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Liza

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Filipino Sexual Networks

How safe is the Pinoy?

M. L. Tan

"Yup," Dr. Romy Lee confirmed, "87 percent of Filipino males say they’ve had only one sexual partner in the last 12 months." Dr. Pilar (Lalay) Ramos-Jimenez and Romy led a team of researchers at De La Salle for a study on Filipino male sexual behavior. Their findings, released last week, have elicited mixed reactions that range from disbelief to relief.

In so many words (and statistics), the study suggests that the Filipino male’s sexual behavior is actually quite conservative, characterized by late coital debut (first sexual experience) and relatively low incidence of premarital and extramarital sex. Lalay and Romy say they were surprised as well with the findings, given the image of the Filipino as a reckless cassanova.

How reliable is the survey? It involved a random sample of 3615 men, aged 15 to 44 and from Quezon City, Cebu and Davao, which is as comprehensive a sample as it can get. The researchers used face-to-face interviews, and employed only male researchers to make the interview more of "usapang lalake" or men’s talk.

Were the respondents honest? I think so; in fact, if there was lying, it was probably more of over-reporting rather than under-reporting, given the Pinoy penchant for exagerrating sexual escapades, especially during drinking. Lalay says their survey probably "captured a lucid moment of truth" about Pinoy sexual behavior.

The survey results were released just as I was wrapping up a report for the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) on HIV/AIDS and development. That NEDA study included a review of various studies, with findings that do suggest fairly conservative sexual behavior for Filipinos.

For example, there is a study by Susheela Singh and others, comparing sexual activity among young people in different countries and published recently in the journal International Family Planning Perspectives. Among the 14 countries studied, the Philippines has the lowest percentage of sexually-experienced young people. At age 20, for example, 32 percent of the Filipino males surveyed were sexually experienced. Compare that to 57 percent in Thailand, 70 percent in Costa Rica, 72 percent in Zimbabwe, 88 percent in the United States and 92 percent in Jamaica.

Do all these figures mean then that the Pinoy is "safe", as one Inquirer headline put it? Nope. Romy emphasizes it is important to keep going with HIV prevention programs because their study does show that we do have risk factors that could speed up the spread of HIV/AIDS in the future.

Here’s something for the guys to think about. The survey found that 11 percent of those who were monogamous actually thought their partner (mostly female, but also a few males) were having sex with others. Were all these partners sex workers? Probably not. "Only" 5 percent said they paid for sex, which means the others had partners in a non-commercial context. Who were they? They could be single or married, close friends or casual acquaintances. Such figures challenge not just the stereotypes of the Pinoy Don Juan but also of the Pinay Maria Clara.

Let me state here that having multiple partners doesn’t automatically mean HIV/AIDS. What’s important is whether or not risky sex is protected with condoms. I feel that among the survey’s findings, the most alarming are those in relation to condoms. The survey found that two-thirds of those who are sexually experienced have never used condoms. This includes men who have had anal intercourse, which is one very high-risk mode for HIV infection.

I was also concerned that many of those who did not use condoms said this was because they knew their partner well. This is a common problem that had been detected in earlier research among local women sex workers, many of whom will not use a condom with "suki" or regular customers. Future HIV prevention campaigns will have to focus on the dangers of relying on this "knowledge" of the partner. Many readers are aware that you can live with someone for 50 years and still not really "know" that person, especially in terms or his or her sexuality and sexual behavior.

Surveys are important but they are not sufficient if we want to understand sexual behavior. For example, the La Salle survey found that 90 percent of Filipino males had sex before marriage. Does this mean they are all at risk? Not necessarily. The risks depend on how many partners they had, the sexual behavior of those partners and, most importantly, if they had protected sex or not in risky situations.

Even the figure of 87 percent being monogamous in the last 12 months should be carefully interpreted. There’s a tendency in surveys of this type for "telescoping", i.e., respondents may have had another partner six months before but thinks it was more than a year ago.

More food for thought: I had a talk a few weeks back with sexpert Dr. Margy Holmes, who thinks Filipino men are into "serial monogamy", that is, they still have multiple partners – in terms of queridas and sex workers -- but do this one at a time, a few weeks or maybe a year for each relationship. (Let me propose still another hypothesis of "serial bigamy", where men "only" have one wife and one querida at a time.)

Let me warn here against the temptation to use surveys as moralistic tools to divide the population into "sinners" and "saints" and to presume it’s the "sinners" (read "the promiscuous") that get HIV/AIDS.

Not so. A few years back I met a young Filipino seafarer who had been found HIV positive. He insisted that he had sex only once, and that this was in fact his first time. He had been forced by fellow seafarers into this "baptism" (binyag). All it took was one fateful unprotected sexual encounter. HIV/AIDS isn’t just about averages and percentages, or about sinners and saints. It’s about life and death.

You can also check an earlier column I did on Filipino sexual networks (Inquirer, November , 30, 1999). The Young Adult Fertility Study's findings are summarized in Corazon M. Raymundo, Peter Xenos and Lita J. Domingo (editors), Adolescent Sexuality in the Philippines (Quezon City: UP office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, 1999).