Sass Rogando Sasot
Love Advocate
By Kiki Tan
PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 2009

“Engaging in activism, especially in an advocacy work that is so close to your heart, can be so depressing and frustrating sometimes – but this kind of activism is about stimulating a paradigm shift, and history has shown us that paradigm shifts come not so easily, (with) a critical mass needed for deep-rooted change. You cannot create this critical mass, but you can be part of it.” Sass Rogando Sasot

Becoming a TG activist hasn’t been easy – but it’s always fruitful, says Sass.  “Engaging in activism, especially in an advocacy work that is so close to your heart, can be so depressing and frustrating sometimes – but this kind of activism is about stimulating a paradigm shift, and history has shown us that paradigm shifts come not so easily, (with) a critical mass needed for deep-rooted change. You cannot create this critical mass, but you can be part of it.”

FACING CHALLENGES

“Being a transgender person is fraught with so much difficulty.  Generally speaking, opportunities in life are already scarce.  But the prejudice against people who violate gender norms raises the cost of getting an opportunity for people like us,” Sass says.  Living as a TG “can be a lonely life. Having a loving relationship can be so difficult. Non-transsexual people don’t need to explain to whoever they are dating that genitals they were born with. There’s always that worry that people will reject you not because of you, as a person, but because you don’t fit the standard definition of what it means to be male or female.”

This is why, for Sass, advocating TG rights is important – and this is even if “doing advocacy work for TG people is like talking in a foreign language. How do you explain to people your internal reality, considering that most of us are too lazy to scratch beneath the surface and question the assumptions handed over to us by tradition? Moreover, society is so genital-centric. The genitalia, a minuscule part of a person, become the most definitive part of the body – more than our brains. If you’re going to come to think of it, the male and female on our birth certificates, as well as the question ‘Are you boy or a girl?’ are all euphemisms to telling others and asking you what genitalia you have between your legs.”

Sass elaborates: “I face the personal challenges of being a transgender person by appreciating the things that come my way, no matter how insignificant they seem. Just like in creativity, we get acquainted with happiness through the simple things in life. The world is certainly not beautiful all the time, but it’s also not just about hate, violence, despair, and all those horrible things. The beauty of a sunset, the elegance of a crescent moon, the eloquence of a shared laughter, the unselfish sound of rain, is all greater than the pain and loneliness we experience in this world.”

As an advocate, Sass considers an achievement “being able to inspire people to take the responsibility to stand up for themselves.  Sometime in January 2009, while I was in Malate with friends, someone approached me and asked me whether I’m Sass Sasot. She was a young woman of transgender experience. She told me that she was inspired by the article I wrote for (the now defunct) ICON Magazine and that she was inspired to follow her dreams wherever it will take them. That moment was just so heartwarming.”

There remain challenges, obviously – and not just for Sass and/or the TG community, but the whole GLBTQIA community.

“This is what disappoints me: the current lack of dialogue in the community – this prevents us from having a united front,” Sass says, adding that she is, nonetheless, inspired by GLBTQIAs “who have an intimate affair with their courage.”

For Sass, there are three issues the Filipino GLBTQIA community has to focus on, i.e. 1)  The passage of the Anti-Discrimination law (“We need legal remedies if we experience unfair discrimination based on our sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression”); 2) Dialogue with the business and school communities (“The key players in these two sectors can pave the way for making the workplace and schools in our country safe for sexual and gender diversity”); and 3) Passage of a Gender Recognition Law similar to that of the UK and Spain (“It’s about time that the lived gender identity of transsexual people be reflected on their legal papers “).
With these, Sass, not surprisingly, intends to “follow the beating of my star, keep on drumming my own drum, and perhaps, along the way, find someone I can share my song with. Life is always throwing me in directions where I always get involved with transgender issues, so you can expect me that in whatever I do in life will be along these lines or at least intersects with it.”

STANDING PROUD

Pieces of advice are, says Sass, oftentimes a result of one’s frustration in life; “but if you insist that I give them, here they are: First: remember that you are doing it for yourself. This may sound as an egoistic way of approaching advocacy. I’m not a fan of advocating ‘selflessness’ as I firmly believe that selflessness cannot be advocated, to campaign for it is to kill it. Know and understand yourself, don’t be afraid of your own shadow, and that of others,” Sass says.

She then adds that, second: Always remember that you are part of any system you are against, you were born out of it, you live in it. The system does not exist independently of us and we don’t exist independently of it – we build it as much as it builds us. We are not above, beyond, nor outside of it. Everyone is both a demon and an angel in this intricate web of oppression. To dismantle the system is to dismantle your self – be prepared, for it takes so much courage and honesty to accept this.”

And “third: In the course of your advocacy, you may affect some changes in policy, but these, at best, no matter how much we fought for them, are cosmetic ones. Change, like in matter, comes in subtle ways and this is the change that is transformative and the one that you will unavoidably exude after you yourself flow at one with the change you want in others. Light doesn’t preach to darkness, the night simply knows its time is over and gives way to daylight.”

It is still love that drives Sass now.

“Best lesson learned in life? That we are more than our pain and suffering. No matter how many times we fall, it is inevitable that we will stand up again,” Sass ends.  “And if you want a lasting revolution, then LOVE! – dance with it!”