The ConstructDiscourse, Society, Language, New Media, and I

It has been quite a long while since I’ve blog hopped blogs of fellow Filipino bloggers. Interesting bits here and there but Basapa never disappoints with up-to-date commentaries on relevant social issues. Here’s something about sex education in Quezon City.

Save for a few weeks vacation when I was a kid, I lived in Quezon City all my life. All of my schools are located in Quezon City. My past two jobs were also based in QC. Unless I’d find some place more suitable for me to start a family, I’m staying put. There’s a lot to hate about the city but hey, it’s my hometown.

So what do I care about sex education in QC? Frankly, not much. But apparently, it’s such a big fuss. Especially since the Catholic Church.

Now what’s interesting is that I’m taking a graduate-level Anthropology class on Sex and Culture and we’ve just finished discussing sex and religion. And what makes our class more interesting is that we have a Roman Catholic priest as a classmate. Good thing he’s one of the more open-minded ones. Last meeting he discussed with us the church’s stand on sex. And boy, was it a very engaging one. At least we found out that Vatican II left out issues of sex and that all of the church’s stands with regard to the “nasty” is still based upon age-old doctrines. With that discussion, I believe that it reaffirmed my views that much of it is based on semantics which is the case with morality in general. With the proper words, what bad can be made good and vice versa.

So what’s wrong with teaching our kids about the birds and the bees, and more importantly, about reproductive health in general? I mean Quezon City is teeming with people. The largest city in the nation with more than 2 million people (90% of which are Catholic). And the largest baranggays are usually the repressed communities. Blame that to mucky urbanization but heck, in a city where prostitution is popular and where sex is one of the most favorite past times of repressed areas, sex education is a must.

I remember the time when one of our former househelps was impregnated by her taxi driver boyfriend. They had the money to pay for a motel room, but they scrimped out on the condom. The result? A kid in 9 months. And our househelp, when her period suddenly stopped, asked our mom whether a woman can get pregnant even if they only did it once. That time, ignorance wasn’t bliss. Reality stares us at the face that people aren’t well-educated enough when it comes to sex.

Now my question is how would QC handle sex education? Who will formulate the curriculum? Who will teach it? Will there be materials available? Incompetence in any of those areas might just mean disaster. With a growing teacher population who are basically unqualified to teach, why even institute areas that might lead to more misinformation?

All those while the church is yakking about the immorality. This is where religion becomes hegemonic as it imposes its own morality on state and legislation. State trumps priest but God trumps state. A conundrum?

Would I go on to say that whenever the church does that, they become unconstitutional on the basis of the separation of church and state? Maybe. Maybe not. Or then again maybe a resounding “Hell yeah!”

Thus, I go straight to hell.