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Featured Stories

OVERVIEW
Anak ng Jueteng
by Sheila S. Coronel
Like Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been accused of accepting money from illegal gambling.

THE CAMPAIGN
Jekyll-and-Hyde Campaign
by Yvonne T. Chua
Alongside the official Arroyo campaign was a parallel structure that operated secretly and with little accountability.

Presidential Makeover
by Ellen Tordesillas
A foreign PR firm is re-engineering Mrs. Arroyo’s image.

CAMPAIGN FUNDS
Running on Taxpayers’ Money
by Luz Rimban
Billions of pesos in government funds were used to pump prime Arroyo’s candidacy.

THE VICE PRESIDENT
The Man Who Would be President
by Luz Rimban
Noli de Castro has come a long way from his days as a broadcaster; he may even end up in Malacañang.

CHARTER CHANGE
SOS: System Under Stress
by Sheila S. Coronel
Can Congress be trusted to hold a credible impeachment trial and to change the constitution?

IMPEACHMENT
Lights, Camera, Impeachment!
by Alecks P. Pabico
The impeachment proceedings should be the best show in town, but so far, it’s been a sleeper.

VOICES FROM THE PERIPHERY
For Visayans, The Center Does Not Hold
by Resil Mojares

The Moro People Can Be a Part of a Plural Society Without Losing Their Identity
by Omar Solitario Ali

The Time for Federalism is Now
by Rey Magno Teves

TWO AT EDSA
"When the Wheels of History Turn, You Hardly Expect the World to Turn Upside Down”
by Ed Lingao

“I Was at Edsa Out of Pure Disgust”
by Mylene Lising

FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH: THE LOST GENERATION
Finding Spaces
by Katrina Stuart Santiago
They are the hi-tech generation, at ease with technology but otherwise lost when it comes to dealing with the complexities of a globalized world.

So Young and So Trapo
by Avigail Olarte
The Sangguniang Kabataan, training ground of future leaders, has fallen into the grip of traditional politics.

Teen and Tipsy
by Vinia Datinguinoo
More and more adolescent girls are drinking alcohol.

Perils of Generation Sex
by Cheryl Chan
Filipino women are having sex earlier, but are seldom aware of the risks, including sexually transmitted diseases.

The Business of Beauty
by Cheryl Chan
Shampoos, skin whiteners, and assorted other beauty products find a ready market among young women.

Machos in the Mirror
by Dean Francis Alfar
Filipino men are spending millions to look—and feel—good.

Male and Vain
Photos by Jose Enrique Soriano
Men are lining up to get facials, foot scrubs, and even dips in bathtubs filled with rose petals.

Growing Up Female and Muslim
by Samira Gutoc
Moro women still value religion and tradition, but are also responding to the challenges of modernity.

Filipino women are having sex earlier, but are seldom aware of the risks, including sexually transmitted diseases.

by CHERYL CHAN

	Today’s youth are exposed to sex and sexuality earlier and in larger doses.

UP A FLIGHT of stairs, in a room with red, yellow, purple, and green walls, the talk is all about sex, all of the time. This is, after all, the hotline center of the Teen Foundation for Adolescent Development (FAD), an organization dedicated to adolescent health. In this room, among a few potted plants, counselors are always ready to answer calls from youths and discuss with them the consequences of premarital or unprotected sex.

In the past, typical hotline questions involved girl-boy relationships and family, school, and peer issues. But in the last year alone, the number of inquiries about sexually transmitted infections (STI) has soared. It now ranks third among the top five most commonly asked issues.

“It’s very alarming,” says Cecilia Villa, president of FAD, which has its offices right smack in the heart of Manila’s university belt. Awareness is higher now, she explains, but very few people realize they can be infected with a disease because of one mistaken assumption or a momentary lapse of judgment. With the invincibility characteristic of the young, they “know about it but don’t think it can happen to them.”

Dr. Rosendo Roque, head of adolescent health of the Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (POGS), is himself quite worried. There is a lack of statistics and woeful underreporting, but based on feedback from obstetricians and gynecologists across the country and from his private practice, Roque believes STIs among youth is a growing health concern.

STIs are infections of the reproductive system, transmitted through sexual contact generally through warm, moist mucous membranes such as the vagina, anus, urethra, and the mouth. “STI” is used interchangeably with the more common term STD” or sexually transmitted disease. Some organizations, including the Department of Health (DOH) and the World Health Organization, are now using the more politically correct STI. The most common STIs diagnosed are gonorrhea, known in the vernacular as tulo, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, and genital warts.

There are many factors behind the increase of STIs, says Dr. Teresita Brion, an ob-gyn at St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City. “There’s the media. There’s the barkada. There’s the breakdown of families. You don’t need hormones surging to want to experiment.”

There is certainly no lack of stimuli either. Today’s youth are exposed to sex and sexuality earlier and in larger doses. There may still be the constant nagging of elders about sex being a sin, but between advertisements using sex to sell products, double entendres on noontime variety shows, and pirated pornographic DVDs sold for less than P80 in Quiapo to gyrating MTV starlets and explicit lyrics of hip-hop songs, young people are constantly bombarded with messages about sex. These contribute to a shift in cultural values that makes casual sex more permissible and traditional preconditions for sex such as marriage or true love increasingly irrelevant.

As a result, Filipino youths are having sex earlier. Last year, Roque’s youngest patient was all of 14. This year he has a 12-year-old. Brion sees patients who are sexually active even before their first menstrual cycle. According to the 2002 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality (YAFS) survey of the University of the Philippines Population Institute, the average age for the first sexual encounter for both men and women is 18. About 55 percent of these first sexual experiences were not planned or were something the teenagers did not want to happen at that time.

Premarital sex is also becoming more accepted, its prevalence rising from 18 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 2002. But the sex is often unplanned, sporadic, or a product of either being nadala (carried away) or peer pressure. It often takes place before teens learn about STIs and other health risks. “They still don’t know what is going on in them,” says Roque. “Most of them are getting into it because of peer pressure or experimentation. They are not well-guided.”

He also cites the impact of broken families, absentee parents, and lack of role models created by the mass exodus of Filipinos overseas. Parents abroad shower their children with gifts in order to compensate for their absence, so the children grow up in an nvironment of material excess without proper guidance. In today’s sexually charged landscape, there is a surfeit of teenagers left on their own to figure out their own values.

Dr. Brion suspects that experimentation on bisexuality and homosexuality, as well as one-night stands and having sex “for old times’ sake” or “just because” have become increasingly common. And while the dominant practice is still to have a single partner, there is a trend toward multiple partners, especially among young men. YAFS data show that about 50 percent of men have had multiple sex partners compared to about 11 percent of women.

THE CALLERS of FAD’s phone-a-friend hotline are a good mix of students and young professionals. Most are male. One possible reason is because males are more likely to have multiple partners and are therefore more vulnerable to contracting an STI.

At the same time, some STIs tend to be asymptomatic among women. Only 20 percent of women, for example, exhibit symptoms of gonorrhea; just half show symptoms of trichomoniasis, which is marked by painful, burning urination and a yellowgreen discharge among females.

STIs become a serious public health concern when ignored: in women, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which increases the risk of infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Chlamydia, left untreated, can spread to the upper reproductive tract and in women, infect the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries, leading to infertility. Untreated syphilis may lead to nerve damage, mental disorientation, and eventually death. Yet approximately 80 percent of men and women who experience reproductive health complaints such as painful urination, abnormal vaginal/penile discharge, genital warts, or ulcers do not even consult a health professional.

This may be partly why the official number of STI cases in the country seems deceptively low. The 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey, for instance, says only 7.6 percent of men aged 15-19 and less than 2.2 percent of those aged 20-49 reported an STI or STI symptoms. But underreporting may be at work here; while public health centers usually report the STI to the health department for statistical purposes and the necessary contact tracing, private clinics are not obliged to do the same.

Even patients of private clinics rarely openly acknowledge their sexual practices or articulate the suspicion they might have an STI. And the young, for instance, would not tell their parents they think they may an infection because of what this may imply about their sex lives (which their parents often assume they don’t have). But they also might be too embarrassed to tell their barkada so they go on the Internet and self-medicate. The good news is that some STIs like gonorrhea and chlamydia are responsive to antibiotics. The bad news is that with self-medication, these drugs have been abused by over medication, under medication, wrong dosage, or prematurely stopping medication before the required time frame. As a result, doctors say they are beginning to see strains that are resistant to antibiotics.

When Lina (not her real name) experienced a burning, itching sensation while peeing two months ago, the first person she consulted was her yaya. The 18-year-old’s trusted nanny told her to use a feminine hygiene wash and put a hot water bottle on her tummy before sleeping. But the symptoms — which by then included an abnormal yellowish discharge — did not ease; Lina thought it was time to consult a doctor, by herself.

Lina was shocked when the doctor told her she had gonorrhea. She is sexually active, she admits, but has been with only one partner, her high school sweetheart. They have been together for four years. Now she believes he has been unfaithful to her and gave her gonorrhea.

Lina says she had planned to wait until marriage to have sex but college, with its accompanying independence, freedom, and openness of thought, challenged her long-held traditional beliefs. “Suddenly it’s ok to be affectionate with your boyfriend,” she says. “It’s ok to have sex with your boyfriend because everyone is doing it.”

They did not use condoms. “I’m not an idiot,” she says. “I know I can get pregnant but he did not want to use one…” Her voice trails off, and then she says, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Di naman ako nabuntis, ‘di ba (I didn’t get pregnant, did I)?”