(above) Dra. Margie Holmes was telling me, “Oh! You look different from what I imagined!” or something like that, while I was reaching to shake Dr. Mike Tan’s hand (off-photo).It was an enlightening book launch for A Different Love, as eloquent speakers Doc Margie, Doc Mike, Professor Eric Manalastas and Malou Marin talked about homosexuality in the country last Saturday at Powerbooks Megamall. I was able to ask a question to the panelists through a piece of paper the organizers passed around: “Are there people devoid of sexuality? For example, old maids or maybe nuns. Is it possible to not feel attraction to anyone?”
Dr. Margie enthusiastically responded, “I’ll answer it. It’s such a good comment. It’s possible to be asexual or, as my husband would say, a non-combatant. Actually, there’s a group that says, ‘you should look at us the way you look at alternative sexual lifestyles.’ At the moment, they’re just not interested in having a passionate relationship with anyone. But they’re happy. It doesn’t mean that they’re sick; it doesn’t mean that they’re passionless. It doesn’t mean that they’re just recovering from a painful relationship. It’s just that they’re interested in other things. It’s probably hard for us to understand, but there are people for whom sex, or sexual happiness, is not that strong a drive.”
Interesting. There were participants and stories galore (Dr. Tan explained the difficulty of not being able to visit his partner directly at the hospital without the signatures and consent of his lover's parents; guest Fr. Robert Reyes revealed that the Pope’s new directive to weed out gay seminarians would remove 75% of the roster, etc.). I was also able to have the book signed by Dr. Margie (one of the few people I actually want an autograph of). Dr. Mike also told me that it wouldn’t have been possible twenty years ago to create a comic book like mine, and it wouldn’t have been as well-received, if it were. So my timing was good. Naks.
Talk About Sex Baby
That last part actually allows me to segue to LNA. I’d like to share, again, that people have been reacting nicely to it. I’ve heard stories through friends and siblings how different people have been affected positively by it, and there are blog entries of persons I’ve yet to meet or talk to that praise, critique and recommend it (thank you!). I continue to get grateful emails from (I assume) a mix of young and old readers who share their feelings about it, how they connected with it and who their favorite characters were. Creating it and publishing the book is a gamble that paid off.
There was one weird reaction to it that made me worry a little, though. A sibling’s friend (okay, I’ll be veiling identities at this point to protect certain people) bought a copy months ago and hid it from the prying eyes of his younger brothers and sisters. Sibling’s friend was shocked when his mom showed him the comic book; she caught his Grade 7 sister reading it. Apparently, angsty Grade 7 kid, fan of The O.C., rummaged through his personal belongings and got curious. The mom confronted sibling’s friend in the company of other 20-something pals, who were giggling the whole time. The horrified mom, a devout member of a Catholic offshoot group that rhymes with Bogus Day… o sige na nga, Opus Dei, said, “I tried to read it but I stopped because it was so SHOCKING!!!” Sibling’s friend and pals went, “There was a warning on the cover, Mom. And we’ve all read it!” Friend’s mom: “What? It was confiscated in this house!!!” And the giggling, I was told, continued.
All I can honestly say about it is, parents, please talk to your kids. Discuss sex eventually. You yourselves know that they’ll be getting information from friends, and discussions at Science or Biology class aren’t enough to answer all their questions. It will be hard, I’m sure, to acknowledge that your children aren’t babies you can cuddle anymore. But please do it to make them aware of the changes that they and their bodies are going through, and to let them know that it’s not an embarrassing thing to talk about. Please don’t go ballistic when you catch them beating off. Or if your strapping young man fancies other strapping young men. Or if your pop culture-loving girl is reading something that isn’t about Jesus or Mary (digression: some Bible stories make me recoil sometimes because of the violence and gore). Puberty is a confusing and difficult enough time as it is. Be realistic, but present them with different options.
Surreal
Looking at my Friendster friends page reminds me of recurring dreams where people I met at different points of my life know each other. It’s weird, having them contained within a list that easily creates bulletpoints of specific periods, both good and bad. The search bar allows me to see old classmates and acquaintances, some of whom aren’t aging gracefully. There are those who’re barely recognizable because they actually look better. Some are starting their own families already. Kewl.
Toysies!
The Marvel Legends Sentinel series arrived Monday. Got Angel (Warren Worthington III) yesterday and Black Panther earlier today. Super-poseably nice.
Monday evening, GloriettaThanks to my friends for the new pics, by the way. Wow. This post is long.
7 comments:
some members of my family are opus dei. they're staunch detractors of harry potter. theyve banned it among their members.
crazy ...
ey they should bring margie holmes back on air? or a cameo on your comic thats soon to be a series ..
ignorance makes us fear and hate those who are different from us. if only that mother continued reading LNA, she would've probably understood her son more.
on margie--i remember this morning show back in the late 90s where margie had a segment or was always a guest. she always talked intellegently about sex and family issues. then she was booted out in favor of madam rosa. this shows a lot about where our local tv is headed to.
my family are born-again christians. all my nephews and nieces are forbidden to read all fantasy books including fairy tales and comic books on superheroes, anything that has an element of magic and fantasy that are not biblical. children need fantasy to develop their creativity and imagination. take these away and they'd grow up like zombies.years from now, when they are already adults, they would look back to their childhood and frown at its utter lack of color.
rmacapobre--that's a nice suggestion. having margie back on tv. or bringing her character into oliver's comicbooks. she can be a superhero who kills her enemies with incisive and intellegent psychological repartee.
Had to delete my last comment because I needed to adjust a sentence.
Max- Harry Potter? hehehe. That's just sad. Jesus is also a being that's supposedly immersed in the supernatural/extraordinary, isn't he?
About Margie Holmes... they should give her a talk show or something. She's busy teaching at UP though. My comic book... not going to be a series. Maybe something else? Dunno yet. ;)
Slim- Yeah. Ignorance kills.
Local TV shows... I rarely watch them now. But yeah I first saw Margie there. She's still unique and revolutionary to merit her own show. I should ask her if she's got a radio show again. She deserves as much air time as possible.
About your family, yep, I find it really interesting that you were once a Born Again Christian... I agree that limiting kids' imaginations is just deplorable. But I'm sure that some of them will eventually stray from the programming and partake of as many fantasy stories as they can.
The sad thing about that kind of ultra-conservatism is, they forget that brains need to be used and challenged. And there are so many ideas and cultures that they're sorely missing out on.
Hello.
What's Robert Reyes's stand on homosexuality by the way? Just curious.
Hey J!
Just last year, he had a TV interview where he said, and I paraphrase, that gay people “don’t need a law for protection, but people should not discriminate against them”. Weirdest, dumbest declaration of tolerance ever.
So I found it strange that he was sitting there at the lecture among the guests. Dr. Margie acknowledged his presence, and the guy shared that many Catholic Church leaders are gay. These, according to him, are closeted people who chose the seminary as a refuge as young seminarians. He suggested that Dr. Margie conduct seminars with Catholic officials that they may be enlightened. He declared that he was opposed to the impending interrogations of seminarians’ sexual histories, and that the Pope should take an enlightening lecture/workshop about sexuality himself.
I do hope, though, that he got the part where Dra. Margie was talking about religious people’s tendency to impose the restrictive “hate the sin, love the sinner” attitude on gay people.
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