Women’s Month celebrates the strength and savvy of empowered women—and raises awareness that women can be strong and successful. In a world where mobile technology is a growth catalyst, Burlesque.Ph and Open Now’s Trisha O’Bannon sat down with Argomall to share how she uses technology to provide a safe space for sex education, and tell us how she chooses her devices.
Trisha O’Bannon
A 24-year-old writer by profession, O’Bannon is part of Burlesque.Ph advocates for sex positivity, body positivity and women’s and LGBTQ rights. She started an alternative sex education platform with one of her friends called Now Open, “where Filipino youths—especially female Filipino youths or queer Filipino youths—can learn about sex education that’s totally lacking in schools or their families.”
At Burlesque.ph she advocates for “a woman’s choice to do with her body what she wants, and it’s such a great roster of beautiful, strong, empowered women” with “different body types, different aesthetics, different personalities.”
O’Bannon and a friend of hers are building the Open Now website, “but, at the moment, we’re operating over Twitter,” their “platform of choice.”
“These advocacies are actually very personal to me, since I’m obviously a woman and I’m part of the LGBTQ community.”
O’Bannon told Argomall that “what keeps me going is I have people messaging me on Twitter, usually very, very young girls who are not even of age—usually 16 or 17—telling me that they’re so scared to be judged by their families, or, even worse, disowned or hurt by their families because of these feelings that they have that are completely normal.”
For her, the Women’s Month celebration “recognizes that women are at a disadvantaged position in society. It brings more awareness to people who might not realize that it’s a problem.”
O’Bannon uses technology pass on her learning: “Now we’re at an age where information is so readily available and it’s not so much an issue of access to information as knowing where to look and knowing which people to trust.”
She asks people she trusts for advice before buying a phone: “I have a friend that, no matter what he recommends to me, I basically take it because I trust him and he knows what he’s talking about.” At Argomall, our Argonauts are eager to help online tech shoppers find the perfect device for them.
O’Bannon replaces her smartphone every two years. “Battery life is very important for me,” she said. “I’m a very heavy user of my phone—data’s on all the time, full brightness—so I need it to be able to last very long.” Processing speed is also important, and “a nice camera wouldn’t hurt.”
When shopping online, she told Argomall, “take your time. Don’t rush your decisions. That applies in real life as well. Learn as much as you can so that when you make your decision, you’re making it with confidence.”
A decade from now, O’Bannon mused, she would like to be remembered “as someone who was at the forefront of women being more sexually empowered, or at least less judgmental about women who are sexually empowered.”
