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.

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).

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 Religious Queer: The Discourse on the Western Gay Politics And How Religion Is Implicated Within

Reflecting upon my being a practicing Catholic while also being queer at the same time, which I recounted in my previous post entitled:  The Catholic, The Queer, and Probably an Unbeliever Too?, made me think of the discourse on the Western Gay Politics into which I was introduced while still in the graduate school. According to this discourse, the Western societies – unlike the differently developed societies – are modern and progressive because the historically marginalised subjects such as women and queers in these societies are liberated from subjugations. The de-secularisation of the Western societies that has taken place in the second half of the 21^st century – according to many scholars both in social sciences and the humanities – proved to be quite favourable towards those who have been hitherto marginalized and excluded from the norms of heteronormative masculinity.

A Conversation That Might Have Inspired This Blog Called The Baklush Phenomenology

Below is an excerpt of a conversation or rather a ‘small talk’ I had sometime ago. I already have had many conversations of this sort and this is just one of them.

Interlocutor: Did you study?

Me: Yes I did. I attended a graduate school in gender studies. I have completed my masters degree there.

Interlocutor: A gender what?