Man versus Woman

After weeks of reading feminist literature in preparation for a presentation in my women's studies coursework, I still wonder: What makes the man different from the woman that the two are seen as not equal? This question is even harder for me to answer because I treat and find women as my equal in spite of our differences.

My views on gender equality could be attributed to what kind of family did I come from, while my views on gender difference may have been influenced a lot by what the schools taught me. My personal experiences through healthy social interactions with both sexes while having more women around me in the house, must have helped tame my masculine tendencies to view women with respect and dignity as I accord to myself.


Men and Women in my Family


When I was kid, I never knew that we had a matriarchal family. My paternal grandmother was the head of our clan, and her wisdom was our discipline. She has the voice that everyone must hear and heed to. She has the power to demand what is due her or what is due to others. She has a strong influence down to the littlest family from her brood. Her presence I think is what remains to be so memorable to unify our generation and the generation before us, that we keep in accord with one another.

I have seen how my mother supported my father in rearing us, and how they fulfilled their duties out of love for us and for each other. My earliest drawing of my family is a sketch where my mom and dad are together standing on equal grounds, my sisters and brothers in a line according to their age, while I was there in front of my mama and papa. Very few things would distinguish those figures as to gender, the triangular skirt or dress, the pants and the hair. Everything else would be the same.

The differences between the men and women in family were not so noticeable to me then. But now, that I am learned and had been educated, I see that man functions differently as to the woman, but their differences in thoughts and actions are rather complementing.

My father would earn a living by working in his car repair shop. My mother stays in the house to take care of our daily needs at home, until the time that I could tend for my self as kid, my mom would also work in small in-house handicraft shop. My sisters who would come from school, will do the cooking, if not my mom. But the boys would help in the housework by fetching water, preparing the dining table, brushing the floor, washing the dishes and running errands. My brothers too would work with my father in his repair shop. Cooking, brooming, washing, mending, folding and ironing clothes were the girls tasks. The sexual division labor was negotiated, never imposed.

While mom will extend her work in the house, my dad will play with us, listen to the radio until mealtime is ready and put as all asleep after some family bonding over TV. My mom will prepare my father's clothes for sleeping and even give him sponge bath. Then they will lie together on the mat for their matrimonial rites. I never heard any complaint from my mom from doing these work, I guess that how she shows her love for my father and for us.

As to discipline, my father is different from my mom. My mom would talk things out, when we commit mistakes she would tell us what was wrong, why it was wrong, and what to do the next time. My father would use force, if yelling does not seem to work, he would whip us with his belt. Then mom, would talk to us and console us, she would be my father's mouthpiece for he what he never really spoke of. But we learned from that, no not the value of violence but the virtue of righteousness.

As to our education, they both had high hopes for us to succeed. Yet, they never really forced us to be so competitive. Their encouragement for us to do better only had power if we heeded it. They never compared us with one another, but they showed their appreciation to our accomplishment. I remember my dad when he carried me after I received honors in the kindergarten, he had tears in his eyes. Two years after, he left for eternal rest, and my mother had to fulfill the duties and obligations of both man and woman in the house.


Men and Women in my Education

My childhood senses were already ingrained with the natural perception of the gender difference based on our physiological or biological make-up. The capacity to function productively and the potential to reason were out of my mind to develop premature gender-bias. Studying in a public school, where boys have to study together with the girls never gave me a hint that there are other differences to cause inequality between genders. In grade school, boys and girls are just children.
It was in high school that I learned the differences between sexes. Along with learning in biology that but a pair sex chromosomes would differentiate a human being from another, I realized nothing else is different. In physical education where we were oriented with things about puberty and sexuality, I learned that behavior and the reproductive organs are different between sexes. I learned too, that sexual orientation was a preference. What I never learned then was the issue of gender, even if I was so well versed with the history of men.

The school had not paid much tribute to the women, even though the academe was female-dominated. The very few significant women that I came across in my basic education included Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Maria Antoinette, Queen Elizabeth, Margareth Thatcher, Maria Clara, Garbriella Silang, Melchora Aquino and Corazon Aquino. But I do not have a recall as to how the school have imparted to me the significant virtues of these women, that as a man I may look up to them and see my humanity through them.

In college, while I was involved in activism and school politics, my views on gender equity was never changed nor was it reinforced. I wrote with feminists students, rallied with feminists, lobbied for feminist issues, strategize with top feminists in the movement. But the same movement deprived me of its understanding of feminism. Feminism were just for female cadres, but their issues were also our issues as the revolutionary catalyst to stir proletarian consciousness.

In the movement I met women, intelligent, brave, courageous, yet still feminine. They were as audacious as the great women academics that I've met. And I respect them for their distinguishable commitment to bring their selves in the forefront of the feminist cause for equality and recognition of their gender-identity. It was mostly women that educated me. I have learned more from the women than from the men in the academe. It was also women who gave my cathecism that taught me that all are equal before the eyes of God.

Sheila Ruth (2001)differentiates the virtues of the masculine and the feminine. According to her, the masculine virtue is a warrior virtue characterized by aggressiveness, courage, physical strenth and health, self-cotnrol and emotional reserve, perseverance and endurance, competence and rationality, independence, self-reliance and autonomy, independence, individuality, and sexual potency. On the other hand, the not-male complement vritue are characterized by passivity, timidty, fragility and delicacy, expressiveness, frailty, emotionality, needfulness, dependence, humility, chastity, innocence or receptivity.

My upbringing, my education, my political enlightenment, my faith, my social interaction had made me a feminist, if not a supporter of the feminist cause. Yet, there are still a lot things that I need to put in the folds of my brain on feminism. I think I am a man still in the process of understanding the woman better. In most ways, as the biogical dictates of my maleness, I share the masculine virtues, but in the virtues of my consciousness, I also possess those not-male virtues. This my personal anomaly, but I acknowledge it as blessing and balance of the male-female chromosome in me.

Biology may have influence for men or women to possess those virtues strongly. But then, they are human virtues and there are ways to be virtuous, and that is the path to being human which we should all take. Man and woman can not be in constant antagonism, they are opposites in sex but they share so many things in their human nature. Whatever difference that we may have out of the influence of so many factors, the conflict can only be resolved by acknowledging those differences, complementing them and celebrating them as what make us unique and diverse.