The Uterus Monologues

This blog entry was inspired by Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues," which I saw during its local staging here in Bacolod back in 2005. And, yes, it's a play about talking vaginas that make a lot of sense.

So what does my uterus think about all these raging debates on the Reproductive Health Bill? See, if my uterus could think-- which, I suspect, it does, the fact that I'm still single and childless at 35-- and if it could talk (which, unfortunately, it can't do), this would be her take on the issue:

I. "Argumentum ad utero"

"Listen up and listen good, all ye erudite and eloquent people of the so-called Upper and Lower House.

I am not comfortable with the fact that 98% of you, who decide whether I use contraceptive pills, condom, or the good old calendar are members of the male species--  the senate, congress and clergy being male-dominated provinces.

How dare you, sperm-producers and ejaculators, debate over my natural rights and welfare on national TV. How dare you prescribe methods that might be detrimental to my psyche as a woman, because these methods mess up with my hormones and deprive me of sexual pleasure! You are giving me a serious case of dysMENorrhea!

Seriously, gents, I live for the day when you would start empowering and giving more voice to women. Encourage women assemblies and fora and listen to what we believe is best for us. Ever heard of "women's intuition"? The "mothers know best" truism? The "hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" maxim?

For ages, we have been dictated by patriarchal societies across cultures on how to be a good wife and mother; we have been told what to do and what not to do on which days; we have been taught what to believe and not to believe in male-dominated schools and institutions; we have been required when and whom to marry.

Now we are being told when not to have sex with our own husband, who seem to want to have sex on days that end in letter "Y." What if "abstinence" is NOT in my husband's vocabulary, Father, because, as a little boy, he never learned from his father how to delay gratification, and, in Sunday school, you taught him that he should "go forth and multiply"?

But the youngest of my six kids is barely a year old and I've barely stopped lactating and, already, my husband is demanding that I do my "marital obligation." So, I go to my OB-GYN, who recommends pills and rubber and that anticlimactic coitus interruptus. Then I go to hear Mass and I go home confused and miserable. With what this society is doing to me, no wonder I bleed every month!

II. "Walk your talk"

How about this, gentlemen of this highly-civilized society: educate your kind, the male species, from boyhood so that they grow up to become responsible fathers and caring husbands. We have been doing our part as mothers, but these boys just DO NOT see enough good examples.

How about teaching them the art of delaying self-gratification by setting an example? See, if you impregnate your wife before your youngest kid could walk, you're not teaching him self-restraint.

How many of you who try to outwit each other at the Senate and the Congress on the matter of Reproductive Health are bright shining examples of men who are capable of abstinence and delayed gratification?

If you have eight kids by your wife and five by your mistress, then you must have a skin as thick as a crocodile's for being there, lecturing us on reproductive health!"