Point of his story. Or, of skirts cut short of freedom.

Eve stole an apple (or some other fruit that may or may not represent a woman, bane of man's existence), and tricked Adam into tasting it. Because of this, Adam lost his deed to paradise and had to be sent away, running through the marshes, hiding his great folly.

For this reason, men came up with the Bible (cunning bastards), and rendered women faceless in generations to come (pah, such weak hearts!) The peoples of our country would have been saved from the ignorance and imbalance, though. But the tall, stocky white people had to come.

A short disclaimer before I go on: I have nothing against faith in God, and living a good life to get to Heaven. I only believe that the so-called wonders of Christianity as a religion are overrated.

Love in the Cornhusks and The Corral both speak of women in the face of limited to almost no choices. Tinang and Pilar both face heartache, lack of confidence, insecurity. And it's not because 'Amanda' from next door has prettier legs than them but because patriarchal society has made innate to them the feelings of constant disturbance, loss of hope. There is a progress between these two women's situations, where Pilar is given an actual choice as compared to Tinang who simply submits to what is laid in front of her - though Pilar is still not happy with either option faced. And that doesn't make her any different from Tinang's tragedy.

"Lahat tayo, mga prosti sa lipunan." -- Sigfried Barros-Sanchez
(Hindi siya babae pero sang-ayon ako sa mga sinabi niya. u_u)

I do believe that times have changed drastically, and women now have more freedom and opportunities in society but we are fooling ourselves if we think that we have achieved equal footing with men. Women are still very limited and considered weak, incapable, and the scary thing about this is that we might not even notice it at all.

Recently I had an argument with my father about dorming in Diliman for my OJT. He didn't want me living so far away from home, away from his protection - he even found it hard to allow me to sleep over my (very female) best friend's house (which had been in the same neighbourhood.) That frustrated me a lot.

A friend of mine would always get scolded for staying out late (9pm), even if it had been for school work, because "hindi gawain ng babae yan!" Another seems to be prohibited from even showing her shoulders - because she happens to be more endowed than most girls. One more got -accused- of being a -dyke- because she happens to treat herself as the female counterpart of a metrosexual, and I still laugh at being ridiculed for not wanting a boyfriend to "care for and nourish me" at the moment.

Thing is, people still treat us like women and we still see it as a bad thing. And while we still worry about what 'Tony' might say about our new hairstyle, and while we are still phased by Amanda's attractive curvatures and flawless skin, we're far from free from the banes of patriarchy.