Nicole and U.S. Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, Corazon Aquino and Coup Plotter Rex Robles; and Eco-feminism

I am instinctively wary of the feminists of my country.

A Filipina named Nicole (she will fade fast in history by such nameless designation) was vilified as having betrayed the cause of feminists by recanting on her testimony in a successfully prosecuted rape case on appeal setting free the American serviceman Daniel Smith; found guilty of date raping her.  She never set herself up as a hero, only the local feminists did.  And if they did, then they only have themselves to blame.

And then there was this woman named Cory who was consumed by love of country and then by cancer in whose funeral procession was celebrated  as hero and saint with such an outpouring of love and gratitude by the same teeming masses of her countrymen that came out to defend her as icon of their lost democracy.  Like Nicole, on no occasion did she ever set herself up as a hero either. Although she defended herself from lies in a libel case against those who mocked her femininity by accusing her of hiding under her bed at coup d’etat.  One of the coup plotters, Col. Rex Robles of the Rebolusyonaryong Alyansang Makabayan or the rightist military RAM, wept without shame before world TV at her passing declaring that she eventually taught even him and the RAM a lesson..only more violence would be wrought by a violent ascent to power.  In the coming 2010 elections, imprisoned Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and Senator Antonio Trillanes IV will be heading a campaign and they are currently registering members of the MAGDALO party. Unlike Nicole, Corazon Aquino’s place in history is secure.

Ironically and by all accounts, she perceived herself no more than a housewife in charge of a big brood of children while her husband suffered political persecution and detention.  Called to the halls of power after Ninoy Aquino’s assassination (like JFK, it remains unsolved), she realistically saw herself as a creature of convergent circumstances upon whom greatness was thrust at a crucial crossroads in the struggle against a dictator.  She was equal to the task only because she clung to her faith and believed this was her calling– to serve.  The convergence of faith, hers and the Filipino masses’, with the extremely volatile political circumstance of that time resulted in the miracle that was the bloodless revolution.

In her funeral wake, the son and daughters of the dictator came to pay their respects and were received by Cory’s children without rancor. I imagine that instruments of a miracle behave in just such a fashion, that is .. after the evil of the dictatorship itself has been overcome the men and women caught in its web are just as easily welcomed back to the fold of community to hopefully learn the true meaning of power.

Women are, above all, human.  Each will rise or fall in the occasions that present themselves as challenges to their humanity.  What properly gives them cause to rally behind a movement of feminism is the male dominance that has repressed femininity through the ages as a natural repository of the “unscientific/intuitive”; “emotional/compassionate”; the “untamed/natural” as opposed to the “cultivated/industrial/rational/scientific” etc. etc.

In Eco-feminism, however, I find balance and the more rational perspective.

Betty Roszak, in an article “Spirit of the Goddess” found in the Compilation Book “Ecopsychology” (Sierra Book Club, 1995) wrote:

Until every man accepts and expresses what has been called “the feminine” in his nature, and every woman is allowed to express what has been called “the masculine” in hers, we must be wary of setting ourselves apart as women in some new version of the noble savage, who bears all wisdom and will redress the wrongs and injustices of the world.

In the Philippines the line between masculine and feminine are not drawn as opposing lines.  Here it is a thin socially defined line.  If a man is effeminate this is socially acceptable unless he is a sexual degenerate and commits perversions which behavior the Catholic Church, in any case, condemns both in men and women alike.  If a woman excels, therefore, she is as easily lauded as a her male counterpart.

Here, the “takusa” short for “takot sa asawa” literally “afraid of wife”, is not only a good thing; it’s a social virtue.  The Civil Code recognizes the husband as the legal administrator of the conjugal partnership of gains but in most households, the wife controls the purse by tradition and by natural inclination.

Among the mountain tribes/indigenous peoples a man marries and migrates to the tribe of the woman.  Genealogies are traced along matriarchal and ancestral land origins lines. In short, matriarchy was and continues to be rampant in the Islands. Leadership, by tradition, is also thrust upon a person by acclamation of his clan or tribe.   It is never sought and all efforts at actively seeking power are socially repressed as vainglory.

Roszak’s astute goal definition for Eco-feminism therefore is highly endorsed here:

What we seek is wholeness and the creation of a new kind of knowing that cultivates rationality, self-confidence, intellect and power alongside nurturing, healing, compassionate, intuitive components of personality. Both ecofeminism and ecopsychology want to break free of the bonds of patriarchal inheritance, to become grounded in a new reality, aware of the sacred nature of each person and each being on Earth.  There is no Goddess in the sky; we are all the Goddess.  Our saints and heroines are not dead; they live within us and, like the phoenix, are renewed each day.

(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corazon_Aquino_1986.jpg. Photo in public domain.)

I look at this picture and I see the woman who let go of all fear to let in great faith and compassion. It doesn’t make me feel proud I’m a woman. Rather, it makes me hopeful that women and men might re-discover their boundless humanity to set the standards necessary to walking the corridors of power in this beautiful country.

When people began to pray novenas for her recovery I thought … “you ask too much of the woman” and I envied her for the joy she must’ve found at the end of her most illuminating and I dare say, illuminated life.