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.

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.

The Bakla and The Muslim: An Unexpected Bond of Friendship

While studying in one of the universities as an exchange student in Melbourne, Australia, I have had the pleasure of getting to know this man from Saudi Arabia. We were both living in campus and sharing the same floor with eight other students from various socio-cultural backgrounds. Australia is after all  (like the US, Canada, New Zealand and many others) an immigrant nation, which means that unless you are an aboriginal, you and your ancestors must have been from somewhere else.

For the sake of this narrative, let us refer to this man as Majid. Coming from Saudi Arabia, it is not surprising that Majid is not only a Muslim but a devout one at that. Sometimes, while we were chilling, he will excuse himself for a while and go to his room to pray.

At that time, Majid did not speak English very well and it was quite difficult to converse with him. One would think that because of the language barrier, we will not be able to connect and become good friends. Surprisingly enough, I think it is precisely because of this language barrier, aside from our other differences, that brought us closer together. We have spent so many time trying to understand what each of us was trying to communicate. Then, there is also the elephant in the room: I am conspicuously queer.

The Catholic, The Queer, and Probably an Unbeliever Too?

Here is a random Sunday thought for you: Although I do not consider myself as a religious person nor a believer of an anthropomorphic God (at least not the way I used to believe), I nonetheless religiously attend  masses every Sunday like a devout catholic. Over the years, I have become convinced that going to church is not always about religion and that there are many different ways of believing.

My First Gay Pride: A Plato’s Cave Experience

In The Bakla and The Gay: While I was being a bakla, she was being gay,  I recounted the conversation I had many years ago while still living in the Philippines with a Filipino-American named Leslie. Leslie lives and grew up in the US and was spending her summer vacation in the Philippines that year. Although we barely knew each other,   we clicked so much and instantly became good friends. We became so close that I opened up to her about my being love sick to a good looking man named Jordan.

As I opened up to her, I was really taken aback when she asked whether Jordan was gay like myself or not and how genuinely disappointed she was to learn from me that Jordan is in fact straight. Little did I know back then, that unlike in the Philippines, gays have relationship with gays in the US where she grew up. I put my confusion aside; did not bother to ask for further clarification and just continued with our conversation. Leslie’s response begun to make sense to me after few months when a friend of mine introduced me to the gay pride in Malate, Manila.

The Bakla and The Gay: While I was being a bakla, she was being gay

Many years ago, while still living in the Philippines, I fell madly in-love with a  man I –  for the sake of this post – would refer to as Jordan whom I met through a common friend. I was 18 years old at the time and so was Jordan. As a young man, Jordan was very good looking and attractive. He possessed a physical beauty so uncommon in the Philippines that commands a second look of admiration from women and men alike.

As a bakla or a Filipino homosexual male, I already knew at a very young age that my infatuation, attraction, and even love for the member of the same-sex will never be equally requited in the same way as my heterosexual counterparts. As it always happened in my puberty, my heart is broken the minute I fell for a man and my falling in love with Jordan was not an isolated case.

Gender Studies? Why Study Gender Studies in the First Place?

In the previous blog entry, I recounted a conversation I had with somebody – a sort of which I often had and perhaps will continue to have – about the degree I took in the university, namely, Gender Studies. It is quite often that I find myself in a situation in which I justify, if not apologize, studying Gender Studies in graduate school.

Gender Studies? What about gender? There are men and women, what is so complicated about it? Why the need to study gender and to study in graduate school in the first place? And here is the question I find most irritating of all: ‘what can you do with it’, which also reads: ‘how can you earn money from it’?