students in the late 1980s were targets of rape by a fraternity in a "game" called "Ethnic sex challenge." (Zia, 133)

Discipline and Punish

2006-02-19T09:08:00.000-08:00

Regarding Leny's last post: The thing that bothers me about R's writing is that I feel that it IS written to attract the voyeur in everyone. Using those images, talking about Filipinas, and positioning himself as a white man in the "candy store" is his way of getting attention and feeling powerful. He knows that what he's writing will attract attention, and it probably doesn't matter whether it's positive or negative, so long as he gets the attention.

I'm also thinking now of the voyeurism involved in all the recent scandals about Abu Ghraib, the recent airing of British troops beating protesters, how in all these instances, the need to record and replay these displays of punishment and power (in many cases eroticized in the videos -- even in the British case, the hysterical vocalizations of the narrating soldier were disturbingly orgasmic) have exposed the abuses. In some ways, perhaps what we are seeing on the Expatriots in the Philippines site is a kind of micro version of what's getting played out on a larger scale; in both cases, someone must be "disciplined" so that they can be worthy of the gifts of modernization and democracy.

Certainly, this isn't just about the Philippines, although the Philippines, as a tropical archipelago feeds into a particular type of (Conradian or Melvillian) fantasy.

I think Leny is also right that "the lingguistic turn in the academe and professionalization of Ethnic Studies has severed or widened the gap between our communities and our scholarship."

It's hard to feel compassion for someone like this, but this kind of behavior also seems to suggest that, while money certainly helps people to survive, neither riches nor "democracy" are the answers for all our problems, and they are certainly not the heal-alls for a sick soul.

Jean said I should blog this....

2006-02-18T11:13:00.000-08:00

Hi, Jean and all -
Actually I started to blog yesterday, Jean, about similar concerns you express here. I felt like a voyeur while skimming through Rik's ramblings..it was very unsettling. Barb's post from Ninotchka and Eileen's post connect the global(political) and the local/personal...but it also made me want to extend this even farther back: Asia, in the Western imagination, has always been feminized.

In spite of global decolonization movements, scholars of Orientalism, Asian American studies, critical cultural studies -- these haven't made a dent on the "reality on the ground" maybe because the lingguistic turn in the academe and professionalization of Ethnic Studies has severed or widened the gap between our communities and our scholarship. Perhaps this exercise is a reminder to us on how to find ways of reconnecting with people who are already addressing these issues in the frontlines. (at least this is what I'm telling myself).

There will be a conference on mail-order brides iN Canada in May. I will ask my sister,Lily, to send us info if anyone is interested. Will also ask her to read the blog and ask if she can also share something from her own research on mail order brides in Arizona.

As for Rik, there are thousands of them in the Philippines -- in Puerto Galera, Boracay, outside of Clark and Subic -- who see the Philippines as nothing but a sex playground. Like Bino, I also feel a bit of compassion for the likes of them -- their woundedness, their unconsciousness-- which unfortunately wreaks havoc and violence on both sides - psychic, emotional, physical. Colonial wars have never ended.

Leny

mortgaging our population

2006-02-17T11:01:00.000-08:00

pulling back from viagra superstar rik for a minute, because there is only so much nausea and rage i can handle in a given amount of time. in terms of the IMF/WB context in which the filipina pen pal exists, here's an excerpt from an interview with ninotchka rosca:

[Rosca] believes that prostitution in the Philippines, the sex trafficking of women and the ongoing mail-order bride situation are the responsibility of numerous governments, as well as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.
"The Philippines is constantly adjudged credit-worthy - having good credit - and the simple reason for that is because we mortgage our population. We send our workers overseas, and the money that comes back is used to pay the interest on the loans," she said. Rosca explained that the root of this problem is the subservience of the Philippines to the IMF, World Bank and the WTO.
"The IMF/World Bank has been lending money to Philippine presidents, beginning with Marcos, even though it knows full well that a large percentage of that loan is being pocketed - stolen - by government officials. And as we see today, despite $45 billion of loans, the Philippines is still poor. It hasn't advanced an inch!"
Rosca had previously criticized the Ramos administration for encouraging the commodification of Filipino women by tying in a beauty pageant with the Philippine centennial celebration. She is glad that the Philippines is rid of Estrada, but doesn't feel positive about the current Arroyo administration. "From my distant vantage point, I actually see certain government decisions which are extremely dangerous to women. Very notably, the decision of the Arroyo government to allow the United States military to use Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base," said Rosca.
She believes that allowing the U.S. military to come back to use the Philippine bases is extremely perilous because " . . . it took us nearly half a century of struggle to get the United States military out of the country . . . and history and experience have shown us that it is almost impossible to get the U.S. military out once they are in there . . . and now, just on the say-so of one woman president, the U.S. military is going to be back in the Philippines."
According to Rosca, prostitution was de facto legalized while the U.S. military was in the Philippines. "What they did was they invented euphemisms - labels - different names for prostitutes. They called them hospitality girls, entertainment whatever, you know, to hide the fact that there is prostitution going on."
"Now here in the United States," she continued, "if you look at the military bases, they're all rimmed by brothel houses, nightclubs, bars, etc., and you check out who the women are . . . they are women of color: black Americans or Koreans or Filipinas. In fact, 25,000 women from the Philippines and South Korea have been brought to the United States for this particular purpose!"
Rosca is quick to note that the second-most common occupation of women who leave the Philippines is the sex industry.
Since the inception of Gabnet and the Purple Rose Campaign, which educates the world about the sex trafficking of women and children, Rosca's voice has been heard all over the world.

speaking of euphemism: "pen pal."

read the rest here.

and once again, the link to the gabriela network's purple rose campaign.

POVERTY IMPOVERISHES

2006-02-17T00:34:00.000-08:00

and not just financially. I read through the archives of "Rik"'s site. I have to say that my read quickly transcended my contempt at Rik. First, to sadness that it's people like him who can enjoy the Philippines -- it was jarring to read his words juxtaposed against his photos of beautiful images there in the Philippines. It made me remember my first visit back to the Philippines about 9 years after I immigrated to the U.S. I mentioned to someone as I looked around the mountains and rice fields in the Ilocos, "It's so beautiful here." And the farmer I was talking to was taken aback -- she just had so many other things to focus on (like how to earn money that day) that she could no longer see the beauty of the landscape. And it's people like Rik retiring there on his Social Security who can relish such views...

But then as I kept reading through Rik's archives, I kept trying to put myself in his "Honey"'s shoes. And, how, for someone impoverished with possibly no other means of economic progress, I could see how Rik may not be a bad alternative (relative to other options). And I recall how, in a comment to a post below, Barbara used the word "normative" in how these guys like Rik don't seem to see anything disgusting if not aberrant in their behavior.

The mail order bride thing obviously is inextricably linked to poverty and the failure of Philippine governmental policies (whether due to corruption or ineptness) to provide for ways for the general population to advance themselves. And it's probably useful to take a look at how certain aspects of our culture -- as it flows through the political structure -- that would seem "normal" are things that get in the way of economic development.

If I had to feed a child or an aging parent etc and had no other means to do so, I may just end up being a little brown fucking machine myself. Between that and having a starving child the decision may be easier than I would think as I sit here in my shoes. That's what's really degrading about poverty -- how it sets up awful situations to be "normal"...

It's all so complicated and could say more but ... I'm tired.

Well, wait, let me say one more thing as I just remembered it. I remember myself in my early 20s in my first job on Wall Street (pre-writer days). I was a young analyst going up an elevator in a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan (decimated now due to 9/11). I was in the company of various executives, bankers etc -- we were going up to a penthouse restaurant. And riding the elevator was this guy, a messenger for some local restaurant delivering lunch to someone who no doubt would be eating lunch at his desk as s/he continued to work.

In this crowded elevator of mostly men -- hmmm, actually, mayhap I was the only woman in the elevator at the time -- this messenger guy turns to me, leers, looks me up and down and says, "Hey, you Filipina? Maganda!"

All chit chat broke down and deteriorated into Silence. I just looked at him as I didn't know what to say. Asshole continued, "I met many of your sisters when I was stationed in ____[forgot which military air base in the Philippines. They were goooo...oooo...ooood."

Then his stop arrived. He got off. The gentlemen I was with (either diplomatically or because they didn't know how else to respond) pretended the incident didn't happen but I have to assume that incident affected what credibility I might have had at that *business lunch*. And, though it's been about 20 years since that incident, I still dream about it and keep wishing that there had been time for me to reply....

"Oh yeah? So if one of my sisters had to be 'gooooood' to you because she otherwise would starve, or her kid would otherwise starve, or her mother, father, or brother or sister would otherwise starve, do you honestly think her being good to you has anything to do with you? You really think any blow job you got has anything to do with your own dick?!"

Although, of course, I couldn't have said something like that either even if I had had the chance. Because clients were in the elevator with me and I, too, had a job to do and the rent was due.

Filipinas Welcome Your Visits

2006-02-16T15:59:00.000-08:00

I just checked the sitemeter, and although we're not way up there yet, and a number of the hits are, well, us; still our outside hits have risen fairly dramatically over the last few days, and we now have a daily average of 71/day. ;-))

rethinking "filipinas defer their men."

2006-02-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

*
*
i am still gritting my teeth over the previous post, "filipinas defer to their men."

let's set the record straight.

the following are my comments to said teeth gritting post:

rik is an asshole and he knows shit.

this is the story of my grandparents (the pulmanos) meeting: already a college graduate and employed registered nurse, my grandmother was taking care of an american family in baguio, where she met a young medical student, working as a gardener during semester break to make enough money for medical school tuition at university of the philippines. after getting to know each other, after falling in love, she said to him: when we get married, i will pay your way through medical school.

and she did.

dr. pulmano is now 93 years old; he retired from medicine in his early-80s. my grandmother passed away when i was 12. when she was still alive, she was an entrepreneur, and then she came to america w/o my grandfather to help my mother raise me and my older sister. she was the love of my grandfather's life. she still is.

oh i should add, with my parents, my mother is the breadwinner, has been for years, and is in charge of all the finances. i'll concede that we are in america and have been for over 30 years. but my father is a filipino man and a filipino husband, and according to rik, my mother ought to be deferring to my father. i'll also add that my mother was raised by the amazing woman i wrote about in my previous comment.

i'm irate.

serious TMJ syndrome over here.
*
*

"Filipinas Defer to Men"

2006-02-16T12:57:00.000-08:00

In his July 15 post, this man attempts to spread a ridiculous myth/lie about Filipino women: "The family structure in the Philippines is and has always been patriarchal; for the most part, men run things. Women defer to men. It’s the man who will almost always have the final say in matters requiring a decision. Women are taught from birth to seek the blessings of, and to obey men. A Filipina wife will not go anywhere without first getting permission from her husband. She won’t go to the nearby sari-sari (small, general) store, to town, to the neighbor’s house - nowhere. Even when she has permission she will rarely go without a ‘companion.’ It may be you or her mother, her child, a neighbor or friend. If her husband isn’t at home, in all likelihood, she’ll wait for him to return before going anywhere, unless it’s absolutely necessary for something like timely food preparation. She may still wait anyway. A married Filipina may stay inside the house and not ever leave it, other than to go outside to get water, gather wood, tend to animals, or care for her plants, unless it’s in the company of her husband. Celine was advised by no fewer than her mother, father, grandparents, aunties and other women relatives and friends to “Stay inside the house and take care of your husband. Don’t go outside to chika-chika (gossip) or go off anywhere without your husband’s permission.”

Well, all you Filipino ladies and men, has this been your experience in the Philippines?

I have a large family that lives in "the boondocks" (by Manila standards) in Mindanao. My male cousin is considered the "head" of the family, and often "lays down the line" on certain issues. However, while he operates as a figurehead, his wife is anything but deferential or submissive. She teaches volleyball, swimming, basketball and tennis. She's constantly out in town running errands, or driving out into the jungle to remote schools to administer tests, and everyone in town knows and respects her, male and female alike. It's true that she usually goes with a companion, but this has nothing to do with submission, it's simply a survival strategy in an area where violence is a daily occurence and kidnapping is a possibility. Yet this fetishized submission that Rik refers to is not at the spirit of this. She and her husband have taught all their daughters to shoot handguns and rifles, and one of them is a champion sharpshooter, and can take care of herself, thankyou. Dependency is not encouraged. Most the women in my extremely large, extended family have active lives (most of them teach) out in the community, and most of them are outspoken, and have no problem arguing politics, religion, or what have you, with their husbands or other males in company. And that's just one example from my family. While men often maintain a figurehead position, and their opinions are certainly valued, anyone who pays attention for a period of time can see that, in many ways, the woman is running the show. I mean, for Chrissake, the Philippines has had two Filipina presidents! How blind do you have to be?

How does it go in your family? Whether you agree with me or not, let's set the record straight.

This guy is obviously just sick and living in fantasyland, and I'd like to say it's not worth my notice. But it does make me wonder how many more people like this are out there, ingratiating themselves into Filipino families, and passing these myths off as the truth.

New Awardee

2006-02-15T02:17:00.000-08:00

So soon, I have found a new candidate for this week's _____ award (This one deserves a special title, you just fill in the blank). This guy is just chock full of advice on how to pick the best little Filipina wife. Click on his name above to read more. High up on his list: find yourself an "uneducated" "forest girl." Uh huh. Gee, I'm kind of speechless at the moment. Now, scuse me while I go get a stick...

…can't say enough times that you - or any Western man - should just come here and taste of the exotic fruits (so to speak) and enjoy yourself for awhile. Get to know the ways of the people and the ladies. We Westerner's often feel the need to have something 'waiting' for us in advance before we come here. I plead guilty of doing that, myself. But I've long since learned that you don't need to. Very quickly after setting up house here the jungle drums will start beating, and before you know what's happened you'll have mother's bringing their daughters, aunties bringing nieces, sisters bringing sisters, men bringing groups of women to your door to offer them to you.
You won't be lonely for more than a few days or weeks - if that long. But know that if you let a girl through your door on some sort of permanent basis, it can be very hard to get them out again when you discover they lie, deceive or steal from you.

And:

…As for Celine and giving you advice about "exotic fruits"; Celine is private in the most extreme sense of the word. She wouldn't even consider advising you. She talks to almost no one, and completely shuns the pinay habit of chika-chika (gossip) - which you'll soon learn about to your regret. She won't talk to the neighbors, and will hardly talk to her own sisters. She stays in the house and does needle work and other crafts, and listens to the TV while I sit at the PC. She works outside in the garden daily - eschews jewelry and showing-off, and goes nowhere unless I send her. She's as about as perfect a partner as a man could hope for.

….On chika-chika: You will have to be very careful about what you do and say to anyone. I call the compound's maids and house-keepers, “The Maid Mafia” - and for good reason. Everyone is in a conspiracy of chika-chika about each other's "bosses." You will always be called "boss" here. It's best to say nothing you don't want anyone - everyone - else to know. And, believe me, they'll all know.
Find yourself a girl who hates chika-chika and doesn't want friends, and you find yourself to be a much happier man.
As to being the "boss": You can be as much of a boss as you wish. Here, your word is law. Tell your woman how she is to obey you - right away - and that breaking your rules will get her kicked out the door. Use the words 'training,' 'discipline' and 'punishment' often. Tell her that you're going to train her how to behave. It won't faze her. Discipline your woman how you wish. Filipina's are designed to obey and defer to men. You can spank her, tie her up, **** her until the cows come home, and she'll take what you give her as a matter of course. Training is everything, so you should have a plan on what you want and how you want it... then implement it.
Filipina's, as you probably know, are known by the term LBFM's (little brown ****ing machines), and they deserve the title. You can *** your Filipina as much as you want.

…By the way, the more highly educated Filipina's can be far more dangerous and deleterious to you than a simple girl. A 'forest girl' as they're known as here can be the best. They live simply and are already well trained in obedience and submissiveness by their father and mother, relatives and neighbors.
Celine, for your edification, has a third grade education, has worked more or less steadily since she was eight years old. She's a forest girl. But, she is one of the smartest Filipina's I've met so far - certainly the most trustworthy, faithful, obedient, loyal and hard working. She's unassuming and satisfied with what I give her. City girls - college educated girls want MORE, and expect to get it. They know the ways of the Western world and want their piece of it. Forest girls are happy if they have electricity and a fan.

Note:

2006-02-15T00:51:00.000-08:00

To bloggers on this site; I'm going to be fiddling around with some of the posts on this site to figure out what's knocking the sidebar to the bottom of the page. If your post disappears, it will only be temporary!

the husbands

2006-02-14T23:24:00.000-08:00

The Mail Order Bride market seems to be highly concentrated in Cebu. When I travelled there and to Mindanao, the planes I rode in held considerable numbers of single men. The malls were filled with mixed couples, probably pen pals just meeting each other. The men were from many countries, not just the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe.

I went to a party in Mindanao with several ex-patriots of different countries there. There were a few older white guys there, American from their accents. I wondered if they had met their wives through MOB market. I had wanted to talk to them, but I wasn't sure how to ask. For most of the party, they struggled to find a place to be comfortable. While their wives congregated together and tsismised in Visayan, which their husbands didn't understand.

A friend travelled to New Zealand once and came across a Filipino community there, the wives of New Zealand farmers. New Zealanders lived isolated lives often miles from the nearest neighbor. However, the wives had created a community structure that held parties at each other's houses nearly every weekend. Their husbands formed the outer circle of these social gatherings, unable to fully participate, yet almost grateful to be dragged along to it, as they would not have any kind of social gathering.

When they start they start with various stereotypes of who they think the other is, but whether it's a bad marriage, a good marriage or somewhere in between, how do their views of each other change? When reality hits, what happens to those stereotypes?

Do any of these pen pal sites track the relationships created by their services? What kind of accountability to they have? Is there a way to be able to locate, then help women who find themselves in a bad situation (ie abusive)?

the children of mail order brides

2006-02-14T22:14:00.000-08:00

Now I remember when Prof. Rhacel Parrenas was at I believe the University of Wisconsin. She mentioned that when she was teaching her class was filled with all these Hapa-Filipinos, who were mostly children of Mail Order Bride marriages.

I wonder, what the children think of their parent's marriages. And how do other Filipinos react to them and their parents? Many of them too live in places where they are the only Filipinos. How do they view their Filipino identities?

You may be married to a Filipina if....

2006-02-14T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Thanks for your comments and insights. Absolutely interesting stuff. So right now, I'm working on what will be a pretty mediocre presentation on Filipinas and Fat for the conference this Saturday. I dunno what to say... I'm completely STUMPED! If you thought the search results for "filipina" were bad, try googling "filipina" and "fat." Disturbing. Absolutely disturbing.

Anyway, in the midst of this awful google search, I ran into this. It's a list that was apparently written by, "an American guy who loves his Filipina wife in spite of the numerous irregularities." Knowing where it came from, I don't find it funny at all. Here it goes:

You may be married to a Filipina if...

While this has circulated on the internet for quite some time, I have no idea who originally wrote it, though there can be NO doubt that the fella has a Filipina wife...by the way, this is all in good fun, so I hope no one is offended by some of the broader generalizations here. Some of these items I didn't understand myself, but most struck a familiar chord, and my wife enjoyed it (well, most of it), so I figure it's safe for public consumption.

You may be married to a Filipina If... (written by an American guy who loves his Filipina wife in spite of the numerous irregularities):

* Your refrigerator is always full but you cannot find any food that you recognize

* Instead of a dowry, you got the whole bill for the wedding and honeymoon

* Most of the decorations in your house are made of wicker

* You are expected to be able to read her mind just by watching her eyebrows move up and down and by the way her lips are pointed

* All her relatives think your name is "Joe"

* The instant you are married you have 3,000 new close relatives that you can't tell apart

* Your house isn't really on fire, you've just got a very charred fish on top of the stove burner

* All the desserts are sticky and all the snacks are salty

* She eats her fruit with giant salt crystals and her fried chicken with ketchup

* Even the ketchup tastes weird...very weird

* You throw a party and everyone is fighting to chop the leathery skin off a dead pig

* All your kids have 4-5 middle names

* Your in-laws take 10 years to acknowledge your existence and to call you by something other than "that white guy"

* You try to call her up on the phone and someone tells you "for a while" and you want to know "for a while, what??"

* You are trying to go to sleep and she keeps asking for the comFORT'r, and you ain't got a clue what she's talking about

* Your first Christmas present is some funny looking, baggy, see-thru shirt made out of leftover lace doilies

* Your phone bills are composed mostly of international and calls that average 3 hours each

* She sweeps with something that witches usually fly around on

* Her idea of classy, expensive champagne is Asti Spumante

* The rice cooker is on 24 hours a day and uses up 50% of your electricity and food budget

* On your first trip to the Philippines, you have 18 giant boxes that weigh 1000 pounds each and your "carry on" luggage requires a small forklift truck

* The same luggage is over filled with things that cost an average of 15 cents each like old magazines and M&Ms -- the worst part is when you get off the plane, the same stuff you've been hauling around half way around the world is available in every store in the airport for half the price!

* All her pajamas look like they were worn by the Dalai Lama until they got too faded and he discarded them

* The first time she's pregnant you have to go out at 4:00 in the morning looking for some weird type of greasy sausages, green mangoes and bagoong

* You buy a new $500 freezer so she can store 200 pounds of SPAM and CORNED BEEF that was on sale

* Everything in your house was bought on sale, even if you don't need it ... that it was a "bargain" is all that matters

* She gets really excited by sucking the fat out of pig knees

* Your daughter gets her ears pierced when she's 2 minutes old but your sons are not circumcised until they turn 21

* All your postage bills instantly double

* You hire a Ya-Ya because your wife ckeabs mirrors with soap and a sponge and the Ya-Ya seems cheaper than a divorce

* The only "white meat" she likes is YOU. And that's if you're lucky...

* Her favorite sauce is called "patis." Americans call it turpentine

* She actually thinks that bowling and golf and billiards are real sports and are more important than baseball and football

* You were married 5 years before she explained to you that "ARAY!" doesn't mean "ooh, baby!"

* She prefers bistek to beef steak

* Her idea of new upholstery is rinsing the bagoong stains out of the slip covers

* She can eat and talk at the same time; in fact that's her specialty!

* Her favorite meal is leftovers, her favorite fancy dessert is Jell-O mold and for something REALLY romantic, she'll offer you a halo-halo with 2 straws

* You still don't know the difference between manong and manok

* She and the kids are always saying "Daddy made utot" and you still don't know what it means, but they think it's pretty funny

* Other than eyebrow raising and lip puckering, her next most expressive form of communication is grunts and pssst's

* She goes to the movies just for the AC

* Her homeland has more Megamalls than islands

* Before every holiday and visit, her sisters fax you a 10 page "bilins" list which says "suggestion only"

* Your kitchen table has a merry-go-round in the middle

* All the vegetables she buys at the Filipino store look like they were grown at Chernobyl

* Her friends are named Chinky, Girlie, Boy and Bimbo and NO, you are not allowed to smirk

* Her home economics course only taught shopping, eating and siesta; cooking, cleaning and sewing were not electives

* Her idea of edifying reading is gossip magazines

* All your place settings have the silverware backwards and there are no knives

* She washes her hair with a bucket and her car with a broom

* Her favorite book (she has 3 copies) is "1001 New Recipes for Pig Parts You Were Gunna Throw Out"

* You are the only family in a 200 mile radius with 2 Betamaxes, 3 televisions

* She's done her best job planning a surprise party for you if she manages not to tell you about it until a week or two before

* She "cleans" her closet by throwing all the crap into your closet

I seriously think we should start a list callled, "YOU KNOW YOU'RE AN OLD, WRINKLY ASSHOLE WITH A FILIPINA FETISH IF..." I'll even start with the first item:

Your "perfect wife" looks more like she's your adopted grandchild.

Here it goes... add away people!!!

googly again [ page one ]

2006-02-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

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i clicked on one of the photos at the top of page one of google search on "filipina", and found this site with a warning.

WARNING: Do not scroll down should you find photos of dancers wearing a bikini offensive. Also included are website links to help you explore the best night life in the Philippines, obtain addresses to contact penpals meant to pursue lasting elationships with friendly but often conservative Filipinas and other cultural attractions. Although this page was created with foreign male tourists in mind for any visiting females interested please FEEL FREE to ask questions about Filipino men or request adding some photos. Filipino men being very romantic often make single female tourists feel VERY SPECIAL like a PRINCESS.

http://pages.zdnet.com/AsiaBill/id14.html

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I'M NOT A MAIL ORDER BRIDE, OR WE ARE ALL M.O.B.'s

2006-02-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

Leny's article below on how she could have been a mail order bride reminds me of Moi article "'Suite Nothing' May Sound the Same But is Not the Same as 'Sweet Nothing'" at OurOwnVoice -- a meditation on Identity that I wrote using as a springboard an exhibition by the performance arts group Mail Order Brides:

M.O.B. is a performance art group comprised of Filipinas Reanne Estrada, Eliza Barrios and Jenifer Wolford. The M.O.B. specializes in dressing up and acting out often over-the-top scenes of Filipino-American life. Their performances are memorialized through photographs, installations, sculptures, film, video and performances. As a collective, M.O.B was born after its three members saw a "Frasier" television episode wherein a character referred to women from the Philippines as mail-order brides. The context implied that Filipinas are subservient or victims, a portrayal M.O.B. subverts with edgy portrayals that are often, in Estrada's words, "kick ass."

INS report on the mail-order bride industry

2006-02-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

THE "MAIL-ORDER BRIDE" INDUSTRY AND ITS IMPACT ON U.S. IMMIGRATION

by Robert J. Scholes, PhD with the assistance of Anchalee Phataralaoha, MA (last modified 1/20/06)

[some excerpts]

The Women

An analysis of the listings in recent issues of five popular catalogs featuring 1,400 Asian women found that 70 percent were Filipino (despite the fact that Republic Act No. 6955 makes such listings illegal), many of whom are "in-service" as domestic workers in other countries, 16 percent Indonesian, 8 percent Thai, 2 percent Malaysian and Japanese, and 1 percent Chinese and Korean. In terms of age, 20 percent are 16-20 years of age, 41 percent are 21-25, 24 percent are 26-30, 11 percent 31-35, and just 4 percent are over the age of 35. That is, for the Asian women, 61 percent are under the age of 25. There is a large difference in ages between these Asian women and their counterparts from the former Soviet Union. For the 1,700 Soviet women listed currently by Cherry Blossoms, just 8 percent are under 20, 23 percent between 21 and 25, 25 percent between 26 and 30, 20 percent from 31 to 35, 14 percent from 36 to 40, 7 percent aged 41 to 45, and 3 percent over 45. That is, just 31 percent are under 25 compared to the 61 percent of Asian women.

Why do foreign women want American husbands? Many sources suggest that these women are searching for a "better life" in terms of socio-economic factors--they do, for the most part, come from places in which jobs and educational opportunities for women are scarce and wages are low. However, when the women themselves are asked this question, the answer generally indicates an attraction to American men (they look like movie stars) and an aversion to native men. Americans, they say, make good husbands while Filipino (Thai/Indonesian/Russian/etc.) men do not. Americans are thought to be faithful to their wives, while the native men are cruel and run around with other women. True or not, this is the perception.

The Men

David Jedlicka (1988, cited in Glodava and Onizuka, 1994) surveyed 607 American men seeking mail-order brides and received 206 responses. He found that the men were generally white (94 percent); highly educated (50 percent with two or more years of college, 6 percent with M.D.'s or Ph.D.'s, only five did not complete high school); politically and ideologically conservative; and generally economically and professionally successful (64 percent earned more than $20,000 a year; 42 were in professional or managerial positions). Their median age was 37. The men came from 44 states, with 22 percent from California, and 84 percent lived in metropolitan areas. Fifty-seven percent had been married at least once; most had been divorced after an average of seven years of marriage, 35 percent had at least one child, and 75 percent wished to father additional children. When asked about their religious affiliations, 48 percent of the men identified themselves as Protestant, 23 percent as Catholic, 15 percent as belonging to other religions, and 14 percent as having no religious affiliation.

Why do American men want foreign wives? Most of the personal reports from American men who have married women through these agencies talk about "traditional values." That is, American women are thought not content to be wives and mothers but seek personal satisfaction through their own careers and interests, while the foreign woman is happy to be the homemaker and asks for nothing more than husband, home, and family. Again, true or not, this is the perception.

Although Jedlicka states in his conclusions that his research shows the men who choose the mail-order methods for mate selection appear ". . . above average . . . certainly in their communication skills," and "exceptional in the sense that they are trying cross-cultural marriage to improve their chances for loving and enduring relationships," he cautions that such conclusions are thin at best and such interpretations from these data are not warranted. His experience and the observations of others show that, contrary to responses in questionnaires, those who have used the mail-order bride route to find a mate have control in mind more than a loving, enduring relationship. [my emphasis]

[For those reading this who are American men looking for a Filipina bride, is this true? Is it really about control for you?]

Of the 30 mail-order bride couples Mila Glodava (Glodava and Onizuka, 1994) encountered between 1986 and 1993, only two were close in age (4 -6 years difference). In the other 28 there was a 20 to 50 year difference in age. Older men, says Glodava, often want women "they can mold" and therefore do not want those who are too educated. "They would just become like any other American woman," they said. She concludes that, "It is apparent that power and control are critical for the men."

[Why such large age differences? I guess they would make sense if it is about control....]

[Click for full version of the report here.]

I could have been a m-o-b....

2006-02-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

PAST: A loooong time ago, as a young single woman in Manila, I, too, became curious about those two-line ads in the newspaper: Wanted penpal...So I wrote to the address and soon I got a letter from someone in Dubuque, Iowa introducing himself as a college professor with a degree from Sorbonne. In the passport photo he enclosed he looked like someone in his late 50s. I remember writing him back indicating that I was only interested in friendship and not in matrimony. He wrote back and asked if I could introduce him to another girlfriend who might be willing to marry him. I laughed.

The other close encounter I had with the penpal business was when I found out that my domestic helper was corresponding with someone in Germany. How she got his letters translated, I will never know; this was shortly before she left my employ and she kept this a closely-guarded secret.

PRESENT: Now I am older and more aware of the politics of love and race. As part of my decolonization, I decided that I will not dis-identify with my Filipina sisters no matter what the differences between us might be. I am very critical of patriarchy, racial privilege, and the lack of balance of power in many penpal marriages but I am slower to render a judgment on my sisters. I was also young once and terribly misinformed and miseducated.

"Say I do" a film on mail-order brides by Arlene Ami

2006-02-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

(Please pass on far and wide. Apologies for cross-posting.)

GABRIELA NETWORK PRESENTS...
a screening of

SAY I DO
A FILM ON MAIL-ORDER BRIDES
by Arlene Ami

"…I need to find myself a nice submissive young lady who wants and needs to have me control and direct her life. I am age 52, divorced after a long marriage. There is nothing so pleasurable to me as teaching a young woman to submit fully to my wishes… If my wife does not obey me, then I am perfectly willing to punish her in whatever way I think is right..." -from a letter received by a young Filipina from a mail-order bride agency customer.

When: Thursday, 23 February 2006, 6:30PM

Where: Imaginasian Theater, 239 E. 59th Street
(btwn. 2nd & 3rd ave.), Manhattan, NYC

How Much: $10.00
(Tickets available online or at Imaginasian's box office, or by contacting GABNet at (212) 592-3507 or nynj@gabnet.org.)

While February is a month of heart-shaped chocolates and cards, GABRIELA Network--the largest and oldest US-Philippine women's organization--looks at intimate affairs and the power dynamics that ensue when love is for sale. In commemoration of the 7th anniversary of the Purple Rose Campaign Against Sex Trafficking, GABNet presents a screening of Arlene Ami's award-winning film "Say I Do," a documentary chronicling the journey of four women, from their lives in the Philippines through the mail-order bride system to their experiences as wives, mothers, and women in a foreign land. A panel discussion on sex trafficking will follow the screening.

Tickets are available online at www.theimaginasian.com or at Imaginasian's box office, or by contacting GABNet at (212) 592-3507 or nynj@gabnet.org.

Directions: F to Lexington Ave./63 St.; or 4, 5, 6, N, R, W to Lexington/59th. St; Buses include M57 - E. 57 St / Lexington Avenue, M31 - 57 St. / 2 Avenue, Q32 - 60 St. / 2 Avenue, X63 - 57 St. / Park Avenue.

.............
The Purple Rose Campaign is an international campaign against the sex trafficking of Filipino women and children.
It was launched in 1999 in New York by GABRIELA Network, a Philippine-US women's solidarity mass organization, and is now in 11 countries in Asia, North America, Europe and Australia.

For more info on "Say I Do" and filmmaker Arlene Ami: http://www.redstorm.ca/sayido/synop1.htm

GABRIELA Network
A Philippine-US Women's Solidarity Mass Organization
PO Box 403, Times Square Station
New York, New York 10036
Tel: 1212.592.3507
Email:
nynj@gabnet.org
Web: www.gabnet.org

speaking of googly

2006-02-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

* * *

happy early v-day, folks! on this day o' love, i'd like to turn your attention to this google search: filipina wife. and since i've been obsessing over global perception, i shall also turn your attention here, to my thoughts on becoming a filipina wife within a global context.

* * *

googly

2006-02-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

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been writing about this issue, but as always, am taking fooooorever. blame it on the blizzard. or valentine's day. this issue is very close to my heart cuz gay asians have also somewhat faced a similar predicament as asian women. same predators, same ethnic preys (different gender), same perceptions and stereotypes that fuel the predatorial mind. the end result is also the same--->sex trafficking and abuse. but let me not go into gayness. googling "filipina" turns my stomach. an excerpt from what i have been writing. gasp.

first, let's google the word filipina. at the gut level, many of us filipinos know what may show up. but, i think there is this strange sense of hope that it would turn out differently. the results are no surprising, but dizzying nonetheless. see here.

when i made cover of filipinas magazine, a friend of mine went to look for it in a mag store in new york city and asked a middle eastern sales clerk, "do you have filipinas magazine?" the man directed him to the end of the store, where the pornographic magazines were. and he wasn't kidding. he was, of course, your regular joe schmoe muhammad, who like his american counterparts, see filipino women as sexual commodities nary a second thought.

will try to finish this and post...

thanks for the invite/e-vite/evitaperon/dontcryformefilipinos

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Judge Judy

2006-02-13T00:55:00.000-08:00

I happned to be watching one of those small claims judge shows on tv, Judge Judy.

The plaintiff is a middle aged African American man suing his Filipina bride wife for phone expenses to the Philippines. It was revealed that they had met through a pen pal service and that they had decided to open a pen pal serivce of their own with the help of the woman's mother in the Philippines.

For whatever reason, it didn't go through and the marriage fell apart and he wanted the Filipina to pay off the thousands of dollars in long distance phone charges.

Judge Judy looks over the case. Asked the girl how old she was. I believe she said something like 19 or 20. Then Judge Judy tells the guy, "what did you expect? She's just a baby! You married a baby! You bring her here and you don't want her to speak to her mother? A baby has to be able to call her mother!" Ruling for the defendent.

on the other side

2006-02-13T00:41:00.000-08:00

[this is Michelle]

A friend of mine is tall, white, American married to a Filipina, and lives in the Philippines. If I stopped there, he'd be a typical American going to get a Filipina bride. But he wasn't. He worked and lived in the Philippines on and off for numerous years.

When they decided to get married, they had to take the government regulated marriage counseling classes. The teacher would "accommodate" him by speaking English, even though that he replied to her in Tagalog that "matagal ko dito", but she still treated him like one of those "Americans" in town to pick up his bride.

After a couple of years of marriage and living in the Philippines, they wanted to visit the US. OK no problem, she's married to a US citizen, easy to get a visa. Every time they went to the Embassy, they kept sending him to the long term visa department and he would repeatedly explain to them, "No, they are not immigrating to the US and just need a visitor's visa." It seemed that no matter what he said to them in English or Tagalog that they couldn't understand why they were not immigrating to the US, even though he told them, no, we live in the Philippines, I just want to visit my brother for a few weeks and bring my wife, and then we want to come back home to the Philippines.

It took them months of going back and forth to the embassy until finally they met the guy in charge of the visitor's visas and he managed to push their paperwork through for a visitor's visa.

There are "systems" in place on both sides of the ocean that filters everyone who fits the mold into the equation of wife buying.

introduction and some song lyrics

2006-02-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

hi all, this is barbara jane, and i thought i'd introduce myself by sharing some lyrics to this song:

"My Filipino Baby"
by Charles K. Harris
circa 1900

When the warships left Manila
Sailing proudly o'er the sea,
All the sailors’ hearts were filled with fond regret.
Looking backward to this island,
Where they spent such happy hours
Making love to every pretty girl they met.
When up stepped a little sailor with his bright eyes all aglow
Sayin', "Take a look at my gal's photograph."
Then the sailors gathered round him just to look upon her face,
Her smiling face.
And he said, "I love my Filipino Baby."
She's my Filipino baby,
She's my treasure and my pet.
Her teeth are bright and pearly
And her hair is black as jet.
Oh, her lips are sweet as honey
And her heart is true I know.
She's my darlin' little Filipino Baby.
In a little rustic cottage in the far off Philippines,
Dwells a pretty little maiden all alone.
She is thinking of her true love, though he's far across the sea,
And her heart beats true for him and him alone.
Then one day he whispered,
"Darlin' I've come back from Caroline
I've come back to claim the only girl I love."
Then that night there was a wedding while the ship's crew gathered 'round.
And he wed his little Filipino Baby.

Our Weekly Award Goes To...

2006-02-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

Jason, of Jason's Beach Resort gets my bid for this week's Pen Pal Award. Jason has done a lot to further truthful communications between Filipinas and American men. For one thing, he reveals that Pen Pal marriages don't always work out! In fact, it turns out that his ex-wife is an "offspring of Satan"! Now that's hard to believe; we know that most Filipinas are beautiful, home-loving, loyal women, right? But Jason found out that Filipino women don't always stay in love with their foreign husbands. And then she pretty much reamed out his bank account. Why would she do that? He's American, for Godssake! Could Filipinas have other reasons for getting married, besides love? What might those reasons be?

~~let's think about that~~

How about poverty? Well, Jason thinks she might've been "mentally ill," or "hanging out with the wrong crowd." No problem, though; he managed to get a divorce (well, a pre-divorce, as it were) and sent "Imelda" packing. Now he can get back to watching football.

The fact that Jason is as blue as a democrat can be, that he is highly critical of America's invasion of Iraq and the Bush Administration in general just goes to show that the PenPal phenomenon crosses political, as well as geographical lines. So what's it all about, Alfie? Why is Jason planning to return to the Philippines?

Welcome!

2006-02-12T21:11:00.000-08:00

Welcome to your Filipina Pen Pal! This is a collaborative blog, written by Gladys, Barbara Jane, Jean and Leny, with more contributors to come. Visit us often to find out more about Filipino women... Learn about our culture, hobbies, food, family life, our likes and dislikes. We hope that this blog will help you decide whether or not you want to get together with that special someone from the Philippines...