Daily Challenge: Surmounting the Language Barrier

For non-native speakers like myself, the Dutch language can be challenging and intimidating. After living here in the Netherlands for almost twenty years, I still haven’t managed to master the host country’s native language.

It is not that I cannot speak the language at all. In fact, I have managed to secure a job in which Dutch proficiency is mandatory. However, my accent is so thick that it could cut the air. Many have difficulties in understanding what I am saying.

And people do make assumptions not only based on one’s skin colour, but also based on one’s accept. If an individual has an accent, people sometimes assume that this individual is not intelligent enough.

Youtube video: How de Filipino Really Feel About LGBTQ folk? | Breaking The Tabo

In this breaking The Tabo video, Sapphire Sandalo shows the precarious position the Filipino LBGTQ people in the Philippines. One the one hand, it seems that we are celebrated, but the other hand, we are also being oppressed.

While many claim that they are accepting to LGBTQ people and that they love having gay friends, we are also simultaneously excluded. We are welcome for as long as we can make them laugh, do their hairs, nails and make-up. In other words, they love us when we do not upset the status quo, when we rehearse stereotypes.

The friendship they offer is patronising at best. They consider us our friends, but we are still consider to be inferior because we are perceived to be immoral and unnatural.

How is it like for a bakla to be raised by homophobic parents?

If I could only choose my own family, I would not choose mine. My parents are narrow minded homophobic bigots. It is harsh, but it is true. One could only imagine how terrible my childhood was while growing up in the Philippines. How would I be able to feel safe out there, when I did not feel safe in my own home?

Homosexuality in the Philippines – at least during my childhood – has more to do with gender and less about same-sex sexuality. Of course, same-sex sexuality plays a role. A Filipino gay man is attracted to a straight man, but a straight man who have sex encounters and sometimes even relationship with a bakla is not perceived to be homosexual.

Most baklas fall in love with a straight man, but the straight man cannot love the bakla the way the bakla loves the man. We are destined for heartbreak because our love will always be unrequited. The man will just use the bakla for his financial gain.

Bakla and Foucault: Some Reflections on Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Traditional Ides and Believes around Same-Sex Sexualities in the Philippines.

Many scholars point out that Michel Foucault’s body of work is mainly Eurocentric. For instance, his work on The History of Sexuality Volume I: The Will to Knowledge – in which he postulates that on the onset of modernity, homosexuality has emerged as an identity – might be true within the Western context but not necessarily useful when trying to understand same-sex ideas and practices in differently developed societies, such as the Philippines. But then at the same time, it is also important to acknowledge that – at least in his work on the History of Sexuality, Foucault does not claim universality. His view on the discourse on sex and how it paved away to the emergence of homosexual identity deals specifically on the context of Western socio-cultural and historical context.

Although Foucault’s work deals with the ideas on homosexual identities within the context of the modern West, it can nonetheless still inform – at least in part – our reflections on same-sex practices and encounters in non-Western societies like the Philippines. The main objective of this post is to further expound on Foucault genealogical history of homosexuality by looking into the traditional ideas and believes around same-sex sexualities within the context of the Filipino society. In this post, I would like to demonstrate how the construction of the Bakla identity can disrupt the linear narrative through which the history of the modernized gay identity is told.

I Am Being A Bakla: Some Reflections On Michel Foucault’s History Of Sexuality Volume 1

In his lecture entitled ‘Holding It Straight: Sexual Orientation in the Middle Ages’, Dr. Bob Millshas demonstrated how our ideas and beliefs around sexual orientation are rather recent developments. In the middle ages for instance, people who were attracted to the members of the opposite sex did not see themselves as heterosexuals. The same thing can be said to men and women who have a romantic relationship or sexual encounter with the members of the same sex: they do not see themselves as homosexuals. To refer to them as such would not only be an anachronism but could also be misleading. Sex and sexuality are what they do, it is not who they are. In other words, sex, sexuality, sexual orientation – no matter how you want to call it – were not the defining factor through which they identify themselves. Watching his lecture (see the video above) has propelled me to reflect upon how I own and claim the bakla identity.

The Bakla and The Straight Men: Some Partial Reflection on Same-Sex in the Philippines

Kapag ang lalaki ba, ay pumatol sa bakla, bakla na rin ba sya? [If a man had sexual encounter or romantic relationship with a bakla, is he also a bakla?]. When reflecting upon (homo)sexuality within the context of the Philippines, this is perhaps one of the many questions we often encounter. We do not only hear this question being asked to us by the Filipino heteronormative majority, but this is also the question we Filipino queers ask ourselves.

Of course, this question is not only exclusive to Filipino homosexual men, but the same can be asked to Filipina women who have sexual or romantic relationships with tomboys. In the Philippines, the Filipina lesbians are being referred to as tomboys, maybe because of how masculine they are in their appearances and mannerisms, which is in a stark contrast with the baklas who are very feminine.

Some Reflections On Intersectionality Through the Bakla Identity

It is important to realize that homosexuality does not look the same in all cultures and that there are plural homosexualities circulating in the Dutch society (Wekker 2016: 125).

Linguistically speaking, the word bakla is a Tagalog word, which can be loosely translated into gay. In Cebuano, another important language in the Philippines, which is spoken in the Visayan region, homosexuals are being referred to as bayot.

Kimberly Crenshaw’s Intersectionality: Informing the Analysis on the Experiences of Queer of Colours in Western Societies

The concept of intersectionality is one of the most valuable idea I have acquired while studying gender studies in the university some years ago. This concept did not only informed the theoretical framing of my research project,  but needless to say that as a queer of colour in a predominantly white society, it has also provided me the perspective through which I can make sense of my own positionalities. Furthermore, intersectionality has also equipped me with vocabularies through which my experience as queer of colour can be articulated.

Kimberly Crenshaw, a Black feminist and a legal scholar, coined the idea of intersectionality. It first appeared in her seminal article entitled: ‘Demagrinalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,’ which was published in 1989. Here, Crenshaw argues that:

Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. These problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including Black women within an already established analytical structure. Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated (1989:140).

Exclusionary Experiences Through Accommodation: When People Assume I Do Not Speak Dutch

One of the few things that slightly irritates me while living in the host country is that when people here are quick to assume that I do not speak Dutch and would speak English to me right away. This is irritating because it reminds me that I do not belong here. Why do they assume that I do not speak Dutch? What gave it away? Is it because of the colour of my skin?

I live here for quite a while now and yet I do still feel a newcomer. To be honest, I do still find the Dutch language to be intimidating even though I speak the language relatively well despite of my strong foreign accent.

The Homophobia and Islamophobia Binary: The Case of Majid and Other Australian Students

In my previous blog entry entitled The Bakla and The Muslim: An Unexpected Bond of Friendship , I have recounted my encounter with Majid while studying in Australia as an exchange student some years ago. Majid and I were not only flatmates, but also became very good friends at that time. The beautiful and genuine friendship that developed between Majid and myself was rather surprising, if not unexpected, given that I am a bakla and Majid a Muslim.

This friendship seems to be an oxymoron if understood and apprehended through the lens of the dominant image of the Muslim societies as being blatantly and unapologetically homophobic. Homosexuality is, after all, consider a crime so heinous that if any man or woman found guilty of it, can be executed. And yet, here is Majid, a devout Muslim  who is not only tolerant – but later turns-out to be so accepting of who I am.