Ang Bakla, Bow.
On the Filipino Gay-dentity
By Frolic Tan Lopez

Dino Abueva, 34, of Dinaig, Maguindanao (in Mindanao group of islands, south of the Philippines) is confused.  Growing up gay, he was told – and so he used to always believe – he was a “boy who wanted to be a girl.” 

“To express my being gay meant for me to be like a girl – wear skirts (as if all girls wear skirts, and as if only girls wear skirts), grow my hair long (as if all girls grow their hair long), and do girls’ chores (including looking after the house, cooking the meals, doing the laundry, et cetera),” he recalls.  “These were just what gay people, the bakla, do.”

		GENDER AWARE. Even if, historically speaking, crossing the gender lines was generally accepted in the Philippines, it has been demonized - and, unfortunately, until now, remains a largely unwanted practice. Thus the segregation of the gay community, which remains, until now, nothing but a movement hidden in the shadows.

However, when he was already at ease with his self-expression – “I already won numerous titles from (gay) beauty pageants!” he beams – Abueva had the chance to move to more cosmopolitan Metro Manila.  And there, the confusion started.

“I joined a beauty pageant (as soon as I arrived here, where I moved for work), which I won, of course.  The thing was, after the (competition), my fellow candidates, who were pa-mhinta (non-effeminate), were able to book (guys for sex)," he says.

Abueva recalls how, even if he was the winner, "the crowned one, the queen,"   he was left alone.   Abueva only discovered later that “I was too gay for everyone, so no one wanted me.  They wanted their gay guys butch here – what we called maya (referring to the small bird pestering farmers) in my place, believing they haven’t fully developed yet into ‘full’ gays (who are called agila, or eagle), are the very guys who ‘sell’ here, not the likes of me.”

Mainly because he wanted to “book here, too, of course,” Abueva resorted to changing his look – “My self-expression,” he says – into the pa-mhinta stereotype.  Among others, he already stopped taking contraceptive pills (which used to help clear his skin, as well as help grow his breasts), stopped cross-dressing, started hitting the gym, and started acting butch (e.g. no flicking of the fingers, or plucking of eyebrows, or putting on make-up).  And thus far, everything is working, too, since “I’m getting the attention I desire,” he says, even if he admits “still being uncomfortable” with his chest that stays looking like a woman’s breast, perhaps because of his pill abuse in the past.

Confusion re-starts every time he flies back to Maguindanao, where “I am now considered a maya, even by people who knew me before.  They want me to come out – meaning, for me to be gay, I have to start acting like one, which, for them, means mimicking girls (again),” he says.  “I tell you – if (non-homosexuals) think it’s confusing seeing many faces of being gay, it is even more confusing for people in the community itself.”

Abueva isn’t alone in this quandary, of course.

According to M.D. dela Cruz Tan, author of Queer Side Stories (QSS, queer.iecspecialist.com), it is hard to define was he refers to as “gay-dentity” in the Philippines.  “I always believe in the perspective of the fluidity of gender itself (not just gender identification due to gender expression),” he says.  “Think of gender as a ruler – while there are points for the various numbers, there are also points for the figures in between numbers, just as there are even more points in between them, too.  The numbers are, as mathematics puts it, infinite.  Gender expression should be seen the same way – you can be what you feel like being today, but remain the gender you identify yourself to be.  The figures between numbers may not be whole numbers, but they are numbers all the same,” he says.

The belief, while advanced (or maybe because of its advancement), doesn’t help the likes of Abueva, however, in search of gay identity, even if, for him, its basis may just be physical.

GAY IS DIVINE

At least in the Philippines, the segregationist way of looking at expressions of gay identity dates back to pre-Hispanic times, when being gay was a source of exaltation.  In Babaylan Source: The Soul Book, Francisco Demetrio, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Fernando N. Zialcita, and Roberto B. Feleo (1991) noted how, prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines in 1521, being non-heterosexual/non-straight, so to speak, was divine.  Those were the times of the “babaylan, once the central figure of the Hiligaynon supernatural world since he/she is believed to have exclusive powers to cure illnesses, exorcise evil spirits from objects or the human body, or serve as medium between the spiritual and physical worlds.”

“Without him/her, the spiritual life of the (Hiligaynon) community will be in shambles because he/she is the only person who has the knowledge on how to deal with the engkanto (supernatural elements) and other spirits that abound in the Hiligaynon preternatural belief system,” the Filipino authors say.

The babaylan, also called as a shaman, baylan, daetahan, tambalan, or manggagaway, embodies both the feminine (Earth) and the masculine (sky, or supernatural) elements.

However, according to J. Neil C. Garcia in IIAS Newsletter (#35, iias.nl), with the deterioration of the role of women with the coming of the Spaniards (read: Roman Catholicism), “gender crossing in the traditional sense became more and more difficult, with the gender crosser suffering from the ridicule and scorn which only the Spanish brand of medieval Mediterranean machismo could inflict.  From being likened to a naturally occurring species of bamboo called bayog, the native effeminate man (bayoguin) in the Tagalog-speaking regions of Luzon slowly transmogrified into bakla, a word that also meant ‘confused’ and ‘cowardly.’  Unlike his formerly ‘destined’ state, kabaklaan was a temporary condition away from which he might be wrested, using whatever persuasive, brutally loving means,” he states.

And so bakla being a cross-dressing manifestation was born as a concept.

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