What About Gender in the Philippines
When visitors to the Philippines remark that Filipinos openly tolerate and/or accept homosexuality, they invariably have in mind effeminate, cross dressing men (bakla) swishing down streets and squealing on television programmes with flaming impunity. This is sadly misinformed. To equate Philippine society’s tolerance for public displays of transvestism with wholesale approval of homosexual behavior is naive, if not downright foolish.
Male Homosexuality in the Philippines: a short history by J. Neil C. Garcia, 2004
This was documented in 2004. When researching the existing culture around gender, there is (as can be expected) a presumed link to sexuality, and thus, the LGBTQIA+ community.
Note: This disclaimer is to preface the use of resources that will refer to queer (sexuality) individuals — somewhat interchangeably — with gender non-conforming individuals whilst acknowledging the understanding of gender vs. sexuality.
A term that immediately comes up, both in reference to gender and sexuality, is bakla.
Bakla are genitally male individuals who claim a feminine identity, engage in gendercrossing and desire intimate relations with men (Garcia, 2008; 2013). Originally, the identity of the bakla did not refer only to a particular sexual behaviour but rather it expressed the specific roles within the household and society or an ability to swing from male to female tasks and responsibilities (Garcia, 2008). This is evident in the term bakla (noun), which is actually the contraction of babae (woman) and lalaki (man). When used as an adjective, bakla further means uncertainty or indecisiveness (Tan, 1995a). However, nowadays, under the increasing pressure of globalisation, the term bakla also applies to men claiming a gay identity with masculine attributes as in the West (Garcia, 2008)
From Deviant to Bakla, Strong to Stronger: Mainstreaming Sexual and Gender Minorities into Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, Forum for Development Studies by McSherry, Manalastas, Gaillard & Dalisay (2014)
As with many cultures and languages, there has been the destruction of their practices, words and subsequent meanings, due to the needs of Western mentalities and other forms of physical and ideological colonisation.
Tagalog does not categorise people with limited gendered pronouns, and English can be constricting (Vonne Patiag, 2019). Thus, [the West], has forced inappropriate (at worst) and misguided (at best) interpretations to terms such as bakla.
Later, I learned that many people problematically mistranslate bakla to “gay” in English. As an identity not tied to sex, the word does not correspond directly to western nomenclature for LGBTQIA+ identities, sitting somewhere between gay, trans and queer.
In the Philippines they think about gender differently. We could too by Vonne Patiag, 2019
In his 2020 Ted Talk, The gender-fluid history of the Philippines, France Villarta recounts the commonality of gender variance in his own neighbourhood. One neighbour, in particular, Lennie, was never coded as ‘other’ but was still expected to stay hidden. He also speaks to factors leading to the adoption of the binary but first reminds us that is never a globally shared idea.
Many cultures don’t look at genitalia primarily as basis for gender construction, and some communities in North America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the Pacific Islands, including the Philippines, have a long history of cultural permissiveness and accommodation of gender variances.
The gender-fluid history of the Philippines (TED Talk), France Villarta (2020)
As for contemporary Philippines, there is recognition and visibility of 4 different genders — male, female, bakla, and tomboys (which I’ll explore in a different piece) though there has been more mainstream, entertainment-centric attention on baklas.
In this way, tolerance of bakla in the Philippines is apprehended in a strictly patronising manner within wider heterosexual (and to a certain extent, socio-economic class) and polarised (men-women) norms, and ‘appreciated only for camp value’ (Tan, 1995b, p. 33)
From Deviant to Bakla, Strong to Stronger: Mainstreaming Sexual and Gender Minorities into Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, Forum for Development Studies by McSherry, Manalastas, Gaillard & Dalisay (2014)
This article further purports that this tolerance is underlined by viewing non-conformity as “possibly temporal, amusing but ultimately tragic, lower-class subjectivity, inextricably linked within traditional heteronormative discourses built around the gender binary” (From Deviant to Bakla, 2014).
Before the Binary
When it comes to the history of gender we first need to look to instances of gender-variant beings/deities within Filipino mythology. Initial research led me to the goddess of fertility and agriculture, Lakapati (or Ikapati), who was often described as androgynous, intersex or transgender depending on sources, inferred by the use of the pronoun “siya”. a gender-neutral term.
Note: In Filipino, mostly Tagalog, we only use “siya” or “them” to refer to a person. There’s no “him/her” or “he/she” either. As one Quora poster explained, “We just don’t distinguish the gender through the pronoun. So there has to be additional indicators in a sentence to let the audience know if the person in question is a he or she, like name, title, or genderized nouns/labels/classifications.” (On the Filipino gender-neutral language and our egalitarian origin by Jacqueline Arias).
Unfortunately, mythology and culture are always vulnerable to colonization. Two distinct periods have shaped modern Philippine culture: The Spanish and United States colonization.
Before Spanish occupation, indigenous cultures in many parts of the Philippines practiced a form of religious animism headed mostly by women — thus, women occupied a social rank in precolonial societies that paralleled that of men (Garcia, 2008, pp. 158, 162). Women were considered more spiritually linked to the animist gods. The babaylan were mostly women who acted as healers, arbitrators, and spiritual and social leaders who occupied a place of social prestige in precolonial times (Garcia, 2008, p. 162). Babaylanism was an occupation dominated by women (Garcia, 2008, p. 162) however it was not exclusive to genital females. Males would be allowed to perform the babaylan function provided they took on the garb and mannerisms of women (Garcia, 2009, p. 163). Gender-crossing, however, was not merely transvestic in these cultures — the babaylan took on the “social and symbolic role of the other, complementary… sex” (Garcia, 2008, p. 165). The babaylan’s gender-crossing means that they shared all the rights, roles, and responsibilities of genital women.
The Bakla and the Silver Screen: Queer cinema in the Philippines by Inton Michael Nuñez (2017)
The Spanish Colonization of the Philippines
The Spanish conquistadores established a colonial government in Cebu in 1565. They transferred the seat of government to Manila in 1571 and proceeded to colonize the country. (About the Philippines, The Embassy of the Philippines in London, UK)
During this period, the ideals of both Spanish culture and the Catholic faith implanted the new order of “civilized” gender roles and sexual identities. This then erased the existence of the babaylan reducing women to lesser-than, subservient beings and reducing these once open gender-crossers, and subjecting them to “the ridicule and scorn which only the Spanish brand of medieval Mediterranean machismo could inflict” (Garcia, 2004).
The US Colonization of the Philippines
In 1898, Spain relinquished rule of the Philippines to the USA, which maintained control of the islands until 1946. This early twentieth century US occupation introduced secularism to the nation; however, the American biomedical approach to gender (based upon Freudian psychiatry and sexology) emphasised biological attributes and sexual practices over indigenous understandings of gender. Same-sex sexual behaviour was then tagged ‘with a new label — that of “sickness” — to replace the old one of “sin”’ (Tan, 1995b, p. 33).
From Deviant to Bakla, Strong to Stronger: Mainstreaming Sexual and Gender Minorities into Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, Forum for Development Studies by McSherry, Manalastas, Gaillard & Dalisay (2014)
The US Colonization period laid the metrics on gender and sexuality set by Catholicism and introduced more secular ideas.
The American period, in which arguably the Philippines remains, saw the expansion of the newly empowered middle class, the standardization of public education, and the promulgation and regulation of sexuality by means of academic learning and the mass media. This discursive regulation inaugurated a specific sexological consciousness, one that was incumbent upon a psychological style of reasoning hitherto unknown in the Philippines.
Male Homosexuality in the Philippines: a short history by J. Neil C. Garcia, 2004
Where Has it Evolved To (in Media/Culture)
In Inton Michael Nuñez’s thesis paper, The Bakla and the Silver Screen: Queer cinema in the Philippines, he takes a comprehensive look at the turning points of bakla representation in film between the 1950’s and 2010s. In his work, he includes the faces at the forefront of the various eras of Filipino cinema, the tropes they had to play into for representation, and the implications of these media for its target audiences. As this is a 216-page document, I encourage you to read through for more of his insight and findings, but here is a summary of his findings.
Over all, this thesis has argued that the bakla is constructed in Philippine cinema as a distinct, unchangeable gender and sexual category that incorporates aspects of gender performance from both local practices and ways of thinking and global LGBT discourse and social movements. The primary feature of the bakla in cinema is his woman-heartedness, which both causes the conversion trope and empowers him to resist this kind of enforced masculinization. This woman-heartedness is also the primary intersection between the western, Euro-American, transgender concept and the bakla, but whereas the former is pathologized by psycho-medical discourse, kabaklaan is seen as a condition of the spirit rather than a mental health issue. Social acceptance drives the gender-transitive bakla to want to modify their bodies, but only through self-acceptance, in terms of coming to terms with one’s male anatomy and one’s feminine spirit, can the bakla struggle for social equality. The object of desire for the gender-intransitive bakla has been shifted away from the macho lalake, and towards that of other equally middle-class, urban, and masculine ‘gay’ identified men. Finally, the bakla as a public figure may stand for certain social, ideological contradictions that are purportedly based on ‘traditional’ values (like financially providing for one’s family) and ‘modern’-day values (like being vocal about human rights and struggling to work hard to achieve economic success).
The Bakla and the Silver Screen: Queer cinema in the Philippines by Inton Michael Nuñez (2017)
In the Being LGBT In Asia: The Philippines Country Report, “a report was technically reviewed by UNDP and USAID as part of the ‘Being LGBT in Asia’ initiative”, their section on ‘Cultural and Social Attitudes’ stated:
For Tan (2001), “‘acceptance’ is conditional as long as the bakla remain confined to certain occupational niches and fulfill certain stereotypes.” Garcia (2004) added that “when visitors to the Philippines remark that Filipinos openly tolerate and/or accept homosexuality, they invariably have in mind effeminate, cross-dressing men (bakla) swishing down streets and squealing on television programme with flaming impunity. To equate Philippine society’s tolerance for public displays of transvestism19 with wholesale approval of homosexual behavior is naive, if not downright foolish.”
Being LGBT in Asia: The Philippines Country Report, UNDP, USAID (2014).
Lastly, in its conclusion, the contributors of From Deviant to Bakla, not only speak to progress with regards to the context of the Philippines’ history of colonization, but also urges the necessity of acceptance and inclusion for societal progression.
Contemporary Philippine society is, to a certain extent, straddling a complex development dichotomy. Strong Roman Catholic traditions paralleling decades of US occupation and ‘virtue’ have made way for an important and informative context that highlights wider global discourses surrounding gender and sexuality in the development industry. Indeed, such issues have, for the large part, been actively sidelined in mainstream paradigms of development, as the dominant behavioural deterministic perspective has left the constructions of sexuality, heteronormativity and gender identity typically unquestioned or unconsidered (Cornwall and Jolly, 2006; Jolly, 2000; 2007). It is vital, however, to address these factors and address matters of gender and sexuality in a head-on manner if development is to realise its full potential in terms of fulfilling wider goals of empowerment, participation and poverty alleviation (Armas, 2006; World Bank, 2013). One’s gender and sexuality remains integral to one’s personal identity and quality of life, and if this is left disavowed and stigmatised within society, then the same goals of empowerment and participation that are central to development cannot be achieved with full integrity (Armas, 2006; Cornwall and Jolly, 2006).
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Philippine society is perhaps a rather tame example of sexual and gendered marginalisation. The last decade and a half has witnessed a gradual ‘coming out’ and coming together of many bakla Filipinos and other members of sexual and gender minorities (Manalastas and Torre, 2013). Their capacities as ‘social agents’ are proving to be multi-faceted and multi-purpose, particularly in an era where disasters and disaster risk are being flagged as such imminent and pressing global development issues (Wisner et al., 2012). However, this is not to say that Philippine society is exempt from the patriarchal gender discourses that pervade development theories and practices, and bakla, as people and as a term, are still bound within powerful restrictive heterosexist norms (Garcia, 2008). The current positioning of bakla and other sexual and gender groups within the Philippine governance framework highlights just this — where there is, to a certain extent, everyday tolerance of bakla within Philippine society yet also an inherent lack of understanding of the capacities that sexual diversity and gender liminality can offer.
From Deviant to Bakla, Strong to Stronger: Mainstreaming Sexual and Gender Minorities into Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, Forum for Development Studies by McSherry, Manalastas, Gaillard & Dalisay (2014)
Conclusions
Writing this was, admittedly, harder than I imagined. As the first in this series, it is now a testament to how deep-rooted and internalized my ideas of gender were/are. Although there were thorough resources to my disposal, there were many roadblocks that were created simply from being almost unable to separate myself from the established binary created by the Western world. Luckily, I, as a Black, Caribbean woman understand well enough that there are entire histories, and once-normal existences, that have been tactically demolished through colonialism.
Although I know the exhaustion with having to constantly face many pervasive doctrines won’t subside, this project feels worthwhile in understanding the familiarity of otherness. It is a reminder that our collective evolutions of expressions may be more innate than we think.
Resources
The gender-fluid history of the Philippines. (2020). Ted.com. https://www.ted.com/talks/france_villarta_the_gender_fluid_history_of_the_philippines.
C., G. J. N. (2009). Philippine gay culture: binabae to bakla, silahis to Msm. Hong Kong University Press, in association with the University of the philippines Press.
Brewer, C. (1999, May). Baylans, Asogs, Transvestism, and Sodomy: Gender, Sexuality and the Sacred in Early Colonial Philippines. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue2/carolyn2.html.
Garcia, J. N. C. (2004, November). Iias Newsletter. https://web.archive.org/web/20191208131132/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d860/3912ca73927c43667dbf0f1306f68c8d9687.pdf
Alice McSherry, Eric Julian Manalastas, J. C. Gaillard & Soledad Natalia M. Dalisay (2014): From Deviant to Bakla, Strong to Stronger: Mainstreaming Sexual and Gender Minorities into Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, Forum for Development Studies. https://pages.upd.edu.ph/sites/default/files/ejmanalastas/files/mcsherryal_fds_2014.pdf
Patiag, V. (2019, March 3). In the Philippines they think about gender differently. We could too. The Guardian.
Arias, J. (2019, June 4). On the Filipino gender-neutral language and our egalitarian origin [web log]. https://preen.ph/96642/on-the-filipino-gender-neutral-language-and-our-egalitarian-origin.
Inton, M. N. (2017). The bakla and the silver screen: Queer cinema in the Philippines (Doctor’s thesis, Lingnan University, Hong Kong). Retrieved from http://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/30/
UNDP, USAID (2014). Being LGBT in Asia: The Philippines Country Report. Bangkok https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PBAAA888.pdf
Disclaimer
This is solely for personal enlightenment. I do not claim to be an expert in any capacity on this country or its culture and history. Please take the time to peruse the resources mentioned throughout the piece for more context. If there is any misinformation or discredited resources, please let me know.
