I recently attended a cervical cancer prevention bloggers event courtesy of Glaxo Smith Kline held at Melo’s Quezon City. Although this is a boring topic, because of its scientific terms and all, GSK was able to make the bloggers participate in their impromptu play. So while having dinner, the actors from PETA were doing their impromptu acting. It was a 50′s set up dinner wherein the actors and some bloggers were asked to wear 50′s attire. Of course, I didn’t effort to do that but just went with the flow of the whole situation. The whole event focused on Jennifer, a married woman in the 50′s, who mysteriously died. Everybody in her family was a suspect when until they discovered that it was Cervical Cancer who killed Jennifer. During the 50′s, there was no preventive medicine yet for this disease and so Glaxo Smith Kline introduced their Cervical Cancer Vaccine which can be availed by Filipino women. This event made me thought of this: Cervical Cancer and Lesbians.

Question, are lesbians at risk for this killer disease?

Historically, it was a popular notion that Cervical Cancer can be transmitted through heterosexual sex. I guess this is because scientists then were heterocentric and never realized that women can also fuck other women. I am confirming that YES, LESBIANS are at risk for this disease even though you do not have sex with men. Even though I am not a scientist or a doctor, the thought that your partner or ex partner might have sex with men in the past, already is a reason for you to have the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) too. So even doing “digital” sex (fingering) or oral sex, whether with a man or a woman, a lesbian (er woman) can get this.

Basically, women who have sex with different partners have higher risks of getting this disease. It really doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is. This is not only transmitted through sexual contact, but also through skin-to-skin contact. The symptoms are not that evident at first, sometimes it takes years before the HPV is fully developed.

Cervical Cancer is the second most common killer among women. There is an estimate of 12 women in the Philippines who die everyday due to Cervical Cancer and an estimate of 510,000 new cases globally every year according to the World Health Organization.

The good thing is that Cervical Cancer can be prevented and this is by using condoms, smoking avoidance, eating nutritious food and by undergoing the vaccination. Glaxo Smith and Kline (GSK) already has a cheaper cervical cancer prevention vaccination which only costs around Php 7,000. Just go to your OB-GYN to ask for this. I better get myself vaccinated before it’s too late.

If you want to read up on this, maybe a simple brochure from ILGA on Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer can help you. To know the scientific stuff on cervical cancer, visit this page.

It was just recently when I started browsing through Mocha Uson’s blog. Someone I know gave me the link of her blog and voila, my Mocha time started. I knew that she wrote for Maxim Philippines but I never knew that she still continued blogging.

Well, Mocha has been known for being open about her sexuality. Although there are some who have doubts (like I used to before) about her sexuality, I learned to be open-minded about it. I have a thing with bisexuals before, probably an influence of my ex-girlfriend. I usually hear my lesbian friends complaining about bisexuals because of their fickle-mindedness and used to think that bisexuality is related to sexual adventurism or plainly being a swinger. But with Mocha’s case, I think this is is the right label for her and not bisexuality. If all boils down to sexual arousal and not involving emotions with it, then I could say she is a sexual adventurist (or a swinger) than bisexual. Anyway, if she chooses to be called as such, well, I can’t do anything about it.

Her blog mostly tackles sex advices but most of the photos and videos of her are usually with women than men. It’s weird because if she is indeed bisexual, she should show photos or videos of her having intimate moments with men. Apparently, it’s only women-to-women action and I guess it’s a way to attract more men to her blog. Also, I noticed that she doesn’t have any ads (yet) on her blog (I don’t know if she has advertorials or paid blogposts somewhere). With the amount of traffic she has, she can monetize her blog if she wants to. Most definitely, she can’t use Google Adsense because of the content of her blog.

Sexual politics and labelling aside, Mocha Uson is H-O-T (period). As a lesbian like me, she’s one hell of a turn on especially when she performs onstage (mostly in San Miguel Beer events). Now is not the time to be hypocrite about it.  I appreciate her frankness and it’s very seldom that a Filipina like her would be open about her sexuality. I guess she has already become a bisexual icon in the Philippines! Are there others that I don’t know of?

You may visit her blog (link is in my blog roll, side bar) but make sure that there are no kids around! Enjoy your Mocha time!

To kick off things here, I would like to say that I appreciated the fact that P.O.C (Philippine Online Chronicles) set up an event like this. This was Bebe Gandanghari’s way to reach out to the bloggers since she has been visible online. The event was ok but I really couldn’t say that it achieved something. Yes, she was liked by everyone (and suddenly became fan boys and girls) butI am saying this because I believe that the LGBT agenda wasn’t highlighted. It became some sort of a ‘fans day’ or a ‘press con’ for an upcoming movie. I am glad that some of my fellow bloggers (even though they’re not “one of us”) asked relevant questions that actually highlighted the LGBT issues such as discrimination. It was Mark and I who opened up the LGBT issues and I was even wondering if some of the people there knew what LGBT was. Maybe I was looking for something that I couldn’t find and I expected it to become an avenue for it. But, I my expectations were too much. I know that total acceptance of the LGBTs is very impossible in the Philippines (and even the world) but at least some of us bloggers were able to open it up. I actually appreciated Mark in being honest about being one of the homophobics and meeting BB in person sort of opened up his mind a little bit though I know homophobia is not totally gone. This has become a some sort of achievement for me.

Anyway, I actually invited some LGBT bloggers to attend the event because I believe that they deserve to be represented there. I’m glad that Peach of lesfriendly.com was there and waved at me but I am not really sure if the others came. There was a bit of frustration in my part because there is already an avenue for the LGBTs to shine but it seemed that these kinds of events won’t interest them. This was how I felt when I was in college when the organizations that I was a member of organize forums or discussion groups and nobody wants to attend. Deep in our heart we know that the topics that we have were very relevant but usually it’s just the members of the org who attend those kinds of intellectual avenues to at least have an audience. There should be a ‘marketing’ factor to motivate people to come. As much as I don’t want to think that people are always searching for ‘what will I get out of it?” factors to make them go but it is a reality. Why do I need to ask more when I really can’t expect people to have the passion and conviction on the politics of the LGBT agenda? Oh well, here I go again. I better stop expecting from people too much. It is true that there is division in all sectors of the society and even in the LGBT community. It just sucks but I would have to work with it. At least some people were enlighted about the LGBT issues and I am already happy about it.

Above all the externalities, I admired BB Gandanghari. I saw her inner beauty while she was answering the questions that we asked. I realized that she is a sensible person who is capable of having an intellectual conversation.

Rustom Padilla has became her past but she does not regret living as Rustom Padilla. She’s currently a transgender (or transpinay in the local terms) and according to her does not have any plans on “cutting it off”. I know that most people will think that “isn’t it that being an LGBT means that they want the sex organ of the opposite?” well, to tell you frankly not everyone would like to have a sex change. This is a misconception and a lot of LGBTs are happy with the sex organ that they currently have. Like me, I don’t want a dick. I am very happy with my own stuff.

BB is a good example also in recreating one’s self. This shows that agency (individual) plays a very powerful role in self-deconstruction. And with her internalization of her deconstructed self as a woman becomes a reality. I know people’s minds are still boggled by this kind of idea but for me it is welcoming the concept of agency (individual) creating reality and not the other way around. Well actually, this has been a long debate among the social theorists but I think that it is becoming mainstream as well. This will open the hard to penetrate narrow minded individuals in thinking that reality is based on defining what is right or wrong. Something becomes a reality if other people acknowledge it. As mentioned by BB, she has experiences with the people that she meets acknowledges (and welcomes) her being a transgender. Her concept of reality is thus becomes legitimized and the internalization of her being a woman is much more deepened. I remember, when I got home I told my mom that I have met BB and then she asked “So talagang tinotoo na niya ang pagiging bakla niya?” and I would answered “Ma, matagal na siyang ganyan at ang pagiging totoong bakla ay hindi natatapos sa pagsusuot lang ng pambabaeng damit. Kahit ang lalake ay lalaking-lalake magdamit ay kung bakla, bakla talaga. Hindi nasusukat yon sa panlabas na kaanyuan. Yun ang katotohan niya na babae siya kaya tanggapin natin.” I would’ve wanted to say “Hindi naman niya pinapakialaman ang pagiging ‘straight’ mo so bakit pa nating pakikialaman ang pagiging babae niya?” but saying that would be too disrepectful hehe. Everytime I open up a topic that is very mind boggling we would always fight about it.

BB has become one of the leading LGBT Icons in the Philippines and I thanked her for being our inspiration. We, the LGBTs, need someone to look up to so that we could be guided on how we can live our lives. I just hope that we could have more Pinay lesbian icons too.