Etiquette, etc.

*TRIGGER WARNING*

Within Every Woman… There is a Story 

This was happening around the same time my dad was born and was happening in the area where my dad grew up, too. There isn’t much talk about it in my family, except for my tita mentioning it in passing about my lola being confronted by Japanese soldiers and her having to cover her face in made to appear ugly and yell that she was married. I never really found out if my lola was a comfort woman, but surely this type of violence affected the women, children, families in those areas - and still with residual unspoken trauma continue to do so today. A lack of conversation about comfort women in the Philippines doesn’t erase the history. In fact, it continues the sexualized gender-based violence through the generations.

I think a lot about how my dad and all my titas and titos were affected by this. How this affected my lola in terms of carrying this trauma, in terms of trauma trickling down into her interactions with her children, in terms of how my dad has been affected by this mentally and emotionally, and how still an unspoken story and collective trauma remains wordless and nameless as it seeps into me and others in my family. 

Thanks Jo for the heads up on this.