Sen. Nancy Binay (third from left) asks a question to Sister Mary John Mananzan (third from right).
Sen. Nancy Binay threw an interesting question in this week’s Senate hearing on the Sogie Equality Bill: Will an all-girls school like St. Scholastica’s College accept transwomen as students?
Binay asked the question to Sister Mary John Mananzan, the activist nun who co-founded Gabriela, the feminist party. She was also president of St. Scholastica’s, the Catholic college founded by her congregation, the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing, in Manila in 1906.
Mananzan drew cheers during the hearing for supporting the Sogie bill and saying members of the LGBT community, like everyone else, were “made in the image and likeness of God.”
Binay told the Benedictine sister that “One of the discussions is a scenario, because, in the previous hearing, the definition of a transwoman, for them they are women already. So technically, they can enter all-girls schools like St. Scholastica’s College.”
“If we accept that kind of definition, can, for example, schools like St. Scholastica’s College, or Assumption, be compelled to accept them as students?” Binay asked.
Mananzan appeared to have been caught off-guard by the question and replied with her microphone turned off.
When her mic was turned on, she told the lawmaker: “We have to talk about it because there has never been a case.”
She pointed out that “lesbians, yes, of course, we have [in school],” and the music department was open to males, and some of them were gay.
But Binay said transwomen would be a different case as they were formerly men – “assigned male at birth” according to committee chairwoman Sen Risa Hontiveros – who would be recognized as women.
“We have not gotten a case about that,” Mananzan replied.
Hontiveros however clarified that “The bill does not compel Catholic schools to admit students.”
“Despite that, how to always uphold the best interest of the child, [is] the basic principle, including in the school setting,” she said.
Told by Binay that accepting transwomen in all-girls schools would be the logical conclusion of the Sogie proposal, Hontiveros said such would be the “full flowering” of the policy.
“Let’s see how much common ground we can find in pushing this bill forward,” she said. (PressONE.ph)