Gay Spaced Out?
From the Bat Cave to KFC: Gay Spaces in the Philippines
By Frolic Tan Lopez

Frank N., who is in his late 40s, recalls how “not many years ago – less than 20, perhaps – that site where Ayala One (the Makati City office of the Philippine Stock Exchange) stands used to be a swamp.  We used to go there to hook up, me and my friends, with other people like us, in search of quick fucks,” he recalls, laughing.

For a lack of a local term to identify such a venue, what Ayala Avenue used to be was, borrowing Western terminology, a “beat,” a venue (usually a public space) that men who have sex with men (MSMs, whether self-identifying as homosexuals or not) frequent for sexual activities.

When Makati City started to be developed, however, “the cops chased us out (of the place),” Frank N. says, adding tales of “many of us hiding in the darkness, our faces covered by the thick grasses, as we crawled our way out of the swamp to avoid the cops wanting to catch us.”

But the closure of Ayala Avenue as a beat didn’t kill the practice.  In fact, “afterwards, we started hanging out in the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City – though that was soon closed, too, when the barangay started sending people to go around the campus at night; right across the Film Center at the Cultural Center of the Philippines – though they ended up fencing the area; at the toilets of five-star hotels and landmark buildings (it still happens now, too); and at cinemas (this one, too, still happens, and not just in Delta or in Ginto, but even in Glorietta),” Frank N. says.  “You shut one down, another will just surface.”

And here is where the interest in gay space lies – on why it is relevant, if it really is that, in expressions of gay identity.

GRAVE ACT?

The lack of an alternative venue “is, arguably for many I know, why we opted to go to (these) places,” Frank N. says, adding “we were not left with a lot of options, really.  I’m in the medical field, still (largely homophobic), and (while there, I’ve had sex with) other doctors, bankers, lawyers, film stars, sports celebrities, even politicians – name the kind, one way or another, you’d find one of them in these places, where we could do what we wanted, really, out of the sight of the people we didn’t want to know what we were doing.”

The reasoning negates a more commonly-held belief – at least especially among non-homosexuals – that the practice of gay sex in public space is an act of exhibitionism.  There’s that “thrill of being watched, if not of being caught, of course, but it was more a smorgasbord of (men meat) readily available there and then,” Frank N. adds.

This point is strengthened by the observation that “not everybody can afford to rent rooms, you know; or even just pay cover charges of sex clubs, where you get just as many men.  This is free sex for all, basically.”

And then, of course, there’s the involvement of sex work.  At least this was – and still is, in many ways – the case of the vicinity of the Philippine Women’s University (PWU) along Taft Avenue in the city of Manila, where predominantly male sex workers (female sex workers are more concentrated in the Remedios Circle, while transgender sex workers are along Adriatico Street, both also in the city of Manila) can be found selling their “wares,” which, to cut expenses, can be had anywhere that’s dark near where they can be found.  The practice actually helped make the outside of PWU’s campus as a sexual transaction area, aside from creating the infamous Bat Cave, the sexual beats at the streets parallel to Taft Avenue, and intersecting Malvar and Nakpil Streets in Malate in the city of Manila.  It is this practice, too, that forced the PWU to hire multitudes of security guards to look after the outside of the campus as soon as the night falls, just as the government of the city of Manila lit up the once dark areas, thereby discouraging the practices to happen in the first place.

Interestingly, even if many frown upon the practice, the 1983 Report of the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong on Laws Governing Homosexual Conduct, as quoted in http://www.ilga.info, states that “there is no offence of homosexual activity in Philippine law (since) homosexual acts carried out in a public place could fall under ‘grave scandal,’ penalized by Article 200 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC).”

Under Chapter Two (Offenses Against Decency and Good Customs) of RPC, Article 200 specifically states:

Somewhat related are Article 201, and Article 202, to wit:

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