LET'S ALL CELEBRATE WOMEN'S DAY AND WORK FOR GENDER HARMONY

KAISARI Movement for the Promotion of Gender Harmony

Message for International Women's Day

The newly-organized KAISARI (Kaisahan ng mga Sari) Movement for Gender Harmony salutes all women, and all men who salute the women, as we all commemorate the International Women’s Day this year. Both the women and the men of Humanity have reason to celebrate, and celebrate together, this global holiday on this date, and increasingly live its spirit the rest of the year.

         We fully agree with the declaration made by SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation exactly ten years ago that: "The liberation of women from patriarchal ideas and practics is in the best interest of the entire human communities. Both the womenfolk and the menfolk should synergize for this liberation, and synergize further on the basis of this liberation. No positive social change is possible without it. No social change can be complete without it."

         The potentials of both the women and the men can be fully actualized with complementation schemes and a supportive atmosphere created by efforts of members of both sexes.

         Such gender harmony can develop as a consistently growing reality as current trends in development initiatives get increasingly premised on a horizontal relationship between the sexes. In such a case, gender issues like prostitution, sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape, etc. can be made absolutely loathsome and obsolete, and not merely reduced or neutralized, in human praxis, like slavery has long been. Members of both sexes have a joint stakeholdership in the eradication of social patterns of human rights violations perpetrated on women and perpetrated on men in widely-varying circumstances. The violation of the human rights of any person anywhere is both an affront and a real threat on the rights of all persons everywhere. The humanity of all is one!

        Humanity cannot be uplifted as the female members of the species merely carry and birth children and then raise them, and serve their husbands and depend on them. On the other hand, for any effort towards positive social change, a community can at the very least double the capability of the people comprising it by attaining the liberation of the womenfolk from the shackles of patriarchal ideas, structures and practices. And wherever synergism is alive, the liberation of women more than doubles the community’s power.

         We resonate with Sycone International in advocating the full realization of human synergy in conscious oneness. On United Nations Day last October, it declared: “When we have evolved enough to really live our oneness, then we shall have become fully human!" Sycone also expressed a spiritual premise for Gender Harmony and all other synergies among individual humans and groups of humans. "When we: have finally discovered that our individual selves go well beyond our skin, we can finally discern as "at least possible" our deep unconditional connectedness, and we will draw ever closer to knowing fully well our oneness in spirit. This oneness extends its field of dynamic harmony throughout the “integrity of all creation,” the synergy of all that exist, known and unknown.

         Kaisari supports the Lambat-Liwanag Network for Empowering Paradigms in developing and promoting the paradigm of gender harmony, to be practised in our social, institutional and personal lives. This is gender harmony premised on gender awareness, sensitivity and basic equality.

         The enhancement of gender sensitivity has already been mainstreamed to a significant extent at the policy level in this country. After all, sensitivity to the sensibilities of all the people affected by a person’s speech and deeds is a measure of the level of a person’s capability for compassion, of that person’s attained level of maturity.

         This is gender harmony, as clearly distinguished from the folly of pursuing gender identicality which is unnatural and therefore impossible. Diversity, whether between any two individuals or any two groups of individuals (like genders) cannot by itself lead to conflict. Only the sense of separativeness can, and this can even imagine diversities where it does not exist, just to satisfy the lust for separation and conflict, On the other hand, diversity is the basic element for complementarity, for dynamic unity, for synergy.

         While the obviously desirable vis a vis the patriatchal structures that have oppressed the womenfolk for centuries, gender equality has to be a mere stepping stone to the real ideal of gender harmony. Only the earnest pursuit of gender harmony by the womenfolk and the menfolk, teamworking for the collective interest of human evolution, can result in the resolution of the gender issues that have tended to divide the human population into hostile halves. Basic equality, which underpins justice, is the bottomline and basis for real harmony, but pursuit only of equality would tend to make the discourse on gender issues degenerate into endless acrimonious nitpicking on the pettiest of details in intergender dynamics.

         Kaisari does not expect the pursuit of this advocacy to be easy. With a long historical baggage in the form of inequalities and hostilities that precede our existence and efforts, and with all our limitations especially in material resources, we can only bank on will power to validate our existence with some success. Many men, who have great ideas and deeds in many fields of social advocacy have had the tendency to dismiss gender issues to be a concern just of the women, and many would also be clumsily patronizing. Many women would either be inadvertently participating in the denigration of their own gender in terms of capabilities and rights, or would be overemphatic in their opposition to this, implying that human rights violations would be all right if the victims were only men.

         But a growing number of men and women are opening their minds and jointly putting together their minds and hearts for seeking mutually-beneficial arrangements. Openmindedness on the part of everyone in a process of earnest dialogue is a key. There are some people who have joined our kaisari e-mail list group. One of them wrote: “I am not sure why I was invited to this yahoogroup… I am not for gender harmony/gender equality… (but) I think receiving updates on your activities and advocacies would be helpful and informative.” Another egroup joiner declared his conscious stakeholdership in family synergy, saying “HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY! HAPPY FAMILY DAY! Family day since without women, family will not exist.” With women doing the birthing and rearing of children, families do still exist, but without gender harmony, “happy family day” can only be a very ironic greeting. With every passing day, more and more men and women are joining our e-group for a richer discourse on premises and ways of pursuing this advocacy.

         We are optimistic of this trend. And we join SanibLakas in speaking up to salute the women, and also the men who are enlightened enough to really work hard for women’s liberation from patriarchy -- on International Women’s Day, and every day.

Norma Y. Beltran

Spokesperson,  KAISARI

March 8, 2008

We are inviting women and men who would be willing to help us in this consciousness-raising effort and others who would be interested in our work, to join our e-mail list group by sending a blank message to <kaisari-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>

See also http://saniblakas.faithweb.com/ss-2-7.htm

http://sycone_international.8m.net/#statement

http://saniblakas.faithweb.com/LAMBAT-LIWANAG.HTM#paradigms

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp 

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