From a broad social perspective, sexuality involves intimate human relationships; sexual desires, preferences, and pleasures; crucial decisions on getting married or staying single, whether or not to have children; personal self-esteem and psychological and emotional well-being.

Sexuality, therefore, cannot be reduced simply to genitality and biological determinism, i.e., defining the social functions of women and men on the basis of sex. Biological evidence itself shows that "an estimated two to three percent of the world's people are bom hermaphroditic—with ambiguous genitalia" (Edgerton, 1964:1289 cited by Cucchiari) and do not fall under the conventional categories of male and female. In given societies, homosexual preferences in a political or cultural context make issues of sexuality even more complex.

Too often, however, sexuality has been crudely and cruelly made to refer to the sexual act itself and in reference only to the heterosexual experience, consequently denying the other reality that is homosexuality. This is a reality that has to be taken as an issue in sexuality. Unfortunately, in this dominantly homophobic world, homosexuality is effectively framed as a religiousmoral issue especially in the cultural context.

The high fertility rate among Filipina women in the grassroots indicates, among other conditions, their limited subjective concept of sexuality. For them, and even more presumably for their husbands, sexuality is equated with genitality.

A significant observation is that peasant women, factory workers, and the urban poor usually describe sex as being used by the husband. Bound by a sense of wifely duty, the women experience sex as passive receptors of male virility and aggression and face unwanted pregnancies.

Many women see reproduction as the main, if not sole, function of sexual activity. This deeply ingrained attitude or belief has serious implications on their health and total well-being.

A feminist group, K A L A Y A A N (1989) wrote: "A core issue in the whole question of sex and sexuality is reproductive freedom. Women have become overused and uncared for baby machines operated by impersonal health care systems. Women's total loss of control over their bodies is seen not only in their almost total dependence on external systems but also on the crass, not far from inhuman/subhuman disregard by governments of women's welfare in their so-called population control policies."

Excerpt from InfoKit on Women's Health, March 1991, published by the Institute for Social Studies and Action (ISSA).