A number of notable feminists in the Philippines joined hands during “The 'P' Dialogues” held last March 10, 2007 to jointly reflect on the current state of feminist movements and to imagine how the future should be constructed. Find out the issues they discussed and the challenges they face.

In celebration of International Women's Day, feminists from the Philippines gathered together on March 10, 2007 in a forum titled “The 'P' Dialogues: Politikal, Peminista, Progresibo (Political, Feminist, Progressive) – Conversations on Social Movement Building” held in Quezon City. The gathering served as a venue for feminists to re-assess the current feminist movement and its work across the broader social movements.

Gender Orientation

The world is not anymore confined to two genders alone. As Mira Alexis Ofreneo of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA)-Asia explained, there are lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ). But the list does not stop there. Hence, Ofreneo offered XYZ to represent any new sexual identity.

“Within L, G, B, T, I, Q, XYZ, levels of marginalisation, relations of power, and hierarchies exist,” Ofreneo said.

Feminism and Political Parties

Professor and political activist Sylvia Estrada-Claudio, in her talk, described the nature of political parties as deeply ingrained in proletariat and nationalist discourses.

In the present globalised situation, Estrada-Claudio reminded everyone that “Citizenship and nationality may not necessarily work in the same way and in fact, [these] may already be exploited by capitalism to blind us to cross differences and to place sectors, tribes, and religions one against the other.”

Another point she raised is that multifocal power requires multiple sites of resistance. “Power permeates not just in economic class and state terms but in terms of religion, in terms of spirituality, in terms of culture, in terms of everyday communication.” Therefore, she added that “multiple sites of power require multiple sites and contexts of resistance.”

Women's Human Rights

To end human rights violations that women continually experience, Carol Ruiz-Austria of WomenLead, a feminist legal resource institution committed to advancing women's human rights, pointed out the importance of state accountability and religious freedom.

“Women's place against violence [is] within the recognisable frame of the victim-subject in law,” said Ruiz-Austria. There may be penal sanctions and police-led measures but welfare services and enabling conditions are not in place. As a result, “we still have a constant tendency to prefer and to invoke state power instead of positive state duties,” underlined Ruiz-Austria.

“Religious conservative cultures have also aggravated the situation,” Ruiz-Austria added.  She proposes a more genuine interrogation of religious freedom, delving on issues such as divorce, abortion, gay unions, and LGBT rights. She ended her talk with the question “How do we promote the exercise of rights and freedom in line with the pluralistic value written behind the principle of religious freedom?”

Feminist Collaborations

“Feminism is not just a particular set of issues. It is a frame and a perspective that could apply to multiple ways of working,” said Tesa C. de Vela of Isis International-Manila.

Jasmine Nadua Trice, also from of Isis-Manila described the nature of the current feminist movements as “non-unified, global” and “facing diverse sites and forms of power as well as different forms of resistance.”

“But despite or because of these differences, feminist movements still collaborate,” de Vela said. These collaborations may be based on bottomlines, short-term agenda, or agreements to disagree.

As lessons on feminist critical collaborations, de Vela emphasized the importance of understanding the context of a particular collaboration and the ways of doing feminist collaboration as possibly applicable in other social movements as well.

Looking Forward

“A social movement [that] is not bound by fixed boxes, by fixed categories. It is a movement that is grounded on diversity, tolerance, non-conformity. It is a movement that is not afraid to question itself and sometimes even to subvert itself in search of its own identity.” This was how Aurora Javate-de Dios of the Miriam College-Women And Gender Institute described the women's movement in her closing speech.

The session proved to excite, disturb, and raise more questions among feminists, hence should be a continuing programme, said de Dios.

“The ‘P’ Dialogues” was jointly organised by the Miriam College-Women And Gender Institute (WAGI), Isis International-Manila, WomenLead, the University of the Philippines Center for Women’s Studies (UPCWS), and the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).