Last Friday, when I received a letter informing me to make this introductory input, I asked myself:
why me? For some of you here, this issue is personal. Let me not take away anything from you by
writing this.
My unassuming question - “why me?” stems from my unarticulated view on the issue. Well, allow
me to articulate for the first time my view by sharing some of my stories. My apology if I limit my
writing about “bakla.”
When I was in elementary, I had a classmate who was “different” from us. The class called him
“bakla.” While he was not accepted to join some of the boy’s games, because he was a bit slow and
soft, he was not totally welcome to join girl’s games because he was a bit fast and and hard. He
would end up on the sideline watching all of us playing and having fun. Speaking of fun, the class
had a lot of it at his expense. When he reacted to taunting and teasing, the more he would receive
those until he could not take them anymore and he would cry. For some reasons, his cry was a sound of triumph for the class.
So why me when I don’t have this kind of experience?
More often, LGBTs are portrayed as victims of many things, such as discrimination and hate crimes. The circumstances surrounding victimization are understood as overwhelming social force of
morality and normalcy. They are not understood as inhibition of agency of the victim. I would like to deviate from the perspective of having them as victims. I would not ask you to put your feet in their
shoes, rather I would like you to focus on many of “us,” and on “that elementary class” not different
from us. May I ask then, do we see LGBTs through a privileged lens and position? Do we feel that
we are entitled to see them this way? Where do we derive this entitlement?
When I was in all-boys high school, there was an unwritten rule of assignment of sports. Smart boys played chess; tall
boys played basketball; agile boys played football; and not-so boys played volleyball. You could probably guess what sports I played........ basketball for some
reasons. There was this overpowering pre-existing categories with which we simply needed to conform. In high school, that was the reality we
confronted. And now, we know better. Reality is much more than those simple categories. It’s
complex that we can hardly simplify its complexities. It’s diverse that we can barely mask its
diversities. Everyday, differences abound, uncertainties arise, and contradictions and antagonisms
emerge all around us. It is not only an issue of language, of religion, of gender, of representation.
More than these, it is an issue of privilege, of entitlement. C. Wright Mills (1959) writes, “An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by publics is felt threatened.”
Let’s take, for example, marriage. For believers, marriage is highly valued and cherished. They have
internalized and immortalized its spirit in their practice of marriage between a man and woman. Any other arrangement is an issue for them. But will they become less of a believer if this “sacred”
arrangement is bestowed outside of the valued arrangement, that is to same-sex couple? If believers agree that marriage is good to build a family, why not open it to all? This can be a good subject for this discussion. Twelve years ago, Ateneo high school accepted its first female students. It was difficult for many alumni to accept that their cherished all-boys institution would be no more. The question then was, did Ateneo high school become less of an Ateneo when it opened its doors to girls? Because Ateneo believed that it offers a good education,
why not open it to all? The issue here may be described to have one side trying to cling to the
glorified past, while the other on the painful present onto a glorious future. Now, after 12 years, we
hardly look back at that debate.
For fun, one of my organizations had an all-male beauty pageant when I was in college. We acted as beautiful contestants, mimicking popular
actresses and singers. As we know, Ms. Gay contests have been perennial feature of fiestas. In her
description of Ms. Gay Naga City contest as provider of high taste and entertainment, Fenella Cannell (1999, 223) describes, in part, a “reputation of bakla as ‘artistic’ and ‘artificial.’” I would delve on
the latter reputation of bakla. There is a recognition that what we see in bakla, either on or out of
stage, is “fake” and therefore not real. The imitation and mimicry in exaggerated forms are
ephemeral expressions of their “identity.” For many of us, the “presentation of self,” as Goffman
would point out, by bakla is intended for an audience. Thus the presentation is thought to end
somehow and eventually return to the real self. But who is the real self of a bakla? During Cannell’s
fieldwork, many contestants then copied Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Madonna, to name a few. All of these names were women. Now, there is a shift in the object of copying. I’ve observed that
many bakla would imitate Vice Ganda, a bakla too. There is now a emergent sense of authenticity of “identity, ” not anymore a copycat of real women, but bakla “identity.”
In hierarchical society such as ours, where do we situate this bakla identity in the structures of power relations with pre-existing identities?
In the end, why me? Well like most of you, I also seek greater understanding of this issue. Let us then start the discussion.
