Traditional Philippine Norms Of Sexuality And Reproduction

1. The Evolution of Traditional Philippine Norms of Sexuality and Reproduction

As a thrice-colonized country, the Philippines has a complex history of norm evolution. Before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1521 and the establishment of Roman Catholicism in 1565, the indigenous Negritos were believers of animism, or the worship of nature. The indigenous inhabitants believed in a hierarchy of gods, goddesses, and nature spirits. Each tribe had different terms for their spiritual beings: for instance, Bathala was the supreme God of the Tagalogs, symbolized by the sun; in central Philippines, the Bikolanos believed the supreme God to be Gugurang. Other gods and goddesses included Buwan or the moon, Tala or star, and the indigenous people believed objects such as trees, rocks, and rivers as having spirits. Evil spirits also existed, such as the aswang, ik-ik, duwende, and diwata— the Filipino equivalent of vampires, witches, dwarves, and fairies, respectively. Voodoo practices were also common, and healers or practitioners of magic named babaylans were a staple of each village. The babaylan was traditionally female, and she functioned both as the tribe’s medicine woman and spiritual advisor.

Philippine pre-colonial society was egalitarian in the sense that both women and men enjoyed equal rights and played important roles in the community. Women were businessmen, healers, and warriors alongside their men. Daughters of datus, or tribal leaders, were part of the line of succession, and women in positions of leadership could hold pacts and act as representatives to agreements. In some tribes, such as the Ifugao, divorce was acceptable on the basis of infidelity or infertility, and either the man or the woman were allowed to seek divorc...

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...fordable for the common laborer.

Similar sensitive topics such as divorce and abortion produce comparable divisive opinions within the political sphere. At present, the Philippines remains the only state in the world without divorce after Malta legalized divorce in 2010. The Philippines also categorizes abortion as illegal in all cases, reiterated in 2010 by CBCP legal counsel Josephine Imbong with the church position that “abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances, including rape or incest. The Church has long influenced social norms and attitudes to reproductive health however these are increasingly challenged in two respects: first, the argument that reproductive health is integral to dealing with two key problems in the Philippines— poverty and population; and second, the growing debate about access to reproductive health as a basic human right.