Loving TGs IS Loving Women

Gender Bender
By Kiki Mura

A walk down memory lane.

Even if it’s unpleasant.

“You are an embarrassment.”

We were standing by the doorway, my mother and I, with her trying to stop me from leaving.  I was off to Sydney, Australia to attend the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG), an event she wasn’t so keen for me to attend because, then, I’d be mingling with “people you shouldn’t be mingling with, (and you) become what you should become.”
In not so many words, she didn’t want me gay – much more a TG.

“What will people say?  Kalalaki mong tao, babakla-bakla ka (You are a man, and you’re effeminate -  AS USED IN THIS CONTEXT, ED).”

As it is, being bakla is bad enough.  The term used to refer to everything NOT heterosexual in the Philippines (read: GLBTQI) is derived from the merging of babae and lalaki (woman and man), thereby meaning a “half of both,” not “whole,” so deemed lacking.  This is the country, of course, that believes in men’s superiority, so that even if women do all the work (as in the cases of many poor families I personally know, whose women are the breadwinners, with the men doing nothing but wait for their earnings, drinking, drinking, drinking...), they can be made to feel small, inconsequential.  Remnants of Hispanic machismo.  A bad one, at that.  Especially considering the legal recognition of same sex marriage in Spain (Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, when gay marriage was enshrined into law: “This law will generate no evil, that its only consequence will be the avoiding of senseless suffering of decent human beings.  A society that avoids senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society”), still our mother country, for all intents and purposes.  A case of the mother maturing, and its child, well...

“Kung bakit kasi gusto mong maging babae (I don’t know why you want to be a woman)?”

I actually haven’t seen my mother for a while now.  That SGLMG I attended was years ago (yes, I went), and, upon my return, the place where I grew up ceased to be a home.  I was unwanted there, a reminder of the “shame you have become as a gay guy,” as mother used to put it; and I didn’t want to be there, either.

So I just moved out. And moved on.

But that last exchange I had with her didn’t come out completely useless, actually.

In truth, I knew more about myself because of that (well, yes, I knew more about a mother’s love, too – of how, even when people say it is like a deep well: an endless source of affectation, of love without limits/preconditions/whatever, IT CAN BE LIMITED IN REAL LIFE); I knew, because of that, that the TG struggle – of the GLBTQI struggle, as a whole – is closely tied with women’s struggle.

Whenever I am told I shouldn’t even want to be a woman (“Masuwerte ka, lalaki ka” or “You’re lucky, you’re a man”), it’s actually an attack on women – like being a woman is not good enough, is even a curse, so that only being a man is worth being born as.  When this comes from a woman – the saying I shouldn’t want to be a woman – it’s even worse, like saying you are ashamed to be a woman, what you are, so I shouldn’t want to be like you.

I have always admired my mother – even now, when we don’t talk.  The memories I have of her were of her strength.

When she sent all six of us, me and my siblings, to private schools, actually going to work, when our father, who wanted her to stay home and become “just a plain housewife” (as if that, too, was easy), stopped giving her money, and chose to spend what he earned, instead, on partying with his friends, bedding as many queridas as they all can. 

When she had to sell Avon, and then Tupperware, and then all these other things to help increase what money she earned, just so we could be like every other student in our exclusive schools – joining all the outings (not that we needed them, now that I think back), dressing up (hand-me-downs were okay, but when possible, having something new was ideal, especially on special days), et cetera.  As much as possible, she didn’t want us to feel less than everybody else.

When our father started hitting her, telling her “lumalaban ka na” (“you’re now fighting back” – as if that was bad, this ability to defend oneself), and she did start fighting back, even able to tell him how wrong he is, with his idiotic ways, even when he thought he was always on the right.  he was so, so angry, he looked like a ripe tomato about to burst – and she stood her ground, even with his heavy hands falling on her left and right.

When she decided she wouldn’t put up with him anymore, she packed everything up, and,just like that, “it is time to move on,” she said.  But didn’t drop us as she did him, calling us her babies, “what kept me going through all these years.”  He was angry; then he begged her not to leave, “what will the neighbours say?”; then he threatened her he’d do this and that if she didn’t change her mind; then he just ignored her – and then us.  “Good riddance” was what she said, wondering why it took her this long to leave him.

There were more of these that show of strength.

All admirable.

All worth emulating.

Alas, no, even mother herself said, there’s something shameful about wanting to be a woman, as if there’s anything shameful about being a woman.

I beg to differ.

And I daresay that loving women, celebrating them, means honouring the woman in us.

Kiki Mura is a “budding” transgender who makes the rounds and is in the know of the five Wives (in newsmen terminology, the important Ws to ask when interviewing, i.e. Who, What, When, Where and Why) and one Husband (for the one H, i.e. How) for everything transgender in the Philippines . “Besides,” she said, “even if I didn't know, my dear, my circle is wide enough to fill in the rest of those that I missed or simply don't know!”