I am a Filipino. I am a Filipino citizen of the world. I am a man.I am a gentleman. I am a gentle man.

I love girls, ladies and women. I have high respects for women.

I love women more than I love myself or more than I love my father, my brothers, my sons and my male friends. 

I am gender-friendly, too. In fact, some of my first friends were lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals. I respect them, I respect their person, I respect their points of view. We accord each other mutual respect.

I am confident of and with my self as a gentle man, and so, therefore, I am comfortable with the idea and the ideal of women leading men. 

I like the idea that Hillary Clinton or any other American women of substance and of merits and competence succeed Barack Hussein Obama as the first Woman President of America - in 2012, 2016 or beyond.

In The Philippines, we had in 1986 the First Filipino Woman President of the "romantic and romanticized" political idea and ideal that was the First Peaceful People Power Revolution at EDSA (actually, a national fiesta) where a million people converged, that became a (r)evolutionary model for the emerging democracies after the '80s. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, or simply, Presidentita Cory, a plain housewife of the martyr-hero Ninoy Aquino, ended the authoritarian reign for 20 years of the US-supported Ferdinand Edralin Marcos - by leadership by inspiration, by the power of prayer and by peaceful mass action.

We have another woman president now, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a Georgetown classmate of Bill Clinton, an ally of George Walker Bush and a new phonepal of Barack Obama, but that is another story.

Back in my gradeschool and highschool, I had been fascinated with Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Margaret Thatcher et al leading their respective countries.

But not only did Cory Aquino fascinate me. During our revolutionary histories of the 19th and 20th centuries, Jose Rizal's mother, Andres Bonifacio's wife and many more Filipina leaders of note led the light of the founding yesteryears in The Philippines.

Filipinos love their women, generally.
The idea and ideal of the western "women's liberation" did not quite flourish well in The Philippines. Filipinas are generally in the Filipino men's high pedestals, so to speak. We are used to having woman justices and judges. We are used to having woman mayors, governors, congressmen, senators and Cabinet ministers. We are used to having woman school, college and university Presidents. We are used to having woman CEOs in private and public corporations. We are used to having woman scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, artists, literati, culturati, priests or pastors (whether our established religions allowed them or not). We are used to having woman drivers (of public transports), technicians, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, construction workers and so on, around. Fact was, during the more polite years in my country, young and elder men walked the girls or old women and the disabled (or differently-abled) across the streets, offered them seats in buses and trains, opened them doors and synonymous acts of true gentlemen.

Ours is, by nature, a maternal or matriarchal society; we love our women. But we are also a "macho society." Some of us think and feel that "we are the law, we are kings, we are the bosses, we are God."

Generally, Filipino men are masochists, too.

Personally, men who abuse their women, physically, psychologically, emotionally and otherwise are mice and boys wrapped and trapped in the body of young and adult men. They are not real men, to me. They must be pigs!

In this view, I pledge, and enjoin you to pledge, to encourage women to lead, to nominate and elect women into office, and to support as many woman Presidents as possible, of and in any country, for our lifetimes - with all our strength.

Women reign and rule with a heart and soul.

I have always been an honorary woman. I love and respect my women.