Stigma and the Filipina

When I was writing my romance trilogy "Hawlang Apoy" as a medium for advocacy against the trafficking of women, the women I interviewed brought up the issue of stigma. It is one big stumbling block for women who want to start anew after having been abused. Society's persecution of these violated women often continues long after the punishment for the perpetrators has been forgotten.

Stigma is a difficult thing to face because it is something insidious and hidden. The victim is seldom told to her face. She never fails to feel its cruel effects, though. There is exclusion, distancing, marginalization. It is demeaning and often breaks the spirit of the stigmatized.

Stigma is what the Filipina now faces when internet search engine searches produce a majority of results showing smut sites or mail order bride sites.

Stigma is what the Filipina is subjected to offline when people are influenced by such an unbalanced internet image.

Now, Filipinas are cautioned against considering themselves sexy lest they be automatically associated with lewdness.

Filipinas married to non-Filipinos are often assumed to be mail order brides, with the unspoken connotation of having married for money.

Oh, and there's that other stigma, too: that Filipina means domestic helper.

Stigma is particularly harmful because it causes division even among Filipinas. For example, many of us protest the last label because of its narrowness and not because being a domestic helper is demeaning. Other Filipinas hold a different view, however, and feel insulted at being identified with Filipina domestic helpers. Class discrimination is highlighted and brought to the fore.

Stigma thrives on the unspoken. Like taboo, it is a child of darkness. It envelops the stigmatized and draws her to cower in hidden corners.

To fight stigma, we need to throw light on it. Bright light. Glaring light. We need to expose it and subject it to scrutiny. Dispel the mistaken notions and innuendoes. Strip it down to bare truth.

Ironically, the internet itself is an ideal medium for fighting stigma. I'm glad that Filipinas are speaking up against it in the very same arena.

Bloggers have particularly powerful voices. Filipina bloggers should, indeed, show the world that yes, we are Filipinas and we can be sexy without being lewd, we can marry the man of our choice from anywhere in the world without being mail order brides, we can be domestic helpers with heads held high and also professors and scientists and artists, we can be everything we want to be. Stigma be damned.