Paradigm shifts

I've long wanted to organize this blog of mine into several different ones to keep a single line of thought or a theme per blog. However, I have discovered that there is no one unifying theme that would bind some of my blogs together, thus I have abandoned all hope of that. Looking at the title, "A lot of nothing to say" really is apt for this. Thus I am doomed to put thoughts of nonsense onto the screen for as long as I couldn't find myself something worthwhile to write about. The torture continues...

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Since I got Kermit (the green chunk of sheet metal which I call my car), there has always been this annoying yellow sticker at the rear exclaiming "PROBIKE". A legacy of its previous owner, I've hadn't found it as annoying as to tearing it off. This morning, however, I suddenly felt the urge when the same bright yellow sticker was similarly posted on the back of a pick-up truck. The owner took a glance at my own sticker and looked around for someone who seemed to be "PROBIKE". Needless to say I don't fit the description howsoever and pretended not to notice someone looking my way as I got into the car.

So finally, I stirred up the resolve to rid Kermit of the sticker. Found it harder than I imagined, this was definitely a high quality sticker that they made and it took around 15 minutes to scrape it off with a cutting blade. I wasn't able to successfully scrape it all off as the adhesive still clung to the glass, dulling the cutting edge and making my fingers as well as the glass sticky. I gave up, confident that a few days of sun would harden the adhesive and make it a lot easier to fully scrape off.

After this ordeal, I took a step back to inspect my work and found the rear end of the car rather dull, without the contrast of the bright yellow blip on it. Or maybe I was just too used to it that it now looked weird to me. I thought of buying another sticker more apt to my personality but am fairly sure that I'll never muster enough effort to follow this through.

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Just as in life, there seems to be a point when we get used to some things that suddenly not having it around seems most awkward. It is at this point that the laws of inertia wills us to resist change, trying to fight it off as best we could and holding on to the paradigms that we have always found ourselves to exist within.

I was watching Probe Profiles on the television last night, the life of Romeo Jalosjos was in focus. For those of you who do not remember him, he is the infamous congressman who was found guilty of statuatory rape. He was sentenced to two life sentences but only served 13 years in the penal system. The details, I won't go into, but what astounded me was his adamant refusal to admit guilt. Not that he claimed innocence, mind you. Rather, he claims that he was merely guilty of an act of lasciviousness and not rape.

I do not claim to be an expert in the field of law and morality, but isn't there something sickening about all this? He further claims that what he did was something that all men do, as if humping minors were the norm and that society should look at it as something of a natural phenomenon much like speeding on a yellow light or going full speed through pedestrian lanes.

The clincher? This guy got voted back into the House of Representatives by a landslide. Obviously, he along with a lot of other people believes he is innocent. This piques my curiosity about what other values, albeit twisted, are still imbued in the minds of the old-school macho Pinoy. Admittedly, I have to acknowledge that my dad is one of these dinosaurs. Growing up, without the benefit of Christian values that they taught us so vigorously in Catholic school, I may have ended up with the same paradigm as the infamous congressman.

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Back in college, after being thrown out of the college of engineering, I landed in the college of social work and community development, the bastion of activism, progressive thought and gender equality. You can imagine my shock sitting in my first gender class, who would've thought that there was an entire movement involved in studying all the issues about gender and its development?

Okay, for the benefit of those who find my ignorance amusing, I am my dad's only son, and came from a decade of Catholic boys schools, not to mention six or so years studying engineering, a field traditionally dominated by men and have only recently seen its fair share of girls. The fact that I have 3 sisters plus a mother didn't give me enough of an insight into this sub-specie. (Okay, that was harsh and politically incorrect. Sorry.)

Going back, my first gender class began opening my eyes to this 'phenomenon' called women's rights. There were angry young women surrounding me, and I was scared of them. The terms 'womb-envy', 'gender-inequality' and 'marginalization of women' flew left and right. I was probably the most silent person in the entire class. It was so easy to make the mistake offending your purple-ribbon weilding professor with a green joke or just by acting all macho and "manly". Never did I wear a fraternity shirt in that class, as well.

Attending that class, I learned a heck of a lot about all these issues. It's pretty easy when you start out with zilch to absorb every bit of knowledge like a sponge. Though admittedly, you can't really change your whole perspective in a few years, the realizations that I gathered from this experience certainly gave me quite a lot of things to think about.

Having watched that feature on Romeo Jalosjos brought back the many things that I learned from gender class, and I looked back in wonder what I would've thought about the whole issue without it. Would I sympathize with the fucker? (Apt, is it not?) Would I put equal blame on the adolescent girl he violated? I don't know. Glad, though to have known the things I know now.