Let's Get Physical: Part One

In my last article, “Is She Jealous?” I wrote that the man who was always being controlled and yelled at by his wife should “slap the crap” out of her. No, I haven’t changed my mind in a Western-style PC Moment. I stand by what I wrote. Perhaps some of you who still live in the West don’t agree with me on that point. Too bad – keep it to yourself. Or start your own blog and express yourself for good or ill.
If you had been paying attention, and I know most of my readers are intelligent and always do – you would have also read the add-on, “as per local culture.”
And therein lay the point of this article: local culture and Asian customs.
You should understand that I have never beaten a woman in my life (although sometimes I think I should have when I reflect on my Americunt ex-wife’s disgusting behavior and indifference to anything beyond the perimeter of her own skin). I have only slapped a woman once – a Filipina who perpetrated a deep deception on me. I’m not a fan of violence and it doesn’t turn me on. I believe in and am dedicated to being a ‘gentleman,’ with all of the courtesy, decency, and respect for others and myself that it implies.
I am 59 years of age, and I come from a time and world that no longer exists in America - a semi-rural, farming environment that was, at the time, more of the 19th than of the twentieth century. The folks I came into contact with as a child were of a nature to be straight forward, self-reliant and self-determined. These good and simple people had an inner strength that didn’t require signs of other's acceptance. They were honest, trust-worthy and kind, with a courteousness that is currently so rare as to rate being on the endangered species list. It was all I knew. And to this day I appreciate that I was fortunate enough to have experienced that style of life in my formative years.
Later, when I was ten-years-old, my family moved to the San Francisco bay area. My father went to work for the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. Whereas before, I lived in a spacious and mostly empty world of few people and lots of animals, trees and fields, I found myself in a crowded city of buildings, asphalt and cement, and surrounded by wild, unpredictable animals of the human kind. In all the years I lived in the bay area I found no more than a handful of people were even worth peeing on. I won’t linger long on how American life began to radically change (in no small part by the advent of television) in the late 1950's and 60's, and more-so in the current American incarnation, providers were replaced by consumers, courtesy replaced by rudeness, honesty by lies and deceit, trust by treachery, respect by disdain.
If you’re one of those ‘money and power at any cost’ kind of people who oppose kindness and caring with a finely-sharpened bottom line, then may you rot in hell for what you have done and will do to the people's of this world.
Now that you’ve been cudgeled with a little personal background on me, I can go into a little of family culture in the Philippines.
The following descriptions of Asiatic culture are no longer exclusive. Because of the global media - centralized in America - and the opprobrious desire by mostly myopic American religious zealots and even more recently, treacherous politicians seeking to force the ugliest portions of their own dark souls on all other nations, cultures around the globe are being transformed from their own national identities by what I call the "Hamburger Syndrome" - you can find the same one anywhere. Fortunately and thankfully, the older culture still remains the prevailing system.
I’m a firm believer that each country and culture has just as much right to their “way of life” as the one I came from. And the last thing I want to do is force them through fear or the threat to withhold needed funds unless “compliance” is met. Read: become like us.
While you read the following, bear in mind that I am writing of that portion of Filipino’s that follow their own culture and are either resisting or ignoring the Westernization of the Philippines.
Control is not the issue:
The family structure in the Philippines is and has always been patriarchal; for the most part, men run things. Women defer to men. It’s the man who will almost always have the final say in matters requiring a decision. Women are taught from birth to seek the blessings of, and to obey men. A Filipina wife will not go anywhere without first getting permission from her husband. She won’t go to the nearby sari-sari (small, general) store, to town, to the neighbor’s house - nowhere. Even when she has permission she will rarely go without a ‘companion.’ It may be you or her mother, her child, a neighbor or friend. If her husband isn’t at home, in all likelihood, she’ll wait for him to return before going anywhere, unless it’s absolutely necessary for something like timely food preparation. She may still wait anyway.
A married Filipina may stay inside the house and not ever leave it, other than to go outside to get water, gather wood, tend to animals, or care for her plants, unless it’s in the company of her husband. Celine was advised by no fewer than her mother, father, grandparents, aunties and other women relatives and friends to “Stay inside the house and take care of your husband. Don’t go outside to chika-chika (gossip) or go off anywhere without your husband’s permission.”
If a girlfriend drops by and invites Celine to go with her to visit other friends or maybe shop together, she will only go once she has permission. If I’m not at home, she’ll wait for my return.
If a wife is called to go to her parent’s house, and the husband is away, she will not go. I know of one woman who had cut herself rather badly while chopping wood and someone called for an ambulance. When it arrived she refused to let the driver take her to the hospital because her husband wasn’t home. The ambulance left and she waited for his arrival so he could take her to the hospital.
Did you guess it’s that way because of cruel, over-bearing and dominating chauvinist-pig husbands? If you guessed it was the men in her life, you’d be wrong. The one’s who have taught Honey Ko to stay in the house after marriage, to tend to the husband’s needs, and to always ask permission are women.
Women value the dominance of men because they find safety and stability and comfort in knowing that they have someone to depend on, and who will guide and protect them. They recognize that they are, in physical fact, less able to do the things that men do, and they still find value and importance in having men ‘take care’ of them. You could argue that men perpetrated a hoax by “creating” a dominant culture of and by men. But, if you were to do a poll and ask women if they want to be “freed” from a patriarchal culture – and if you asked women if they want to be equal to men and all that implies by way of doing men’s work and having men’s responsibilities; and if you asked them if they want to have men stop calling them “Honey (Ko),” and treat them as special for their important role in caring for the family and raising the children and teaching them the proper way to live, with honor and respect as moral and decent people – they’d laugh at you, the pollster, and not only tell you, “No,” but also tell you you’re crazy.
Women’s liberation is reserved for spoiled and pampered Western women, who pay others to care for them and their children so they can use their ‘maximized leisure time’ for their “Oprah moments” to cry and lament about how hard life is and how badly mistreated they are by men (those same men who are manipulated to work to get the money so their wives can lie beside the back yard pool and tell their husband to make his own damn lunch) – and spend $85 to have their nails painted with little swirls and stars by underpaid Puerto Rican girls.
It’s not for women who still wash and hang clothes by hand, cover their babies with reusable cloth rags for diapers, cook meals on top of a charcoal (charcoal made by the hand of her husband) stand, and work at night, mending and talking under kerosene lantern-light, who live in a bamboo house filled with flies and mosquito’s and wood-smoke in an attempt to keep the insects at bay - surrounded by a forest with no road access for an ambulance or pizza delivery man, only a long dirt path for friends and family to walk on through the forest when they want to visit – no telephone, and no way for police to get near the house to give or offer protection against robbers, rapists, thieves and murderers– no television to amuse oneself while lounging on an expensive and comfortable couch, eating micro-waved popcorn or cold ice cream and washing it down with cold drinks with ice-cubes clinking in the glass in a room flooded with electric light – without an SUV to hop into on a whim to go to town to spend unconscionably with a handful of credit cards provided and paid for by the very man they despise and belittle as being “too demanding.”

Filipina’s still depend upon their husband’s to protect them from harm. They don’t call the police and have the husband hauled-off to jail for slapping her when he’s just discovered she spent the rent and car-payment money on a new spring ensemble so she’d look cute at the golf course or at those leisurely lunches with the other spoiled wives and girlfriends. They respect their husbands and honor them. They don’t see serving and caring for a man as humiliation, but as a respectable privilege, and something to take great pride in.
When mothers, aunts and older female friends visit to a married woman’s house, they will join in to help with the wash and/or clean the house. They do not sit around stuffing their faces and talking about the stupid ‘men’ that are the husbands they agreed to “love, honor and cherish.” There’s plenty of advice from female visitors, but it’s along the lines of advice on how to better take care of the house, to better organize or clean. They usually advise keeping a good attitude and that ‘she’ should take good care of ‘her’ husband and make him happy.
That’s not to say there isn’t problems and that women stay no matter how bad things get. I’ve seen plenty of ‘runners,’ running from an abusive husband who beat his wife with fists and sticks, knives and bottles. Virtually to a man, every one of those low-life’s were devotee’s of Tanduay Rhum and Ginebra Gin. I don’t advocate wife-beating and detest those that do. And that’s not what this article is about. It’s about discipline and responsibility.
In the Western countries, the discipline, training and punishment of children is now controlled by the Psycho-Gods - Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Child Protection Services (run by the Psycho-Gods), etc., and through them the State, the courts and the police. Parents are no longer “in the loop,” but are merely relegated to housing and supporting the children, as well as pay the State to control you through taxes. Children do not answer to you, and you don’t have the right to do anything more to them in the nature of discipline than to yell ineffectually. If yelling doesn’t affect an obedient response and you go beyond “acceptable limits,” like a spanking, you’ll find yourself answering to a judge after a night in the jail-house. All American children are fully aware of their ‘rights” and know, also, that with one phone-call the cops will be at your door to haul you away for child abuse, and then the ‘child’ can be on his or her way out the door for a night of partying.
Fast forward those children to adulthood. No more need be said: you don't need to ne reminded of what you see all around you every day.
You and I are concerned with girls and women, so let’s leave the boys out of it.
Watch most any movie from the last 20+ years that caters to the youth market and you’ll begin to notice a repetitive cultural dynamic that one could easily call “training.” The girls always talk about how they can toy with the boys. “I can make Johnny do anything I want if I let him think I’m going to let him… you know. Of course I don’t go all the way. But as long as he believes he’ll get some, he’ll do anything for me!” They manipulate the ‘boys’ for their gain, all the while laughing at their stupidity. The ‘boys’ are nothing more than idiots with cars, money and hormones. They have little more purpose other than to be used to the ‘girls’ advantage.
The second noticeable dynamic is how physical violence is applied and its acceptability. It’s acceptable for a girl/woman (g/w) to slap, hit, pound with fists or with an object, or shove a boy/man (b/m) (over the back of the couch, hitting his head on the coffee table) whenever the g/w decides the b/m needs ‘punishment’ for his despicable behavior. The b/m will almost always be required to apologize for his bad behavior. The g/w will never apologize for her physical abuse of the b/m.
Let’s turn that around and look at it through the mirror, shall we? A boy slaps a girl. He’s done an unforgivable and unpardonable act. A boy hits a girl. He’ll usually later be beaten by a bigger, tougher man who “defends the g/w’s honor.” A b/m pounds a girl with fists or an object and he’ll die a violent death in the second or third reel. A b/m shoves a g/w and she falls, hitting her head – he must join the ‘pounder’ in death. The only act that will allow the offending b/m to redeem himself and live until the credits run is to profoundly apologize and state that he's “wrong” and that he’s so sorry, but he's learned his lesson and, "will never do that again." Film reflects a culture’s social mores. That’s a fact.
Now, what exactly did he learn? Girls can do whatever they want and a boy or man must accept that ‘right’ of females to have her cake and eat it, too. She may discipline and punish him as she pleases. On the other hand, he may only do things to a girl or woman that is acceptable to her. He has no right to either discipline or punish. A man’s only real choice, if it can be called that, is disenfranchisement. That is, he can walk away.
But walking away has its own punishments. For, most assuredly he will pay greatly for his act in the divorce-court system when half of everything he has worked all his life for will be legally handed over to Betty Sue. Years will pass and he’ll still be paying through alimony and possibly child support.
So what’s the final analysis of Western “culture?” The State controls your public, private and family life. Women rule men because they hold the keys to the kingdom between their legs, and men find more value in nookie than within themselves. Lastly, men have no real power (unless you’re filthy rich and can afford to buy your way out of trouble. See: O.J. Simpson and others). But you are allowed to hold the chamber pot.
No wonder beer and porn are so popular.

Part two coming soon