Still, accidents

“Collision,” “banggaan”—use those terms rather than “accidents.” I wrote about that campaign some time back, an effort to educate the public that there are no real accidents on the road. The injuries and deaths from vehicle collisions come from someone’s neglect—the driver, a pedestrian, a government that doesn’t care enough about road safety.

I thought again about another group of “accidents” during a recent symposium with clinical psychologist Margarita Gosingco-Holmes, whose famous (or notorious) book “Life, Love, Lust” was first published in 1990, with Anvil issuing a 25th-anniversary edition last year.

Margy’s book was loved and reviled, praised and condemned, as were the others succeeded it—for example, “Passion, Power, Pleasure.” The books, which are Anvil Publishing’s best-sellers, are compilations of Margy’s newspaper columns, providing “straightforward answers to provocative questions” on sex and sexuality, the columns themselves generating heat even before they were compiled.

Margy had a running battle with many conservatives who fretted about young people having sex of any kind, and about older people having “wrong” sex, mainly same-sex sex and, well, sex in positions other than the “missionary,” and in the dark.

Her responses, naughty and witty and sometimes laced with some indignation, were not so much “how to” as “why not?” An entire generation has grown up on her advice, often homegrown, but always supported by research.

Thinking back

The auditorium was jam-packed with University of the Philippines students and faculty who came to listen to Margy and her husband and fellow columnist Jeremy Baer. I was there to deliver a short welcome message but got roped to sit with Margy and Jeremy to take some questions.

The request for “short time only” (oops!) ended up in some 45 minutes before I begged off because I had to catch a (much) tamer class on anthropological theory.

As “LLL” goes (if you know what the Tagalog “el” means, the title becomes even more provocative), there was not an unlively moment during the symposium. I found myself almost frantically switching my hats—as the anthropologist curious about our sexual culture, as the professor who taught “Sex and Culture,” as Margy and Jeremy’s friend, and as a university administrator, wondering about where our students were today when it came to sexuality.

As the symposium unfolded I would think back about those 25 years since Margy’s book was published. I remember students from my “Sex and Culture” class telling me that they had signed up for the course “secretly,” worried that their parents would disapprove. Some wondered about the consequences of the course appearing in their transcripts, and I’d answer: “That’s why you have to make sure you get a ‘1’ (UP’s highest grade) in the course.”

Margy had actually taught part-time at UP’s psychology department, and when my anthropology department decided to come up with a new general education course with a less exotic title, “Exploring Gender and Sexuality,” Margy agreed to come and teach it, too.

In the first semester the course was taught, it invited attacks, including an angry letter published by the Inquirer saying such courses had no place in UP. The letter-writer also claimed that porn stars were being invited to lecture. I called Margy to tease her: “Could that have been you?”

Bolder

“Exploring Gender and Sexuality” and “Sex and Culture” are still being taught at UP, mainly by much younger faculty. From time to time, I’d check with them, asking how the students are.

I’m told students get “bolder” each year with their questions, and with their self-assertiveness. They talk openly about their relationships, mainly in relation to their families, especially the tensions and apprehensions. They refer as well to Margy and her books, and it’s good to hear that while in 1990, they would have bought the books secretly and hidden it under their beds, these days they simply pick up the copies that their parents bought, and which are lying around the house.

Times change, for the better. As I keep telling parents, I’d prefer having our children bring home their boyfriends or girlfriends so we can meet them and do a bit of “interrogation,” rather than having them dating secretly.

I am also happy that more families are open enough so that a son or daughter growing up gay feels comfortable to talk with their parents about their sexual orientation, rather than repress it. As a university administrator, I’ve seen too many bright gay students who flounder in school because they can’t come out to their parents. The problems are even more difficult with transgender students, those who feel they were born into the wrong sex.

The harsh reality is that Filipinos, young and old, are still pretty much in the dark. Gideon Lasco, a physician who is also my student and a regular contributor to Inquirer Opinion, maintains a website (kalusugan.ph) where he is bombarded with questions about the most basic issues in sex and sexuality, mainly from overseas Filipinos.

It shouldn’t be surprising then that we still have hundreds, thousands, of sexual “accidents” out there: unplanned pregnancies in and out of marriage, or sexually transmitted infections. Again, if I might cite my experiences as a university administrator, I’ve had so many letters from students requesting to delay their tuition payment, or to go on leave, sacrificing their own schooling so they can work to put younger siblings through school. One letter I have never forgotten came from a student explaining why she couldn’t pay her tuition: “My mother just had another baby. She is 42, and we are now six.”

So, Margy and Jeremy, we need to work on this as well: Explain to people that there need not be accidents.   There are reasons for the accidents: Yes, sometimes because of recklessness and irresponsibility, sometimes because of ignorance, and most often, all things said, because of society’s equating prudishness with virtue.

Next time you see hordes of malnourished children running around in an urban poor area, don’t blame the poor’s “L” and think instead of slashed government budgets for family planning. Next time you hear of friends dying of HIV, don’t ask why they didn’t avail themselves of the government’s free testing, and medicines. You’ll find out they were ashamed to go and get the medicines because of the stigma. I actually met a heterosexual man with HIV/AIDS who worried that people would think he was gay if he did go and register for the medicines. Literally, these are people choosing to die rather than live with the stigma and shame that come with sex-related discrimination.

If we seem so concerned about the big L, it is because it is so embedded in love, and life.

* * *

mtan@inquirer.com.ph