The New Gay Revolution?
Tapping Next Gen GLBTQIA Activists
By Mikee dela Cruz
PUBLISHED: APRIL 2010

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The Metropolitan Community Church – Quezon City (MCCQC) organized a gathering, dubbed Affirming Party, slated on April 8 for GLBTQIA activists who were at (and driven away from) the fourth regional conference of the Asia chapter of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association (ILGA) in Indonesia. 

Earlier, on March 26 in Surabaya, Indonesia, an estimated 50 to 60 members of hardline Indonesian Islamic groups staked out not just the hotel where the participants were staying at, but also the conference venue (Mercure Hotel) to force the participants to leave their accommodation and, thereby, cancel the event.  To what is shameful for Indonesia, conservative intolerance triumphed over respect for diversity – ILGA’s gathering was cancelled, and not without drama, with the participants literally chased out of the country.

The April 8 gathering was, in MCCQC’s Rev. Ceejay Agbayani’s words, an “affirmation of our fellow GLBTQIA Filipino activists on their quest for equality and justice.”

To drum up participation, for MCCQC, aside from word-of-mouth, a main mode of information dissemination was through the Internet. Even sans the availability of disposable budget, “the Internet (allows) us to tap (as wide a market as possible),” Agbayani says.  The effort boosted by “coordination through SMS messages” made the gathering a “success, exceeding our expectations (as over 60 people attended – in Facebook, only 50 people confirmed attendance).”

That, then, stresses the power of New Media.

And so the GLBTQIA advocacy gets an upgrade.

CHANGING WORLD

Outrage Magazine, as the only Web-based publication catering to GLBTQIAs in the Philippines, may well be an ideal study on the utilization of New Media – dominated by the Internet – in reaching target (in this case, i.e. GLBTQIA) markets.  According to publisher cum “editor on the loose” Michael David C. Tan, getting an A4-sized magazine of from 60 or more pages printed could easily cost well over P100,000 just for a thousand or so copies – and this does not yet include the money to be allocated for the salary of people involved in the publication (e.g. editors, writer, graphics, administrative staff, et cetera), costs to run the office (e.g. space rental, allotments for utilities, et cetera), and other costs associated with the production of traditional media.

Going online made the move realistic, Tan says – something he stresses is “great because, in the Philippines, GLBTQIAs remain under-represented, (and) we only actually make the (mainstream) news when something (bad) can be said about the group, e.g. when gays are found dead, supposedly killed by sex workers who were not paid properly; when there are raids of cinemas, supposedly because of the ‘immoral’ acts of its gay patrons; et cetera.”

Tan adds: “Outrage Magazine in this sense is a media by and for GLBTQIAs,” he said, adding that “other markets on top of these are, of course, just as welcome.”
It helps, too, that this representation is immediate.

On this, the experience of Sass Rogando Sasot of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP) on May 24, 2008 is worth a mention. Visiting Ice Vodka Bar in Greenbelt 3 in Ayala Center, Makati City, she (with other members of STRAP) was refused entry because – put succinctly – she’s a transgender (TGs are often described as “dressed inappropriately”).

In a letter that went viral virtually starting 6.04 A.M. of the next day, May 25, Sasot made the world knew what happened to her – she wrote: “This may not be the proper forum to raise this concern. But is there any reliable legal forum to address this issue? Reality check: There is no antidiscrimination law in this country. And if you’re discriminated, there seems to be a notion that you’re supposed to blame yourself for bringing such an unfortunate event to yourself.  So, I’d just stand up through this open letter.”

With other advocates picking up the story, the responses soon followed – first, from Ice Vodka Bar itself, which apologized to Sasot; from Dennis Galimba, operations engineer of Ayala Property Management Corporation, who raised the issue to the Ayala Group of Companies; et cetera.

What the Constitution states (equality for all) but the law enforcers fail to implement, the Internet (somehow) helped to (at least) stress, thereby press for actions to be taken. IMMEDIATELY.

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