SO WHO has time for sex when you?re cutting loose colonial ties, liberating the Motherland and proving to critics and allies alike in Europe that Filipinos are just as educated, as cultured and as virile as they are?

Without quite realizing it, Dr. Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Antonio and Juan Luna and other members of the Propaganda Movement were preoccupied with the issue of sex, as they treaded the treacherous waters of gender relations during their studies in Europe in the late 1800s.

In her book, "Love, Passion and Patriotism (Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882-1892)," Raquel A.G. Reyes explores the ?manifold, oftentimes contradictory, ways in which sex suffused the patriotic discourse of the young men who first shaped a Filipino national identity.?

Sex, writes Reyes, was ?an integral part of (the Propagandistas?) experience of Europe, their understanding of the sexual nature of women and of themselves as men.?

But first, a brief background on the male ilustrado identity: The young men who pushed off to Europe in the 1880s to further their studies were some of the best and brightest of their generation. Increased global trade in Manila had led to prosperity and an increased cosmopolitan character among the city residents as European influences seeped into their manner of clothing and affected their personal tastes and style. Born into wealth and schooled in private institutions, the men were also weaned on the ideals of courtesy, good manners and urbanidad, or ease with the complexities of city life.

Despite their relative sophistication, however, the young men?s views on women remained anchored on the conservative and religious character of Spanish colonial rule. Early converts to the cult of the Virgin Mary, Filipino women at the time were expected to be docile, modest and prayerful. Chastity was the norm, but prostitution was tolerated as a necessary evil to protect the institution of marriage. Men remained unchallenged on matters of state and business, and women were expected to be totally submissive to male authority.

But Europe in the 1880s and 1890s challenged those expectations. The continent was in ?the throes of panic about sex and gender,? with women competing against men for gainful employment, Jack the Ripper murdering prostitutes, and medical studies exploring the pathological aspects of human sexuality. Hysteria, masturbation, venereal disease and orgasm had become subjects of intense scientific curiosity at the time.

Amid such flux, major ideas about masculinity and femininity still held: men continued to be seen as imbued with courage, virility and robust physicality, in contrast to women who were largely regarded as weak, fragile and deserving of male protection as keepers of the home fires.

The Propagandistas promptly subscribed to such ideas and tried to project masculinity by excelling in shooting and fencing (perennial favorites for their dueling possibilities), growing facial hair, and having multiple sexual affairs with European women.

But while ?adventures with European women were applauded as affirmations of Filipino manliness and patriotic honor,? the need for discretion was also stressed. A case in point was the sexual exploit of Jose Panganiban, whose affair with a married woman had been discovered by her cuckolded husband because of Panganiban?s piquant letters to the woman. The wronged husband and his friend promptly gave the errant Lothario a severe mauling, but what really worried members of the Propaganda Movement was the effect of this affair on the integrity of their cause and the good name of the Filipino community in Europe. Such indiscretion threatened the credibility of their political campaign, and all manner of sexual scandal had to be avoided.

The conflicted views of the Propagandistas with regard to this flaunting of sexual prowess became evident when they eulogized Panganiban, who died of tuberculosis barely two months after his severe beating. Friends praised his bravado as a way of defending Filipino honor, his ?sexual adventuring seen not as a stain on his character but as a matter of pride,? writes Reyes.

Panganiban?s sexual desire, declared Graciano Lopez Jaena, was ?properly moral because it is directed towards recovering the dignity of the Filipino people.? His sexuality was described as ?a key element in his identify as a man of honor and a Filipino patriot.?

Just as threatening to the Propagandistas? macho sense of identity were their encounters with modern femininity in Europe, where fashionable accoutrements were seen to symbolize women?s declaration of independence from social constraints. Writes Reyes: ?Feminine sophistication and worldliness in European women was compellingly erotic for the ilustrados, But it also provoked great fear.?

Being so knowledgeable about the ways of the world, these elegant women wielded power over etiquette and appearance that the newly-arrived students from the Philippines had yet to master. There was always the underlying fear, notes Reyes, ?of committing a fashion faux pas that could make even the most well-dressed of egos look foolish.?

In one incident, the author recounts how a stylish woman who had fashioned herself as a baroness, had taken Felix Roxas under her wing and proceeded to transform him into a suave, leisure-seeking gentleman ? from the color of his tie, the style of his shoes and the quality of his wardrobe, to his manners. She once passed Roxas a note with instructions for Juan Luna who was standing nearby. Read the note: ?It would be convenient for you to hint to the swarthy man beside you that wearing a blue tie is always displeasing.?

Such distrust of independent-minded and stylish women was most apparent in Juan Luna?s painting, ?La Parisienne,? where the volatile artist seems to make a strong inextricable connection between female self-adornment and sexual allure. That concept might explain the deteriorating marriage of Luna and his wife Paz Pardo de Tavera who, having come from a wealthy family, was given to wearing elegant outfits. Juan Luna, the book suggests, was clearly wary of ?the power of fashionable women and their being ungovernable by men.?

The celebrated painter?s sense of male identity manifested itself mainly through ?amor propio or self-love that exploded into violence on suspicion that it was being trampled upon by his wife?s infidelity,? a direct threat to his patriarchal authority. In a burst of jealous rage, Luna fatally shot his wife and mother-in-law at point-blank range and ?made their skulls fly.?

Ironically, the prevailing notion at the time, not just among the ilustrados but also among the men in Europe ? ?that an honest woman, particularly a bourgeois woman, might at any moment lapse into immorality? ? led to Juan Luna?s eventual acquittal.

Defending the Filipino?s honor seemed to be a major preoccupation among the ilustrados. There was Antonio Luna, whose response to any racial slur was a public challenge to a duel that ?not only put on display his courage and mettle but also vindicated the collective male honor of the Filipino community in Madrid,? observes the author.

Wanting to look as dignified as their colonial masters, the ilustrados in Europe also consciously adopted their sartorial style ? from the meticulously-curled mustache, to the hats, walking sticks and gloves worn by fashionable gentlemen ? and even the pose of studied repose and extreme gravitas in their photographs. The image, according to Reyes, ?undercut Spanish racial stereotypes, while simultaneously asserting a construction of masculinity.?

This affectation was best seen in a group shot of the Propagandistas on the steps of a building in Madrid. Describes the author: ?Wearing the dark costume of the fashionable, European urban male, the Filipino ilustrados... mobilized their defence against European racism through bourgeois sartorial style. ... Many sport moustaches, Marcelo H. Del Pilar?s being the most magnificently curled and stiffened. Next to Del Pilar, Jose Rizal stands rigidly, his hair carefully combed and brilliantined, his demeanor one of resoluteness.?

An interesting sidelight was Rizal?s annoyance over Del Pilar?s moustache. Rizal was of the view that a manly look had to be distinctly Filipino and Del Pilar?s carefully tended moustache was not. While praising him for a pamphlet recently published, Rizal also advised his compatriot to shave, lest people take him for a Spaniard by the beard and attribute the merits of the book to Spanish blood.

Fencing too became a mark of honor, as ?(it) captured the essence of aristocratic gentlemanly values ? of civilized sportsmanship and chivalry.? Says Juan Luna of the manliness that the activity inspired: ??The Filipino is now renowned for being brave and strong in the use of weaponry.?

But while the ilustrados firmly upheld the conservative values of the Filipina over the more liberated ways of European women, they were ambivalent about her extreme piety. That her devotion to the duplicitous frayle threatened both country and family was a widely-held view.

Rizal illustrates this danger in his novel, "Noli Me Tangere," when a woman confessed to the villainous Padre Salvi the existence of some kind of patriotic conspiracy. Breaking the sanctity of the confessional, the Franciscan friar alerted the Guardia Civil, who then hunted down the conspirators.

Del Pilar?s letters to his wife Chanay, insisting that their daughter Sofia?s moral upbringing should be solely entrusted to them as parents, also speak of the man?s distrust of the religious orders at the time. It was, says Reyes, an implicit rejection of the friar?s traditional role in the counseling and confessing of children.

Ironically, the Propagandistas? aversion to the friar?s moral influence over women did not extend to the clergy?s age-old teachings on female sexuality. Although they agitated for higher education for Filipino women beyond religion and the home arts, the Propagandistas? emphasis was the development of the women?s mental faculties and ?the demotion of the body, resulting in a parallel emphasis on female chastity, celibacy, shame and modesty.?

Might this explain the characterization of Maria Clara in Rizal?s novel?

Observes Reyes: ?Oscillating between extreme emotions, Maria Clara embodies an exaggerated notion of femininity in which maidenly proprieties and sexual desire framed her selfhood, a construction that served to define Filipina female sexuality as shameful, sinful and guilt-ridden. Masochism and sexual prudery was Maria Clara?s lamentable legacy to Filipino women.?

Rizal, writes the author, seems to agree with Tasio, the fictional philosopher of his novel, that ?A woman, to be good, must have been at least some time, a virgin or a mother.?

Rizal?s could very well be the perfect example of the Propagandistas? schizophrenic attitude towards women?s sexuality, notes Reyes. The female characters in his novels ? from self-immolating Sisa, to the docile Maria Clara, the spiteful Doña Consolacion and the tragicomic Doña Victorina ? articulate his conception of female nature as being mainly ruled by ?illness and madness, immorality and evil.?

Then too, while he consciously adopted a biomedical science approach to his novel ?Noli,? using cancer as analogy, Rizal was notoriously distant and remote when it came to his sisters? reproductive health concerns.

Acutely aware of having a brother studying medicine in Europe, Rizal?s sisters searched his letters for news of innovative medical technologies and advancement with regard to their sexual and reproductive needs. But although he was aware of his sisters? fecundity and their difficulties in childbearing (his sister Olimpia in fact died in childbirth), Rizal responded with relative dispassion. While he regularly reported on his activities as a medical student, he neither discussed the merits of medical advances in Europe when it came to reproductive biology, nor give his sisters the medical advice they sought. There were direct questions on how to increase their supply of breast milk, how to ease the pain of labor, as well as concerns about a problematic uterus, to which Rizal?s sisters instead got lectures on upholding the family honor by their scrupulous conduct.

?Rizal preferred to focus his concerns on women?s morality and the moral dangers that a woman?s vehement sexual passions presented,? Reyes contends.

And so did the rest of the Propagandistas, to whom education and modernity presented a double-edged sword. While it liberated women from the shackles of ignorance and superstition, it also brought with it a newfound independence of thought and manners that provoked deep anxieties among the men.

?The Propagandistas? advice to their female compatriots was for them to emulate the intellectual diligence and plain austerity of the German and English [but certainly not the French] women,? notes Reyes.

At the same time, the ilustrados saw themselves beyond the moral rules they imposed on women. ?Patriotism was a man?s highest calling ? it allowed them to evade responsibility for their carnal desires and to dodge the constraints of convention. Patriotic love affirmed the separation of the public and the private spheres. Domestic life, sensual pleasures, sexual intimacies were to be set apart,? the author notes.

Then as now, sex, passion and gender relations remain the unacknowledged minefield in perennial battles for sovereignty and selfhood. How discourse about it affected the outcome of the Propagandists? reform movement might be a lesson worth pondering, thanks to Reyes? insightful and compellingly readable book. ?

?Love, Passion and Patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882-1892? by Raquel A.G.Reyes, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009 is available in most bookstores.