Monday, April 16, 2007 Arinday: 'Ladlad' and the 'unseen wall' By G.H. Arinday Jr. Sunfare
WE REALLY live in the world that has walls. For instance in the legal realm with all its paradoxes, there are different walls, some of which are broken down as civilization and culture clash with reality. The denial of the Ladlad party-list by the Commission on Elections because it is a "phantom" grouping is one issue worthy of argumentation and debate. There is an unseen wall.
Don't get me wrong. This is not a brief for the Ladlad group of homosexuals and lesbians. I am wholly male and if any opposite sex doubts my claim, she is free to examine me thoroughly with special bonus. There's an international best-seller which tells us that men came from Mars and Women from Venus. And where does the "third sex" come from? We certainly cannot classify them as having flown out from a minor planet No. 6636 and named in honor of our own scientist Dr. Ramon Kintanar and settled down on planet Earth.
Remember planet Jupiter which we learned for several decades as really one of the eight major planets? Because of its size commensurate with thousands of asteroids floating in the infinite space, it was demoted to just a mere asteroid. But this is another story.
Seriously speaking, the case of the Ladlad wanting to be a party-list, with all of its oddities raises some serious questions.
We cannot deny that there is what is termed as sex which has acquired several meanings under the "language drift" by reason of physiological and psychological changes in the individuals. Just like the "ideological drift" now prevailing in the justice system of the United States, decisions of similar
cases are interpreted in different legal perspective or legal philosophy.
The language drift in the nature of person is not longer limited to male or female as indicated in all legal forms required by the government as in the birth or death certificates, etc. Nowadays, we have terms like asexual, bisexual, transsexual, metrosexuals, so forth and so on. Our Constitution speaks only of "person" prominently under the Bill of Rights.
Famous psychologist Carl Jung refers the individual to the personality assumed by one in adaptation to the outside world. Our misunderstanding of sex exclusively refers to the vital organ in procreation. Now comes a new concept of sex shattering the common-held belief that the private organ is not the real sex tool but the brain!
In a news dispatch culled from the study of Dr. Larry Cahill of the University of California, Irvine campus, written last year in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, "desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice" but guided or controlled by genetic programs. The brain being wired by neural circuits prompts the individual to seek their partners in sexual congress. What is very startling in the said study is that "the body of a developing fetus is female by default and becomes male if the male-determining gene known as SYR is present."
The dominant gene "Y" chromosome is determinative of the fetus in the ovary in the process of development. Both "straight" men and women have their respective neural circuits which trigger their choice of opposite sexes. Indeed, this is a more complex understanding than Sigmund Freud's theory of Sexual Preference. Is there an instance where a self-proclaimed lesbian would morph into a real woman and function as the receptacle of the man's vital organ? It is very possible. It's only a matter of sexual-culture sensitized by an expert in igniting sexual arousal.
Indeed, the sexual complexion of change is a difficult mechanism to reverse the working neurons in the brain, which is one way or another confirms the Platonic perspective-the absence of sexual arousal in an individual.
Threading into the legal frontiers, we are boggled by this human phenomena where one is only given two choices of either male or female in filing up legal governmental forms.
Persons certified as gay or lesbian would have no chance or choice to fill up the requirements about sex. There is nothing in our legal papers that one has to reveal or identify one as an exception to male or female. This is primarily the basis of the Comelec in denying the registration of the Ladlad, led by Danton Remoto, a well-known figure in the literary circles. The issue is indeed paradoxical as it is mind-boggling if not an oddity in the legal realm.
Bisexuality is an interesting subject for sexologists as they are comfortable in both worlds of sex. They are possessed by both male and female gametes as in plant with both stamens and pistils. They are the generation of Hermes and Aphrodite who grew together with a nymph. Are you one of them? If so, you re the real phantom as the COMELEC called Ladlad. Poor Danton. If only there is a mechanism to change your neurons and legal tool, you can make it.
