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.

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.

History of Homosexuality: Antique versus Modern

 

Modernity is a word populated by people who define themselves as gay, lesbian straight, bisexual, bi-curious, exhibitionist, submisives, dominatrixes, swingers (people who engage in partner exchange), switchers (people who change from being gay to being straight men), born-again virgins (people who technically lost their virginity but pledge to renounce sex until marriage), acrotomopiliacs (people who are sexually attracted to amputees), furverts (or furries) – people who dress up in animal suits and drive sexual excitement from doing so, or feeders (people who overfed their generally obese partners). The important point here is that we draw on these categories in order to make sense of who we are: We define ourselves in part through sexuality (Mottier 2008: 1).

Perhaps, one would find it quite reasonable to claim that the work of Michel Foucault on ‘History of Sexuality’ is influential in queer theory and sexuality studies. In this text, Foucault provides a historical narrative of the emergence of modern identities that are primarily constructed – at least huge in part- along the lines of sexualities. Here, he convincingly argues that, unlike in pre-modern times, hetero/homosexuality is no longer just about what we do but also emerged as identities through which we identify ourselves.  Homo/heterosexuality is not only concerned about the question of with whom we are sleeping with, but also answers the questions of who we are and how we relate to the society we inhabit.