WORD NERDS: this is NOT your nanay's blog

More facts and information can be found at gabnet.org.

When I type in the term 'Pinay' into a Google search engine, I'm given hundreds of sites that portray Pinays (Filipina womyn) as sexual objects, exotic models, or overseas workers. The latter usually isn't the case.

With so many pornographic and exploitative websites on the Internet in regards to Filipinas, I can see how they have paradoxically become synonymous with hypersexualization and invisibility. The bodies of these womyn are very present and visible, yet their realities and voices are kept silent. Images like the ones commonly found on internet search engines perpetuate superficial constructions of what composes the Filipina/Pinay identity. These images won't show hundreds of years of colonization or ongoing patriarchy and U.S. militarism or a flatlining Philippine economy (if it wasn't for millions of dollars in remittances) that indirectly forces Filipin@s to work overseas. These images won't show that womyn are tricked into the global sex trade.

Womyn and children have become an item of export as a result of economic competition. In the 1980s, then-President Ferdinand Marcos developed the sex-tourist industry as a short-term strategy to bring in international currency and minimize the nation's deficit. This "strategy" comes at the expense of womyns' lives and their families. Marcos capitalized on the portrayals of his countrywomyn and maintained strong relations with the United States and their military.

This issue, by itself, reveals a greater power structure that creates room for injustice, labor export, and the reinforcement of sex trafficking. General misconceptions place blame on individual womyn, view sex trafficking as a significant contributor to the Philippine economy or attribute this sense of hypersexuality to Filipinas' nature. Individual womyn are pinpointed as victims of their own mistakes yet they are tricked into leaving their homes to work overseas or in "factories" but end up in brothels, as mail-order brides or personal prostitutes to U.S. army men who frequent brothels conveniently located near U.S. bases in the Philippines. Sex trafficking as a "get-out-of-debt-quick" method is made taboo and validated for its financial prosperity. Costs are put on lives and sexual transactions are cheapened for cheap thrills. Because of such prevalence, sexual and human violations have become common activities.

The Purple Rose Campaign and what it stands for can be dissected in many different ways, and this is just one point of view that I choose to take. Go ahead and pull off other petals. =)

x_magsalita.

Labels: Pinay Power