prepares his press releases and manages his public relations network…writes for him speeches which win him discerning praise from the international community…amazes him with her sharp analyses of the refugee situation in Rwanda, the Middle East peace talks, the Balkan War…and pulls out facts and figures from her head as easily as a magician manages tricks from his hat. [Ibid.]

Their professional relationship makes MDB conclude that—

We’re linked. There is a highway if you will, from me to you. Something deeper, a oneness in spirit. Don’t you feel it? When we work, when we talk, when we long for a moment or two together. To touch…[and eventually] to…make love. [Ibid.]

Karen gives in to MDB’s advances, knowing fully well in herself that she has played a part in making such mental, physical, and eventually, sexual meeting with her boss possible—what with her sly gestures, her knowing smile and her choice of words (‘Anything else, sir?’), even evident in their recent conversation prior to this particular meeting where she suggested to her boss: “‘Think of yourself too, sir…Find [the time. If not…] I will be a thief…I will steal a moment or two from you…And then give it back…as a gift,’ as she blushes and turns away [Ibid.].”

Still, “his kiss, when it came, surprised her, […a] kiss that sums up and at the same time whisks away all her hours of restraint from the day they first met [Ibid.].” After putting up the mantra of being ‘a woman in command’, Karen “is immobilized and helpless all over again […], pinching herself the way her aunts had done long ago (to make her knees to jerk together into a prim and proper poise) in a futile effort to wake up from the stupor of this folly now invading her life [Ibid.],” knowing fully well that MDB has a wife, a reputation, and so many things in MDB’s career as well as his future projects for her to solve—surely more important factors to consider than having an affair. As they made love on a Friday evening, Karen feels trapped and “stranded in his embrace [Ibid.]”, and she realizes, in her confusion, that it would be best to leave everything behind. This she does by leaving for Humayun’s Tomb, found in the “very heart of old Delhi…her refuge…the only relief from the overwhelming presence of a man who inhabits her heart and mind [Ibid.].” There, MDB finds her, remembering how she once suggested to him to visit the ancient place “which lies in absolute stillness [Ibid.]” for him to find solace. MDB felt he needed to rescue Karen who “is probably running scared and unsure [Ibid.]” hearing no word from her, no answers to his calls. However, Karen turns down his help and instead, hands over to him the fixed budget report and a letter of resignation—as she tells him, “You have abused your position, sir. You have taken unscrupulous means to get your way…You have occupied my heart and used my love to bend me to your will. And yet, I will always love you [Ibid.].” He reads her letter and as he looked up after finishing it, Karen is already gone and he is left alone at the tomb of Humayun. Both the image of MDB and Humayun are reduced to being “the greatest of all conquerors, the proudest of them all…vanquished to his knees, his face to the soil, kissing the shadows of his subjugator [Ibid.].”

Aside from OOV which gives focus to the Filipino in the diaspora, another site that allows for a variety of images of the ‘Filipina’ to be showcased online through literature is the newly opened panitikan.com.ph website, a “Philippine Literature Portal” managed by the UP Institute of Creative Writing and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts which aims “to disseminate Philippine literature online by providing a database of author’s profiles and their works.” The site provides a number of literary works such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s literature, and even criticism and folk literature for more established writers in the Philippine literary scene. Under its fiction category, Gabriella Lee’s short story, “Tabula Rasa”, explores the complications of a relationship, and consequently, of life. The story talks of the intimate link between Sophie and Lawrence, and it starts with a “memory she received from him (Lee)” of drowning when he was just five—how there was “the sudden absence of sound, that shift from noise to silence, and the water that quickly filled up the spaces in his ear […and suddenly], there was light and color and noise and how he was crying noisily and gulping down air like an elixir [Ibid.].” As the story unfolds, more of Lawrence’s memories are transferred to Sophie’s mind as she realizes how much power she has over his body. Soon, “she found him cloying like too much chocolate syrup over her ice cream [Ibid.],” as he tries to conquer not only “her body, her glorious shape and skin and color [Ibid.]” but also her life, with his—

daily text messages asking her where she was…and then came the requests delivered in a quiet voice: no more late-night parties, no more dinner meetings with clients, no more movie dates with Harold, her gay best friend…She hated the cage he was putting around her, these slow erection of bars around her life, slowly but surely, putting her in the center of his life. She wanted to get angry at him, but as soon as his lips touched hers…

She didn’t know how to make it stop. [Ibid.]

As more events flashed through the couple’s lives, memories of Lawrence keep getting etched on Sophie’s mind while Lawrence continues to forget his past. Patrick, his best friend, also notes how “something’s changed…there’s something that’s not quite right with him. It’s like he’s fading away [Ibid.].” True enough, after a night of lovemaking with Lawrence where “she shuddered as he came inside her with the force of a tidal wave [Ibid.]”—“when Sophie woke up, she was alone on the bed….She only had a vague memory of drowning, of the waters closing over her head, […and] thought that it was just a memory from childhood and quietly dismissed it [Ibid.].”

The story ends with Sophie, alone and with a memory devoid of Lawrence but with only a hint of “what drowning feels like [Ibid.]”—with only a feeling of being washed out by a big wave, an intricate feeling of loss not only with regard to love, but in life as well; but it is only dismissed by Sophie as some long forgotten childhood memory and of no concrete impact on her present life—as if she has started over her life with a clean slate.

Both short stories—Edessa Ramos’ “In The Manner of True Conquerors” from OOV and Gabriella Lee’s “Tabula Rasa” from panitikan.com.ph, depict the overpowering sexual desires of the men over the women, a far cry from the earlier two short stories which revolve around the traditional images of the Filipino mother. In these stories, the most important men—both MDB and Lawrence have taken over the passions of both their women, Karen and Sophie, leaving them powerless for “as soon as skin touched bare skin, there was that foreknowledge that there was no going back [Ibid.].” However, despite this psychological entrapment, by the end of the story both women do overcome the men’s power by having the will to be aware of their situation. In Karen’s case, she kept her mantra ‘woman in command’ by accepting the fact that she too plays a part in the game MDB is playing with her, thus, making it possible for her to cut her ties with him and leave him behind her shadows. Sophie, on the other hand, despite Lawrence’s surreal absence, has managed to continue her life, clear out every memory of him and begin anew with a clean slate as if nothing has happened between them.

These two short stories present another dimension of the Filipina, veering away from the more traditional images of a comforting and loving motherly woman. Although Karen and Sophie remain loving, the two woman protagonists portray these in a more sensual level, extending love to lust and back again. The two short stories also give them the capability not only to love other people—more specifically the men in their lives, but also to love their own selves more than anybody else. Karen does this by being in total control and by calculating her moves; Sophie on the other hand simply goes with the flow, letting herself be washed out by the waves, and knowing that she would somehow be saved and be able to breathe air once again.

I cried then because I did not want to miss the porridge with the grated coconut meat that she always served for breakfast. I wanted to spend all my evenings laying with her in a hammock, which gently swung as my head rested on her arm, as I smelled the perfume in her chest, as she sung,

‘Dandansuy, I will leave you behind,

I will go home to the Island Payao,

And if you should come to miss me,

Just cast a glance to the Island Payao.’” (Terasaka)

As the granddaughter summons her courage to fight back the tears as she leaves her aging grandmother behind, she recalls the images of her loving grandmother that remains strongest in her memories. Her Nanay, whose “arms used to be round and fat…who in land purifying rituals sat alone in the middle of the ricefield and beat demons and bad spirits away from the land was also the matriarch who had the power to stop [her] father’s punishing belt from hitting [her] hips (Ibid.).” One of the most striking recollections provided by the narrator in the story is when her “Grandma paused and slipped money into my jeans’s backpocket, as she always did everytime I left home as a student (Ibid.)”—a gesture which her Nanay has not forgotten for as the narrator gets ready to leave for Japan, her grandma once again slips money into her pocket which made her joke by saying “I don’t need your money anymore, Nanay, I’m earning millions! Of yen (Ibid.)” and made her even suggest of buying her grandma a perfume in Manila. However, her grandma replies by telling her instead “to buy a present for your husband in Tokyo (Ibid.).”

As the granddaughter, already inside the car and ready to leave, reaches out and draws her Nanay’s hand to her forehead to pay respect, her grandma gives her well-loved grandchild her blessings as she “makes the sign of the cross in front of me and whispered, ‘Go with God’ (Ibid.)”—unknown but not impervious to both that it would be the last time.

In Nadine L. Sarreal’s “Laurel”, a mother and daughter cruise along America’s grocery aisles in search for a pack of laurel – a part of what “adobo needs [to have] a special blend of spices in the right proportions.” Tina’s mother is in search for laurel leaves because it’s Tina’s grandmother’s 80^th birthday celebration where they would be serving the most loved Filipino dish of adobo. Her mom, who has “DA BES!” adobo, has “been planning the event for months now [and] she has invited practically the whole Irving Filipino community (Sarreal)” for the sake of Tina’s grandma who gets homesick. However, their frantic search in American groceries has led them in finding “allspice, basil, bay leaves, curry… (Ibid.)” and other spices they don’t have a need for so at past ten, they “head home with two sacks of groceries but [still] no laurel.”

Tina’s mom badly wants to please her mother during her 80^th birthday by exposing her to a Filipino atmosphere for the old woman has been having a hard and uncomfortable time still in adjusting to the American way of life for she has spent most of her life in the Philippines. The young Tina who has easily adapted to America—obvious in her speech and her way of thinking, notices how her lola—

sitting in her velour robe with an afghan spread over her legs…in the middle of an unusually hot April [is] always cold, always, and to see her wardrobe of sweaters, shawls and fluffy slippers, you’d think she lived in Alaska. (Ibid.)

Tina also notices how her lola isn’t the only one having a hard time. She wishes that her mother, a single parent, “would do fun things sometimes [for…] she’s on a treadmill—work, home, work, home (Ibid.)” as she shuffles from working at the clinic on weekdays and at a clothes store on weekends to working in their laundry room and doing most of the house work for the rest of her time. These images, both of her grandmother and her mother, are contrasted with her own in the story. During her grandmother’s 80^th birthday part, a Filipino guest shared a joke with Tina only to get disappointed, giving Tina a short sermon as he said—“Anak, you’re becoming too American to appreciate Pinoy humor (Ibid.).”

At the end of the party, all three women—Tina, her mother and grandmother, were all too tired from the day’s work. Tina kept worrying about their guests’ “scrutinizing eyes and shaking heads (Ibid.)” for on their way home, she assumes, that they would say to each other that Tina is indeed becoming too American for her own good. On the other hand, Tina’s grandmother who “fell asleep in the middle of the noise and mad shuffle (Ibid.)” at her party was being haunted by the sad memories of her past in the middle of the night. Tina comes to her bedside and tries to comfort her as the old woman relives in her mind the last time she saw her husband Ramon, who was taken by the Japanese during their Philippine occupation. Tina’s lola laments how “I never saw him again. Not even once. What did they do with his body? (Ibid.)”, and soon afterwards, she falls asleep once again. Tina’s mom also awakened to check her mother and seeing Tina, also laments—“Poor Mamang. The party must have tired her (Ibid.).” She shares to Tina how she is still bothered by her adobo for, as she recounts to Tina, one of their guests told her that—

everything, the food, was pretty good. Except the adobo…[it] lacked fragrance. Walang bango. She asked why I didn’t use laurel. Laurel. I just stared at her because we looked so hard for that laurel and I thought maybe no one would notice we didn’t have any. But she said, laurel, laurel, you know, what they call bay leaves here. (Ibid.)

Both mother and daughter felt sad upon hearing this for they did encountered bay leaves at every grocery store they have visited. The mother and daughter “sit side by side on the top stair, gazing down the well of darkness […], Tina’s mom slips an arm around her waist and gathers her in a quick tight hug (Ibid.)” as she reassures her “Next time. Next time. We’ll get used to this life yet (Ibid.).” For Tina—“tonight nothing feels impossible and I know each of us, Mom, Lola and I has to get through this new life one day at a time (Ibid.).”

Both Ivy Teresaka’s “The Last Time I Saw Nanay” and Nadine L. Sarreal’s “Laurel” revolve around two to three generations of women, exploring their relationships from various points by comparing and contrasting not only the characters (grandmother-granddaughter, mother-daughter), but also their interrelationships (granddaughter/daughter—mother/daughter—grandmother/mother) showing more aspects of their personalities and, thus, giving more dimensions to the ‘Filipina’ for the reader to work on as these stories present the traditional motherly nature of the Filipina along with the effects of more modern situations such as leaving the homeland, working and migrating abroad, and the problems that come with it.

In Our Own Voice Literary E-zine which aims “to provide a home space for creative expressions of Filipinos in the diaspora” (Our Own Voice), Filipinos all over the world are given the opportunity to be heard through their written works such as short stories, poems, essays and even plays. Moreover, the e-zine which accepts and publishes contributions regularly is able to showcase various perspectives of the Filipina coming from different points of the world, putting into productive use the liberty provided by the open-ended space found in the Internet.

With this process of selling contact information, the woman’s address becomes a commodity which is worth around $5 or more over the internet, and through online advertising and circulation it becomes available to men who probably would have no chances of making contact with her otherwise. This is where the problem sets in. Although what is being directly sold is the Filipina’s mailing address or contact information, the ideal end goal set by such online dating services, as seen in the testimonials of the webmasters who have found wives through online means, is the marriage of their able male consumer and the passive Filipina subject. With this in mind, the Filipina therefore becomes commodified for what is exactly aimed is not the service that the contact information will provide, which is communication, but what the Filipina herself has to offer. The reason for this situation can be rooted to her being “born into certain situations of impossibility [which] limits the range of one’s potential aspirations and one’s life possibilities (Rivkin and Ryan).”

In a Malaya news article dated September 10, 2005, it was estimated that around “50,000 to 100,000 Filipinas have signed up for matchmaking sites, seeking romance and more importantly, a ticket out of poverty… Based on a survey of different sites, about 70 percent of women listed in Southeast Asia were Filipinas, making [the Philippines] one of the world’s hotspots for mail-order brides along Eastern Europe and Russia (Reuters).” In a more recent news article in Journal Online dated February 13, 2006, Catanduanes Representative Joseph Santiago cited that last year―

illicit cybersex promoters may have lured over 200,000 Filipinos — women, men and possibly even children — to the trade based on the registry of a popular web site, www.adultfriendfinder.com that peddle sexual activities over the Internet (Journal Group).

In the same article, Santiago was said to have recently exposed seven websites which are being used by Philippine-based promoters to encourage Filipinos to earn fast money by holding live sex video chats over the Internet with mostly US and Japan-based customers. Such online scam easily lures Filipinos for “each [cyber]model usually generates an average of $1,000 to $2,000 a month, 60 or 70 percent of which go to the managers (Journal Group)” by entertaining customers which might possibly involve, if the clients requires it, undressing and performing lewd acts in front of the cybercamera. Meanwhile, statistics coming from top “Filipina” Internet dating sites also reflect how many Filipinas try their luck online to escape poverty. In “Melinda’s Filipina Personals”, there were 78 new Filipina profiles and 64 in “Filipina Eyes” for the months of January and February, while in “Filipina Penpal”, there were 13 new ones from January 16 to February 4.

Although operators of Internet dating sites claim that “they are providing a harmless match-making service (Malaya),” such claim is undoubtedly not supported by their services and its effects. News such as trafficking, exploitation, marital abuse and deaths which even lead to the creation of the IMBRA Law debunk this generalization. Furthermore, it has attracted illegal activities―in the Philippines alone, “for the past two years, authorities have busted dozens of so-called cybersex dens in Angeles City, Baguio City, Zambales, La Union, Manila, Las Piñas City, Quezon City, and Davao City (Journal Group).”

On the personal scale, it has led the Filipina to become blinded by a promise of a rich life – or at the least, something better than what she already has. By advertising her contact information, she has commodified her addresses and numbers with her very own human life attached to it. Why does she allow herself and the dating sites to sell this? In order to live a life which she deems more independent, and certainly less impoverished. Unknowingly or rather, subconsciously, she “learns to think and act as if she was perfectly free, while simultaneously and unconsciously acceding to all sorts of regimens that betoken her obedience and submission…The magic of her ideology makes her do things that may be against her interests, and she does them as if they were entirely self-willed (Rivkin 238).”

conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second [whereas] traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. Google uses PageRank™ to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant and reliable results first (Google).

This means that it all goes back to the website’s content which can be easily manipulated by its webmaster through keywords found in the body and effective off-site linkages. “Filipina Eyes” , another top Yahoo! site on the keyword ‘Filipina’ has pages dedicated to improving website content such as their affiliate program and information regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which help boost the site’s popularity in search engines. Affiliate programs are very much put to use not just by dating sites. Websites provide a page, sometimes even more than a page, containing links to other internet dating sites and related webpages which in turn link to them as well. By swapping links and by getting more exposure, the number of points (links) and clicks (hits) leading to the website grows and thus, gives the site better chances at ranking higher on search engines.

Since Internet dating sites have grown into a large number, running such a site has become very competitive and has a need for high maintenance if it aims to top the search engine lists and consequently, attract more members and gain more profit. Being aware of this, the “Filipina Eyes” webmaster, who uses the keyword “Filipina lady” for his site which is part of the top results for both Yahoo! and Google, explains that―

[i]f you are going to compete in the search engine world, you have to have a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I spend as much, if not more time with SEO work then designing and maintaining my site. It is an ongoing process that never ends (Filipina Eyes).

For other webmasters or web owners who are not familiar with SEO or who do not have the time to manipulate their website’s architecture, there are commercial SEO services easily available online. For a commercial business like Internet dating sites, SEO has become a very important factor and it is the same tool they have been using to promote their site and to reach the top status at the most widely used search engines which they currently have.

Due to these reasons, it is no wonder that particularly programmed Internet dating sites top the search engine results using keywords such as “Filipina”, “Filipina ladies” and “Filipina wives” and in turn, attract a large following of men who seek their future wives through the Internet. According to Gary Clark, author of “Your Bride Is In The Mail”, Filipinas are more popular than women from other countries and have the advantage specifically because “most [if not all] of the women seeking husbands in the international bride market have to do so using a language other than their own [which is English, and] …for this reason alone, most of the poorly educated women in the world are unable to play the game (Clark).” Since―

English is a required subject in Philippine schools beginning at a very early age, [t]his gives Filipinos, even the very poor ones at the bottom of the social ladder, the ability to participate in the process necessary to pursue a husband via letter writing. This is not true of other countries (Clark).

The site offers various kinds of membership for its male subscribers. What is currently noticeable is the alert on top of the pages regarding the International Marriage Broker Law (IMBRA Law) which will take effect by March 06, 2006. The IMBRA Law, “part of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization of 2005,” was passed to provide stricter laws regarding the acquisition of fiancée and/or spousal visa and to—

require the U.S. gentleman who wishes to meet his future fiancee or spouse through an “International Marriage Broker” to first submit extensive personal background information to the broker agency. The broker must then share that information with a future lady fiancee or spouse who must consent before the couple can start a communication and relationship. (Bala)

Due to the activation of the IMBRA Law, the “Lifetime Membership” being offered by the pen-pal site is taken out as an option but despite of this, the site still provides “Gold and Silver Membership Options” that allow men to obtain information regarding 15-30 Filipinas for the amount of $50-85 in a span of a couple of months which only requires a single transaction for the option to be activated.

The “Filipina Penpal” also provides necessary information for the interested searcher of Filipinas such as a built-in money converter, the latest news on the Philippines, a list of where to get hold of the best airfares, VISA and immigration information as well as necessary forms, order information both online and by mail, and even tips on penpal writing and travelling.

At the end of every page consisting of about ten or more similar profiles is the California address of Lyn Shelden where you can send in your chosen girl’s name/s and designated number/s, as well as your e-mail address and an amount of $5 for each girl you wish to contact, so that you will be provided with their “addresses with no delay.” Further down the page is a picture of the brown skinned Lyn Shelden together with Mitch, her white skinned husband, and their two children―all wearing brightly lit eyes and big smiles.

Aside from these, other things made available in the site are about 10 more pages of Filipina girls, tips on how to write to them, links to various dating sites, and lastly, a link to PayPal where their clients can directly send their payments through the Internet.

The same thing is happening today under different circumstances. In this time of Internet and technology, the Filipinas has taken on a new definition. Although simply defined by Dictionary.com as a Filipino woman or girl, googling for the term would yield top ten results that include penpal and dating services which, in the World Wide Web, can possibly be synonymous to mail order bride and cybersex services. A number of these promote services which include a “Catalog of Filipina women” (Google: Filipina) wherein online customers could purchase the Filipina’s address for contact and afterwards, follow up her Visa and immigration information.

There is a truth to what search engines such as Yahoo! and Google offer its users for there are indeed Filipino women offering their bodies as commodities to foreigners online due to the raging poverty due to the lack of job employment in the country. However, such dismal search engine results have misled people all over the world to give the term “Filipina” a bad connotation. The multiplicity of results has created a working definition not only for a particular set of Filipino women but also for the whole lot. This generalization is now being contested by Filipino web enthusiasts both male and female based in the Philippines and abroad. They have directly taken action by putting up Filipino logos, blog entries, links and websites that promote holistic image of the Filipino woman―one who not only avoids being trapped in becoming a commodity but also makes herself as an empowered woman.

However, there are other indirect means of putting into action protests against the derogatory use of “Filipina” and this is where literature comes in.

Since the boom of the Internet, there has been an increase in the presence of Philippine literature all over the web. Although most of them are short-lived and/or not regularly maintained, it is evident that there is a struggle to keep its presence and to make its message loud and clear.

One of these websites is Literatura Magazine , “an online monthly literary magazine dedicated to Philippine fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and literary criticism (Casocot),” which ran from July-August 2003 to June 2004. The site covered various themes such as “Negros Fiction” which featured poems and stories about the island of Negros to “Literaturang Tsikiting”―the site’s fourth issue which gave importance to local children’s literature and art. More interestingly, the site also focused on “Women Writing Themselves” which is another issue composed of “two monologues, sixteen poems, two essays, and a short story―that will explore womanhood in all its diversities and beyond the boxes society has imposed on all women (Casocot).” Interestingly, our local literature offers us significantly varying perceptions of the Filipina not only in Filipina-centered texts such as those found in “Women Writing Themselves” but as well as those in the other issues.

Another Philippine literary site is “Our Own Voice Literary Ezine: Filipinos in the Diaspora” , which as the website’s title suggests is a literary e-zine that gives more focus on the foreign-based Filipino’s diverse artistic capabilities such as writing and graphic design. This then gives way for cyberspace readers the same opportunity Literatura Magazine provides―another place for people to see the construction of the Filipina, not only by locals but also by Filipinos in a foreign land, or even by complete foreigners since “Our Own Voice” allows for the outsider to share his or her “experience of the Filipino culture (Our Own Voice).” Constantly being updated, the site aims to bind Filipinos both from the native land and abroad to become one family.

Such literary sites give the netizens other more concrete and more effective image of the Filipina through essays, short stories, poems, plays and creative non-fiction. Although, such literature is still in dire need of polishing and strengthening, having their presence online is valuable for the Filipina precisely because it serves as a mirror giving the Filipina a more concrete and more relevant image construction.

The Filipina’s presence online is seen not only in these websites and e-zines but in the blogs by enthusiastic and active Filipino “bloggers” whose presence in the Internet is now very much felt. Bloggers, whose blog updates range from day-to-day to a weekly basis, have provided means for local literature to take off. Aside from the New Filipina campaign they have been promoting through fast information dissemination via their blog posts and even campaign logos, some blogs also contain literary content through which their readers get access to freshly written short stories, mostly flash fiction, and poems. Examples of such blogs is Sacha Chua’s website which features short stories, flash fiction and poetry. Gabriella Lee’s blog also gives space to her literary works which include poems, vignettes and short stories which relives a Filipina’s blossoming adult life. Another would be Palanca awardee Dean Alfar’s blog which houses various vignettes and anecdotes. Some of his works have received publication through his online submissions and his novel “Salamanca” won in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an online novel writing contest held annually wherein contestants aim to write “one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time (NaNoWriMo)”―specifically from November 1 tro 30. “Salamanca” also very recently won the 2005 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature-Grand Prize under the Novel Category. Nikki Alfar, Dean Alfar’s wife and fellow Palanca awardee, also maintains a blog that also contains blog entries of vignettes.

These websites, e-zines and blogs remind us that for as long as there are varying representations of the Filipino woman that can be found online, for as long as there are voices to be heard and for as long as the Filipinos express themselves both as an individual and a community, the fight of the Filipina to be not misrepresented and to be actively present not merely as mail order bride but as an empowered woman who lives a dynamic life will be pursued ever so strongly and hopefully, more effectively than what has been said and done in Filipina-related controversies such as what happened in 1998.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then…I contradict myself;

I am large…I contain multitudes.

―Walt Whitman

‘Ceci est un scandale!’ cries feminist Monique Wittig to the postmodernist Helene Cixous in a conference (Jones 86). Indeed, scandalous can be the right word to describe Cixous and her postmodern ideologies. For one thing, refusing to be referred to as a “feminist,” arguing about the definition of “feminism” and replacing it instead with “women’s movement” were not expected of fellow feminists like her. What was expected of women was to shout alongside other feminists the words “Down with patriarchy!” and not at all the shocking and scandalous ―“Down with feminism!”

Although there is much conflict and much diversity to be found in the women’s movement of her time, what serves as their common ground is their strong and critical analysis of patriarchal society

as fundamentally oppressive, as phallogocentric. ‘I am the unified, self-controlled center of the universe’ man (white, European and ruling class) has claimed. ‘The rest of the world, which I define as the Other, has meaning only in relation to me, as man/father, possessor of the phallus.’ This claim to centrality has been supported not only by religion and philosophy, but also by language. To speak and especially to write from such a position is to appropriate the world, to dominate it through verbal mastery. Symbolic discourse (language, in various contexts) is another means through which man objectifies the world, reduces it to his terms, speaks in place of everything and everyone else―including women (Jones 87).

Moreover, the fuss over labels and definitions is considered trivial once Cixous gets on with her theories which dwell on “relations between women, femininity, feminism, and the production of texts (Moi 102).” One of her theories is her opposition of the “patriarchal binary thought.” Here, she uses Jacques Derrida’s concept of differance as a basis. Derrida opposes the structuralist thought which claims

that meaning is produced precisely through binary oppositions. Thus in the opposition masculine/feminine, each term only achieves significance through its structural relationship to the other: ‘masculine’ would be meaningless without its direct opposite ‘feminine’ and vice-versa. All meaning would be produced this way (Moi 105).

To put this in feminist context, Cixous points out that at the end of every binary opposition lies patriarchy where “victory is equated with activity and defeat with passivity; [and] under patriarchy, it is always the male who ends up as the victor (Moi 105).” Not only does this kind of discourse dominate the formation of subjectivity but also of sexual difference. Madan Sarap in her essay “Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: French feminist theories” wraps up these ideas: “sexual difference is thus locked into a structure of power, where difference, or otherness, is tolerated only when repressed (Sarap 110)” as seen in the case of women.

Derrida’s response to this “set of hierarchical oppositions [which] have structured Western thought and governed its political practice (Sarap 109)” through the concept of differance (spelt with an ‘a’ to distinguish it from difference and to provide an interplay of deferral) wherein meaning or signification “is produced precisely through this kind of open-ended play between the presence of one signifier and the absence of others (Moi 106)” as opposed to the direct binary opposition posited by the structuralists. Such free play that occurs in differance provides Cixous the power to break open “the prison-house of patriarchal language (Moi 107)” and “to unearth myths that sustain the logic of patriarchy, undoing their naturalness (Sarap 110).” She gives life to this through the power of writing and the body.

Cixous does not only focus on the “antagonism to all forms of dualistic thinking based on oppositions and hierarchies (Sarap 109)” but also on the “espousal of a feminine practice of writing related to the body [for] she sees feminine sexuality as rich and plural and she draws a parallel between feminine libido and writing. She believes that the patriarchal order can be challenged by feminine writing (Sarap 109).” Thus, it is in feminine writing, a concept closely related to Derrida’s differance, that Cixous finds a way to produce an open-ended means of signification with regard to sexual difference. For her, as Jones has quoted,

[a woman’s] writing can only keep going without ever inscribing or discerning contours…She lets the other language speak―the language of 1000 tongues which knows neither closure nor death…Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible…Oral drive, anal drive, vocal drive―all these drives are our strengths, and among them is the gestation drive―just like the desire to write: a desire to live self from within, a desire for the swollen belly, for language, for blood (Jones 90).

She contests the centrality of the male libidinal power in the penis and puts forward her claim that a “woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within boundaries. Her libido is cosmic, just as her unconscious is worldwide (Jones 90).” She further claims that “in a certain way, a woman is bisexual; man―it’s a secret to no one―being poised to keep glorious phallic monosexuality in view (Moi 109)” and that “a form of writing that would embody bisexuality, and operate in the interests of women (Sarap 111)” is a key in breaking down the already stable notion of binary oppositions of male/female. This kind of other bisexuality, as she refers to it,

is multiple, variable and ever-changing, consisting as it does of the ‘non-exclusion either of the difference or of one sex.’ Among its characteristics is the ‘multiplication of the effects of the inscription of desire, over all parts of my body and the other body, indeed, this other bisexuality doesn’t annul differences, but stirs them up, pursues them, increases them (Moi 109).

This she relates further to the concept of the Gift as opposed to the Proper. Unlike the latter “which is describe as ‘masculine’, is caught up in the mechanisms of exchange, and will give only with certainty of immediate return (Sarap 111),” the Gift “correspond fairly closely to a Derridean definition of writing: the feminine/female libidinal economy is open to difference, willing to be ‘traversed by the other’, characterized by spontaneous generosity…[It also serves as] a deconstructive space of pleasure and orgasmic interchange with the other (Moi 113).” Generosity―”the act of giving [which] becomes a subtle means of aggression, of exposing the other to the threat of one’s own superiority [where] the woman gives without a thought of return (Moi 112)”―is one of the most positive words Cixous has been able to form in relation to women and feminine writing.

Thus, like the sun shining so generously without ever receiving, bisexual writing serves “not as a denial of sexual differences, but as a lived recognition of plurality, of the simultaneous presence of masculinity and femininity within an individual subject (Sarap 111)” and provides the free-play Derrida has suggested against the structured binary oppositions in society, thus making “Cixous’s vision of feminine/female writing as a way of reestablishing a spontaneous relationship to the physical jouissance of the female body [which] may be read positively, as a utopian vision of female creativity in a truly non-oppressive and non-sexist society (Moi 121).”