Liberation
Posted by: Fats in: Wika at HirapAccording to data obtained by Inquirer.net from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, more Filipinos, especially women, have married foreigners in the last three years. (See news article)
Last year, 24,904 Filipinos married foreigners, up 18 percent from the previous year’s 21,100. The 2005 figure is an 11.4 percent increase from the 2004 figure of 18,933.
I suppose this is data taken of Filipinos marrying foreign nationals with the intent of settling overseas, since figures were taken from those who were applying for fiance and spouse passports. They were also required to undergo counseling.
Surely, there are more inter-cultural marriages and partnerships now. I remember a few friends whose relationships were initiated through working overseas (as well as foreign workers coming into the Philippines), through the slow pace of postal penpals, and recently, the speedier Internet (whether e-mail, chat, web forums or other).
I am the result of an inter-cultural marriage, actually, since my father is Bicolano and my mother is Iolcano. Apart from speaking obviously different languages, they have distinctly different cultural traits. From their respective regions, Manila became the central melting pot, providing the opportunity for my parents’ common pursuit of education.
My brother and sister are also in inter-cultural relationships: my sister married a man from Batangas (they met at work) and my brother married a woman from Romblon (they met at school). 
In these cases, Manila also was the central melting pot.
Among my paternal and maternal first degree cousins, there are at least two who have married foreign nationals - Canadian and Arab, if I am not mistaken. Both are the result of the pursuit of better paying employment outside the Philippines (Canada and the Middle East). One, however, is marriage with a Filipino-American, with rather different circumstance: not really because of overseas employment but because of plain old fashioned love. After over 10 years in the US, they now also intend to return to the Philippines with their two kids and re-settle here.
As for myself, it is quite true that I am one of those new batch of people finding their partners through the Internet. It can sound horribly disgusting especially with all the Internet scams. When I applied for a visitor visa at the Dutch Embassy in Manila with my partner’s letter stating support of my stay in Holland, the visa officer asked where I met this person. I replied “Switzerland.”
Of course, that was true. Although at that moment I grappled between “meeting” in the physical or virtual sense. I could’ve said “Internet” which came first before Switzerland.
However, my partner and I first got acquainted not through a social Internet service but rather through an email argument about virtual reality and language (although of course, one can also call that a “social Internet service” - or more accurately, an “anti-social Internet service”). 
Here in Quezon City, it is obvious that more Filipinos are marrying foreigners; a visit to the mall or supermarket we often encounter at least one couple, usually a Filipina with a caucasian husband. Talking with the sales ladies at the mall I often get questions like, “where did you get that man?” and “can you ask him to bring someone for me too?”
The primary motivation for relationships are obviously economics. Why marry a man who’s as poor as a rat as you are? Of course, for ages, marriage has often been an economic union and a business contract not only between partners but between families, clans, villages, kingdoms and nations. But if one has reasonable comfort in life and no pressure from family or clan, then there is at least more freedom to marry for love and other such stupid reasons.
Just last night, a friend sent an email joke (see below) about “The Liberated Pinay at a Women’s Lib International Conference.” The punchline was, among the English and Russian wives, it was the Filipina wife who gets beaten up by her husband when she insists on being liberated. I told my friend, this must be the reason why I ‘married’ an Englishman - the wonderful roast lamb!
Of course domestic violence is a problem that cuts across nationalities, cultures, economic status. Fortunately, my father was a real gentleman and so is my partner (and yes, makes wonderful roast lamb . However, very few people seem to talk about husbands who are being beaten up by their wives, and a few also talk about domestic violence as more complex than simply the wife as victim of the violence.
The only domestic violence that I know of personally are three cases, one of the typical case of the wife being beaten up by the husband and the other two of the husbands being beaten up by their wives. In the latter case, the husband was being beaten up by the wife AND their teenage daughter. In both cases, the husbands were unemployed, had a drinking and or drug/gambling problem; in one case the family was supported by the woman’s parents and in the other case, the family breadwinner was the wife.
Evidently, support must be given to both the husband and the wife within any form of domestic violence. I wish that could be done with the Ruffa and Yilmaz issue, which is a celebrity inter-cultural/inter-religious relationship, and is very very public - and the public deserves deeper discussion of the complex issues rather than simple lurid gossip, especially as the Filipino public become sees more inter-marriages as a reality rather than a celebrity fantasy.
Anyway, the joke below must have some unfortunate truth in it (as all jokes often do). When a female friend came to our apartment and saw my partner washing the dishes, she asked me in disbelief, “you could make him do that?”
Of course I did not “make him do that”, it just seemed the natural thing to do as a couple (which was why I was quite surprised by my friend’s question just as she was surprised to see my partner doing the dishes) - to share in all the responsbilities at home.
I don’t know if this is partly why I have a foreign partner: because there is no Filipino male (around me at least) who could instinctively respond to what I felt was “natural.” (Perhaps same sex partnerships within the heterosexual norm can relate to what I mean by this). Surely my partner and I had very difficult times where we both transgressed each other emotionally and intellectually, a very complex problem now hopefully transcended, but we never crossed the line of violence. I have grown to not need or want a lot of things - material and emotional - and a violent relationship is one of them. As more Filipinos marry foreigners, I hope that the differences inherent in such unions provide the opportunity to openly discuss rather than reinforce the taboos glossed over by the calls for “liberation.”
The Liberated Pinay
Women’s Lib International ConferenceThe first speaker, a lady from England stood up and said, “During last year’s conference, we spoke about being more assertive with our husbands.
Well, after the conference, I went home and told my husband, Barrington, that I would no longer cook for him and that he would have to do it himself.
After the first day, I saw nothing. The second day, I saw nothing, but on the third day, I saw that he had cooked a wonderful roast Lamb.” (The crowd cheered).
The second speaker from Russia, stood up and said,”After last year’s conference, I went home and told my husband, Ivan, that I would no longer do his laundry and that he would have to do it himself. The first day, I saw nothing. After the second day, I saw nothing, but on the third day, I saw that he had done not only his own washing, but mine as well.
(The crowd again cheered).
The third speaker, a Filipino lady from Visayas, stood up and said, “Aftir lass year’s kampirince, I win hum(went home) and tuld dat lazy husband op mines, Pidro, dat I was tro getting his slippers, kuking his meals ol da tyme, washing his undirwir and dat he was guing to hab to do dem himsilf.”
(The crowd went wild with cheering and clapping that lasted for five long minutes).
She continued,”Aftir da first day, I see nating. Aftir da secun day, agin I see nating, but aftir da tird day, I could see a little bit out of my lif eye.”
