Born This Way At All?: An Antinatalist Declaration

It's hard to describe oneself as an antinatalist without the uninitiated mistaking you for a baby murderer. Yes, I hate children, particularly the squealing, shrieking kind, but that's entirely a different matter (and in fairness, I don't exactly dislike babies: who could hate such cute, soft, bouncy little bundles of joy, save when they poop). I myself find the term "antinatalism" particularly inadequate to describe the philosophy it represents, when I discovered the term roughly a year ago which turned out to be the near-sacred personal world view I happen to believe in all this time. It's not so much as simply not wanting children to be born, for whatever reason, be it related to economics or overpopulation. It's about the question of existence itself. It's about questioning if all the possible joys and pleasures of life are really worth all the challenges, the disappointents, the imperfections and suffering that comes with it. If it's even fair at all to be "forced" into "existence", without ever having been given a choice. It's about pointing a blaming finger on the unchangeable, the inevitable.

Religious people would have a simple response: it's all according to "God's" will. "God" created you for a reason. "God" wants you to apreciate his creation, and to realize your true purpose. "God" wants you to worship him and glorify him as your "creator". If I were to honestly look into this kind of thinking, I can find no other conclusion: "God" wants you to be his toy. A toy that, unfortunately, could feel. A toy who could make mistakes, and be done mistakes to. A toy who would writhe in eternal suffering in Hell or be reincarnated as a slimy worm should you happen to annoy your creator by not flattering his ego with "prayers", or should you happen to dislike his "perfect divine plan". You may as well have not been created at all, but of course you can't have a say on that. "God" can do whatever he wants!

I thus find an atheist view of the antinatist philosophy less hateful. For some reason or another, there was the Big Bang, and with it the chain of events that led to atoms, the Universe, to DNA, and to then to life, all governed by their respective natural laws. "Pain" has become an evolutionary-sound means for living things to respond to stimuli and keep "living", and is here to stay. And out of this natural process, you "became". Nothing could have stopped it, just as milk can't be stopped from spilling once the glass is dropped. It's Nature running its own course.

Thinking about it, perhaps antinatalism is indeed the only sound term to legitimize it for public discourse. What's the point, after all, of crafting your thoughts on what no one can do anything about? It's too late for you to be "unborn", but you can keep other people from ever "becoming" at all. Simply by never bringing a child into the world--"anti" and "natalism". Whether it be by celibacy or abortion is an entirely different subject altogether, and debates regarding this are what keeps antinatalism, though relatively unheard of by many, a living philosophy.

What's of those who already live to do then? It's none of anyone's business. "Pain" - or what I would rather call, "Disturbance" - is something only the person himself knows. No one else but oneself knows how one really feels. We may laugh at a lethargic obese lady utterly distressed by an out-of-service escalator, but an antinatalist would say who are we to judge how the lady feels just because the rest of us could "suck it up" and climb the stairs instead? The point is that how we perceive and respond to life, to all its perks and, more importantly, its disturbances, is ours and ours alone, and no one has the right to judge that a child who lives in constant hunger and dread in warn-torn Afghanistan "suffers" more than a well-fed First World kid who whines for not being given a PS3 for his birthday. One could face life's pains head on if one wishes to, but if one were to choose to end it all and take his or her own life for it, after weighing all options one has at hand, then nobody, NOBODY, not even the "loved ones" who'd be left behind in grief, has any right to condemn it.

"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved."
-Mark Twain

"Telepono" (adapted from Lady Gaga's "Telephone")

(I want to record this song. Badly. :,c)

Hello, Hello, napatawag ka sa phone ko, beh?
Hindi 'ko maka-text, walang signal kase-seh
Hwa-hwa-hwag  ka nga feeling paimportante
Sige, break na tayo, hwag ka lang magse-seh

Hwag kang magse-seh
Hwag kang magse-seh
Sige, break na tayo, hwag ka lang magse-seh

Teka muna, sino kaya diyan ang nang-injan
Buong araw 'kong nakatunganga sa S-M
Kaya ako'y nag-bar na lang kasama'ng aking friends
Ngayo'y di ka makapigil, ika'y magse-seh

Makulit, makulit, tigil na sa kakukulit
Nag-sasaya 'ko dito sa Malate
Makulit, makulit, tigil na sa kakukulit
Nag-sasaya 'ko dito sa Malate

Eh-eh-eh...Hwag ka nang makulet
Eh-eh-eh...Kase-seh
Eh-eh-eh...Hwag ka nang makulet

Bahala ka diyan, tumawag ka lang
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono
Tatagay ako, sayang lang ang load mo
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono

Bahala ka diyan, tumawag ka lang
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono
Tatagay ako, sayang lang ang load mo
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono

Pambihira ka, daig pa'ng pokpok
Sino kang istorbo
Akalang sinong gwapo
Talaga ngang bobo

Nadukutan na lang sana
ako ng 'sang isnatyer
Kesa magpakamarter
Sorry, pero tayo'y over

Minahal naman kita, kahit papaano
Nagsasawa nga lang 'ko sa 'yong panloloko
That's why ako'y nag-LRT pa-Recto Station
At nag-taxi ng pa-Orosa't magpaparty!

At magpaparty (tonight)! At magpaparty (tonight)!
At nag-taxi ng pa-Orosa't magpaparty!

Makulit, makulit, tigil na sa kakukulit
Nag-sasaya 'ko dito sa Malate
Makulit, makulit, tigil na sa kakukulit
Nag-sasaya 'ko dito sa Malate

Makulit, makulit, tigil na sa kakukulit
Nag-sasaya 'ko dito sa Malate
Makulit, makulit, tigil na sa kakukulit
Nag-sasaya 'ko dito sa Malate

Eh-eh-eh...Hwag ka nang makulet
Eh-eh-eh...Kase-seh
Eh-eh-eh...Hwag ka nang makulet

Bahala ka diyan, tumawag ka lang
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono
Tatagay ako, sayang lang ang load mo
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono

Bahala ka diyan, tumawag ka lang
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono
Tatagay ako, sayang lang ang load mo
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono

Telepono! Te-te-telepono!
Tatagay ako
Sayang lang ang load mo
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono!

Telepono! Te-te-telepono!
Tatagay ako
Sayang lang ang load mo
Dededmahin ko'ng telepono!

Ay, ¡Mi Baklito!

"Things would have been so much easier if I were gay."

A law student friend of mine quotes this from her straight friend who has been mistaken a lot for being gay, due to his effeminacy. The guy I've been told is in a happy relationship with his girlfriend.

It brings to mind one TV show I remember watching when I was a kid. The story involved a flamboyant effeminate boy (played by Vandolph, and then by Dominic Ochoa as an adult), who end up impregnating and marrying his long-time female childhood friend. It also brings to mind famous "bakla" celebrities such as Jun Encarnacion and Ogie Diaz who each end up raising a family. I sense the Philippine society's reaction to this as a mixture of both disgust and approval: disgust, with the thought of how a  stereotypical gay man and a stereotypical straight woman could endure having sexual intercourse with each other and enjoy it, and approval, for having gone beyond "sinful" carnal desire to fulfill a man's "God-bound duty" to be head and provider of a God-fearing family. They're looked upon as heroes, for despite being effeminate they're thought off as being more responsible  fathers than they're more masculine beer-guzzling peers, proving that they're more worthy to be called a "man".

I still however resent that either way, effeminacy is still looked upon as something "wrong", as something that needs to be "redeemed", regardless of the guy's sexual orientation. Now I'd like to distinguish this sentiment from sheer personal taste: I would NOT, in my most desperate sexual fetishes, have sex with Jun Encarnacion (bless his soul). But if you're a straight guy who just so happened to have snappier fingers than usual, it must have been terrible to be branded gay right away. First, because you're seen as having something "wrong", and second because you're seen as what you're really not, the same way a transgender woman would cringe if she were called "sir". It would then have been much easier indeed if you were gay, as you'd save the trouble of having to explain every time that while you can sway your hips better than beauty queen contestants, you just happen to like licking pussies more than cocks.

Ironically as a transgender woman, I'm often inclined to fall into believing that things would have been so much easier if I were a gay man too. It would save me the trouble of having to explain to people the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. I wouldn't have to be bothered every time I see my name prefixed in official documents with "Mister". I wouldn't have to take expensive self-medicated hormones to look more feminine and risk cancer and liver failure in the next few years. I wouldn't have to be worried being caught "cross-dressing" by my family. I could've signed up without discrimination on PR and have SEB's, provided I buffed up my abs a little and evaded posers. I could've had a chance to share my heart with the gay men I once fell in love with.

Strike A Pose, There's Nothing To It...Vogue!

 

"To be awake at two-ish in the morning with only three regular hours of sleep is the nearest I could get to being drunk (or stoned). I have already surrendered to the fact that drinking beer is an acquired taste, something I'd rather reserve for bitter chocolate (85% cacao to be exact). It's now five-ish in the afternoon and the sky looks just as dark and ominous as an oversized incontinent prune slapped with the cruel reality of an out-of-order toilet."

- hug me. =), 10th September 2008

One ought to be disturbed, when one comes across a three-year-old piece of prose, drool at its awesome (sic), and one realizes (or pretends to realize) it's her very own spawn. It's like getting trolled by a smartass kid for being smartass, only the smartass kid fondled the very same genitals you're fondling now, and both of you called it masturbation (and that this bratty kid didn't have to rely on overt sexual rhetoric, internet meme references, redundancy, or excessive parenthetic statements to state her case).

The ironic thing was that said smartass kid considered herself a failed geriatric, which would then make me a glorified mummy at present. Heaven forbid what ancient anomaly I'd end up into three years on.

"...I've been killing my time going over several blog entries, job posts, and broadband/DSL forums. October 4 is not very far away. Soon I'd be residing over my very own flat and experience how it is to pay my very own utility bills and ride the sweaty crowded MRT train with a stored-value ticket. I'm hoping later today Globelines would confirm its service availability in my area, as I'm becoming less and less encouraged to pimp myself out with documents to PLDT just to prove I'm a good paying customer. I'm less worried about a 10-page Rizal paper due this Saturday which I never bothered starting as I am at claiming my updated TIN ID later at the BIR district office, a tricycle and jeepney ride away. October 1 will mark the end of my daytime starvation and nightly food binge, and is exclusively reserved for a friend date with a werewolf. October 8 will mark the end of my unfinished college life and a start of a year or so of money hoarding and soul searching."

- beware of the lurking sappy pun, 25th September 2008

As internet connection is still elusive back at my residence in Winterfell, I'm currently leeching wi-fi connection here at Katipunan, Riverrun, hoping the 102-peso meal would satisfactorily cover for six hours I would have similarly spent on a DOTA-noisy internet cafe. The recent weeks had not been very kind for money hoarding and soul searching. But while my financial future may now be shrouded in a cloud of uncertainty thicker than the early-morning smog I have to endure everyday along the Killer Highway, I'm somehow more confident that what my soul has been looking for wouldn't be so far off.

I better start writing like a geriatric again.