Slogans of love

LOVE is a tagline.

Like the pails of roses and bouquets inundating the public pulse last Feb. 14, some took to the public sphere of mass media to spread advocacies for lovers, those about to fall in love, those resisting love, and those immune to love.

Here are my favorites, a mix of social good and pithy capsules for that most maddening of emotions (sa Binisaya pa: “makaboang”):

“Wear your feelings.” As paraphrased by SunStar Cebu’s Fe Marie Dumaboc in her Feb. 13 report, this was the essence of Talisay City Mayor Gerald Anthony Gullas’s Feb. 12 memorandum directing City Hall employees to abandon their uniforms in favor of an attire to “express (one’s) feelings” on Valentine’s Day.

His inclusive color code accommodates almost all statuses: red for couples, green for the “single and ready to mingle,” yellow for those neck-deep in “complicated” relationships, orange for the “prisoner to someone’s love,” pink for the solitary ones, gray for those relieved they “got away,” and black for the “dense”.

Talisay City Chief Maj. Gerard Ace Pelare reminds the public to avoid trouble by staying within the law: “make sure your date is of legal age”.

In a telenovela dilemma, a male teacher rejects his undergraduate student, protesting that he is too old for her. What should be emphasized are the reasons why student-teacher romances are inappropriate and must be avoided, regardless of the student’s consent: abuse of authority, conflict of interests, exploitation of the student’s vulnerability, and threats to the student’s emotional stability and academic performance.

“Dili magpataka og partner (choose your date).” Department of Health (DOH) 7 Director Jaime Bernadas advises checking first the recent travel history of the intended before going on a date that may just lead to a possibly fatal exchange of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), reported Wenilyn Sabalo in SunStar Cebu last Feb. 13.

And not the least is “H.E.A.R.T to H.E.A.R.T,” cautions the Commission on Population and Development (PopCom) 7, whose advocacy launched on Feb. 14 emphasizes these touchpoints for millennials: H stands for HIV, AIDS and STI; E for early sexual encounters; A for adolescent sexuality; R for reproductive health; and T for teenage pregnancy.

Love is a minefield, not just on Feb. 14, one infers from this headline from “Bag-ong Kusog,” the leading newspaper in Cebu during the American period: “Mirisi nga babayhana” (published on May 6, 1917).

Tamely translated, the idiom means “serves her right” but it is not just in matters of the heart that the saltiness of the Cebuano is beyond the ken of English.


Too close for comfort. The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) [Source of photo: Medscape.com)


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in the February 16, 2020 issue of SunStar Cebu’s Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Love bytes

MANY young persons don’t know how to write a letter. I’ve read missives without a salutation or a complimentary close.

Rarely does a young letter writer find out the name of the person he or she is addressing. Or verify the spelling, the position, or the gender.

And the tone, the tone of the letters. Millennials write a letter as if it were just another SMS, Tweet or status post on Facebook.

A teacher drummed into our senior high school class that writing a letter is not first about getting what you want; it’s about letting the words reflect who you are, crucial when the person reading the letter has never met you.

All that seems like worlds ago.

According to “Heartbreaks and Healing,” a survey of 500 Filipinos recently conducted by the online shopping site Lazada, technology and new media mediate in the relationships of many Filipinos.

To break up with partners, 58 percent of Filipinos used their mobile phones; 34 percent did it in person; and 6.3 percent gave a handwritten letter.

More Filipinos (30 percent) chose to text and break up, compared to the 22 percent who called and the seven percent who resorted to instant messaging.

Perhaps technology spares more feelings. And trees, too. (I imagine I would try to write a “break-up” letter, crumple and throw aside, start with a fresh sheet, crumple again, and so forth. Or perhaps mistake a ream of paper as fresh tissue for a freshet of tears.)

The same Lazada survey (no data about scientific rigor) revealed that “online profiling” is standard to check out a potential partner.

Fifty-four percent of the respondents visited the social media page of a potential date, with 60 percent of these respondents losing interest in someone they liked before they stalked them online.

Ages ago, my generation used the “FLAMES” technique as an alternative to card-reading, matchmakers, and the personal network of relatives and friends one could rely on to spy on one’s obsession.

I wrote my name and the name of the boy, crossed out the common letters, and counted the remaining letters. If the last count landed on “F,” it meant the boy and I would remain friends; “L” meant “lover;” “A” for “acquaintance;” “M” for “marriage;” “E” for “enemy;” and “S” for “sweetheart”.

One could try a variation of nicknames to get the coveted “S” or avoid the dreaded “A”. In the corridors where nuns and teachers were omnipresent, we giggled that “L” came before “M”—a daring sequence we found romantic but too racy to aspire for.

In the age of instant connections and bloodless breakups, I wonder about social media’s substitute for the firing squad on Valentine’s Day. Technology shouldn’t be destiny.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in SunStar Cebu’s February 12, 2017 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Color diversity

AGE hardens the lens in my eyes, reducing the world now to a fuzzy swirl of amateurish strokes of watercolor.

But out the night before Valentine’s Day, I didn’t have to switch between my two pairs of eyeglasses to notice that the popular notion of love hasn’t changed much.

Electric Crimson and Lava may have edged out the more maidenly shades of Rose and Blushing Pink, but malls, awash in different hues of passion, pulled out the stops in pushing everything from flowers to fantasies.

To do so, they used the time-tested formula: a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, Romeo and Juliet, Kathniel ad nauseam.

Wandering in the mall, I noticed that the popular depiction of romance did not always connect with reality. Among the couples walking hand-in-hand were partners that were both female.

Sticking out in a sea of office girls going home with a long-stemmed beauty was an ecstatic fellow proudly bearing a bouquet of exotic blooms. His expression declared that he had just received, not delivered, the flowers.

Isn’t it time for merchandisers to tweak Valentine’s Day with its traditional bias for heteronormativity?

In this view, gender is fixed at birth. Born a man; desire a woman. Born a woman; serve a man. The normal is limited to this binary: an exclusive society of two, permitting only two kinds of identity, two kinds of sexuality.

To be any different is to be queer and deformed.

Since enterprise is a great motivator for change, I hope the “juggernauts of secular and commercial culture” will rethink their packaging of next year’s Valentine’s Day. You don’t have to be heterosexual to desire the company of a loved one, the unflagging stamina of the serially monogamous.

More than a commercial eroticization, Valentine’s Day is a good barometer of social values. If we cannot depict through mass media the couples that fall beyond the orbit of heteronormal, how can we understand and accept them?

LGBTIQ represents the realities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning persons.

A transgender or “trans” person identifies with a gender that is different from his or her biological one. Born with male and female genitals requiring reconstruction, an intersexed person may later choose a gender different from the manufactured one. Individuals seeking a sexual orientation may choose the questioning gender.

Yet, instead of labeling, one should ask a person how he or she describes himself or herself and use this self-chosen definition and corresponding pronoun.

We can take our cue in gender sensitivity from Mandaue City, which passed on first reading last Feb. 11 an LGBTIQ Code. Last Jan. 22, Barangay Subangdaku in Mandaue unveiled a multihued pedestrian lane. Sun.Star Cebu’s Rebelander S. Basilan reported that muralist A. G. Saño suggested the rainbow lanes as a statement for acceptance of and respect for LGBTIQ rights.

Since the 1970s, a rainbow of eight colors distinguishes the LGBTIQ pride flag.

San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker, after being challenged by gay politician and activist Harvey Milk, placed at the top of the gay pride flag the color pink (for sexuality). Once used by the Nazis to label and persecute homosexuals, pink today blends with seven other colors to represent the diversity in the LGBTIQ community.

Colors can augur change.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s February 15, 2015 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Love, chemistry, politics

What’s on your mind? Asked the hubby when he recently came home.

Sex, I answered.

I didn’t say this because our work keeps us apart. Or because the older son and his friend may be queuing with other couples when “Fifty Shades of Grey” opens in theaters nationwide just before Valentine’s Day.

But because when the younger son recently took a college entrance exam, his chosen course was Chemistry.

Sex, I thought.

I’m pretty sure Juan wasn’t inspired by Carl Djerassi, the chemist who discovered The Pill and fathered a scientific and social revolution.

His passing away at 91 on Jan. 30 was buried in the local dailies’ inside pages. For the Facebook generation, Djerassi’s name may just be semantic noise.

But his accidental discovery continues to have an impact on us.

In 1951, Djerassi led a research team that was trying to find a cure for arthritis when they stumbled instead on norethindrone. It’s the synthetic molecule that became the building block of the first birth control pill.

Djerassi freed generations of women from the “morning after” shakes (“Am I or am I not?”). He returned to women the control of their bodies, which machismo and moral uptightness locked away from them.

When women could have sex without worrying about and bearing the consequences, the sexual revolution began. According to a Feb. 3 article on The Daily Mail, Djerassi admitted the pill speeded up the “separation of sex-for-babies and sex-for-fun”.

And The Pill spreads the love, too. Instead of squalid futures awaiting a house bursting with squalling babies, couples can plan each pregnancy and prepare for each child’s future.

I wonder, though, if Djerassi’s sexual revolution was not premature. In the country, an unplanned pregnancy can still get a Catholic-schooled coed to drop her studies until she can wear again the school uniform without the tattletale bump.

But reproductive health education is forbidden by religion from crossing the thresholds of schools where vulnerability to love or alcohol predisposes many teen pregnancies.

The state prohibits anyone younger than 18 from watching “Fifty Shades,” the movie revolutionizing those boring articles of men’s clothing (neckties and belts) into gladiator arsenal for the realm of the senses.

But for years, anyone of any age could buy the book. The trilogy even has a Filipino version.

But outside the sexually liberating realm of pop culture, girls are still getting conned by their boyfriends mouthing the world’s oldest cliché: “If you love me…”.

Over the years, birth control pills evolved, reducing the side effects but keeping Djerassi’s simple formula: prevent ovulation, prevent pregnancy.

Though given that power by science, women have yet to muster mastery in the arena of politics—not just the clash between church and state but also the gender wars, where a woman’s assertion of her right to say “yes” or “no” requires men rethinking their sense of entitlement.

Djerassi said inventing the pill for women, not men, was giving the former a fighting chance in the survival of the fittest. “Would you, as a woman, put your entire reproductive risk in the trust that he has remembered his Pill?”

Djerassi, that man of science, believed politics, not science, will decide the reproductive wars. For women’s sake, we hope he is wrong.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s February 8, 2015 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”