What is the difference that I see between websites about Filipinas and websites for and by Filipinas?
I have friends and made friends with those who have published and/or used both types of sites above. So this is a matter-of-fact examination with no judgment and I invite you readers to comment.
Websites about Filipinas
These days, and for many years, a site merely about Filipinas is usually produced to put a Filipina in the best light in order to make her desirable and marketable. There are currently two types of sites about Filipinas online: Type 1-matchmaking(penpal, mail order bride, friendship) and Type 2-porn.
The benefits for Filipinas from sites that market them are then two types.
For those based mostly in the Philippines who add themselves to matchmaking sites, Filipinas may benefit through the following things: sincere online friendship and companionship, delivered gifts from their new friends abroad, and even marriage to someone abroad and outside of the Philippines. If you think/know that there are more benefits, please add your comments below.
From porn sites (including mild sexy photo galleries of Filipinas), Filipinas who get self or material value from their external looks may revel in the recognition of their faces and bodies as sexual and beautiful, they may get photos for their portfolio, and they may even get paid well. Again, if you think/know that there are more benefits, please add your comments below.
A site for and by Filipinas has content written and produced by Filipinas, and the audience is targeted to mostly Filipinas from a broad range of educational and economic backgrounds, regardless of their geographical location… These sites usually are intended to be empowering to Filipinas so that they benefit from inspiration, sharing, inner growth and how much more effective they can be in relationships, families, workplace and society.
The most important difference is that a site for and by Filipinas is about a Filipina being a woman unto her own self and is not about marketing the Filipina to men in anyway, form or matter. Any other comments or things to add to the empowerment of sites for and by Filipinas, please comment below.
“A woman unto her own self”—what does that mean? It simply means that as a woman her self-worth comes from inner and real value, her relationships with her Self and with her loved ones, and not from being valued for her domestic services, her looks, her flesh.
In defiance of Filipina cybertyping it www.filipina.com and in search engines taking place between 1996-1997, I bought the domain of “newfilipina.com“ in January 1998.
I decided to name the site Bagong Pinay as it was the Filipino translation of “new Filipina.” That is when I got an epiphany: that “newfilipina.com” would not only be a “new” web representation of Filipinas it would also mean the evolving identity of Filipinas.
I designed a draft of the BagongPinay homepage starting with a photograph of a young morena woman wearing a white t-shirt, jeans, and red-sneakers. In the background I layered an antique photograph of one of my great-grandmothers wearing traditional formal dress. Both women were smiling. I wanted the collage to honor my ancestors and the modern attitudes of Filipinas today because I wanted BagongPinay to stand for the best Filipina traditions and values, old and new, that today’s Filipinas integrate within themselves. The layout also included clickable buttons that represented links to wished-for site sections.
I uploaded this draft in February 1998 and then sent out an email to over 200 Filipinos, as many that I could find in a short time. I announced the brainstorming of BagongPinay and briefly explained the state of Filipina representation online. I gave the link of the draft page and asked for any forms of help, especially in writing content. Also, I requested that people forward the announcement to any other Filipinos online. Two key Manila netizens sent encouraging, eye-opening responses:
Jesse Liwag, Editor of i-Site, wrote in with farsightedness:
> If for Pinays only, the image or identity cannot be left to be determined by those selling sex tours in the Philippines or mail-order brides. The Filipino woman is much, much more than that - - - but she has to know this, believe in this, and fight for this. The Net is one great place to do it. You can have a hundred online magazines and websites in no time. You can create a worldwide network to support this. And in the end, when someone would search for “pinay” or “Filipina” in Yahoo! then these sites would top the list.
And Mila D. Aguilar, a Philippine video documentary producer who was working at the Manila Standard and the Institute for Filipino Cinema emailed me with:
> … computers and the Internet are some of the tools that will finally liberate both women and Asians from bondage. You see, women in general, and Asians as a set of countries and races, could never have come to the fore in the Industrial Age of Steel and big machines. These were meant for the big men of brawn.
> … the tools of production shifted from iron and steel machines to electronics, computers and the Internet, which are small, handy, fine, cheap, and require more mind than brawn to operate. Due to these qualities … big men of brawn are not what are needed to run today’s industries anymore. What are more necessary now are fine hands and minds, both of which are amply available among women and Asians.
Mila’s insight set me afire with urgency.
In 2004, Philippine based sites for women, Filipinas, were still not topping Yahoo! or search engines because they don’t use the word “Filipina” in their site. They only use the word “women” or “females” at their site. Realizing this, I Iaunched the Fabulous Filipinas campaign and emailed as many web publishers for Philippine women and men the information on how to optimize their site to try to counter Filipina cybertyping.
In the meantime, I had a directory at NewFilipina.com for great sites for and by Filipinas since 1998, and then between between 2002 and 2007 I began to use www.pinay.com to reroute visitors to other sites by listing links of sites with great content for and by Filipinas such as Herword.com, Candymag.com and Femalenetwork.com.
Today, only a handful of sites for and by Filipinas such as newfilipina.com, FilipinaImages, the NCRFW, Filipino Women’s Network, FilipinaMoms , HerWord, CandyMag, FemaleNetwork, Gabriela, and Damayan, seem to be doing this as they come up in search engine results. Major Philippine community sites for women are still not appearing in search engine results for the keyword “Filipina.”
Readers, please email your favorite Philippine women’s site and ask them to use “Filipina” in their metatags and in the content of their pages.
This will help evolve Filipina identity onine and Filipina web presence.
And if you publish your own site or blog about being Filipino or your life, please make sure you add “filipina” in your html metatags and in your content, too.
Many search engines key words in the content and some also use the metatag keywords. So it is important to identify your content this way in order to help shape Filipina identity online.
Here are links that can help you with content, keywords and metatags:
- http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931
- http://www.newfilipina.com/fabfilipinamessage.html
- http://filipinaimages.com/filipinaimagescom-is-an-seo-campaign/
- http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2007/12/05/is-the-keywords-meta-tag-really-necessary/