Maids of honor

Here we go again. Hong Kong does it again, and this time, it is even in their textbooks.

 

Once again, we are racially-profiled as a country whose identity is now attached on the Yayas and Indays that we send abroad to earn dollars, taking care of the children of others, even as they are forced to leave theirs. And social media is again abuzz with words of condemnation at these people who label us as such, whose houses our Filipina maids clean, whose food they cook and whose babies the asses of which they wipe.

 

To think that the offensive representation appears in books which Hong Kong children will read. This makes many shudder at the long-lasting effects this would have on how they will see us as a people.

 

I remember a time when I attended a conference in Singapore which was held in one of the prestigious universities there. During lunch break, I overheard two local Singaporean participants, obviously academics, seated in my table talking about their maids. One loudly complained about how stupid her Indian maid is. As if this was not painful enough to hear, to my horror, the other one retorted that she should fire her and hire a Filipina maid instead since Filipinas are less stupid.

 

I was horrified, and at the same time livid at the racial insult. I could not contain myself and I decided to move to another table, but only after I politely gave the two poor excuses of being professionals a piece of my mind. In my most diplomatic way, and friends who know me would attest that it took me a lot of effort to be so under the circumstance, I told them these exact words: “I am sorry, if you have to excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude but I have to move to another table. You see, I do not want to ruin my appetite. I am a Filipino and I find your comment about your maids offensive.”

 

I cherished that moment as my modest contribution to defend the image of the Pinay domestics, and others like them—Indian, Indonesian, Bengali—who are being treated like dirt.

 

The rage that many feel right now against Hong Kong is so intense that some even appear to launch their own racist comments against Chinese in general. Somebody even suggested that we should give the bigots who were responsible for the racial slur a dose of their own medicine by inserting in our textbooks the same type of characterization of identities of Chinese nationals in our country.

 

If “I am Filipino, and I am a domestic helper in Hong Kong” is used in Hong Kong, then it is only but fair, as these people would say to state that “I am Chinese, and I am an illegal trader of pirated products, and of drugs in the Philippines” or “I am Chinese, and I stink and smell, and I spit anywhere in Manila.”

 

The politics of hate and bigotry can only lead to more politics of hate and bigotry. This is particularly true in a world where those who are different are seen as inferior.

 

Indeed, it is disconcerting for Hong Kong authorities to simplify a rather complex identity of the Filipino, that includes a whole array of skills and talents, from engineers to singers, teachers to artists, into just one template of representation—that of being a maid. This is what I protest against—the disempowering homogenization and stereotyping, and the failure to appreciate the diversity and versatility of our people.  

 

I argue that this is the very logic of the racism that is embedded in the manner we have been represented. I believe that we have been demeaned not because we are being stereotyped as maids, but because we are stereotyped.

 

This is exactly my rage at those two Singaporean women who were at my lunch table. I felt insulted at the sheer abuse they heap on maids, regardless of nationality, which they labeled as stupid. And those who are offended by the representation of the Pinoy as maids, but whose anger is rooted at the insult of being identified with Yaya and Inday, are no less guilty.

 

This is precisely why I am equally troubled by people who retaliate at the Hong Kong Chinese by using “drug pusher” and “illegal trader” as labels, thereby giving the impression that these pejorative descriptors are of the same level of shame, and notoriety as that of being a maid.  

 

I would have been terribly offended had the Hong Kong text books identified us as “prostitutes,” or “drug mules,” for these are indeed problematic domains of subjectivity. However, one has to also balance this with the awareness that many of them are victims of sex trafficking and illegal recruitment. Nevertheless, these are activities that transgress legal standards, and people who bear in their identities these labels would be understandably at par with a “drug pusher” or an “illegal trader.”

 

I would suspect that had we been described differently, perhaps as “boxers” or “singers” or “beauty queens” that we would not have protested that much, if at all. People would have been, in fact, elated had the textbook in Hong Kong contained passages such as “I am Filipino, and I am a champion boxer,” or “I am Filipina, and I sing in the hotel lounge,” or “I am Pinay and I am Miss Universe.”  

 

This is precisely because being a boxer in the mold of a Manny Pacquiao, a singer following the fame of a Lea Salonga or a Charice Pempengco, and a beauty queen which we have a lot to offer, are far more desirable than being lumped with Yaya Lucing and Inday Caring.

 

Many of us are angry not because we are being stereotyped, and that our complex identities are being simplified into one representation. We are, instead livid because we are stereotyped as maids. The insult lies not in being demeaned and objectified, which is in fact what happens when we are denied of our versatility. Instead, the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong responsible for the text in that textbook are guilty for demeaning and objectifying us as belonging to a group of people that we ourselves demean and objectify.

 

We lament how Filipina maids are being treated abroad by their employers. We condemn their abject state, how they are being confined in cramped sleeping quarters, sometimes subjected to sexual abuse by their male employers, being beaten up and starved.  

 

Yet, these very same transgressions also happen here, in our country. The violence that many maids experience in foreign lands from foreign employers is also experienced by many maids at the hands of their Filipino “amos” in many places in the Philippines. We are horrified at the penury that Pinay domestics are led into in foreign lands, yet in our very midst there are plenty of examples of young women from the rural areas working in sub-minimum wage levels in the city.

 

The objectification of the maid, and their marginalization in society, is a product of a colonial discourse where the “muchacha” became the inheritor of the “alipin.” This was further reinforced by a kind of capitalism that effectively rendered invisible the work of the domestic helper as outside productive labor. Even the left who endeavor to dismantle capitalism failed to fully locate the place of Yayas and Indays in their advocacy, considering that they are neither peasants nor factory workers. The feminist movement tried to accommodate the plight of the kasambahay, but more in the context of women’s rights.

 

Absent in this framework is the recognition of the enormous contribution that maids have on domestic productivity. Their labor, mostly not priced fairly, serve to provide the management class of our society time to become productive. Yaya Lucing takes care of a child so that Ma’am and Sir can work. Inday Caring cooks and cleans the house so that a bank manager or a factory owner can continue to manage the production and circulation of surplus in the economy.

 

And in a globalized market, we also turn them into an export commodity, as another source of dollar remittances. And in foreign lands, such as in Hong Kong and in Singapore, in Italy and in the Middle East, and in many places in the world, our maids further give capitalism a breathing space and a time to thrive.

 

In this context, the place of maids is an honorable one. 

 

Yet, when our diverse identities are simplified and turned into a stereotype that is attached to their kind, we are insulted.  

 

We rage at the Chinese for demeaning us as a people not because they confine us in just one place, but more because they confine us in the place where Yaya and Inday are in. 

 

It’s about time that we should also rage against ourselves for denying our maids the honor that they deserve.

 

The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.