PinayTG

Romblon: A revelation

2011-05-28T23:44:00.000-07:00

(This piece is warmly dedicated to the magnificent people of Romblon. I would like to particularly thank Levi Redulla, Joey Agawanon, Tita Bert Adarlo, owner of Bert’s Salon, Joe and Annabelle Riano, owners of Casa Joebelle where we were billeted, Dawn Madrona, her mom Helen Madrona and the rest of the Madrona family and everyone in Romblon who made our stay there magical and truly unforgettable.)

Over the Holy Week about a month ago, STRAP’s transpinay celebrity Rica Paras was invited to judge a Bikini Open in Romblon so on 21 April 2011, Maundy Thursday, Rica, another STRAP girl Dawn Madrona and I (see pic above) set sail for the island of Romblon.

My hubby Alex and I had been looking forward to this trip having agreed some time back to do many things together for the first time. I have never been to Romblon nor taken a ship before so we both could not wait to begin our Romblon odyssey. On Thursday afternoon, we boarded a ferry called Maria Matilde at the Batangas Port (see the pic above).

The journey took 12 hours overnight and we slept through most of it. On the way though we watched the breathtaking sunset from the ship’s bow and right before dusk we had the delightful experience of witnessing a pod of dolphins swim with the ship. They came from both directions and positioned themselves right under the bow, swimming fast and so gracefully, as if they were leading the boat and guiding it. The scene took under five minutes but Rica and Alex were able to film it. Up to this day, we watch the video whenever we miss Romblon.

When we arrived at the Romblon port, the organizers of the Bikini Open, Joey Argawanon (in green in the pic above) and Tita Bert Adarlo (in orange in the pic above) were already there waiting for us with a welcome banner for Rica (see pic above). We were so touched by their warmth and thought that the gesture boded well for the rest of our stay. We were not mistaken. What followed after that was five days of rest, relaxation, enjoyment and unrivaled hospitality from our hosts.

On our first day, Tita Bert immediately organized a trip to the beach. He had a feast prepared and invited us to join him at Tiamban Beach (see pic above). It is one of the most beautiful beaches that I have ever seen. Alex and I fell in love with Tiamban that save for one day, we went there every day of our stay until we left Tuesday of the following week.

Tiamban has white, sugary sand, so white it has the effect of making the seawater clear (see pic above). I was glad to see that the beach was unspoiled and well-taken care of. There were no bars or restaurants around and I hope it remains that way. Proof that man’s encroachment has not disturbed the beach’s ecology is the fish that we saw swimming around with us. They seemed careless and unafraid and acted like we were not there. It was just another one of the many unbelievable details of our stay in Romblon.

Alex and I had so much fun in Tiamban. We lazed there in the afternoons, watched the sun set several times and played in the water like kids. We tried to master a trick where I would stand on his shoulders and on the count of three, he would throw me into the air so I could dive into the water (see pic above). We failed to perfect the trick but laughed our hearts out while trying to do so.

On Easter Sunday, Dawn brought us to another island called Logbon where we spent the afternoon (see pic above).

Although Logbon was not as beautiful as Tiamban, we were thrilled to be there. The boat ride from Romblon to Logbon was phenomenal and it felt like we were surrounded by an ocean of emeralds (see pic above). The remoteness of Logbon gave it a particular charm.

Dawn’s picture above is a testament to the poster-perfect beauty of the place.

Rica had her own shot too (see pic above).

Over lunch, care of Dawn’s incredible cooking skills (see pic above), we marveled at the fact that Romblon was not in any of the regular tourist maps of the Philippines. Many know of the legendary white sand beaches of Boracay Island but not of Romblon and we felt that that was an injustice.

Rica, Dawn and I had fun thinking up a tourism tag line for the island and settled on: Relax, recharge, renew—refreshing Romblon. My “jump shot”, I think captures this tag line perfectly (see pic above).

Although I want many more people to see Romblon, I fear that if tourists start coming to the island in uncontrolled droves, its natural beauty would be tainted. It is my hope though that Romblon would attract more attention in the coming years and that the local government would be able to balance commercial tourism with protecting the environment, a feat not achieved in many of the Philippines’ tourist attractions. Boracay beach, for example, is notorious for the amount of trash one finds in it during the peak seasons. Tourism authorities have to do a lot more in terms of educating local and foreign travelers alike on their civic duty to the places they visit in this country.

Over all, our trip to Romblon was probably one of the best holidays I have taken in a long time. Up to this point, I have heard only good things about Romblon but never really seen it--its Mediterranean-like beauty, its charming, down-to-earth people and its pristine white sand beaches. Many Filipinos come to know of Romblon only abstractedly in Civics Class as the “marble capital” of the Philippines for its rich marble and mineral deposits. My appreciation of Romblon has deepened so much more now after having been there and having the honor and pleasure of enjoying its uncorrupted beauty.

To Romblon and its people, Alex and I wish you prosperity. You will be forever in our hearts and have our gratitude and loyalty (see pic above). Long live the people and island of Romblon!

Transwoman refused entry at Dubai airport

2011-05-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

Jen Janice (see pic above) is not a well-known name in transactivist circles but many see her as having done so much more than others for making great strides in the corporate world. Jen Janice is currently a Program Manager for a multinational based in the Netherlands. She has worked for the same company for many years in Singapore where she is originally from until two years ago when she decided to make the big move to their Netherlands head office.

I had the honor of meeting Jen in Copenhagen for the World Outgames where she talked about her rise in the corporate ladder as an out and proud transwoman. We hit it off really well and have kept in touch since. Besides her obvious intelligence, corporate savvy and professional credentials, Jen is a very caring, sweet and motherly person. I know for a fact that she has mentored a lot of underprivileged transgirls while living in Singapore. She is also a great cook and I have seen her whip up a storm in the kitchen producing the most delectable of foods.

It was a shock for me to learn that she was held at the Dubai airport on her way back to the Netherlands on a business trip. She wanted to visit some friend in Dubai but was not let in. You can read her full story below. Fortunately, Jen wants change at the Dubai airport and hopefully her case will be the first step towards better treatment of all especially transgender people when they enter the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Transgender being refused entry into Dubai

Being showcased like an attraction

Adapted from The Gay Krant Newspaper, The Netherlands
Writer : PAUL HOFMAN
Photo by : GEERT VAN TOL

Baffled, sad and most of all upset. Those were the feelings which came up when Jan
Janice reported at Customs at the airport of Dubai - one of the seven Arab Emirates
- together with other passengers. What should have been a pleasant visit to friends ended up in a drama. "As a transgender, I have never ever been so humiliated onto the bone".

Without the faintest idea, Jen Janice got off the plane on that hot December day
and went through Customs. A few days ago she had decided to continue to the
United Arab Emirates to visit some friends, after a business meeting in Kuwait. She
was very much looking forward to it, as it had been a while since she seen her
friends. But in her wildest dreams she would not have guessed the end result. "I
was queuing up at customs and I was dressed modestly. When it was finally my
turn, the customs official studied my passport. He then called for help from passing-by colleague". Jen Janice was stunned. Because she is unable to speak Arabic, she could not make out any of the conversation following that. His stern
facial expression then changed when he heard a remark from a colleague. "I was clearly the subject. A few times, he looked at me in minute detail and then back into my passport. That was so humiliating." Because she has not had her Sexual Corrective Surgery (SRS), Jan Janice is still registered as a male.

And then the long wait started. Jen Janice was taken out of the queue and into a separate room. "Another man joined them and together they started asking all sorts of questions. What I wanted to do in their country and why I looked the way I do? One of the officials just could not understand why I am a man but look like a woman". The men did not know what to do with her. Next, like a criminal she was taken to yet another room where she had to wait for hours again. When I asked if I could call one of my friends, they reacted rigidly that that was absolutely not possible. They also asked me why I wanted to be a woman. They were very intimidating. On top of that, it was very humiliating that more and more customs
officials came into the room just to have a look at me. They all started laughing/giggling. Although it had not been mentioned yet, at that time it daunted upon me that I would be deported."

She still is livid having been put up as a curiosity. "My passport reads that I am a
male. But from when I was nineteen, I already felt like a women. This has never been a problem work-wise. My management and direct colleagues respect me for who I am."
In the airport the doors were opened up and Jen Janice was taken to another room by
some airport ground-handling staff. In the departure hall we caught the attention of quite some people. In the room where she subsequently had to take place were another fifty or-so people from different countries who just like Jen Janice, would be deported. "I then lost courage. I was told officially that I would have to leave the country immediately. I felt dismayed and could have easily cried. My dignity was at stake. No reason was given as to why I had to leave. I was extremely sad that this had to happen to me. I had only wanted to visit my friends and meant no harm. Via Blackberry, I then finally managed to contact my manager. She was on the road and reacted upset when she heard my story. My employer then offered
help and arranged for my return trip. Not easy, because many flights had been canceled due to the heavy snowfall at Schipol airport. I was really lucky being able to leave so quickly. Else, I might have had to stay for two days in that room amongst all those other deportees.

Back in the Netherlands, she is determined not to drop the story. Although the planned visit to her friends was purely for pleasure, her employer is supporting her wholeheartedly. "Early January, I have sent a letter to the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Singapore as I still hold a Singapore passport. But up until now I have not received a reply. The Singapore embassy in the United Arab Emirates is looking into the matter. "In future, without a doubt, I will need to travel for business to the UAE more often. So then it should be clear as to what I can expect. We've got a big leap ahead of us before transgender ladies can be themselves. All my life, I've been fighting to prove that I'm just like everyone else. The
fact that I have to continue to proof myself is inhumane."

Love Post #1

2011-04-20T18:13:00.000-07:00

We’re at the beach waiting for sunset, my head cradled lovingly in the nook of his shoulder, when he turns to me and says in his endearing European accent, “Baby, I have a gift for you.” He shows me a picture of the sun, a pin prick in the sky, between his thumb and pointer finger (see above). “I got the sun to put in your eye.”

He struggles with English and when the words escape him he says “I don’t know for speak.” And I tell him that I understand him clearly and absolutely so. He says “Only you understand me.” I look at him with utter love and feel that everything is right and perfect in the world.

I will always love you

2011-02-28T02:31:00.000-08:00

I am a firm believer in fate. I accept fully that there is a reason why the things that happen in your life happen and why you meet the people that you meet. Some of those people will be with you for a lifetime, while others surely can only be passing through so that they can move on to a life that they deserve even if it is one that does not include you.

I am glad that I have had the honor to know some people who have shared my life even briefly. It is always liberating to realize that because of each other you have actually become stronger and are now better off as people, to stand on your own two feet. Even if you want to keep each other in your life, the Fates will not permit. In the end of course you are never really alone. You will always have family even the ones that cannot see you for who you are, people from your childhood who have loved you all these years including your long-time friends. Those people whose friendship you do not need to worry about. They who will always be there when it matters most and will never, ever let you down.

To a love that could only be ephemeral, I can only offer this song:

I Will Always Love You

If I should stay,
I would only be in your way.
So I'll go, but I know
I'll think of you ev'ry step of the way.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
You, my darling you. Hmm.

Bittersweet memories
that is all I'm taking with me.
So, goodbye. Please, don't cry.
We both know I'm not what you, you need.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.

(Instrumental solo)

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have all you've dreamed of.
And I wish to you, joy and happiness.
But above all this, I wish you love.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
I will always love you.
I will always love you.
I will always love you.
I, I will always love you.

You, darling, I love you.
Ooh, I'll always, I'll always love you...

And now it is time to happily move on.

Happy holidays from STRAP!

2010-12-23T18:49:00.001-08:00

STRAP wishes everyone a Christmas filled with warmth, laughter and hope and a New Year that affirms our dignity, protects our right to self-determination and ensures a good quality of life for all. Happy Holidays!

Rica the performer

2010-12-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Last night, I was with Rica to watch her perform (see pic above). It was the taping of ABS CBN Channel 2's Christmas Special at the Araneta Coliseum. I wanted to go because I have never really seen Rica perform live and I have not been inside the Araneta Coliseum ever. The Araneta Coliseum or the Big Dome as it is more commonly called is quite famous for being the venue of the famous Thrilla in Manila boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1975. It is actually five minutes away from my apartment and I pass it by almost every day on my way to work and yet I have never seen its insides. So when Rica invited me to see the show at the Big Dome, I readily agreed.

Before the show, Rica invited me and her best friend, Bev backstage where all the Kapamilya (monicker for ABS CBN) stars were getting ready. Being a big fan of Rica's show, I just had to take a picture with Melai--who like Rica is a product of Pinoy Big Brother Double Up and one of Channel 2's rising comedic stars (see pic above).

I also saw Princess Manzon (above) who is part of the 2010 Project Headshot ACT. We had a brief chat about the campaign then Princess went back to doing her make-up.

The ladies' dressing room was so hot and crowded that I asked Rica and Bev to step out. When we did, we saw all the handsome Kapamilya male stars milling around. I immediately spotted Jake Cuenca and we took a pic with him (above). The Kapamilya star also happens to be part of Project Headshot ACT and actually has an indie movie sponsored by the Department of Health (DOH) called HIV. You can read about it here.

As expected, the show started late. Because my shift at work is very early, I had to leave after just an hour. I did not even see Rica perform in her hippie outfit with the rest of the PBB gang. I'm glad I can still catch her on TV though but I think I will have to wait till Christmas night to see it. Darn, the travails of the working class!

Project Headshot ACT

2010-12-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot that for World AIDS Day this year, I was warmly invited by renowned photographer Niccolo Cosme and talented videographer Jethro Patalinghug to take part in the third offering of Project Headshot (see above). Project Headshot is an HIV and AIDS-focused photography campaign sponsored by UNAIDS Philippines with the tag line Saving humanity through profile pictures. It began in 2008 with the the theme "Aware". In 2009, they had a second round of shoots for the next phase called "Move." This year the campaign calls people to action to emphasize voluntary HIV and AIDS screening and counseling for the third installment called "Act." Project Headshot has a Facebook fan page that you can like here.
The head shots were released on 1 December 2010 and many web sites have carried it. You can see it on Spot here and at the Female Network here. To view the entire gallery, click here.

This is not the first time I worked with Niccolo, who is a celebrated photography artist here (see pic above). I had the pleasure of being shot by him when he was not yet internationally famous for an anniversary photo shoot of one of my organizations. So it was really amazing to me when the next time I saw him was when he joined the local singing reality TV show, Duets. I am happy to note, though, that fame has not changed him one bit. He is still the self-effacing, nice and sweet guy I met years back.

I was also very happy to have met for the first time the talented Jethro Patalinghug (see above). Jethro is the person behind the promotional video for the 2010 Manila Pride March called One Love. He is also a singer and performer and his talent just inspires me. I hope we can work together some more in the future.

It was a great day doing the Project Headshot ACT shoot. Ana Santos, a long-time ally and editorial director of Sex and Sensibilities.com, was there as well (see pic above) and it was during that day that we agreed for her to visit the STRAP ladies for an HIV and AIDS 101 session.

I would like to thank Niccolo and Jethro for inviting me to be part of the Headshot Clinic this year. For updates on the clinic, visit their blog here. The best part about ACT was the fact that I was the only transwoman there. Hopefully for the next installment, we will see more head shots of transpeople. That is definitely something to look forward to.

2010 Manila Pride March

2010-12-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

Last 4 December 2010, the Transgender Lesbian Bisexual and Gay (TLBG) community in Manila concluded another historical Pride Parade. For the first time in history, the TLBG Pride March was sponsored by the local government of Quezon City. Of course STRAP was there in full force (see pic above). The girls, upon the suggestion of founding member Dee Mendoza, decided to come in fiery and radical red.

STRAP had two calls this year: AFFIRM THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION (above pic) and STOP DISCRIMINATION BASED ON GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION (pic below). We also brought back the red truck last year that we rented again out of our own pockets this year.

Our hardworking member Seanel Caparas (rightmost in the pic above) along with her best friend Princess Jimenez (leftmost in the pic above) decorated the truck and turned it into a parade float. I was so touched when I saw the truck. Seanel and Princess truly outdid themselves and I am so grateful to them up to now.

Once again, joining the march was a tiring but fulfilling experience. Every year, it just seems to get bigger and grander. I was so proud to see that many of the people organizing the march were the first-timers when I was the co-coordinator two years ago. I am glad that they kept the flame alive and served Task Force Pride Philippines this year. The TFP execom did a very good job this year and they deserve a big congrats!

I was proud as well that many STRAP ladies were marching for the first time and their experience was positive. I was going to host the evening's program and was being prepped at the wings when STRAP was called on stage. I was unable to join the sisters but saw how the crowd roared seeing the proud women of STRAP in red own the stage and strut with attitude (see pic above). People ran near the front of the stage and just erupted into thunderous applause. They cheered the girls on and applauded STRAP with so much love and warmth. It was so touching.

At last I was able to get a picture taken with my best gay friend in the world, Rey Banag (see above). A week before, Rey sent me a "surprise" Christmas card which had a picture of him and his partner, JM. I cried when I saw the pic and fell in love with them all over again. They are one of the best gay couples I know and I love them both to pieces. I was so elated to receive their loving message with a beautiful picture of them to boot. Now I have their picture in my wallet and it can finally be said that yes I am a fag hag. I am a true-blooded girl who loves boys who like boys. And the pic with me and Rey is my favorite picture from the march.

During the program, I was surprised when one of the stage hands went up to me and said that Arnel Pineda, the front man of Journey just arrived. Arnel made every Filipino proud when he became Journey's lead singer around 3 years ago. It was such a treat for him to drop by and give a solidarity message to the LGBT community. And of course, it was great meeting him in person (see above)!

One of the highlights of the program that night was seeing old allies winning a special prize. Akbayan party, the partylist that originaly filed the Anti-Discrimination Bill (ADB) in Congress 10 years ago, attended this year's march with their usual huge contingent. The ADB seeks to penalize discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression but its passage has foundered since it was first filed 3 Congresses ago. Akbayan won Most Number of Participants in this year's parade. It was an honor to hand the award to Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros and Akbayan Chairperson Percival Cendaña (see pic above).

The best part of the night was meeting Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista again (see pic above). Mayor Bautista and I actually met 3 years ago when I was just a TFP volunteer and he was still the Vice-Mayor of Quezon City. We saw him in a restaurant and asked him to support the march which was going to be held in Manila then. He asked me to send in a letter to his office and I guess that gave him an idea to fully support the march in a bigger way in the future.

All in all, One Love was amazing. I want to acknowledge Dee Mendoza for being the person behind this year's Pride March theme and STRAP's Pride March color. It was also heart-warming to see the media acknowledge the advocacy work of the transgender community. Many of the media write-ups and features on the March showed the STRAP ladies. See a news article here and a TV news feature here. It beats me though why even if I kept saying LGBT during the program, most of the news agencies present called it the "gay pride parade" in the news the day after. I guess old habits die hard but at least now, they say LGBT as well and not only "gay and lesbian this" or "gay and lesbian" that, which is a good change.

Congratulations again to TFP. May this be the start of a long and good relationship between the annual LGBT Pride Parade and the Quezon City Government. We cannot wait for next year's Pride March!

One Love

2010-12-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

On 4 December 2010, the Filipino Transgender Lesbian Gay & Bisexual (TLGB) community will come together once again in a show of unity to assert their right to love and their right to be which comes from one heart at the 2010 Manila Pride March. The March, still organized by Task Force Pride Philippines (TFP), is different this year as the celebrations focus on the fight against HIV and AIDS. It will also be held after a long time in Quezon City. See the publicity video for the march which features TLGB human rights activists here.

Portugal passes new trans law

2010-11-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

Below is a press release from Transgender Europe.

Since November 25th Portugal has a law regulating the legal gender recognition. It is filling a legal gap human rights activists have been pointing out for a long time. With the new law, the preferred gender can be obtained using a standardized administrative procedure within 8 days. Besides the application a certificate from a medical multi-disciplinary team is necessary to fulfill the pre-conditions.

Read the rest of this release here.

Miss International Queen 2010

2010-11-21T00:51:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to the newly crowned Miss International Queen, Mini Han of South Korea (see pic above). The Korean stunner was crowned on 19 November 2010, Saturday in Pattaya, Thailand where Miss International Queen, the world's most prestigious pageant for transwomen, is beamed live from Tiffany's, the world's biggest transgender cabaret.

Completing Mini's court are First Runner Up Ami Takeuchi of Japan (right in the pic above) and Second Runner Up Stasha Sanchez of the USA (left in the pic above).

Queen, COLORS and the Cebuana transpinay

2010-11-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend from November 5-7, I was with Rica Paras, our transpinay celebrity from STRAP, because she was invited to be one of the judges in the second offering of Queen, a spectacular pageant in Cebu for transpinays (see pic above). Queen this year like the last one was held at the Pacific Ballroom of the Waterfront Hotel Cebu, where both Rica and I were billeted thanks to the generosity of the Queen organizers.

Queen is the brainchild of the Clothes for Life Foundation, an organization mostly composed of fashion designers who are Cebu-based. Its current chair is Cary Santiago, one of Cebu's most prominent people. Cary is a world-known couturier whose clientele includes the creme de la creme of the Philippines. Rica and I chatted with him post-pageant and had our pic taken as well (see above). Cary told us of his plans for Queen to be a platform to help needy communities in Cebu. I was quite impressed with his vision for Queen to be a pageant that will showcase the best of Cebu and benefit the poorest of the poor. It sounds too good to be true but after having met Cary, I have now become a firm believer in the aspirations of Clothes for Life and Queen. If I am ever in a position to help, I would easily choose Clothes for Life foundation as my charitable institution of choice.

We owe our presence in Cebu to our fantastic member in STRAP, Rain Villagonzalo who was crowned the first Queen in 2009 (see above). Rain made sure that the paths of STRAP and Queen would meet and she was instrumental in ensuring STRAP's involvement in Queen.

Rain was stunning on pageant night once again as she made her farewell walk in a breath-taking Cary Santiago cream gown (see above). We realized while there that Queen was not only a pageant for Cebuanas. It is actually open to all transgender women of Filipino descent even those who live abroad. The real name of the pageant is just Queen and not Queen of Cebu. They just had to name their Facebook page Queen of Cebu as the name Queen was already taken. I think that having an international pageant like Queen in Cebu is a fantastic idea. It is a challenge to Manila-centrism and also a way to up the ante in pageantry in the country. Queen, I personally believe, has raised the bar very high for trans pageantry in the world. From concept to execution, Queen is truly one pageant for the books. It has the potential to change the face of beauty pageants for transwomen in the world.

I was very happy to get the chance to come back to Cebu. I was there in 2007 and met a group of Cebuano transbabaes, one of whom turned out to be the star of The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, Minerva Buzon. Minerva later became a member of STRAP and is now poised to be the coordinator of STRAP Cebu. It was also one of the reasons why Rica and I went to Cebu--to meet the potential members of STRAP Cebu and have an exploratory meeting with them. Rain gamely offered for us to meet the girls at her house on our last night there (see pic above). The ladies on the left are Rain's friends (Meg in black beside me and Paula, in a denim tube dress) while the Cebuanas who have expressed intention to be part of STRAP Cebu are those on the right: Syndy (in the red dress), Weng (in white shirt, seated), Minerva (in yellow), Judy (beside Minerva) and Etep (in a striped shirt, standing).

I am proud of Minerva of course who volunteered to organize a Cebu chapter of STRAP. We will be working with her closely in the next year to ensure that our Cebuana counterparts will have an organization as strong as the one their Manila-based sisters have. It is something to look forward to indeed.

Community organizing is strong in Cebu now and I am very happy to tell all of you that a new trans organization has just been established there called COLORS (Coalition for the Liberation of the Reassigned Sex). Minerva and Syndy are members of COLORS and we are all hoping that STRAP Cebu and COLORS will be able to work closely together to improve the lives of trans Cebuanas. On our first night there, Rica and I went out with the members of COLORS and had a smashing time (see pic above). From left to right in the pic above are Honey and her boyfriend, me, Rica, Eda, Minerva and Bonita (seated) while the girls at the back standing are Syndy, Brax and Magda.

The new Queen herself (in the middle in the pic above), Maki Eve Mercedes, is a member of COLORS. I wish her well and hope this new chapter in her life as reigning Queen will open doors for her and opportunities to do good for the transgender community in Cebu. Congratulations again to the new Queen Universe, Queen World and Queen International 2010! Mabuhay ang Cebuana transpinay!

STRAP salutes Queen of Cebu

2010-11-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

Every girl dreams of being treated like a Princess. But in Cebu, they can actually dream of becoming a Queen.

The Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP) congratulates the organizers of Queen of Cebu on its sophomore year. Envisioned as an alternative pageant, Queen of Cebu has proven not only to be a grand showcase of the beauty, talent & splendid uniqueness of the Cebuana transpinay but as well as a magnificent platform to advocate for respect of gender diversity & the right to determine one’s gender identity.

Thank you to those who put together Queen of Cebu & for setting a very high bar indeed. As has been said, excellence is the best deterrent to sexism. Now our Cebuana transpinay sisters have another prestigious pageant that they can not only be proud to be a part of & call their own but as well as to use to break down barriers of prejudice.

May dreams come true on pageant night (6 November 2010, Saturday, 8 pm, Waterfront Hotel Cebu)! May all the candidates’ stars shine bright! And to the next Queen, may you reign in kindness & compassion, love & light!

In sisterhood,

The Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines
www.tsphilippines.com
strapmanila@gmail.com

Wan Chai bars shock transgender experts, barring them as 'lady boys'

2010-11-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

Below is a news article that came out in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Hong Kong's most widely read English broadsheet. Santy and I decided to go back to the bar in Wan Chai, Amazonia, that barred our entry in the past and luckily an SCMP journalist was there to see it all happen again. When we got there I had to politely introduce myself to the manager named Dave (see pic above) and he said that he'd let us in if Dr. Sam Winter and Atty. Michael Vidler, a human rights lawyer, who were with us that night would escort us the entire time. We said no. The Hong Kong trans community is in a very vulnerable position right now after the W decision barring a transsexual woman's petition to marry in the gender she identifies as. I hope that by exposing more of the bigotry that seems to pervade Hong Kong society nowadays, we have been able to call people's attention in Hong Kong enough for them to start agitating for badly needed change.

Wan Chai bars shock transgender experts, barring them as 'lady boys'

(SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)
John Carney and Lana Lam Oct 31, 2010

Two transgender professionals from the Philippines attending a conference in Hong Kong fell victim to the very discrimination they'd come to talk about - they were denied entry to bars in the city "because they were not women".

Last week, Naomi Fontanos and Santy Layno attended a lecture for an undergraduate course at Hong Kong University entitled Sexuality and Gender: Diversity and Society. That evening they went to Wan Chai for a drink with Dr Sam Winter, the course organiser and an associate professor in the faculty of education at the University of Hong Kong, and human rights lawyer Michael Vidler, who had attended the lectur

On arriving in Wan Chai, they were told they were not welcome in certain bars. Initially, the group went to Amazonia, known for its live music.

Winter and Vidler were allowed to enter but the others were not.

The men remonstrated with door staff about this, only to be told that they were allowed to come in, but their friends weren't.

The doorman was insistent. They couldn't go in because "they are not women, they are men".

"They are lady boys" and "there are other places for people like that," he said - meaning gay clubs.

Later that night the pair were also refused entry to other Wan Chai bars - Escape and Dusk til Dawn.

A spokesman for Amazonia said: "It's up to our security's discretion who gets in on any given night. There is no discrimination here. We often let transvestites in and we have no problem with that. They are all paying customers."

A spokesman for Escape said this was also their policy. Dusk til Dawn said it reserved the right to refuse admission to customers.

Fontanos, 32, has a degree in secondary education from the University of the Philippines in Manila and prepares teaching materials for an English language teaching company. "I felt very offended and hurt. We were doing nothing wrong or illegal," Fontanos said. "I was surprised that this thinking exists in Hong Kong as it is a global city. It markets itself as a cosmopolitan place where all cultures converge, but there's an underlying bigotry and ignorance here."

Layno 27, has a degree in mass communications from the University of St Louis in Baguio City, and works in communications. She was equally shocked. "Hong Kong should be more advanced than this but the fact is it isn't. These people associate us with working girls, which is why they didn't let us in, but we are not. The thing is, working girls can still go into these bars but we can't."

The pair also work for the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines. Winter had brought them to speak at the University of Hong Kong, where he runs the course Sexuality and Gender: Diversity and Society.

"Naomi did a presentation about being transgender in the Philippines, while Santy took part in the question and answer session afterwards," Winter said. "They are educated, eloquent and teach on transgender issues around various campuses in the Philippines ... It's a quite depressing reminder of the ignorance, bigotry and prejudice that still exists on the streets of this city. There's a real issue here as to why ordinary, decent and law-abiding people can't get through the door at Amazonia or places like it in Hong Kong."

Human rights solicitor Vidler was appalled that the transgender pair came to Hong Kong to address transgender issues here, only to fall prey to the very discrimination that they had come to talk about.

He said he knew at least two women officers in the disciplined services - he would not say which one lest doing so revealed their identities - who are transgender.

"If they were working undercover, they wouldn't be allowed into these bars either, as they'd be assumed to be lady boys.

"They also would have no recourse against an establishment like this. But they would have recourse if the discrimination was to do with a government establishment.

"This is why there's got to be legislation introduced to protect against this kind of thing happening."

The Equal Opportunities Commission has received fewer than 10 complaints from transgender people since it was formed in 1996, a spokeswoman said.

Such complaints must be made under the disability discrimination ordinance since there is no law specifically on transgender discrimination, she said.

Proud transbabae

2010-11-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

When the chance to return to Hong Kong arose, I did not have second thoughts and immediately said yes to the invitation from Dr. Sam Winter to speak once again in his Sexual and Gender Diversity course at the University of Hong Kong. (see pic above) The first time I did so, I was not even half-way through my term as STRAP chairwoman and so I was looking forward to this trip as it coincided with the end of my first year heading the STRAP Working Group, STRAP's team of officers. I am very proud of the many things we have accomplished in the last activist year and the talk at HKU was a good chance to tell the world the many great things that STRAP has achieved in such a short time.

I was particularly happy that one of STRAP's hard working officers, our Internal Affairs Head Santy Layno was there with me once again (see pic above). I have been mentoring her the past year and have been urging her to try her hand at public speaking. I am always very happy when a girl finds her voice in STRAP. It makes me even more proud when she starts using that voice to speak for herself.

I was very happy to share the stage with Santy (see pic above) because it is always a good thing when people see other proud transbabae, another term for transpinay that came from one of our sisters Greta. I want the world to see that there are hundreds of transbabaes in the Philippines and it is time to unleash their voices. We have sisters in many regions in the country and I am excited that they are expressing their desire to join the conversation on human rights as they should. Yes, to borrow from Maozedong, let a hundred flowers blossom indeed!

It is my hope that more of the world will see the many other Filipina trans activists who are here in the Philippines, working hard to make real change like Santy. Santy made me proud when she gamely answered questions from the HKU students in the hall that day (see pic above).I hope that more STRAP girls will choose to be active this year. We have so much to do and we will need people on the ground who do not only talk the talk but also walk the walk. STRAP is a well-spring of potential and I know that together we can do so much more for ourselves and the communities we serve.

I am especially struck when I am with the STRAP girls and see that many of them have surpassed the point of victimhood. Of course we always acknowledge the travails and hardships that come with being trans but more and more of us seem to be rejecting the victim mentality and really taking charge of our lives. They are not just complaining about how hard life is they are actually doing something about it, dreaming big, breaking barriers and going after jobs that transwomen of the past generation would have never dared go into: human resources, management, entrepreneurship, health care, information and communications technology, etc. My STRAP sisters truly are my inspiration and I always love telling the world about them.

If you are on Facebook, make sure to like STRAP's Facebook fan page and tell your friends and loved ones of this great community of sisters, proud transbabaes, working to make Philippine society a better place.

Glamnation

2010-10-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

As you all know, I am in love with Adam Lambert. I wanted him to win the 8th season of American Idol and even when he didn't, it really didn't matter. The first time I saw him in the auditions for that season, I had a feeling that he was going places. He was going to be a star. And I was right.

So when I heard that his first headlining concert, Glamnation, was making its Manila stop on 10/10/2010, I just had to see it (see pic above).

Luckily, Santy's mom, Tita Tina, scored VVIP tickets to the concert and happily gave it to me and Santy's best friend, JayZ. Like me, JayZ loves Glambert so much and I was happy to have a date with him and have the chance to spend time with him (see pic above). A few nights before the concert, we--Santy, JayZ, Tita Tina and I--had dinner together where I remarked how young looking Tita Tina was. She looked refreshed and beautiful. She knew I was not flattering her because she and Santy went to the salon before we met up and the hair dresser could not believe that Santy was Tita Tina's child. The hair dresser thought Santy was Tita Tina's older sister! This really made me laugh so hard.

Anyway, seeing Glambert perform was a nostalgic experience for me (see pic above). I was so emotionally invested in his stint on Idol that seeing him here in Manila made me feel like a stage mother! The entire evening I felt like a mother watching her son perform, all the while grinning from ear to ear. It was fantastic. Although short as expected (there were only a dozen or so songs), Adam Lambert's concert rocked it.

I was also happy to note that his fans range from the very young to the more senior. There were a lot of high school-looking kids in the audience that night as well as mature men and women dressed very formally but singing along to "For Your Entertainment" or "What Do You Want From Me?". I loved the crowd that night and many Glambert fans came out dressed up. I had to take a pic with a girl who came dressed like a Japanese geisha (see pic above).

His concert is far from those of Madonna's or Lady Gaga's although it was good enough. It didn't reinvent the concert wheel nor did it showcase anything new in terms of technology or theatricality. It is Adam Lambert's first concert tour and it put his singing prowess in the center of it. I know that he is taking a lot of inspiration from old school Glam Rock but I just wish he would add something fresh to it aside from his voice and looks.

I have high hopes for him though but he has to make his concerts more exciting. I know in the future he will master the art and science of staging concerts down pat and I can imagine him headlining concerts as unforgettable as Madonna's Blond Ambition, Virgin, or Girlie Show tours. Those were highly conceptual and even if sometimes, Madonna's voice cracked or got hoarse, you never felt cheated because they were all a spectacular extravaganza.

Anyway, thanks to Tita Tina for the tickets. She also invited me to attend Jason's (her younger son's), birthday. That night she wore a dress that Santy bought for her and she looked smashing (see pic above). She is the vavavoom woman, third from right in the pic above. From left are Jason, Santy, me, Uncle John, Tita Tina, her sister and Tita Tina's sister's husband. I will always be grateful for her kindness. I know that she is going through a rough time right now so I want her to know that I am praying for her to overcome the health issues she is facing.

Tita Tina, you rock! You will get through this. Have faith, spread your love and always always be the beautiful, glamourous and feisty woman that you are.

High estrogen levels impact brain: study

2010-10-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Studies like the one below make me frustrated about the status of transgender health in the Philippine. It does give me reason to want to keep advocating for medical practitioners to study the health care needs of those who want to affirm their gender through hormonal and surgical means.

Agence France-Presse

MONTREAL - High estrogen levels in women while they are ovulating may be directly responsible for sluggishness or problems concentrating, a Canadian study released Friday has found.

Researchers at Concordia University's Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology in Montreal linked high estrogen levels in laboratory rats to an inability to pay attention and learn.

These high levels have also been shown to interfere with women’s ability to pay attention, but the study, to be published in the journal Brain and Cognition, is the first to show "how this impediment can be due to a direct effect of the hormone on mature brain structures," said a statement.

Both humans and rodents have similar brain physiology.

"Although estrogen is known to play a significant role in learning and memory, there has been no clear consensus on its effect," said study lead author Wayne Brake.

"Our findings ... show conclusively that high estrogen levels inhibit the cognitive ability in female rodents."
Researchers repeatedly exposed rats to a tone, with no consequences.
Once they became used to it and ignored it, another stimulus was linked to the tone.

Rats with low levels of estrogen quickly learned that the tone was associated with the new stimulus whereas those with higher levels of estrogen took longer to form this memory.

"We only observed this effect in adult female rats," Brake said. "This and our other findings indicate that estrogen directly affects the brain, perhaps by interfering with brain signaling molecules."

The next step, he said, will be to determine how this occurs.

W cannot marry

2010-10-05T04:05:00.000-07:00

A decision on a case that I have been tensely monitoring from Manila has finally come out and sadly the outcome is most unfortunate. You will remember W, the transwoman from Hong Kong who in August filed a petition so she could marry her long-time boyfriend. Because Hong Kong law does not allow changing the sex in birth certificates, W's potential marriage to her partner would be considered same-sex marriage, which is also not allowed in Hong Kong. You can read more here.

The High Court where she lodged her petition has finally come out with a decision that disallows her from marrying. In the decision, the High Court essentially washes its hands off the responsibility to decide whether transpeople in Hong Kong can marry or not. The High Court leaves it up to the legislature to decide.

I can see shades of the infamous Silverio decision here. Mely Silverio is an accomplished transpinay who 3 years ago petitioned our Supreme Court (SC) for a change of name and sex in her birth certificate. An amended Clerical Error Law passed in 2002 which disallows changing any Filipino's sex in his or her birth certificate led to the SC to deny Mely's petition and left it to Philippine congress to decide on the matter of birth certificate sex-changes involving transsexual Filipinos.

The irony in the Hong Kong high court's decision is that W can actually marry a woman and socially it will be a same-sex marriage. And so presently, even if Hong Kong law does not allow such, it can actually happen if one spouse is transsexual. The High Court dismisses this particular reality and the bigger reality of the existence of transpeople. I think this is a good opportunity for the global transcommunity to give the Hong Kong High Court a highly deserved rude awakening.

For BBD (with thanks to Musehunter)

2010-09-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

i carry your heart with me
by e e cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Thank you UNO Magazine!

2010-09-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and pleasantly discovered that UNO Magazine Philippines, a men's magazine that has given the Pinoy version of FHM here a run for its money for its quality content and groundbreaking art and features, finally put up the article featuring me and our beloved STRAP. You can see the article here.

Thank you UNO Magazine Philippines for your courage to write about the transpinays! We will be forever grateful!

EDUC8, LIBER8, CELEBR8: The 8-Campus Rainbow Tour

2010-09-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce the start of EDUC8, LIBER8, CELEBR8: The 8-Campus Rainbow Tour, a free symposium on LGBT human rights (see poster above). It will have its first stop at the College of Saint Benilde (CSB) on 29 September 2010. Below is a write-up of this historical initiative.

TrueColors Publishing Inc., the makers of Ketchup Magazine, the only Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) magazine in the Philippines in keeping with its thrust to promote social awareness of LGBT issues, proudly presents Educ8, Liber8, Celebr8: The 8-Campus Rainbow Tour.

This Rainbow Tour brings together noted leaders of the LGBT community to conduct a free symposium targeting students in 8 colleges and universities in the Metro Manila area in an 8-month period from September 2010 to April 2011.

The symposium, which covers various issues including LGBT Politics, Spirituality and Sexuality, Gender Identity and Human Rights & Media Activism, is designed as a “crash course” on human rights and the Filipino LGBT community, their needs and concerns and the advocacy work they carry out in their pursuit of equality and dignity.

The symposium seeks to provide a venue where students can:
a) deepen their understanding of the human rights issues facing the LGBT community in the Philippines (EDUC8)
b) free themselves from damaging, stereotypical and incorrect notions about LGBT people & culture (LIBER8)
c) and affirm & respect the inherent dignity of all human beings including themselves (CELEBR8)

By hosting this symposium, colleges and universities bring themselves on par with leading higher education institutions in the world that advance human rights education. They also affirm their role as bastions of a truly international, liberal and liberative education by giving their students an opportunity to critically engage with pressing issues confronting civil society. As well, they take part in a change-making project to promote greater social equality and equity. The symposium also provides students, faculty and staff a venue to explore research ideas and interests.

The 8-Campus Rainbow Tour is organized by TrueColors Publishing in collaboration with 4 leading LGBT organizations. Speakers include Atty. Germaine Leonin of Ang Ladlad Partylist, Rev. Ceejay Agbayani of Metropolitan Community Church Quezon City (MCCQC), Vic Alba of Ketchup Magazine and Ms Naomi Fontanos of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP).

Two transgender women found murdered in Puerto Rico

2010-09-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

Below is an alert from Daryl Hannah, GLAAD's Media Field Strategist. For more information, visit GLAAD's blog here.

13 September 2010

Two Transgender Women Found Murdered in Puerto Rico

Two transgender women were found murdered in Puerto Rico on Monday, reports El Nuevo Dia. According to the media outlet, local police discovered the bodies of two individuals “dressed in women’s clothes” along Highway 512 in Juana Diaz with bullet wounds to the head.

Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian task Force urged the Puerto Rican authorities to investigate the deaths as hate crimes, according to Edge.

In a statement Serrano said:
“At the very least it is probable that these crimes could have been motivated by prejudice based on the victims’ sexual orientation or gender identity.” He added “the authorities have an obligation under the law to investigate this hate angle.”

Serrano said “We urge the police and the prosecutor to appropriately and quickly investigate this double murder and to classify them… as hate crimes if they discover enough evidence to determine it was motivated by prejudice.”

The murder of these two women is the latest in a rash of anti-LGBT murders happening on the island. Since 2002, more than 25 gay or transgender individuals have been murdered. Among these were: Ashley Santiago Oscasio, who was stabbed to death in her home in April, and Jorge Steve Lopez Mercado who was stabbed, decapitated, dismembered and partially burned late last year.

Two months ago, the New York City Council, which represents the largest Puerto Rican constituency in the Continental US, declared July 13th the “Day Against Homophobia” in direct response to the anti-gay and transgender murders in Puerto Rico.

GLAAD is working to elevate these stories to a national platform as well as monitor the coverage.

http://glaadblog.org/2010/09/13/two-transgender-women-found-murdered-in-puerto-rico/

Meet Kayo Sato

2010-09-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

Some parts of the interweb have been fired up recently with discussions about Kayo Sato (see pic above). Also known as Kayo Police, she is said to be a well-known celebrity, model and host of a video game show in Japan. According to various accounts, she recently admitted on national TV that she was in fact a "man" and that she said so again on her very popular blog.

The 22 year old supposedly came out after persistent rumors about her gender. Many predict that she will become even more popular now that she has come out. Although some web sites have chosen to use male pronouns to talk about her, most comments about her recent revelation have been encouraging and respectful. You can read more info here.

Well what can I say, she looks amazing! Sato San wa utsukushii desu yo! Ki o tsukete kudasai! Ganbatte kudasai ne!

Honduran transwoman gets justice

2010-09-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

Below is a media release from Human Rights Watch regarding the case of Nohelia, a Honduran transwoman who was stabbed repeatedly by a policeman, Amado Rodriguez Borjas, two years ago. Nohelia survived although she carries scars from the brutal stabbing. A lot of transwomen in Honduras have suffered from macho violence and many of them have ended up in the list of those honored during the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. I am glad that at least Nohelia has won her case. I am not sure though if she is sufficiently protected from any kind of retaliation from Borjas and his ilk. Let us hope for the best. To my Honduran sisters: Teneis que ser fuerte y ayudarse unas a otras! Vamos a continuar la lucha contra la transfobia!

Honduras: Police Officer Sentenced for Stabbing Transgender Sex Worker
Rare Conviction Despite Intimidation a Victory for Justice

(Tegucigalpa, September 10, 2010) – The conviction of an off-duty police officer for a stabbing attack on a transgender woman is a major victory for justice and equal rights in Honduras, Human Rights Watch and Red Lésbica Cattrachas, a Honduran lesbian rights organization, said today. The two organizations attended the trial as observers.

On September 9, 2010, a three-judge bench sentenced the police officer, Amado Rodriguez Borjas, to 10 to 13 years in prison for his role in the attack. Nohelia, the transgender woman, was abducted and stabbed 17 times on December 18, 2008. It is the first conviction of a police officer in Honduras since 2003 for a crime against a transgender person, even though police abuse is common.

“This was a crime fueled by hate, as the 17 stab wounds attest,” said Juliana Cano Nieto, researcher in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “It is a testament to the integrity and courage of all involved with the case that they advanced the cause of justice notwithstanding the threats and intimidation.”

The case was fraught with acts of intimidation, with police, a witness, and prosecutors as well as Nohelia threatened by anonymous attackers and callers. On March 21, unknown men kidnapped Nohelia and threatened to kill her if she continued with the case. She was shot in the arm in the ensuing struggle with the kidnappers but managed to escape.

A witness for the prosecution and police in charge of the investigation received anonymous threats. As a result, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights extended protection measures to Nohelia, the police officers, and prosecutors.

Attacks on transgender people – often targeted because their looks and demeanor challenge prevailing sex-role stereotypes – are commonplace in Honduras.Nearly every transgender person who Human Rights Watch interviewed during research in Honduras in 2008 and 2009 spoke of harassment, beatings, and-ill treatment at the hands of police. The most recent killing took place on August 30. Two men in a motorcycle shot and killed Imperia Gamaniel Parson, a trangender sex worker in San Pedro Sula and member of the Colectivo Unidad Rosa.

Bias-motivated attacks on transgender people by private individuals are endemic. At least 19 transgender persons have been killed in public places in Honduras since 2004; many more have been injured in beatings, stabbings, or shootings.

These attacks rarely lead to an investigation or prosecution in Honduras.

“The larger question is whether this trial will be followed by the prosecution of other individuals who commit hate crimes against the transgender, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people,” Cano Nieto said.

The fact that the court’s judgment did not address discrimination even though the prosecution presented evidence of homophobia and transphobia as motives for the attack was a weakness in the outcome of the Borjas case, Human Rights Watch said. Nor did the court accept prosecutors’ arguments that the sentence should be increased because of homophobic bias.

In addition, most court personnel treated Nohelia and a transgender witness with seeming disdain; only the prosecutor and one of the three judges referred to them by their chosen pronoun.

“The court should be applauded for finding that a serious crime had been committed, but we look to the day when the courts understand the full measure of hatred behind the crime,” said Indyra Mendoza, director of Red Lésbica Cattrachas. “We still have a long way to go to ensure that the justice system understands and properly addresses sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Background
On the night of December 17, 2008, Nohelia, a sex worker in Tegulcigalpa, refused to have sex with Borjas. The next evening, he returned by car with two other men. Based on evidence presented at the trial, Borjas stabbed her in the neck when she approached the car, not knowing who was inside. The men then dragged her into the car and drove to the outskirts of the capital, where Borjas stabbed her on her arms, back, and front of her body.

She managed to escape through the car window, and a passerby later picked her up and took her to a hospital. Nohelia has a permanent scar on her throat and several others on her arms.

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/lgbt

For more information, please contact:
In New York, Juliana Cano Nieto (English, Spanish): +1-212-216-1233; +1-646-407-0020 (mobile)
In Tegucigalpa, Indyra Mendoza (Spanish): + 504-9486-7865 (mobile)

Tragedia y triunfo

2010-08-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in Spanish class everybody talked about the twin events that touched the nation in the week that just passed--one a tragedy, another, a triumph. In Spanish, they translate literally into tragedia y triunfo.

The tragic moment that I am talking about here is the hostage-taking that happened on Monday when a policeman, Leonardo Mendoza, 55 years old, who claimed to have been wrongfully sacked from his job hitched a ride with a bus full of tourists from Hong Kong and declared that he was taking them hostage. Mendoza wanted to be reinstated as a police officer and had hoped that by taking people hostage, authorities would actually review his case and take him back into the force. He was fired after being accused of extortion.

I was busy the whole of Monday and only got to see the latter part of the hostage taking when I switched on the TV at around 8 pm. I did not even have a clue that, in fact, the whole drama started at 10 that morning. I have seen too many hostage-taking on TV in the past here and the fact that nobody was controlling the media at that point gave me a sense of foreboding.

Once I saw a man take a child hostage in a bus terminal. I do not exactly remember his reasons for seizing the child. But police responded and the media flocked around him. The whole ordeal unfolded on live TV. There was a crowd around the man who held the child in a grip with a knife to the child's throat. So many people were talking to him--bystanders, policemen, media people. It was horrible to watch. It felt like watching something terrible happen without doing anything about it.

The whole scene was so chaotic and was made even more so by the TV crews wielding their flashy cameras around. The hostage-taker moved around holding the child in a choke-hold with his arm. The child kept crying and the crowd kept screaming at the man. All of a sudden, the man started stabbing the child in front of everyone. Only then did the police start to shoot at the hostage taker and in the process shot the boy as well. It was the most heartbreaking thing to see. My insides turned as I watched the TV.

That queasy feeling was dredged up again Monday night when I saw the police closing in on the bus (see pic above). I love my country and am a very proud Filipino but at the back of my head I had an inkling that the Manila police sent an inexperienced team. For one, they had many chances to neutralize Mendoza. They could have controlled the media first and ordered them off the scene and they could have negotiated with him to release more hostages. What happened instead was a nightmare that was broadcast all over the world--the police doing a botched up job and 9 hostages ending up dead. It was too horrible for words.

Even when it ended, it left one with a very heavy feeling. I could not take any more of it and switched the TV off. It was one of those things that one would normally wish away but could not. The images were just too raw and too vividly etched in your head.So I found it very ironic that the next day, the nation woke up excitedly to watch a beauty pageant. Somehow though I was thankful for the respite it offered from the melodramatic spectacle of the night before.

I am so proud that Miss Philippines Maria Venus Raj (see pic above) clinched a spot in the final five of the Miss Universe 2010 and showed the world the beauty, elegance and grace of a Filipina. Venus was an early favorite and back home we knew that the Miss Universe 2010 was truly an epic battle between her and Miss Mexico. Interestingly, both nations are former Spanish colonies.

When I saw Miss Mexico the first time, I predicted that she would win it not unless our beauty wiped her out with a universe-conquering answer to her final question. Alas in the end, my prediction was proven right. Venus got a tricky one and answered it in the only way she knew how. Although there has been global or dare I say it, major, major ballyhoo over her answer, I think that at 22 and being Miss Universe 2010 4th runner up, she has made a great achievement.

I particularly relish the fact the she hails from the same area where I grew up in as a child, the Bicol Region. It was a proud moment for me to see her profile on live TV that announced to the world that her home town was the Bicol Region. I believe that she is the first Bicolana to have ever made it this far in the Miss Universe and she deserves all the success, fame and fortune that this achievement should bring.

It was also of particular note to me that she looked darker than Miss Jamaica, another runner-up. I just love the fact that Maria Venus Raj has the potential to change the standard look of Filipina beauty queens. I hope to meet her one day soon so I can hug her and congratulate her for truly representing us well. I wish modeling agencies abroad would pluck her up because she is actually supermodel material. She is as tall as Naomi Campbell and as exquisitely beautiful. If not modeling, then I hope that she can actually conquer Hollywood. It is time for a Filipina of her looks to wow the world. She should be the beauty queen version of Charice! Hey Oprah and Ellen, please have Venus in your shows so doors will open for her. This impoverished lass truly deserves more in life.

Mabuhay ka Venus! Malamong gayon (you are so beautiful) and I am so proud of you!

For BBD

2010-08-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

SONNET 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Bodies electric

2010-07-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!
--I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman

Last May, stories started circulating about Givenchy employing a transsexual model for its fall campaign. The said model was revealed to be Lea T (in the pic above) who is currently generating a lot of internet buzz for her appearance in the August 2010 edition of French Vogue.

Lea is Brazilian and is managed by WomenManagement. She used to work for Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci as his personal assistant and fitting model and is now being touted as Tisci's muse for embodying the androgyny that Givenchy is supposedly known for.

I do not know about you, but Lea T does not look androgynous to me. She looks all woman. This PR spin is just part of the media blitz for Givenchy. It along with her French Vogue profile (see above) which shows her naked has managed to catapult her to the world's attention. I love the bold approach--no pun intended--that Lea T is taking to steer her new-found career as a fashion model. I hope that her story will be used to show the world the beauty and diversity of transsexual bodies, human bodies. I am sure that it will inspire a lot of transphobia as well. Already, news stories are coming out that Lea T is getting ready for genital reconstruction surgery (GRS) as if to assure the public that her body in French Vogue is just temporary, an invalid body to be in.

This reminds me of the backlash that Thomas Beatie, the pregnant transman, (see pic above) received when he started using the media for his "bodily" outing as well.
But there are millions of transpeople like Thomas Beatie and Lea T and it is time for the world to get used to human bodies like theirs.

One of the reasons why I cheered Thomas Beatie was because of the powerful images he showed the world that have never been seen before. I especially find unforgettable the pic of him above. As sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) advocates, sensitizing society to the idea of sexual and gender diversity means sensitizing them to the idea of bodily integrity as well--the idea that our bodies belong to us and that only we have the right to make choices for and about our bodies including choices on who to have sexual relations with and reshaping our bodies in accordance with the gender we see ourselves as. I hope that Lea T's French Vogue story will be used to drive home the very idea behind this fundamental human right.

Merry

2010-07-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last night, Santy and I met up for dinner. I have not seen her for about three weeks and have genuinely missed her. Santy brought along a young trans girl, Erica who she has taken under her wing and is helping to stand on her own feet. Erica (on the left of the picture above) has had a hard life. She was living in Sorsogon, a province in the Bicol Region up until 2007 when she decided to move to Manila to find work. She has been staying with her older brother until recently. He has been abusive towards her, though, and has mistreated her, doing everything so Erica would up and leave. When Santy offered Erica a place to stay, she accepted and has been with Santy for some time now.

Erica's story seems to be a cliche. Many young transwomen here experience being chased out of their homes by unsympathetic family and relatives. It helps that there is a tradition of sisterhood in the transcommunity where more well-established girls help those who are in need. Santy has always had a naturally generous spirit. Having experienced a lot of hardship herself, she knows what it is like to have nothing to eat and not have a single cent to your name. I have seen Santy give of herself to the other girls in STRAP and the depth of her generosity astounds me sometimes. It does not surprise me that she has "adopted" Erica.

Anyway, yesterday we decided to walk around the mall first before heading to dinner. Santy saw a carousel and asked me if I wanted to take a ride. I have never ridden one in my life although I have always been fascinated by the merry-go-rounds I saw in the pages of the old Childcraft encyclopedia (see pic above) my family had when I was growing up. Needless to say, I felt like an over-eager kid!

We bought a ticket and immediately went back to the carousel. The entrance said we needed to buy another ticket to get us all in but the attendant operating the merry-go-round saw how excited I was that he let us in anyway. Above is a pic of Santy and me showing how happy I was to be riding a wooden horse.

I had fun spending time with Santy and Erica. Santy's best friend JayZ was there as well and he took all of our pics. I have been teasing JayZ about taking pics of me in my worst angles so I was surprised that he took really nice pics of us last night. I especially like the pic above which he took while the carousel was moving.

I do not think that that would be my last carousel ride. Santy and I have been talking about reconnecting with and unleashing our inner child lately and finding joy in the most mundane things. I think we are doing well so far. Here's looking forward to more fun and games soon!

The Widow of Wharton

2010-07-27T05:39:00.000-07:00

Nikki Araguz is the 35 year old widow of fallen Wharton, Texas firefighter, Captain Thomas Araguz III (see pic above). On July 3, Capt. Araguz died in the line of duty. Capt. Araguz was buried on July 11 and the next day, his mother Simona Longoria filed documents in court aimed at dissolving Nikki & Thomas's marriage claiming that Nikki was born male and therefore could not be Capt. Araguz' lawful spouse under Texas law.

Capt. Araguz' ex-wife, Heather Delgado, with whom he has two children, filed a similar suit two days later. Capt. Araguz's death benefits amount to more than $600,000 and by law should be shared by his wife, Nikki and his two children. Both Longoria and Delgado claim that their move to question Nikki's gender in court and have her marriage to Capt. Araguz' dissolved is for the benefit of the children.

In an early news report about the case, Nikki's parents are quoted as saying that Nikki has complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) an intersex condition of girls and women with normal female bodies but with no ovaries or uterus. Nikki's initial gender assignment at birth, as recorded in her birth certificate, was male and her original birth name was Justin Graham Purdue, which she had changed in the mid-90s.

Lawyers of Longoria & Delgado, in different news stories, refer incessantly to an infamous 1999 case involving a transwoman, Littleton v. Prange. Christie Littleton was a transsexual woman who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her dead husband's doctor, Mark Prange. Prange's attorney argued that Christie's marriage to Johnathan Mark Littleton was invalid because she was originally assigned male at birth. Chief Justice Phil Hardberger ruled that Christie's gender was not the gender she said she was but her birth assigned sex, thereby declaring her male and invalidating her marriage to her husband. As such, she could not file a wrongful death case which can only be lodged by a legal spouse. Because there was no precedent case in the US, Littleton v. Prange followed the wisdom of an English decision that came out in 1970, Corbett v. Corbett which held that a marriage involving a transsexual spouse was invalid.

Transgender Americans are closely watching how Mrs. Araguz' case will turn out as it has the potential to challenge Littleton v. Prange. Ever since Littleton, marriages involving a trans spouse have been upheld in Californa & New Jersey. There is also case law outside US borders. In 2000, a UK high court in W v. W, held that a marriage involving an intersex spouse was valid. In Australia, the 2001 decision Re Kevin recognized the marriage of a transman who had not undergone any form of genital surgery.

I am going to keep my fingers crossed for Mrs. Araguz & hope that things turn out well for her. According to her, she has lost not only her husband but her best friend as well. I hope that she will be given time to grieve her husband properly. I pray too that the Texas judicial system, in the end, will recognize her gender identity. In the mean time, I hope that those who will come to know this case will realize that a person's gender is a matter that only that person can resolve. For doctors, lawyers, commentators and judges to usurp that right is a crime against that very person's humanity.

Toward gender and age-responsive HIV and AIDS programmes in the Philippines

2010-07-18T05:04:00.001-07:00

Last Friday, 16 July 2010, I attended a whole-day, national consultation meeting upon the invitation of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in line with their project on Developing a Gender- and Age-Sensitive AIDS Response in the Philippines (see pic above). The project is jointly supported by UNDP, UNAIDS & UNICEF. The meeting, which was attended by representatives of NGOs, government agencies, and advocates from around the country aimed to 1) validate the preliminary country assessment report of the gender- and age-responsiveness of national AIDS policies and programmes, including indicators and 2) get feedback and recommendations from the national consultation participants on strengthening the gender- and age-responsiveness of the national AIDS response.

I was happy that finally this conversation has been started in HIV & AIDS circles. The preliminary assessment report for the meeting was prepared by the Health & Development Initiatives Institute in collaboration with EnGendeRights. The preliminary assessment was conducted using secondary data analysis of regional focus groups discussions (FGDs) in the National Capital Region (NCR), Cebu & Davao and interviews with key informants from different target groups including People Living with HIV (PLHIVs) and affected women, women in prostitution (WIPs), NGOs, Males who have Sex with other Males (MSMs), injecting drug users (IDUs) and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). The feedback from the national consultation meeting would be included in the assessment report that would be given to NEDA.

The results of the assessment, which were presented to the plenary were not surprising (see pic above). HDII & EnGendeRights found that the level of gender- and age-responsiveness of HIV and AIDS programmes in the country was low. Further, they also found that mainstreaming gender issues and including age-appropriate interventions into HIV & AIDS response programmes lagged behind bio-medical interventions.

After an open forum that spilled into lunch, the participants were asked to break into various workshop groups that would give recommendations on how to include gender- and age-responsiveness into the various HIV and AIDS interventions, services and policies that are in place. I decided to join the group for MSM & TGs (see above). As expected, I was the only transperson present in the meeting, the only transperson in the workshop group and the only female.

Our workshop group was tasked to make recommendations for gender- and age-mainstreaming in various areas of interventions including: information & education campaign (IEC) materials including behavior change communication (BCC); training which covers HIV 101, peer education, life skills building & others; voluntary counseling & testing; gender-based violence & child abuse and STI services.

At the onset our group decided to make general recommendations that could not be accommodated into the matrix we needed to follow. I made it very clear to the group that for gender-mainstreaming to be fully accomplished for the transcommunity the first thing that needed to be done was to separate MSM & TG populations in HIV & AIDS response programmes in all aspects. Although STRAP does not have a programme on HIV yet, we have been having informal discussions on what a desirable programme for us would look like. We are in agreement that it should be included under a comprehensive transgender health framework that addresses access to hormones, surgeries and general well-being that does not adhere to a pathological model and has a clear component on transphobia-reduction.

I am glad that I was able to have a conversation with representatives of some of the MSM groups who joined our workshop group. I told them that our needs as transpeople especially those who are afflicted with HIV & AIDS have been invisibilized by the domination of MSMs in the discourse on HIV & AIDS in the Philippines. I have heard from positive communities that they have been accepting more and more transwomen in their support groups which clearly indicate increase in infections among tranpinays. Any intervention geared towards them should first & foremost respect their gender identity. Unfortunately, because they are subsumed under the MSM label, they are treated as men by NGO workers, health care professionals & government agencies. And because there is, as yet, no established support group for infected transpinays most of them have joined MSM support groups.

We have a long way to go before developing an intervention programme for transpinays with HIV & AIDS. In the meantime, I am starting to feel frustrated about having to attend all these HIV & AIDS meetings where I keep repeating myself. At some point, we in STRAP need to start walking the walk and doing something concrete in line with HIV & AIDS advocacy. But because we are already over-burdened by our main advocacy concerns, including HIV in our work will be spreading thinly our already limited resources & manpower. I hope our members who are studying to be or are already in the medical field will step up & decide to take on HIV & AIDS advocacy. Their biomedical knowledge will be a good foundation for social justice work in this area. This is something that we need to do and quickly at that.

Those who love me can take the train

2010-07-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

As I write this, oh how the world has turned indeed! The Philippines has a new President. Rafael Nadal & Serena Williams are the latest Wimbledon champions. The World Cup has been won by Spain.

In the mean time, I have been living life as I know it: making heroic attempts to write a long-delayed Master's thesis, meeting friends & loved ones when I can, taking care of things for STRAP, studying Spanish in the weekends, running, working out & day dreaming of a future with Carl. The last one always gives me a warm & fuzzy feeling and leaves me endlessly inspired. Ahhh, the future!

Anyway, this will be a catch up post just to let everyone know that I'm doing well & to justify my blogging absence in the last two weeks or so. The title of this entry is actually taken from an unforgettable French movie that I saw in one of the film festivals here in Manila. Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train is about the death of a painter which results in those who love him having to take the train from Paris to provincial Limoges where he asks to be buried.

Because I have been waxing nostalgic lately, this movie has come back to me. I have been taking the train, the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) (see pic above), a lot to see people I love and now I have come to think of taking trains as a gesture of love. If I am on the train then that means I am on my way to see people who are dear to me. I'm sure Carl will say that I am being overly dramatic & ask if it's just the hormones. Perhaps! *sticks tongue out* One of these days I will take train rides for you baby love. *wink*

Anyway, as an interesting side note: here in the Philippines people are really hung up on gender. We divide lines into male & female & the trains are no exception. We actually have an all-women's train at the MRT. Of course I take that all the time. One day I was on my way to see Rica, our transpinay celebrity, and the train was a bit full (see pic above). I ended up standing in the middle aisle holding on to one of the support straps. The very sweet girl in front of me said, "Miss are you pregnant? Would you like to take my seat?" I almost laughed out loud! I didn't know if it was my dress or the food baby I had from breakfast. It was weird & flattering at the same time.

Here are some pics showing me with friends after taking train rides to see them. As one of our STRAP girls Rio always says, love, love, love:

Farewell get-together for Nadine (in red in the middle), a long-time STRAP member on the eve of her flight back to London where she is now based. In this pic are from left to right, me, Santy, Nadine, Phoejay & Greg, Toni, Joy, Pepsy & Gia.

Dinner with Sass & her boyfriend Aernout. In this pic are from left to right, Dee in her long pink dress, me, Santy, Jayc, Santy's best friend, Gia, Sass, Joy & Aernout who it seems always ends up closing his eyes when a camera flashes.

Dinner with Jayc, Santy, Sass & Adri during a rainy night.

Dinner after watching Toy Story 3. In this picture are from left to right, Sass, me, Rica, Rica's bf's sister, Jean, a new STRAP girl, Aly, Phoejay & Greg.

Dinner with Greta, another long-time STRAP member. In this picture are from left to right, Santy, Gia, Greta & me.

POSTSCRIPT

Santy & I have since met again & got to talking about being taken for pregnant in public. We decided that's it's both a compliment & criticism. On the one hand, it is flattering as it means people have no doubt about your womanhood but on the other hand, being mistaken for pregnant is an indirect comment about your weight. We agreed it's fine. Now we know what to say next time we make our way to the women's train & someone protests: "I'm pregnant!"

This Pride month, STRAP tries to do the impossible

2010-06-25T19:21:00.000-07:00

With just two weeks before June (Pride Month) ends, our beloved sorority, STRAP, decided to increase our fans on Facebook. The STRAP girls who have Facebook accounts (I don't) made profile pictures of themselves with the STRAP logo (see above) and encouraged all their friends to like STRAP's fan page. It was really sweet and I appreciate all the girls who took part in this mini-project. My lovely ladies, you rock!

I do not think that we'd be able to reach our target of having 1000 fans by June 30th. At any rate, it was truly a valiant effort. Still, we have four days to go. So just in case you love STRAP as we all do, please be our fan on Facebook. Also, tell all your friends? Thank you so much.

Just in case, you can see the STRAP Facebook Fan Page here. Happy Pride Month to all!

Civil Service Commission (CSC) memorandum on LGBT applicants

2010-06-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

It is very heartwarming to note that the 110-year old Civil Service Commission (CSC) of the Philippines made history in late May when it became the first government agency to acknowledge Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Filipinos particularly those who apply for the Civil Service Examination and explicitly ban any form of discrimination in the handling, verifying and processing of their applications based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The internal memo circulated through all 15 regional offices of the CSC and cascaded to the more than 1 million employees of the Commission can be viewed here.

Certainly this memo is ground-breaking and deserves all the praise it can get. It is not only a step in the right direction in the government's promotion of gender equality but as well as of human rights. In a nutshell, the memo affirms the Constitutional principle that all people deserve equal protection in law including in the access of public services. LGBT applicants of the Civil Service exam must then be treated, like any other applicants, with utmost respect and dignity.

The common stereotype of government employees is that they are rude and disrespectful, lazy and corruptible and in my many dealings with various government offices, I have met so many government workers who filled this bill perfectly. At the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), for example, when I was applying for the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET), I witnessed a PRC employee put a sign saying CLOSED at her glass window from the inside of an air-conditioned office at the middle of the afternoon and made so many poor applicants wait in long, crowded and cramped lines so she could eat her afternoon snack in full view of everyone for the next half hour. Most waiting areas in government offices do not have air conditioning and it was not lost on us that while she ate her snack lazily, she was also wasting paid government time comfortably. She looked like one of those more mature PRC employees and I figured that the only reason why she had the gall to take such liberties was because she was probably protected by tenure.

Many LGBT people I'm sure have their own share of horror stories in dealing with government agencies--from unwanted remarks to humiliating treatment. It is good to know that the CSC, in its pursuit of professionalizing our public personnel, is taking steps to ensure the dignified treatment of LGBT applicants of the Civil Service exam. I hope that the CSC will not only stop at this memo but also take concrete steps in educating its rank and file so they could truly deepen their understanding of LGBT issues.

I take only one issue regarding this memo and that is its reliance on physical appearance as an indicator of sexual orientation and gender identity. This may lead to embarrassing situations where a CSC handler might think that an applicant is LGBT based on stereotyped notions but turn out otherwise. I also do not know how they will keep a running tally of LGBT Civil Service exam applicants unless they will ask people outright about their sexual orientation and gender identity. In that case, that would be violating applicants' right to privacy.

I also do not see any problems about applicants not matching the picture in their application forms. Most government applications require you to submit a recent picture. I think the memo was trying to refer to the mismatch of the applicants' appearance to the indicated sex or name in the application form--a clear reference to transgender people. Because we still have to indicate our legal names and sex in government applications, many transpinoys and transpinays do encounter some unwelcome remarks in cases where they have to present legal documents. In my case, for example, when I pass by Immigration at the airport, I have encountered male customs officials who would say "I thought you were really a girl!" or "You fooled me for a moment!" This has changed through the years thankfully and now I never hear anyone make such comments anymore.

But my point is, transgender Filipinos are still at a disadvantage when it comes to legal documents. Although this CSC memo does not allow us to identify as the gender we present in our application nor use the name we prefer, at least it protects us from potential rude treatment. I am not sure though if the process outlined in the memo makes thing easier or harder for transgender applicants of the Civil Service exam. It is something that we have yet to see.

Still I am glad that efforts like this are being undertaken by government offices, which highlights the need for the TLBG community here to do more in terms of engaging with government agencies because while there are well-meaning, upright civil servants in government who will try to do their best in delivering quality service to the majority of Filipinos who come through their offices, there are also a number of government officials who have relied on conservative and fundamentalist beliefs about gender and sexuality at the expense of the GLBT community. Thus, BTLG activists will be best served if they remain vigilant and really proactively engage more government institutions in the future.

Congenid closes

2010-06-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

The second day of the International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights or Congenid was even more tumultuous. The dissatisfaction of the international participants came to a head at dinner during the first day and a town hall was called. The biggest complaint that people had was that they felt left out and excluded in the organization and decision-making of and for the Barcelona conference.

The Congenid was organized by Spanish activists who wanted to create a document that could be used as reference by governments in protecting the human rights of their transgender citizens. Prior to Congenid, an International Executive Committee (IEC) was created composed of transactivists from different continents to help identify the people who would be invited to the conference. All the activists were then asked to choose among four work groups that separately would flesh out human rights protections for transpeople in the area of Violence and Criminalization (Group 1), Access to Health (Group 2), Equality and Discrimination (Group 3) and Legal Change of Sex (Group 4). A special group that everyone could be part of was tasked to work on creating a global trans network (Group 5).

At the town hall, people took issue with the four groups. Who decided that these would be the working groups? Who decided who should be leading the working groups? They also questioned the constitution of the IEC. Why were people not consulted on the creation of the IEC some asked. After sharing sentiments, it was decided that the program for the second day should be scrapped. Instead, since the aim of the conference was to create a document outlining trans rights, it was agreed that the second day should be devoted for the work groups to spend the day together polishing their documents. In the afternoon, a plenary would be called where the output of each group would be presented.

The plenary sadly was unable to achieve what it was meant for. More people raised objections to the handling of the conference as a whole. Sex workers from South America expressed their dismay that the Conference did not respect their issue and give it due space in the work groups. In fact, many of them took offense at the term sex work for they said it masked the real dangers that they faced daily. Many of them have experienced violence and persecution because of prostitution. They said, if what they were doing were really work, then how come they were not enjoying the same benefits as someone who worked in an office? They said that sex work was a misleading euphemism that did not do anybody any good and a concept that was being imposed on them. What they did was prostitution and it should be called as such.

Others felt that the Spanish organizers were trying to rush a document that should take more time and more consultation. In the end, the plenary was divided into two: those who wanted to produce a Barcelona declaration (mainly those from Spain and Latin America) and those who wanted to stall a declaration and instead treat the Congenid documents as working papers that could be discussed further in the future (the rest of the international participants from Asia, North America, Eastern Europe and Africa).

I am home now and reflecting on what happened in Spain. In hindsight, a world congress would have been successful if prior regional meetings were held first. For example, the Asia and Pacific activists could have met before Spain and discussed the Asia and Pacific transagenda. The same thing should have happened in South America, North America, Eastern Europe, and Africa with help from the organizers in Spain. That way, a relationship was established with the local organizers in Barcelona. A year-long preparation time should have been devoted to these regional meetings before a world congress was called. As well, the pre-conference that happened in Barcelona should have been spent towards the work of the four work groups instead of devoting those three important days to workshops that sometimes had nothing to do with the topics of the work groups.

In the end, a Barcelona declaration could have still been possible if it was kept local. Opening the idea to international participants was a mistake. But the Barcelona meeting was not completely useless. Giving transactivists from around the world a chance to meet is always fruitful in a way because it opens doors to create connections and friendships. Whenever I am with other transactivists from different countries, I feel extremely humbled and feel less alone in my activism. Their stories inspire me to do so much more back home in the Philippines. I am sure it is the same for them. Meeting your contemporaries is always a refreshing and renewing experience. It is really up to you how you will nurture the linkages made. I do look forward to working with all of these lovely activists from different continents. It is truly my honor to have met all of them.

Conference controversy

2010-06-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

Today, 4 June 2010, the main conference of the International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights officially opened at the Faculty of Law, University of Barcelona. Immediately after the opening plenary, sentiments that have been festering among the international participants started to bubble up to the surface. People lamented the fact that they were working with limited information. The opening plenary coincided with a session that was not announced. Nobody knew where the rooms were for the parallel sessions. I myself was given wrong directions for a workshop I wanted to attend. By the time I found the right room, I was so tired and had gone up and down several flights of stairs.

Many began commenting about the lack of organization and coordination between the local organizers here in Barcelona and the organizers of the pre-conference. As well, the members of the International Executive Committee (IEC) expressly constituted for this historic gathering were feeling powerless over the program that everyone just got on the first day. Most of the sessions turned out to be very Northern Eurocentric in spite of the presence of many participants from Latin America, Asia, North America, Africa, and even Eastern Europe. There was also a seeming tension among the Spanish activists and many of us international participants are getting quite unfairly caught in the middle of their squabble.

No matter, we are here to move our global community of transactivists forward. We did not come here to fight with anyone but instead came here to link forces with our counterparts from other parts of the world. We are here to ensure that transgender human rights are being articulated in our different contexts in a concerted way.

I am very to have met so many people here. It humbles me to know of the kind of struggle that other participants have in their home countries. The girls from Africa have told me of their difficulties (see pic above).

The girl from Kenya who is very beautiful wants to be a model but she has found it difficult to look for work in her own country being trans (see pic above).

A participant from India, Laxmi is a hijra and many of them are the poorest of the poor in Indian society.

I also took a picture with a girl from El Salvador (in the middle in the pic above) where many transwomen suffer continued violence, marginalization and discrimination.

So it is clear what we all came here to do. We wanted to come up with a document outlining the human rights claims of the global transgender community that will be used to influence equality, diversity and anti-discrimination policy at the international, national and local levels. It is understandable that we may not all agree on how to go about it but I hope we will be able to put our differences aside and work in unison for this very important task. I hope that happens tomorrow.

Pre-conference close

2010-06-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today was the last day of the pre-conference workshops. In the morning, I attended a workshop on working with governments (see pic above). The discussion was handled by Jack Byrne from New Zealand. We, the attendees, made up a small group of people interested in deepening links with government agencies back at our home countries. One of the larger-than-life participants was Roger (in black with a flower in her hair). Roger or Rog as she is fondly called is a proud fa-fa-fine.

During the morning break, I made sure to take a pic with Jolerina, from Namibia (see pic above). Jolerina was one of the people I went to the book launch with the night before and we just really hit it off well. She told me that Filipino soap operas are very popular in certain parts of Africa and she knew some soap operas that I did not even watch back home. It was pretty surreal and heart-warming at the same time. That Africans can appreciate our TV creations is something to be truly proud of.

After lunch, while on my way to the closing plenary room, one of the translators approached me to tell me that she liked my dress. It was a really sweet moment. I asked her if she knew transpeople in Barcelona and she said that it was her first time to meet some and that she was very impressed by all of them. For the workshops, we have 5 rooms. Each room is assigned two translators who take turns in the 2-hour workshop. We do appreciate how patient they were with all of us and how much they helped us each day. I just had to take a picture with them (see above).

During the break, Liza from Colombia who I have been having mini-conversations with since the pre-conference started and I finally got a chance to have our picture taken together--something that we have always mentioned that we wanted to do but never got around to doing so until today (see picture above).

In the afternoon we had the closing plenary (see above). People were very optimistic, energetic and livened up. Everyone was happy that the pre-conference went smoothly with no incident. Everyone was helpful, respectful and did their part to follow the house rules and keep the schedule on time.

At dinner, I had a chance to take a picture with (from L to R) Carla LaGata of TGEU, Lizethe from Spain (who we all call Señora Lizethe), a new girl from Kenya who had just arrived and a sistergirl from Australia who also just came in today. Now that the pre-conference is over, I am actually looking forward to two days of the main conference which will start tomorrow in downtown Barcelona. Stay tuned for that!

The disordered gender

2010-06-02T22:50:00.001-07:00

Today's opening plenary was on funding the trans movement. The morning's panel included representatives from different funding agencies including MamaCash, Global Fund, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Open Society Institute and the American Jewish World Service (see pic above). Having potential funding agencies here while the conference is ongoing, for me, is great because it gives activists a chance to touch base with them and explore whether they can work together or not. I had one-to-one meetings with some of the funders who are very excited to hear from STRAP. They told me that STRAP is exactly the organization that they are looking to fund and all we need to do is submit a proposal. I am excited about this prospect especially since some of us in STRAP have been feeling the need to go full-time with our activism.

I attended three workshops today. One of them was on strategic litigation moderated by Tamara Adrian, a lawyer and transactivist from Venezuela. Tamara and I were room mates in Copenhagen during the Outgames there. I found her presentation today very useful. She basically outlined what one would need if one resorted to going to the courts in the absence of law protecting people from discrimination based on gender identity and expression.

The next workshop I attended was in the afternoon on intersex issues. I have always wanted to hear from intersex rights activists and today I got a chance to do just that. I am glad that one of the key movers of this conference is an intersex person who was speaking on the intersex panel as transactivists and their intersex counterparts do not always meet eye-to-eye on certain things. In the Philippines for example, the intersex man who was granted a name and sex change in his birth certificate by our Supreme Court came out to the media saying transwomen, who seek the same judicial relief, are artificially constructed. According to him, it was not surprising for the Supreme Court to side with him as he had a natural, biological condition. This argument makes me very uneasy as some transpeople feel that they themselves have an intersex condition but of a neurological kind. Intersex rights advocates always retort that such is not the case and that transsexualism is NOT an intersex condition.

I also dropped by the workshop ran by Carla LaGata of TGEU. Carla is the head researcher of a project that STRAP is involved in, the TransRespect vs. TransPhobia Project. Because I had to meet funding agencies in the afternoon also, I was not able to hear much of Carla's presentation. Carla and I are in touch, however, for this project and I do look forward to seeing its completion.

During the break, I had a chance to chat with Ana from Hawaii and Hana from New Zealand (see pic above). They are two very bubbly and energetic women whose charm and energy just draw you in. Ana on the left, blew everyone away when she gave a chant during the first day of introductions. Her chant roused people from their stupor and made everyone break in appreciative applause. Hana and I have spoken about bringing together an Asia and Pacific contingent to the Asia Pacific Outgames in Wellington, New Zealand in 2011.

Late afternoon, I went downtown with some people from the hotel (see pic above).

Two days ago, the Spain-based activists announced the launch of a book entitled El Genero Desordenado (The Disorodered Gender). The book is a collection of articles expounding on trans identities and depathologization. It is edited by Miguel Misse and Gerard Coll-Planas, both sociologists from Barcelona (see pic above).

It was a fun book launch attended by friends, family, allies and supporters. I sat at the front row beside Bradley Fayki from France who is also the director of the documentary Transworld (see pic above).

I also took pics with the people I went to the launch with. Above I am with Juana from Madrid and Bellisa from Peru.

Me with Bradley and Monica from Argentina.

The book launch panel. The two left-most guys are the editors: Gerard Coll-Planas and Miguel Misse.

It was a great evening and I was happy I dressed up for it (see pic above). I loved every second of it. There was just love outpouring in that room. I hope that they will be able to translate the book into English so it can become accessible to more people. Viva las activistas de España!

TransAction=TransRights

2010-06-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

Today is day one of the pre-conference. The whole week is divided into two. From 1 June to 3 June, all the international participants of the International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights will stay put at our hotel where three days of workshops will happen covering different topics related to activism: organizational growth, socio-economic, cultural and political change, HIV/AIDS, working with governments, working in fundamentalist contexts, networking and alliance building, funding, violence, pathologization and many others.

The pre-conference is called Trans*Action=Trans*Rights and aims to clarify the issues that that global trans community faces before the main conference on June 4-5 where everyone will be working on a document declaring transgender human rights to the world. Today was quite long. We started at 9 am with a plenary session that opened with a round of introductions. I introduced myself, told the whole session room about STRAP and how I was very proud to be among the future of the global transgender movement (see pic above).

There were about a hundred people in the plenary room this morning from almost all the continents. It is truly a very diverse group of people (see above).

The day was also a chance to meet old and new friends alike. Today for the first time I met Kelley Winters who has been a passionate advocate for reforming the gender identity disorder (GID) diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association for transsexual people. Kelley's writings I have only read online. It was truly an honor to have met her finally. This morning I took a picture with her (right) and Carla Lagata (left) of Transgender Europe (TGEU) (see pic above).

Of course I also saw some transactivists from Asia who I met before. In the picture above, I am with Hua from Thailand who I met in Indonesia in 2008 for the 60th anniversary commemoration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

I also met for the first time Miss Major from the United States who is also the Executive Director of Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), an NGO primarily working on trans and intersex rights in the penal and correctional system. In the picture above we are joined by Jane Thomas from Germany (left) and Carla Lagata (right).

I took a picture with participants from South Asia and South America (see pic above).

Me with Skipper from Botswana and Miguel from Spain.

The first workshop I attended was on documenting and reporting human rights violations. It was moderated by Jessica Stern of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). I joined this workshop because STRAP is involved in a 3-year project documenting rights abuses against lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LBT) women in 5 Asian countries. After the workshop we took a class picture (see above).

In the afternoon I attended a workshop on internet-based activism. I am currently involved in a project in the Philippines linking information and communications technology (ICTs) with violence against women (VAW) so the workshop was perfect for me. There will be more workshops in the next two days and I will tell you all about them. For now, I do feel that I had a very long day and it's time to turn in. Good night for now and till the next post.

In Barcelona

2010-05-31T20:02:00.000-07:00

I am here in Barcelona, Spain to represent STRAP and attend a historic week-long gathering of transactivists from around the world, the International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights. At the moment, it is still unclear to me what is the desired end-result of this conference. When it was being planned, I was told that it would be like a Yogyakarta Principles (YyP) meeting but with more focus on gender identity and gender expression issues. This is a great initiative as the YyP proves to be too general sometimes. But whatever comes out of this Barcelona meeting cannot be too specific either. For me, it will be very helpful to have a single document outlining the specific human rights claims of transpeople but it has to be flexible enough so it can be applicable to diverse localities. We are here to make that happen.

I flew to Barcelona with one of STRAP's founding members, Sass Sasot (see pic above). We were both surprised that our Cathay Pacific flight from Manila to Hong Kong was first-class but enjoyed it immensely as we were the only one in the cabin section. We thought it was a good sign. The flight was delayed, however, and when we got to Hong Kong our flight to Europe had already gone. We were supposed to take Air France that would take us from Hong Kong to Paris then Paris to Barcelona. In the end, Cathay Pacific put us on two flights, one of their own from Hong Kong to Frankfurt, then a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona. We flew 11 hours or so from Asia to Europe. Then from Germany to Spain, we flew another 2 hours.

When we arrived at our hotel, immediately we registered and settled down. On our way out to lunch at the hallway we met an activist from South Africa, Liesl Theron of Gender DynamiX. She was going to town and we decided to join her (see above). We took our first bus ride in Barcelona together.

We got to Plaza España, the city center, and took pictures. The above pic was taken at the steps of the Fira de Barcelona building.

Me posing in front of the giant fountain at Plaza España.

All three of us were feeling famished and ordered a humongous plate for three of arroz negro(see pic above). We downed it with sangria de cava, a drink made of sparkling wine and orange juice.

After lunch, we walked around the Avenguda Parallel (see pic above). After half an hour or so, I was already feeling tired. We waited for our bus, went back to the hotel, bought some water and cookies at the supermarket nearby and I went to bed. I missed dinner and now I am awake in the room at an awkward hour. I hope my body clock stabilizes today as we will be doing a lot in the next 5 days.

In the meantime, cheers to Barcelona and the upcoming conference! I am very happy to be in the company of my trans brothers and sisters from around the world. May we be able to achieve what we all came here to do.

Sybil Awards night

2010-05-25T02:23:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that STRAP's first ever Sybil Awards was very successful and well-attended. The girls were there as well as representatives of our ally organizations including Rainbow Rights Project, Inc., Metropolitan Community Church Quezon City (MCCQC), Ang Ladlad Partylist, OneBacardi, UP Diliman Gender Office, UP Psychology Department, Ketchup Magazine and many others. Members of the media were also present and representatives of our major sponsors were also there. Celebrities from the Pinoy Big Brother Double Up cast graced the event too. We gave out two Sybils this year: one for the movie The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela and another for the TV show Pinoy Big Brother Double Up. Both showcase transpinays with moving and inspiring stories. Here are some pictures from that evening that I will never forget.

Me (above) in the royal blue gown I had made especially for that event.

Sass, one of STRAP's co-founders hosted the evening's program.

The first set of presenters: Santy, Rio & Jill.

Raquela Rios receiving the first Sybil Award of the evening.

The second set of presenters: Maffie, Seanel & Phoejay.

Me with Pinoy Big Brother Double Up Housemates & Creative Manager

The STRAP General Assembly 2010.

Jailed and gay-ed

2010-05-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

On May 18, a Malawi court convicted couple, Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20 of gross indecency and unnatural acts (see pic above). The court found that the two engaged in homosexual sex which is against the law in Malawi. The couple are now in jail and most media accounts refer to them as the Malawi gay couple and their trial the Malawian gay trial. It turns out, according to Gender DynamiX, a South African gender human rights advocacy group, that Tiwonge Chimbalanga identifies as female. This is a clear example of the hegemonic power of the "gay" discourse or the discourse on sexual orientation. It tends to displace and invisibilize the discourse on gender identity. Below is the media statement released by Gender DynamiX in relation to the case of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga.

Media Statement Gender DynamiX 20 May 2010

Malawian couple sentenced to 14 years hard labour – Transgender activists speak out.

Today activists the world over protested the conviction of two gay men in Malawi. Even though activists from many different political persuasions joined hands in a protest in Cape Town today, local transgender activists are highlighting the fact that Tiwonge Chimbalanga clearly expresses a female identity.

According to Ian Swartz from OSISA (Open Society Institute of Southern Africa) Tiwonge Chimbalanga sees herself as a woman. “Tiwonge so clearly identifies as a woman and she has expressed her identity as such more often than not. I think if she knew the word Transgender she would come home to a world of understanding of herself” he said recently after visiting the couple in prison.

A local activist who calls her “Aunty Tiwo” visited her too and to him she said: “I am just a woman who loves my man. I’d rather remain in prison than to be released into a world where I am kept away from Steven”

“Advocating for Transgender people’s rights in most African countries is problematic for us” says Robert Hamblin advocacy manager for SA Transgender organisation Gender DynamiX. “Gender variant identities are not acknowledged and just about any sexual minority is called gay or homosexual. This is because a person is assigned a gender based on their genitals, despite how they self identify.”

Gender DynamiX stood together with other activists today in a protest called by Social Justice Coalition (SJC). SJC was joined by LGBTI organisations protesting the conviction of these two people. The group of activists urged the SA government to negotiate the release of the couple and to offer them asylum in South Africa. The group also demanded that the SA government end the continued silence about human rights abuses against sexual minorities on the rest of the continent.

Gender DynamiX condemns the conviction of Steven Mongeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga. We call on the South African government, as the only state in Africa to recognise equality for sexual minorities, to uphold the South African constitution by offering asylum to the couple.

“Even though the identities of Tiwonge and Steven are misunderstood by the world we stand together with gay and lesbian activists in their work to try and get justice for our trans sister and her partner.” Says Tebogo Nkoana outreach officer at Gender DynamiX.

Robert Hamblin: roberth@genderdynamix.org.za

+27 21 633 5287 ext 2037www.genderdynamix.org.za

http://www.youtube.com/user/GenderDynamiX

The Sybil Awards logo

2010-05-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

May 20 marks the official foundation date of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP). On our 8th year, we proudly present the

The Sybil Awards honor those who have promoted transgender visibility, equality, acceptance and dignity. The Sybil logo has three elements: a silhouette of a woman in a dance pose with raised arms, an oversized S that covers parts of her body and the name of the award and the year that it is being given.

The woman with outstretched hands represents the gallae, a cult of priestesses who dedicated their life to the worship of the goddess Sybil in ancient Greece and Rome. The gallae were assigned male at birth but transformed themselves by means of castration. During the festival honoring Sybil, the gallae danced wildly in veneration of the Great Mother. They are recognized as precursors of modern transgender identity.

The oversized S, aside from standing for the S in Sybil, represents the female garb that gallae wore. Its shape embodies flexibility and fluidity and encapsulates the idea of gender variability. The Sybil Awards is a celebration of the right to self-determination--the right to define one’s gender identity and expression--and is a way to honor those who respect this right fully.

The color of the poster is bronze to symbolize STRAP’s 8th year anniversary. This color will change depending on the color of the gemstone associated with that year. The Sybil logo was designed by our very own Ms Phoejay Amparo.

CELEBRATE STRAP's 8 YEARS OF STRUGGLE, STANDING UP & SUCCESS! Mabuhay ang STRAP! Mabuhay ang transpinay!

Anti-trans violence in Turkey

2010-05-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

Turkey is notorious for the presence of polar opposites: men who admire transwomen and those who have very low regard for them. Because of the latter, many transwomen have been found dead in different parts of Turkey. At the same time, Turkey has a very famous transcelebrity, Bulent Ersoy. I met a Turkish gay activist visiting Manila once and he said that Bulent Ersoy has done nothing for the TLBG movement in his country. I hope he is wrong. Below is another proof of the culture of contradiction that exists in that country. I am posting it in solidarity with the transactivists there who suffer real violence but are standing up against it. I hope there can be real change for them soon.

Trans Individuals in Turkey- Ankara were severely beaten by the police force in Ankara tonight at around 23.00 p.m.. Five Transexual women who are all Pink Life activists were stopped in their car and asked to show their identity cars by the police. They all showed their IDs but the police wanted to get them out and they resisted since this was one of the extreme implementations of the fascist Ankara police against trans individuals.

We as human righst activists came along the car they were stopped and asked the police about what they were doing and they did not provide us with any lawful reason about their violence. After a while, the police force started to beat the human rights defenders (namely us who were out of the car - including me and the trans individuals) and they severely beated us!!

We resisted and some of our friends were severely injured. The trans individuals within the car- including two founders of Pink Life were forcibly taken out of the car and were kicked from their stomach and legs, arms and they were severely bloody !!! The silicons of the trans persons were forced and they are severely injured.

The 5 trans people were taken to the police station forcibly- and the police continued to beat them and us - and they are now under custody without any reason!! We human rights activists are waiting in one of the houses of the beaten trans individuals. Tomorrow we will have a press release, most probably..

I will give the required information soon ! Pls try to spread this information since we as trans activists need your solidarity and overt support!!!

Best,

Kemal Ordek
Pink Life LGBTT Solidarity Association
Ankara - Turkey

POSTSCRIPT
Pink Life staged a protest action in line with this incidence of violence. You can see the pictures here.

STRAP's Sybil Awards 2010

2010-05-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, the STRAP family will come together once again for the final big event celebrating our 8th year anniversary. To honor all our allies, we have decided to give out an award called the Sybil as a way of giving thanks to those who have helped promote transgender equality and acceptance (see poster above).

We will have a General Assembly(GA) first to give a chance to all our members who are here in Manila to catch up on STRAP's activities and plans. After the GA, we will have an awarding ceremony for the recipients of the first ever Sybil Awards. I cannot tell you how excited I am about the Sybil. It is going to be our legacy as the current officers of STRAP.

I am so proud that soon our hard work will come into fruition. We conceptualized the Sybil Awards right around the New Year and have been working slowly to see it come true. On Saturday, our dream will finally turn into reality and I am just overjoyed. I just wish that I could spend the night of the 22nd with all my friends, family and loved ones. It feels like graduating on top my class all over again if not like Christmas morning.

I cannot wait for Saturday. I know in my heart that it will be one of the most memorable days of my life.

Thankful

2010-05-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, Mother's Day, my Mama was over in Manila to check on a cousin of mine who's under her ward. The kid is currently preparing for a professional examination and my mother came over from our hometown to bring documents that he needs to take the regulatory test. She went to him and was out of the house the entire day. Before the day ended, she gave me a call asking me what I wanted to have for dinner. For someone who has struggled to have a stable relationship with my mother, I thought that that moment with her was deeply poignant.

I have rarely spoken about my family here because I want to keep that part of me private. I want people to know though that I have always had a good family life. I am very lucky to have been born to kind parents and understanding siblings. Early on of course, as I was struggling with myself, my family struggled along with me. My mother in particular had a difficult time accepting me for who I was.

I do not know what exactly gave her a change of heart but I guess at some point she just gave up on telling me to change and be the son she wanted me to be. When that moment happened, our relationship dramatically changed for the better. Gone were the melodramatic fights. All the painful and hurtful words also went away. Now, we are okay. We're not friends as my mom is not that kind of person but I know that we are okay.

I want to take this moment to thank my mother. She is an indelible part of who I am. This is not a big way of honoring her but I know it is enough for now. I would like to thank her for her love and acceptance. Most of all, I want to thank her for devoting her life to her family. She has truly made great sacrifices for the good of my father, me and my siblings. Without her constant guidance and care, my siblings and I will not be where we are right now. My two older siblings are both working abroad and they too have a great relationship with my mother. Every time they come home, they always have a special gift for her. I hope I can repay her for all the kindness she has done to me as well in the future.

I love you Mama. I am so proud that I am able to say that to you now. Truly, a mother's love is the greatest gift of all.

Exciting times

2010-05-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

At 10:30 am today, I exited the Barangay Village Park in UP Village which houses three clustered precincts of the Fourth District of Quezon City after casting my vote for the 2010 National Elections here. Yesterday was the STRAP workshop on transgender human rights advocacy and after the workshop, the girls talked excitedly about the elections happening today. The last thing we spoke about was waking up early to go to our respective polling places and making history by electing Ang Ladlad Partylist to Congress. Ang Ladlad is the only TLBG political party of its kind in the world and everyone is hopeful that it will get at least one seat in the partylist system. If that happens, one of our very own members in STRAP Bemz Benedito will be the first trans congressperson in the Philippines. These are exciting times indeed!

I wanted to show pictures of the long queue in my polling precinct as I brought my camera to vote today. Just in case an emergency arose, I wanted to be armed with something to document it. The voting process was uneventful all in all save for the long lines that everyone should have expected. After being in line for 2 and half hours, I finally entered the station where the voting machine was. It took me under 15 minutes (the maximum time allowed per person to vote) to finally feed my ballot to the machine. I left the precinct right after and walked home. When I got home I took a picture of my right pointer finger still covered in indelible ink to show that I voted for evidence. Unfortunately, my laptop conked out on me. This new laptop I am using cannot seem to read my digital camera or its memory card. I have to figure that out in the coming days so I can show some pictures here.

In the meantime, I just want to let the whole world know that today history is being made in my country and I am honored to be part of it.

STRAP's first Sagala

2010-05-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

Finally, the GLBT FlorEZ de Mayo came & went. I was very happy last Sunday, 2 May 2010 because the STRAP girls came out in full force to join our first ever Flores de Mayo santacruzan or sagala (parade) as a group (see pic above). From left to right we had Nadine Barcelona, Maffie Santillan, Seanel Caparas, Rio Moreno, yours truly, Barbie Arcache, Rica Paras, Sass Rogando Sasot, Yasmin Lee, Phoejay Amparo, Santy Layno and Aiyah Cabais. In the middle seated in a yellow gown is one of the newest additions to the STRAP family, Kaye Madrigal.

I emceed the program after the parade last Sunday and I was more than happy to join the festivities by donning a royal blue Filipiniana gown (see pic above). People said I was looking positively Imeldific, an effect that I was not going for. When I look at some of my pictures from that night's affair, however, I do have angles that match those of the notorious former First Lady and I cringe a little at the thought. No matter, it was truly a special night made more extraordinary by the presence of the STRAP girls.

After the parade, there was an awarding ceremony for the Queen, Princess and Duchess of the santacruzan. No doubt all awards were bagged by STRAP members (see pic above). Kaye Madrigal in the yellow gown was judged Queen while Rio Moreno in blue was crowned Princess. Our STRAP Internal Affairs Head Santy Layno in red was declared Duchess of the santacruzan. I could not have been more proud as STRAP Chair.

Of course there were other STRAP ladies there who made sure that their STRAP sisters were taken care of properly. A special thanks is due them as without them the STRAP FlorEZ participants would have fainted in the heat or drowned in their own sweat. The night was sweltering but STRAP Treasurer Joy Cruz (right most in the pic above) and our Secretary Char Williams along with member Jill Madrona (left most in red and pink respectively in the pic above) fanned the girls and brought them food to eat and water to drink. Joy, Char & Jill were such troopers that night and they managed the STRAP girls really well by making sure they were always poised and looking good all the time.

Rica Paras, in the black and white gown above, was also there. She was the Reina Elena (Queen Helena) and gave a solidarity speech as a celebrity of the TLBG community here.

I am glad that the first GLBT FlorEZ de Mayo was a great success thanks in large part to the participation of STRAP. I hope that next year STRAP can organize its own sagala. The girls have been receptive to the idea when I broached it in our dinner after the parade. Now that is truly something to look forward to in our anniversary celebrations next year! Mabuhay ang transpinay!

GLBT FlorEZ de Mayo

2010-04-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

Two days from now on 2 May 2010, STRAP women bedecked in beautiful gowns and Filipiniana couture will brave the summer heat and parade in a much awaited santacruzan in the streets of Bgy. Bagong Pag-asa in Quezon City (see poster above). Entitled FlorEZ de Mayo, this Pride event is co-organized by the Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines (PROGAY), Metropolitan Community Church Quezon City (MCCQC), and Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines. The santacruzan is a parade that usually closes the month-long festival of flowers in different parts of the Philippines each May. Catholics in different towns all over the Philippines celebrate the many flowers that bloom in May and in anticipation of the June rains gather together the most good-looking men and women of their town in a procession that depicts the finding of the Holy Cross by Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine.

The santacruzan was a dying tradition until the Department of Tourism (DOT) sometime back decided to revive it with a splash. The DOT asked the country’s top designers to lend their most beautiful Filipiniana gowns to be worn by selected transwomen who paraded in the old walled city, the historic Intramuros. Since then, the gimmick caught on with other towns throughout the country imitating the DOT which put the Catholic Church in a pickle.

On the one hand, an almost extinct custom was being revived which was also almost always a fundraiser that directly benefited the Church. On the other hand, it was being organized by TLBG people with transpinays taking center stage in the hallowed tradition. Of course at the end of the day, bigotry reigned supreme and in 2008 the Church bishops took a stand by outlawing santacruzan activities involving transsexual women. Because May is also the month when most town fiestas are celebrated, the Church also forbade local governments from holding beauty pageants involving transgender people. The worst hit of all in this witch hunt was Cebu, which has the great misfortune of having a hateful bishop who announced that he would withhold his blessings to parishes caught staging a beauty pageant involving transwomen. Nobody dared disobey him, of course, to the great dismay of the community of Cebuana transpinays.

Many transpinays are born to Catholic families so it is not surprising to find transpinays who are Marian devotees. The Flores de Mayo is actually a tradition meant to honor the Blessed Virgin. Many who participate in this tradition are actually coming from a place of devotion. Of course others join the Flores de Mayo procession for the experience, prestige, and the proverbial 15-minutes of fame as transpinay-attended santacruzans attract media attention.

This Sunday, STRAP, for the first time, will participate as a group in a santacruzan that is much-awaited by the TLBG community. This is our way of starting our anniversary celebrations with a bang. I would like to believe that we are also doing this above-all for the visibility. I may not be a Marian devotee but I certainly would like to experience this Filipino tradition and I am not letting anyone stop me.

When I went to Cebu two years ago, I had the honor of meeting a long-time activist there, a famous lesbian lawyer who, in my opinion, gave the best analysis of why the Catholic Church was so opposed to the participation of TLBG people in the Flores de Mayo. She said that it was mainly because the Church was afraid of our numbers. Transwomen-led santacruzans bring out the TLBG community in full-force and from Luzon to Visayas to Mindanao we are everywhere and there are so many of us. And the Church hates that families come out to watch beautiful transpinays parading in the streets as if it were the most normal thing on earth. Children and old ladies alike have been seen cheering us on!

Well as they say in Filipino “Hindi nyo na kami mabubura.” You can no longer invisibilize us. Join us on 2 May 2010 at 7 pm and see beautiful transpinays bloom in the summer night as they strut in the streets in this first-ever TLBG santacruzan. See you there!

This May, STRAP turns 8!

2010-04-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

This May 2010, the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP) celebrates 8 years of struggle, standing up and successes as the first and, as yet only human rights advocacy and support organization for transpinays (transgender/transsexual Filipinas). In line with our 8th year anniversary celebrations, it is our pleasure to present the following events:

GLBT FLOREZ DE MAYO
2 May 2010 (Sun), 7 pm
Bgy.Bagong Pag-asa Covered Court, Quezon City

The Flores de Mayo is a Filipino cultural tradition that celebrates the blooming flowers of May. The festival culminates with a procession that depicts the finding of the Holy Cross by Queen Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. On 2 May 2010, selected STRAP ladies will serve as sagalas and parade in Bgy. Pag-asa in Quezon City in the first Gay Lesbian Bisexual & Transgender (GLBT) FlorEZ de Mayo. This event is brought to you by EZ Lubricating Jelly in cooperation with the Metropolitan Community Church Quezon City (MCCQC), Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines (PROGAY) and Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines.

TRANS+ACTION Standing Up For Your Rights
9 May 2010 (Sun), 1 pm
Isis International, UP Village, Quezon City

No STRAP anniversary will be complete without revisiting the ideas that undergird transactivism. On 9 May 2010 STRAP members will come together for an exclusive closed-door workshop on transgender human rights advocacy in the Philippines entitled Trans+Action Standing Up For Your Rights followed by a strategic planning workshop that will set STRAP’s agenda and action plan in the coming year.

SYBIL AWARDS
22 May 2010 (Sat), 7 pm
Something Fishy, Eastwood, Libis, Quezon City

On 22 May 2010, STRAP proudly presents the first Sybil Awards, right around the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHO), as a way to honor individuals, organizations, establishments and other entities that, in their own way, combat intolerance based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), uphold gender equality and promote the empowerment of sex and gender diverse people.

The Sybil Awards is named after one incarnation of the Great Mother, a goddess whose worship dates back to the Stone Age. Known by different names, she was called Sybil in various cultures. The Great Mother Sybil was venerated by transgender priestesses in pre-communal, matrilineal societies. STRAP makes history by being the first SOGI activist organization in the Philippines to pay tribute to those who have helped further its cause.

Join us as we usher in STRAP’s anniversary month in the spirit of energetic activism and empowerment. Celebrate STRAP’s 8 years of struggle, standing up and successes!

Yours sincerely,

Naomi Fontanos
Chair
STRAP
E: diabolllique@yahoo.com
W: www.tsphilippines.com
B: pinaytg.blogpsot.com

The company we keep

2010-04-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, 25 April 2010, STRAP held its monthly Support Group Meeting (SGM). I was very pleased because a lot of girls showed up. We were 15 all in all (see pic above). Since December, we have been averaging between 12-16 members every meeting. I hope we can continue this momentum till the end of my term as STRAP chair in October.

For the April SGM we decided to have a session on basic self-defense. This came from one STRAP member’s suggestion after she had an unpleasant experience with street thugs. We invited Fire Sia, founder of the first online community of bisexual Filipinas, WomenBiNet, to give us a talk on ensuring personal security at home, in the streets and at work and a demo on basic self-defense moves. Fire began with an orientation on ensuring personal safety in different situations. She gave the girls tips on how to make one’s home more secure and what one could bring to call for help in case one was attacked in the streets. Fire said that maze and pepper sprays were unwieldy because you had to reach for them and sometimes you could actually accidentally spray it on yourself. She suggested for the girls to be more practical by bringing whistles or pens placed near their reach. If someone attacked them a whistle attached to an ID lanyard or a pen in the back pocket would be easier to work with than a spray.

After the talk, we moved to the garage so Fire could teach us some self-defense moves. She would demonstrate with a partner first then asked the girls in pairs to imitate her. Fire taught us how to react when our arm was grabbed or when we are grabbed from behind or when a knife is put to our side by an attacker. Fire would go around to check if every one got what she taught. It was great seeing the girls go at it. One of our new and very active members, Maffie immensely enjoyed herself while aping what Fire taught (see pic above).

We plan to hold more self-defense sessions like these in the future. It feels good to know that we are helping our own members empower themselves this way. We say no to victimhood and yes to transpinay power!

Anti-trans violence

2010-04-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

Below is a letter that a STRAP member wrote to our e-group detailing her violent brush with street vagrants while she was out with her boyfriend. The incident did not result in a physical scuffle and yet it was as callous psychologically. The vitriol to which our STRAP girl was subjected was uncalled for and extremely humiliating. I am glad that she spoke up but share her sentiments on how to handle the same situation.

I post it below as I try to think about the many laws that protect women in my country from violence. While such laws recognize that violence can be of the physical, sexual and psychological kind and uphold ideas of gender equality and equity, I wonder if they will actually give refuge to transwomen. Perhaps it can be argued but I fear that the debate might lead to what kind of genitalia one has or what sex one was assigned when one was born.

In the mean time, transwomen are dying at faster and faster rates. Just recently I heard news of a transwoman strangled to death in her own home in New York. In Mexico, transwomen are being targeted for decapitation. The inhumanity of it all is just insufferable. I hope that those who are advocating for women’s rights will truly fight for the liberation of all the victims of the cruelty and brutality of the patriarchy.

Dear Angels,

I would like to share what happened to me just a few minutes ago. I hope you girls would be able to know what to do next if this situation ever occurred to you.

I was walking with my boyfriend Luke to the nearest 7/11 to buy some ice cream (around 1:30 am, Monday, 5 April 2010). It was a very peaceful night that there would be no possibility of a fight or something bad happening. Little did we know that someone from the streets would call me out. A guy screamed the "LB" (ladyboy) word.

There were two of them: the first one was aggressive but the other one said some awful words. Luke came up to the guy and asked if he was talking about him. Then the guy pointed at me and said that I'm the person he was talking about. I was surprised that he would be honest about it because the people that we go back to and ask what they said would just deny everything and say that they didn't say anything. Luke pointed at me and told him that I'm his wife. The guy said "You know that your wife is a boy" and he just kept insisting that I was a boy and no matter what I say I will still have a "lawit" (Filipino slang phrase for penis).

Then I went ballistic and lashed out on the guy. I was so angry and said some degrading things to put him in his place. It was a critical situation for us because the guy was kind of going after us and looking for something on the ground, maybe something to throw or some broken glass he could stab us with. After that we just left and decided to still go to the 7/11. We decided to cool down at this waiting shed and decided to talk about what happened. Luke told me that the guy was a drug dealer. After that I paused and told him I suddenly got scared. I even suggested to tip him off to the cops roaming around but Luke decided that he would just go back and talk to them just for the sake of our safety whenever our paths crossed. He made me wait at the apartment lobby and it was the 10 most terrifying minutes of my life. I was so paranoid.

After 10 minutes, Luke came back to me and he told me that those guys wouldn't do anything to us. Luke told the two guys that he knew how difficult life in the streets was; but Luke also told them that we deserved respect, the same respect that Luke had for them. One of the guys told Luke that he was not like most of the guys in the streets who carried guns and knives and that he was known around the area. The guy said that the last thing he wanted was to call attention to himself. He wanted to remain low key while working in the streets. As a peace offering, Luke brought them beer. He assured that everything would fine and that I shouldn't worry about it anymore.

I do love my boyfriend very much. I have a lot of respect for him and admire how he showed me that he didn’t want anything bad said about or done to me. Sometimes it’s just wise to just walk away like there’s paparazzi following you or if you cant help it just talk to those transphobic people calmly and just tell them nicely that its not really nice what they are doing.But I think it’s better to just walk away from the situation and just deal with the fact that some people can be just mean and disrespectful. Maybe we should carry a pepper spray just in case. Or maybe we can have a Support Group Meeting (SGM) dedicated to self defense. :-)

Lesson learned. I do suggest that we should start documenting these things. Maybe it would be useful in the future.

With much love,
Luke and Rebecca
(names changed upon request)

Kawomenan

2010-04-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

In the latter part of March, International Women’s Month, I had the privilege of being invited to two events organized by women’s rights advocates or those who make up the community of Filipino women activists that collectively call themselves kawomenan (literally, the women or the womanhood or the womankind). On 25 March 2010, Thursday, I along with around 40 others participated in a roundtable discussion (RTD) on sex and culture and how issues surrounding the same impact on the lives of young Filipino women today. The RTD was organized by the Women’s Legal and Human Rights Bureau (WLB) in collaboration with Women’s Education Development and Productivity Research Organization (WeDpro) Philippines with funding support from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem). After the RTD, a class picture was taken but since some of the participants left early not everyone was included (see pic above).

The RTD was meant to bring women’s rights advocates together to identify advocacy areas where they could work hand-in-hand in promoting sexual rights and sexual justice in the contexts of young women in the Philippines of today. Several key issues were discussed in the whole-day workshop including women and their relationship with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), raunch culture, narratives of “hotness” in the 21st century and how they can be more empowering for women and issues of sex, power and agency. I was very happy to spend that day with one of the long-time activists of the TLBG community here, Atty. Angie Umbac who I very much admire and look up to (see pic above). Angie is the president of the Rainbow Rights (R-Rights) Project, Inc. and is one of the TLBG community leaders here who has truly served the local community for years—doing so quietly, loyally and by turning in solid and hard work without making grand claims about or shamelessly promoting herself. The kind of work that they have done in R-Rights under her leadership has touched many people’s lives and is truly worth emulating. I am so proud to call her my personal friend.

Over-all the RTD was a very fruitful exchange and I hope to attend more of them in the future. Already, I have agreed with one of the pillars of the feminist movement here in the Philippines, Aida Santos who moderated the RTD (see pic above) for WeDpro of which she is a Managing Trustee and STRAP to work together in the area of trafficking. WeDpro is currently conducting research among women sex workers in a certain area in the Philippines many of whom are transwomen.

On 26 March 2010, Friday, I along with STRAP Treasurer Joy Cruz (middle, in the pic above) and one of our new and very active members in STRAP, Yasmin Lee (rightmost in the pic above) attended the launch of the book The Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act of 2004, written by a long-time ally of STRAP in the women’s movement, Atty. Bing Guanzon. The book is about a Philippine law of the same name, Republic Act (RA) 9262 and discusses RA 9262’s salient features, its constitutionality, problems in its enforcement and recommendations on how to strengthen its implementation and what interest groups including the judiciary, most importantly, can do to affirm and uphold the spirit and intent of the law.

The highlight of the evening’s event was the presence of the former Senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani who was instrumental in getting the new rape law passed which includes male rape. The STRAP girls did not waste the chance to get a pic with the former Senator taken along with Atty. Guanzon Iin pink in the pic above) especially since we were seated at the same table as the former Senator.

Atty. Guanzon gave different groups present at the launch a complimentary copy of her book. STRAP got a signed copy of course (see pic above). I was touched by the dedication that the good lawyer wrote in the front cover of the book. It says: Dear STRAP, To all women of the world, more power to us all. I truly love Atty. Guanzon and I look forward to years of friendship and advocacy work with her. Long live the women’s movement in the Philippines! Mabuhay ang kawomen! Mabuhay ang Pinay!

STRAPpy days

2010-03-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, 18 March 2010, STRAP members headed to the University of the Philippines Diliman Gender Office (UPDGO) to hold A Day with Rica Paras with selected undergraduate students of Psychology (see poster above). The event was envisioned as a celebration of International Women’s Day by putting a spotlight on STRAP’s current Vice-Chair, Rica who is also the first transpinay on the groundbreaking reality TV show, Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) Double Up.

Before Rica took the floor, STRAP treasurer Joy Cruz gave the audience a brief Transgender 101 talk just to get everybody on the same page (see pic above).

After about half an hour or so, the rest of the time was given to Rica to talk about herself, her struggle to be a successful person, what led her to PBB Double Up and her new life as a transcelebrity (see pic above).

The audience was very receptive to Rica and after her talk the floor was opened for the students to ask questions. Their queries ranged from personal questions for Rica to questions clarifying STRAP’s work and advocacy. After the open forum, the students asked to have their pictures taken with Rica. The STRAP girls present had to have their picture taken of course (see pic above).

After Rica’s talk, STRAP’s next activity was its monthly Support Group Meeting (SGM) which was held this Sunday, 21 March 2010. There were many girls present, which made me really happy (see pic above). The main agenda of this month’s SGM was the art and science of make-up.

For the session, we asked one of our members who have long years of experience working in the beauty industry, Seanel Caparas (right in the pic above), to take the lead and give the girls a demonstration. Seanel is well-known in the local transgender beauty pageant circuit. It was such a great session but as usual we lacked time to discuss things in-depth. Seanel left the group with this morsel of wisdom in doing make-up: “Light conceal, dark reveal.” Literally it means, if you want something covered up, you use light make up on it. If you want to emphasize something on your face like your eyes, then you use dark colors.

All the girls agreed to devote another SGM on hair and make-up because the time we had this time was just too limited. Seanel thankfully agreed to be the resource persons again for that planned meeting. I am so happy that we have people like Seanel who generously share their time, energy and talent with the rest of the girls in STRAP. Most people will think little of transwomen who work in the beauty industry and will actually dismiss them. They do not understand that what these transwomen have is actually a gift, an eye, a talent that not everyone possesses. Being a member of a human rights group like STRAP only adds another layer to the already established fact that they are smart, beautiful and empowered women. I salute these sisters of mine and am proud just to be associated with them.

Philippine government must apologize and start giving back to the Filipino transsexual community

2010-03-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today, I came across news related to a story that came out in early January about Filipino transsexual women entering Japan with fake passports bearing the identity of non-trans women from the Philippines to marry Japanese men with whom they have had long-term relationships. You can read the news item here or below:

Philippine transsexuals nabbed for illegally entering Japan

Three Philippine nationals have been arrested in western Japan for entering the country on forged women's passports after undergoing sex change operations, local media reported on Tuesday.

The three had the illegal passports made by forgers in the Philippines using women's identification so that they could live in Japan as the "wives" of Japanese men they had met, Kyodo News said.

While working at nightclubs in Fukuoka, they secured spouse visas from local authorities, said Kyodo and other news reports, quoting local immigration authorities.

They were quoted as telling investigators they wanted to live as women and lead their lives with their loved ones, Kyodo said.

"They looked female. We could not tell they are men," an immigration official said, according to the Nishinihon Shimbun.

News like this makes me feel helpless, tired and angry at the same time. I feel helpless, because even if I want to be of help to these women there is really nothing I can do about it with those involved very far away. I feel tired because of the repeated assault by the media on the dignity of these women by continuously referring to them as men or women in quotes. I feel angry because it is a public secret in this country that Filipino transsexual women formed a major part of the Filipino diaspora that began in the late 70s. With no job prospects here and the economy in bad shape, millions of Filipinos started going abroad risking life and limb in many a foreign land to earn their keep and have a dignified life.

Transpinays were part of the early migration of Filipinos to other lands to seek greener pastures. Japan opened its doors to many of them, granting them visas as entertainers so that waves of these transwomen could work as singers and dancers in bars, pubs and night clubs in Japan. The last batches of these transwomen who entered Japan stopped around the turn of the millennium when the US and UN started pressuring Japan regarding trafficking activities within its borders. The response of the Japanese government was to close down all the bars which left many transpinays with no work and no prospects.

Even when the transpinay migration to Japan started in the early 80s, the Philippines government did nothing to ensure that their working conditions were safe and that they were being treated properly as productive employees of Japanese establishments. No reference even has ever been made to them when the Philippine government started a myth-making campaign hailing the Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) as a new hero of the country whose foreign remittances keeps this country afloat.

Yet if you speak with these faceless transwomen, they have toiled with their hands, and suffered hard and back breaking work just so they could send those precious yens to help their families in the Philippines survive for years and years. But instead of showing gratitude to these thousands of women, the Philippine government has chosen to continue oppressing and marginalizing them by allowing a cruel Supreme Court (SC) decision in 2007 to stand which denied a transpinay's petition to change her name and sex in her birth certificate--in effect not granting transwomen status as people recognized in their gender in the eyes of the law.

This news item is clear evidence of what a discriminated minority will do when their chance at a dignified life is at stake: they will do something illegal. In Filipino, we have a phrase for situations like this: kapit sa patalim. Literally it means, clutching a knife's blade. With nothing else to hang on to and nowhere to go, generations of transpinays have clutched the sharp blade of a knife by going to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe and many other countries and continents to survive. They do no one any harm. All they want is an equal chance at life and yet it seems the world will not stop until these transsexual Filipinas themselves give up clutching the knife and instead use it on themselves. Dignity only at the price of death.

I say enough! And I am demanding this country, this government to apologize to my community and start giving back to us! NOW!!!

A Day With Rica Paras

2010-03-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

In celebration of International Women's Day, STRAP is holding a Day With Rica Paras, the first transpinay on the hit reality TV show, Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) at the University of the Philippines Diliman Gender Office (UPDGO) this coming Thursday. See poster below. Hope to see you there!

The right to self-determination

2010-03-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, 13 March 2010 was the STRAP forum on the right to self-determination. Our main speaker was STRAP founding member Sass Rogando Sasot (see pic above). The forum was co-sponsored by Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines and the Metropolitan Community Church Quezon City (MCCQC).

The forum was very well-attended (see pic above) and I was glad that it was as the STRAP officers did their best to publicize and organize it. After Sass's speech talking about gender identity as a human right, we opened the floor to questions. One particular question that struck me was from a human rights defender who asked if there really could be a separate category that could be called "transgender human rights" to which both Sass and I at the same time replied with a loud, resounding "YES!" The language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was so general that TLBG activists needed to clarify what this set of human rights standards had to say regarding issues on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). This is the primary reason why the Yogyakarta Principles came into being. This is also the reason why the concept of SOGI rights is being articulated by TLBG activists now to affirm the idea that different people experience discrimination, marginalization and persecution on different grounds. Some are oppressed because of their sexual orientation while some are treated badly and with disrespect because of their gender identity or expression. Of course there will be overlaps.

But the Yogyakarta Principles themselves are a set of general rights that do not explicitly outline what exact entitlements people deserve as transgender human beings. For example, there is no provision in the Principles that states outright that people have the freedom to determine their own gender. The idea is only referred to as a premise to the Right to Recognition before the Law. This is why transadvocates from around the world plan to come together to articulate clearly a set of rights in response to the human rights violations committed against transpeople. Of course some of these rights will be similar with existing human rights standards but they will be nuanced by the experience of transpeople. For example, the Right to Found a Family should be clarified by the idea that in many parts of the world transpeople are required to be sterilized which tramples their right to be parents and rear children.

After the Open Forum, we took several pictures. One picture above shows Sass with the three representatives of the organizations sponsoring the forum. From left are Ryan Silverio of TFP Philippines, me from STRAP, Sass and Rev Ceejay Agbayani of MCCQC.

And of course the night would not have been complete without the required picture of just the STRAP ladies present at the forum (see pic above). I was very happy because we had a new girl who came that night, Yasmin (right of me, in white). It was the first time that Yasmin attended a STRAP event and the first time for her to meet us. I was so happy that she came. I am always overjoyed when there are new girls around because they give me a sense of renewed energy. Yasmin told me that she wants to be more active in STRAP and I am looking forward to what she can contribute to this organization that we all love.

Celebration

2010-03-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

STRAP is celebrating International Women’s Month, this month, in a big way. We will hold a forum on transgender human rights on 13 March 2010, Saturday in cooperation with Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines, the official organizing network of the annual Pride March here in Manila and the Metropolitan Community Church Quezon City (MCCQC), a ministry for TLBG people (see poster above).

STRAP has a very good working relationship with both TFP and MCCQC. Several STRAP members have volunteered their time and talent to help in organizing the yearly TBLG Pride Parade in one way or another the last five years while the members of MCCQC have always been supportive of STRAP events and vice versa. In November last year, MCCQC also held a Transgender Day Of Remembrance (TDOR) commemoration and joined STRAP when we held the candle-lit remembering of the dead at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman. I appreciate initiatives like this coming from predominantly lesbian and gay organizations because it shows that they care for the issues and concerns of transpeople. Many of us transpeople in the TLBG community here have grown up only knowing and learning about lesbian and gay rights. I know not all people working in, with and for the TLBG community here comprehend what being transgender means so when they try to understand it by asking us, agreeing to hold a forum with us or coming to talks with speakers from STRAP, I am very grateful for the effort they make.

Last December, when MCCQC held Night Masses to herald the Christmas season, STRAP happily agreed to sponsor one of them (see pic above with the MCCQC core group). We brought food and the STRAP officers acted as Bible readers for the mass. I was also asked to give a Christmas message that also served as the homily. For the homily, I decided to read the ministry the children’s book, 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert and Rex Ray (see pic below). Christmas always reminds me of my childhood and my message was about the need for TLBG advocates to link fingers with the child in them as they do their advocacy work. By getting in touch with the child in us, I was encouraging all to approach activist work with wide-eyed wonder, innocence, hope, idealism, creativity and above-all child-like kindness. This is to counter the fatigue and the hardness that years of advocacy work can bring. I think our community also needs to work, always with a sense of renewal. Otherwise, burn-out can set it and you turn in sloppy activist work, a mistake that no one ever wants to commit, I’m sure.

Another great news worth celebrating from STRAP is an article that came out in the 7 March 2010 edition of the Sunday Inquirer magazine, the magazine supplement of the country’s leading newspaper. I think it was their women’s month issue and featured women from different fields. The issue had an article devoted to two STRAP members, Brenda Alegre, our resident clinical psychologist and Bemz Benedito who is the first nominee of Ang Ladlad partylist. You can read the article here. I am so happy for these two women of STRAP. I hope more STRAP members will give us a reason to celebrate who we are as we make our way through this month especially devoted to US. MABUHAY ANG TRANSPINAY!

Beginnings

2010-03-05T18:00:00.000-08:00

Last 20 February 2010, Sunday, STRAP held its Support Group Meeting (SGM) for the month of love, as our Internal Affairs Head, Santy Layno put it. We met at the conference room of Isis International once again and after the personal sharing we had a discussion on transgender human rights. That day we had two new girls who were attending their first SGM. I hope they will be able to sustain their own momentum and that I will see more of them in the coming months. We were also joined by students from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, a state university here. The students, Shara, Divine and Cindy (left most in the pic below) are working on their undergraduate thesis in Sociology and they decided to study the issue of transgender discrimination. STRAP members are their main respondents for the study. I am looking forward to seeing their final research paper as it will be the first institutional document that will talk about the discriminatory experiences of transgender women in the Philippines.

The week after, the STRAP officers minus Gia Nolasco, our Membership Coordinator, who is currently in Singapore, trooped to the University Hotel at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman for the national consultation meeting of Ang Ladlad, the national organization of TLBG Filipinos. One of the highlights of the day is the election of Ang Ladlad’s nominees for Congress, if ever the Supreme Court (SC) finally allows it to run in the partylist system after being denied by the Commission on Election (Comelec) on grounds of immorality. I am very happy that the first nominee is also from STRAP, Bemz Benedito, rightmost in the picture below. If Ang Ladlad gets a seat in Congress it will open a new chapter in TLBG rights advocacy in the Philippines and we are all excited over that. Rica Paras, the first transpinay on the hit reality TV show, Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) Double Up, who is also STRAP’s current Vice Chair, was able to take time off her busy schedule and joined us that day (middle in the picture below). Rica has been out of the PBB Double Up house for two months now and is making her first forays into show business. I hope this new chapter in her life will only be fulfilling, to say the least.

After the consultation meeting, the STRAP girls had to rush off to a meeting with our former chair, Dee Mendoza who told us that she was featured in the I, Woman section of Metro Magazine, the Philippine’s premier lifestyle magazine. I was overjoyed when I saw the article. It is entitled Transpinay and is in the magazine’s March issue, just in time for International Women’s Month. The article is accompanied by an iconic shot of Dee which everybody absolutely loves (see pic below). I hope this inclusion signals a recognition in the feminist community here that the issues of transwomen are women’s issues too.

Yesterday, 5 March 2010, Friday, I was invited to guest in a radio show called Radio Iskool (Radio School) at DZUP, the radio station of the UP Diliman College of Mass Communications (CMC). The hosts of the show, faculty members of CMC, were posing as students and each guest would be their “teacher for the day.” I was Teacher Naomi in the show and I talked about the TLBG community, the issues they face and the efforts that various TLBG organizations in the Philippines have done to fight for their rights and better their lives. I am disappointed when members of our community go on record and focus on sob stories involving us, talking only about our marginalization and zeroing in on our various oppressions. It depresses me when ever that happens because the TLBG community and its members come off as helpless victims who do not use their own agency to make things better for themselves. It is not only misrepresentation of the highest order but it also invisibilizes the efforts that people are making to empower themselves. I say enough of this victimhood nonsense!

STRAP is starting to get busy again after a two-month hiatus focusing on internal housekeeping. We are working on getting SEC registered so we can finally open a bank account in the organization’s name. Slowly slowly we are making things happen. I am excited about the prospects that being a duly recognized organization will bring. I feel like we are on the verge of a new beginning—one that is full of promise and light. We will have a series of activities in the coming days and I will tell you about those here. Stay tuned!

The year of the pathological T (Part 1)

2010-02-16T01:26:00.000-08:00

As Valentine’s Day came and went, I was glad to have received a very loving message from Carl. I am not sure if this new year became any more auspicious, at least for the Chinese, with Valentine’s Day coinciding with the arrival of the Year of the Tiger (see pic above). Chinese astrologers I heard on TV, however, said that this will not be a good year for relationships. The same feng shui experts gave people a reassurance that what they say is merely a prediction based on horoscope analysis, numerology and whatnot. One’s destiny will still clearly be in one’s hands. So those who are romantically involved this year will be able to avoid break-ups and end-of-affair scenarios by simply working hard on their relationships.

Talking about relationships, there is one that I think is in need of a full divorce: transsexualism and its pathological version in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) also known as Gender Identity Disorder (GID). GID was first introduced in the DSM III in 1980, a good seven years after homosexuality was removed from the APA manual. Ever since, transgender advocacy groups have been fighting to get GID taken off the DSM and transsexualism out of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) of the World Health Organization (WHO). While there are rumors that the WHO will reclassify transsexualism (from a mental to a medical condition) when it publishes ICD 11 in 2014, the APA came out with proposed revisions (PR) to GID, on 10 February 2010, making it clear that the fight to depathologize transsexual identity is far from over.

Rereading the PR, I just realized, being a student and teacher of language, that the new version of GID, which will be called Gender Incongruence (GI) in the DSM 5 slated to come out in 2013, is actually an exercise in linguistic trickery. The PR is below:

Gender Incongruence (in Adolescents or Adults)
A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months duration, as manifested by 2 or more of the following indicators:
1. a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or, in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
2. a strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or, in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
3. a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
4. a strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
5. a strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
6. a strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

Subtypes
With a disorder of sex development
Without a disorder of sex development

According to the Workgroup tasked to revise the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders section of the DSM, on the strength of A alone, a GI diagnosis can be made. On first blush, the PR seems actually like an homage to the last 30 years of transgender rights advocacy because it recognizes the stigma attached to the word disorder which many trans people have been fighting against and so therefore eliminates. It also recognizes the problems that a birth-assigned sex can pose to people especially those who will reject and abandon it, partially or completely, later in life. Lastly, the PR recognizes that gender can no longer be viewed as a binary system. Instead it is a spectrum and a person can actually identify as male, female, in-between or otherwise—a reality that trans advocates have been calling people’s attention to all these years.

But at the same time that the PR accommodates the logics of transgender advocacy, it also suggests the possibility of a clinical syndrome, in this case GI, being attributed to people who fight their gender demons by wearing the clothing of the gender not assigned to them (i.e., crossdressers) or people who reject the binary system (i.e., genderqueers) or those who altogether identify as a gender not assigned to them (i.e., transsexuals). GI here becomes, in fact, the pathological version of transgender.

I hope I am mistaken in my analysis. If not then at least there is some hope, for the PR also gives potentially GI people a way out by using a phrase that we, transgender rights activists, have all been rallying against: the tyranny of our assigned gender. The Workgroup assumes that gender, in the first place, must be assigned. And this is usually the province of medicine and the law. Doctors declare that a baby is either a boy or a girl and the law notes by recording the declaration in the baby’s medical records and birth certificate. This is why the struggle for transgender/transsexual rights have revolved mostly around amending the original gender assignment (and therefore name) in legal documents because our identities are anything but that. This is also why many of us have been calling for the eradication of gender markers in our identity papers knowing full well the oppression that those markers can bring to those who outwardly do not match them.

This latter rallying cry reflects what Phyllis Frye, long-time trans activist, said about the birth-assigned sex being merely predictive. Your assigned gender may or may not be your destiny. With gender issues intersecting with racial, economic, cultural, social, and political issues, the issue of gender assignment at birth is something that has become peripheral in the struggle for transgender human rights. With the imminent publication of the DSM 5, it is probably something that needs to be revisited and be placed front and center in our advocacy work, something along the lines of: STOP GENDER ASSIGNMENT AT BIRTH NOW!!!

In my last talk at the University of Santo Tomas (UST), the oldest Catholic University in the Philippines, with freshman Nursing students, I told them that in the future when they become Nurses, knowing the struggles that transsexual people have with their assigned gender, I hope that when they bring a newborn baby into this world, they will refrain from reflexively giving it a gender. Instead of saying It’s a boy or It’s a girl, they should just say that It’s a baby. The class laughed but I hope they did not miss the premise of my joke: that assigning a gender to someone is an issue of power.

In the first place, the new born is not consulted on the matter. In the second place, the act of assigning a person a gender at birth in fact compels that baby to embody that gender later in life. Transgender people are proof that not all people can or want to do so. So the solution to trans people’s problem seems so simple after all as the impending version of the DSM demonstrates. We must simply stop assigning newborn babies a gender. We should also start teaching people to raise children in gender-neutral ways. For if no gender assignment is done at birth, then how can people experience gender incongruence?

Three cheers for Canada

2010-02-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

I woke up early on Saturday morning, 13 February 2010, to be able to catch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver on TV. I was not disappointed. It was everything that an Opening Ceremony should be: jaw-dropping, spectacular and above-all touching. The whole thing was a combination of animation, technology, art, song, dance and acrobatics. It paid tribute to Canadian history, geography and culture. I particularly liked the part where a giant bear made of pin pricks of light rose from the ground and floated on air for a few seconds. It was really a sight to see. It looked like a constellation, a mascot and an apparition all rolled into one (see pic above).

The grizzly bear is such an emblematic part of Canadian culture, that most if not all Canadians grow up learning what to do when a bear shows up in their proximity. I have family in Canada who, when they come home to the Philippines, somehow always end up mentioning ways to escape, fight off, or lose a bear when one does come around. It is a Canadian thing.

The love of my life, Carl is also from Canada so anything coming out of there has special appeal and meaning to me. This magnificent Opening Ceremony is one of those things. It made me feel so proud to have Canadian relatives and loved ones. There is really nothing like the Olympics to remind you of your humanity and the connections it engenders. I may have watched the Opening Ceremony in my living room at home but it did not take me away from feeling that I was sharing it with millions of other people around the world especially those seeing it live at the Olympic stadium. I knew too that above all I was also sharing it with my relatives and Carl. It is so heart-warming especially since Carl is such a patriotic guy. He loves his country very much. I can imagine how proud he must have been for this great Opening Ceremony.

So it was a little saddening to note that the Opening day was marred by tragedy. According to reports, a luger from Georgia crashed and died while doing a practice run at the luge track. Accounts say that the luge track is a bit tricky and now changes have been made to it to ensure that no other accident ever happens again till the Winter Games end in two and a half weeks.

I am confident that the Canadians will do everything in their power to make everyone safe from harm during the Games. This is not the first time they are hosting the Winter Olympics so it should be easy for them. Canada truly deserves praise for putting on a brave face during the Opening Ceremony and dedicating it to the luger who passed away. Three cheers for the Canadians and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver!

Gender Identity Disorder stays in the DSM V

2010-02-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

In spite of a global campaign to depathologize trans identities, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) working group revising the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has decided to retain Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the fifth edition of the DSM. The APA draft can be found here.

This for me is nothing but a grave abuse of power. I am glad that soon transgender human rights advocacy groups will come together to ensure a worldwide response to the tyranny of the APA.

In the meantime, the fight for depathologization continues.

Kids these days

2010-02-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the University of Santo Tomas (UST), one of the oldest universities in the Philippines, to give a Transgender 101 talk to a freshman Nursing class (see pic above). A group of students in the class sent STRAP an invitation through the website saying that they wanted to work on a paper on transgender issues in the Philippines. As a rule, we ask students to allow STRAP to come to them so that we could speak about those issues ourselves first and make sure the students understand transgender basics before they write about them.

I began the session by reminding the class that in the past, during Spanish times, UST was an all-male school. As years went by, UST underwent a “sex change” of sorts when it started taking in female-bodied students. I patterned this short introduction from a personal story by Atty. Kim Coco Iwamoto, a prominent trans activist in the US, who during her time in law school at the University of New Mexico (UNM) faced opposition on her use of the women’s toilet.

Talking about gender in a way that resonates with students always gets their attention. I am always happy when I see them have their own Eureka moments in their seat when they realize the injustice that a binary gender system can wreak. For these students, gender is something that they take for granted every day. It is always good to remind them that such is not the case for many transgender people for whom gender may end up being like a daily cross to bear.

The session was only good for one and a half hours and it was not enough to cover everything. I was only able to break down the key terminology and cut the lecture short to allow the students to ask questions. I was glad when someone asked about the issue of transgender health and how things are in that area for trans people in the Philippines. I told them that transgender health care is non-existent in the country. Ten years after the new millennium, medical practitioners from different fields remain unknowledgeable about the health needs of transgender Filipinos.

I told them about my own discriminatory experience a long time ago before I started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I wanted to be supervised by an endocrinologist and so went to see one at the Makati Medical Center, supposedly a world-class hospital at the heart of the Makati Central Business District where I was working at that time. The endocrinologist I saw was a middle-aged woman who looked sharp around the edges. At the start, she was quite pleasant. She had me seat in front of her and asked me to tell her my story. So I did. I told her that I wanted to begin HRT and I wanted to consult her on the process. I told her that I had many questions about it and would be glad to hear her expert opinion. She listened to me patiently but after 15 minutes proceeded to tell me with a distinct odium in her voice “I’m sorry but I cannot do what you are asking me to do. It is against my religious beliefs.”

I was flabbergasted when I heard her say this. At that time I was young and naïve. I did not know for sure if doctors could actually refuse a person treatment based on their faith. Because I am normally flexible, I did not pay the issue much mind. I just forgot about it and moved on to the next available doctor. I told the class that now I see that it was a clear case of prejudice at work because doctors are not supposed to judge their patients. They are supposed to provide health services to those who need them most. They are there to ensure the well-being of all regardless of who they are.

I told the class that I hope that when they become professional health care workers themselves that they will not let their own personal biases get the better of them. Transgender people who seek help for their health deserve competent medical care as much as the next person. I told them never to forget an idea usually associated with the Hippocratic oath of doctors which can also apply to them: “First, do no harm.” That is their only mandate as health care professionals, to do good and do no one any harm.

Because health care is in itself expensive, and doctors and nurses are ignorant of transgender issues and hospitals become very intimidating environments for trans people, many of them end up self-medicating which can prove hazardous to their health. I told the class that I hope that they will make sure that in the future, the medical profession becomes a kinder and more compassionate profession as it was originally envisioned. Furthermore, I told them that the main reason why we in STRAP make time to meet young people and talk to them is because we have faith that they will actually change the world for the better.

This is really the reason why we go out there, why we go to Universities and Colleges all over the Philippines and abroad too when possible. We are not only talking to them about our issues, we are also recruiting them into a global project. That is to recreate a world that will uphold the dignity of all and give everyone an equal chance at life. Every single head in that class was nodding in agreement when I told them this and for me that was enough.

I know that advocating for the human rights of transpeople will be a long battle to win hearts and minds. But I am always hopeful and talking to the young is always a good start. When I was looking at every single fresh face in that classroom today, my heart was filled with hope and ardor. I knew that they understood what exactly I was saying. I love these kids. Their desire to learn about, comprehend and empathize with us is truly humbling and touching.

After my talk, we had a jolly time taking pictures. I particularly relish this group picture that they took below. I guess it says it all.

Goodbye J.D.

2010-02-01T07:43:00.000-08:00

The first thing I do when I board a plane is grab the day’s paper. I was flying Philippine Air Lines (PAL) again on Saturday morning, the 30th of January, from Hong Kong and when I got on flight PR 301, I went to the newspaper shelf, got the Philippine Daily Inquirer before putting away my laptop and hand carry bag in the storage bin above my seat.

When I was comfortably seated, I scoured the headlines and was shocked to see that one of the American writers whose work I have long admired and loved had died. The news item said that Jerome David or J.D. Salinger died in his home in New Hampshire at the age of 91 (see pic above). As I was reading the news obituary about Salinger, I could not help myself and began to cry.

The plane had not taken off yet at that point and the cabin crew was still helping people into their seat assignments. I was relieved that the flight was not fully booked and found myself last in a row of four seats, three of which were unoccupied. I let the grief wash over me, said a silent goodbye to Salinger in my head and after a few minutes, the tears stopped rolling. I took out a tissue to wipe my face and started to retrace my steps back into the past and how I discovered this great American writer.

My first Salinger encounter was not through his defining and most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye. That would come much later in fact. The first work of his that I read was his short story collection entitled unpretentiously, Nine Stories. I was in high school and was going through our clan’s, the Magistrado-Estanislaos’ book collection. These were books that were owned formerly by the various adults in our household including aunts who were by then already long gone from our home town and were working abroad. I found Nine Stories in an old cigarette box full of musky-smelling books and when I opened it, I was unable to put it down. From the first story, A Perfect Day for Bananafish to the last Teddy, Salinger made me laugh, cry and gasp in awe. Salinger’s prose is very accessible you see. There is an easiness to the tone of his writing that belies the depth of what he talks about: suicide, sadness over an unrequited love, family and more. Discovering Salinger at a young age made me see how a great writer could inspire affinity and affection from readers. I must have reread Nine Stories a hundred times over before entering University. I went to it when I was happy and when I was blue, when I was inspired or needed to be inspired. I found Salinger's voice both brilliant and comforting. When I went to college I made sure not to forget my old, dilapidated copy of Nine Stories (see pic below).

The Catcher in the Rye, I first heard about from the writer Jessica Zafra. The first time she mentioned Holden Caulfield, I thought, “Of course Salinger has other works!” and I could not wait to get a copy of this generation-defining book. When I was in college at the University of the Philippines, Zafra had a column in the broadsheet Manila Today called Twisted, which I followed loyally. I first discovered Zafra in high school via her old column called Womenagerie in the now defunct magazine Woman Today, to which my mother used to subscribe. Woman Today was like the Cosmo of the Philippines in the 80s and 90s. When the magazine died and Zafra moved to the broadsheet, I followed suit.

I used to photocopy Jessica Zafra’s column at the basement of the UP Main Library which housed the periodicals section. Back in the dorm, I would cut them out neatly and file them in a folder. I was glad to do it because I was a fan. Later when she decided to publish her old column in collected, book form, I realized that I had read all of their contents and so did not have the urge to buy any of them. I always found Zafra’s humor sinister but intelligent and ultimately heartfelt, a trait which I feel she shares with Salinger. The best thing about Zafra was that she was an English major and her columns were peppered with literary allusions. She told people what to read and she made regular references to Salinger’s work. Before the end of my freshman year in UP in 1994, I found a second hand copy of Catcher in the Rye at the old second-hand book store at the Shopping Center.

That night I refused to sleep just to finish the book. As I went through page after page, I found myself being pulled into the irreverent thoughts of Holden Caulfield and his quest for authenticity. When he called someone or something a phony, I agreed. I was hooked and exhilarated. I found the book witty, fast-paced and cheeky. As with Nine Stories, I would reread The Catcher in the Rye over and over again and would never tire of it. In my third year in college, someone borrowed my Salinger collection including The Catcher in Rye, Nine Stories,, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters and never gave it back.

Since then, I would always make sure to look for Salinger’s books in thrift book shops. Now I have in my possession all of the books mentioned above save for The Catcher in the Rye. The first thing I did when I got home from Hong Kong was to take out my Salinger collection out of its storage place and reread my favorite short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.It never fails to undo me with its heartrending ending. I reacted to it the same way I did the first time I read it, with a combination of pain and distress. This story always makes me cry. I am now going through Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and so far I feel like I am taking a trip down memory lane, remembering the times in the past when I would go back to my old copies of Salinger's books and the state of my emotions at those times. I am glad I do not have a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I don’t think I can handle reading it right now. One of these days though when I have fully recovered from Salinger’s death, I know that I will get hold of this book, hopefully a brand new one, and link hands once more with Holden Caulfield.

The good thing about reading Salinger’s work one after the other is that they speak to each other. Franny and Zooey in fact belong to the Glass family, the same family that is written about in Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and referred to in stories in Nine Stories. Salinger became a recluse in the 60s and hauled himself to New Hampshire to retire from the literary world. He refused to grant interviews and was rarely heard from except when he was suing people who tried to use his writing in ways that he did not approve of (e.g., an authorized sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, attempts to turn his work into film, etc.). He also instructed publishers to print and reprint his work between plain covers that only showed the text of his book titles, no art and no blurbs. For me, this is testament to his devotion to his work. There is nothing more important than the fine print. Everything else does not matter. And if I had entitled this piece melodramatically, after one of his work’s titles for example, I know that he would have turned in his grave. So once more, very simply but with much gratitude and love, goodbye J.D..

Hong Kong Day 4: Sex and the City, Hong Kong-style

2010-01-31T20:45:00.000-08:00

On Friday, the 29th, I still could not get over what occurred in Bar Amazonia the night before. I woke up feeling awkward and out of place and I realized that I was still very unhappy about the incident in Wan Chai. I was missing Carl, the love of my life, very much and was happy to find him online that morning. I told him about what happened. His first question was, “Why did Sam Winter bring you to a place like that?” and I thought that he absolutely hit the nail on the head with that question. I thought we should never have gone to a seedy place like Bar Amazonia so later that evening I asked Sam why he decided to take us there in the first place. He apologized and said that he should never have. I accepted the apology but still could not shake my misery over what happened.

It was my last night in Hong Kong though and I wanted to have a nice, relaxed, unproblematic evening with Santy. I just wanted us to be girls out to have fun, enjoying each other’s company, very Sex and the City. At the beginning of the trip I had wanted to visit the harbor, go to the famous Peak, visit different museums and possibly go to Disneyland. I did not have the energy, time and resources to do all those things though but Santy said I could still get my obligatory harbor picture that night because the harbor was just near her hotel. So in our 4-inch heels, we walked some distance to the place. I love walking and I had absolute fun getting there. We took each other’s pictures. Mine is below. The camera had flash on so one can hardly see the harbor at my background. We tried it with no flash, but it comes out blurred and yellowish, really no good.

After the pictures, we decided to go to Lan Kwai Fong, a more upscale place, to have drinks. Around midnight, we settled ourselves in a place called California Bar and took the required location shot once more (see below). Santy got us drinks and we just sat around talking, sharing stories. I could only stay up until 2 since my flight the next day was at 11:10 in the morning. That meant I had to wake up at 8 am and be at the airport an hour later.

After probably half an hour of being unescorted ladies out in the town, we were approached by an English guy. He just came over our table, did not even bother to introduce himself and asked me perfunctorily how much I charged. I was too shocked to speak for a few seconds and after gathering my bearings back, I told him “I don’t know if I should feel insulted or flattered. I am sorry but I am not a working girl.” This egged him on and he said, “That’s better. So can I take you home?” I said, “No you can’t. I have a boyfriend.” He then said, “Then I’m just wasting my time here.” I icily retorted, “Yes you are.” So he left.

At that point, it dawned on me that a nice respectable Asian girl can never get a break in Hong Kong or perhaps anywhere in the world. A certain reputation will always precede her and if she is not a sex worker then she is a ladyboy sex worker. When I was in Europe, I heard the exact same thing. Asians even if they have white or blue collar jobs tend to moonlight as escorts. Not everyone does it of course but the stereotype has stuck.

I myself have nothing against anyone who does sex work. There is a growing sex workers’ rights movement that have claims parallel to other liberation movements: sex work is work; sex workers have the right to self-determination as much as the next person; sex workers need to unite so they can collectively change their material conditions—rid their profession of its stigma and empower sex worker so they have more control of and security in their bodies while making sex work a safe, less hazardous and rewarding occupation.

Because of sex workers’ collectives around the world, laws have been put in place to protect sex workers’ rights. In Scandinavia, for example, it is legal to sell sex although illegal to buy it. This sort of Catch 22 has been debated among activists and policy makers and sex workers have begun to question the wisdom of this legislative model. In the Philippines, there are no organized groups advocating for sex workers’ rights but, awhile back, a lawmaker drafted a proposed bill to decriminalize prostitution very much following the Scandinavian model. The proposed bill purports to shift the responsibility of availing of sexual services from those who sell it to those who buy it. Selling sex, remains largely, illegal here though and much of the world.

In Hong Kong, sex workers cannot come together. It is okay to sell sex if one does it alone. There is an assumption that one only does it randomly, as a sideline and not really one’s main line of work. That means, a sex worker cannot work with a pimp or another person to sell sex. Further, one cannot advertise sexual services and profiting or benefiting from money gained through prostitution is punishable in the Hong Kong penal code.

I have met many trans girls in Hong Kong who are working girls. Many of them are just in it for the money and have become apologists for what they do. I have yet to meet someone who does it who is empowered, who feels no guilt over what she does, actually thinks she can do it as a lifetime job and demand societal restructuring to protect her rights as a service provider and proprietor. But such is not the case. This idea was addressed in Gayle Rubin’s seminal article Thinking Sex: Notes for a radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. According to Rubin, one of the ideologies that have held people’s views on sex and sexuality in a stranglehold is sex negativity, the view that sex is “a dangerous, destructive and negative force.” Sex negativity underpins the view of sex as sin and its non-free, non-procreative expressions as bad. In this view, sex is neither for pleasure nor profit. Such a view explains people’s condescension on sex work and those who do it. After all, one is not supposed to sell sex but give sex for free. Rubin notes that such thinking combined with other anti-sex and sexuality attitudes has resulted in socially ingrained sexual hierarchies where the married heterosexual occupies the most privileged position while sexual outlaws like prostitutes, crossdressers, pedophiles, BDSM-practitioners and even transsexuals occupy the bottom rung.

As the last two posts have shown, I have my own prejudices to unpack. I think that Hong Kong has ultimately brought out my sex negativity by my public declaration of neither being a ladyboy nor a prostitute. I somehow feel guilty over this and I think I need to reflect on this further. I will try to do so in a future post but for now I hope these thoughts will suffice.

Hong Kong Day 3: It Could Happen To You Redux

2010-01-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, 28 January 2010, Santy and I agreed to go out. Half an hour before midnight, I was dressed and ready to see her in her hotel downtown. I myself stayed over with the Winters, in a spare room they keep for guests. On my way out, I saw Sam Winter in the kitchen and he decided to come along with Santy and me. We picked Santy up at her hotel and when we were all together, we decided to go to a place playing live music.

It was a bar called Amazonia in Wan Chai and when we got there, the first thing I noticed was that it was packed with white guys and pinays (short for Filipinas). All the waitresses were Filipina and the guys who brought along dates, brought Filipina women. Even the band was all-Filipino. A waitress led us to a sitting area near the side of the stage where the band was playing and we ordered drinks. While waiting for them to come, we decided to go down to the area in front of the stage to dance.

The band’s lead singer was this cute pinay and when she saw me she gave me a warm smile. After about 3 songs, the band’s repertoire shifted to slow songs which I thought were not very danceable. We decided to go back to our seats and enjoy our drinks. After the set of slow tunes, the band went on intermission and the bar played canned dance music. They played recent hits by the Black Eyed Peas, Shakira, and Lady Gaga and others. Meanwhile, we were all having fun dancing to all the songs.

Beside me was a Filipina with a group of foreign guys. We danced together and she said that all her guy friends who were sitting a few step from us had a crush on me. I said I was very flattered but not interested thank you very much and remarked that she was not bad looking herself. It was then that I kind of figured out that she was a sex worker. When I looked around I saw more of them hanging around in pairs or alone cruising the guys inside the bar. I paid them no mind and kept dancing with the pinay I just met until the song ended. I went to the lady’s room because I felt very hot and needed to pee. When I came back, I asked Santy and Sam if they wanted to have some fresh air outside. We took our new round of drinks with us, made our way outside and stood by the side of the entrance, where other people were also standing around with their drinks. I asked a waitress to take a picture of us (see below).

We were there for about half an hour and at Bar Amazonia for almost 2 hours already. When we heard the band inside play a good dance tune, we decided to go back to the dance floor. Sam went in first while I and Santy followed him behind. Sam was already in and I was about to go in as well when the door man/bouncer, a short, pudgy looking Chinese guy in black shirt and jeans, put himself in front of me, with his arms spread to the sides, barring my entrance. I said, “Excuse me” and he said “No!” while shaking his head side to side. I said, “I’m sorry but what’s the problem? I was just in there an hour ago?” He just looked at me icily and said no again without saying anymore. I was starting to get annoyed. At that point, people inside started to look on.

I saw Sam rushing back outside to us and when he got to the door he started talking to the bouncer. He asked him what the problem was and he said, “I’m sorry sir but no ladyboys allowed here. We are not a gay bar.”

I got very angry at this remark and addressed the door man, “You just fucking insulted me. I am not a ladyboy. How dare you!” Sam told the door man, “These are women!” pointing at Santy and me. “I’m just doing my job,” the bouncer said. He then directed us to the manager, another short and stout Chinese man in a light blue shirt and slacks, who was by then standing at the door. “Talk to the manager if you want,” he said. I went up to the manager and told him that just around an hour or two ago, we were all inside enjoying ourselves dancing to the music. We went out for air and when I tried to go back in, the door man blocked my way. I asked the manager, “What is the problem? What happened between now and then? Have I done something criminal that you do not want to let me in?” The manager just looked at me, with no emotion on his face, and pointed to a sign at the door saying that management reserved the right to refuse entrance to anyone they choose. I said that that was insane because we were just in the bar and we even danced in front of the band. He said sorry but it’s their policy. Santy had my camera then and she started taking pictures of our argument (see picture below). The manager looked at her and said, “No pictures please!” but Santy said, “I don’t care. I will take pictures if I want to!”

Sam needed to go back for his credit card inside so he excused himself. The manager followed him in and we were left standing in front of the bouncer who was looking at me with hate in his eyes. I could not stop myself and started to berate him. “You are such hypocrites. Don’t think that I do not know that there are so many prostitutes inside your bar. You allow prostitutes to go in your bar but you will not allow someone like me. I am not a fucking prostitute! Do you hear me?”

The bouncer got enraged, turned red and started to pick things up to throw at me. First he picked up plastic cups in a stack but it flew in the wrong direction. Then he picked up a small bottle of mineral water but missed me again. The bottle cap hit my left hand though but it did not hurt. At that point, some men from inside and outside rushed to stop him. He was screaming “I’m just doing my job all right! I’m just doing my job.”

One of the guys who calmed him down, a Australian lawyer working for the University of Hong Kong came to my side and asked what the matter was. He knew Sam and they started speaking about what just transpired. Sam informed the lawyer that the manager was refusing to let us in because we were transgender. The lawyer said that that was not right especially since he saw me earlier dancing in front of the band. He said, “But I saw you in there earlier and you were having such a good time.” I said yes that is why I was surprised myself that they did not want to let us back in.

We discussed the matter some more but at that point all I wanted was to get out of there so we thanked the lawyer for his kindness and left.

Hong Kong Day 2: I, Transpinay

2010-01-29T00:59:00.000-08:00

On January the 27th, Wednesday, I went to the University of Hong Kong around lunch time to get a feel of the campus. My talk was scheduled around 4 pm so I wanted to walk around, watch students and be in the middle of the hustle and bustle of campus life first. As I did, I saw different student organizations in booths advertising themselves or an issue. I think I passed by an environmental organization with their booth decked out in all green with posters on climate change. It made me reminisce briefly on my old college life. Dr. Sam Winter took me to lunch at the Faculty Lounge and left for several meetings after. I was pretty much on my own before I decided to go back to the auditorium that the good professor pointed out to me was the venue of his Sexual and Gender Diversity (SGD) class.

The auditorium was housed in the Knowles Building beside which was a lily pond with a full figure statue of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. When Santy arrived, I asked her to take a picture of me holding hands with the legendary Chinese leader so I could absorb some of his revolutionary spirit (see the pic above). Around 3:30 pm, Dr. Winter's class began. The SGD, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is one of the broadening courses in the University of Hong Kong for undergrad students. It aims to broaden students' understanding of the nature and development of sexuality and gender by focusing on areas of knowledge that are not traditionally available to them such as: homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, and power-exchange relationships and expressions such as bondage, domination & sado-masochism.

The course will run this semester from January to April and the last two sessions in January are devoted to trans issues. A Hong Kong transgender advocate named MoMo was the class's guest speaker for the January 20th session while I was the guest for the January 27th class. The afternoon's session on Growing up transgender in Asia was divided between Dr. Sam Winter and I. For the first hour, he was going to give a sort of a Transgender 101 lecture talking about the issues facings Asian transmen and women (see pic above). Apart from the lecture, Dr. Winter also showed the class several videos of transpeople in transition so the students could understand the process. Videos of both transmen and transwomen were shown.

At around 4:30, my turn came. I was introduced and I started by thanking the class and the University for giving me the honor to speak before 160 undergrad students. I remarked that the University was truly doing its job by not only opening students' minds but their hearts as well. My presentation was entitled, I, Transpinay and is divided into two parts (see pic above). The first part, tells about my growing up years, from childhood to working as a professional post-college, while the second one, chronicles how I ended up advocating for transgender human rights. The class was generally attentive and laughed on cue at my jokes and asides (see pic below). I talked to them about STRAP, its work and its plans for the future.

After my talk, we opened the floor to questions (see pic below). Many students stayed for the Q&A and Dr. Winter told me later that it was unusual for that many students to be seen in the auditorium at that time. Many of them had other classes to attend at around 5:25 and the fact that we had a lot of them in the room till 6 was indicative of their interest and genuine investment in the issue being discussed at hand.

The questions were really intelligent. One student observed that my working in the University of the Philippines shields me from the harsher world outside academe. Did I have any plans of working outside the University? Another student asked about my religious beliefs, while another asked about my relationship status. One student asked me, If you had not been born transsexual, do you think you'd have still achieved everything that you have in life? These youngsters do speak their mind and the quality of their questions was quite a revelation for me. I immensely enjoyed answering all of their questions.

At exactly 6 pm, we had to call it a day. A senior academic in the University of Hong Kong joined us because he invited a journalist to attend the afternoon's session. He is a Welsh guy who has been in Hong Kong the last decade and he said that the journalist who sat in the class had very positive things to say about the discussion that afternoon. We had our pic taken with him (see pic above) and after proceeded to the faculty lounge where he, Dr. Winter and other professors of the University had drinks. Santy and I had coffee and after decided to go out to Wan Chai for dinner. We left Dr. Winter and company and went out in the cold Hong Kong night.

Hong Kong Day 1: It Could Happen To You

2010-01-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

My talk at the University of Hong Kong in their Sexual and Gender Diversity (SGD) undergrad class was happening on the 27th of January but I and Dr. Sam Winter, professor-in-charge of the SGD class and an ally and advocate of the transgender community and author of Transgender Asia Research, agreed that it would be a good idea to come earlier so any other pre-talk concerns could be smoothed out with enough time. So my flight out of Manila was booked for the 26th and I was scheduled to come back home on Saturday, the 30th. I left Manila Thursday via Philippine Air Lines flight PR 306 at 2:45 pm (see pic above), and arrived in Hong Kong two hours later. The Philippines and Hong Kong lie in the same time zone so I did not need to adjust my clock upon arrival.

I flew to Hong Kong with Santy Layno, Internal Affairs Head of STRAP (see her pic above), and it was a very uneventful flight. Immediately after stepping off the plane, we could not wait to take pictures to document every step of our trip. A long time ago, I gave away winter clothes which I had accumulated working cold nights for a call center in the past. Most of them were rotting away unused in my closet so when I had the chance, I gave them to friends who started working for call centers themselves. For this trip I had to borrow from friends warm clothes for the Hong Kong winter cold to avoid having to spend unnecessarily money that I could use in the trip instead. One of the STRAP girls, Dee Mendoza kindly lent me one of her bomber jackets which I am wearing in the photo below taken at the Hong Kong airport.

A while back, I had written here about the humiliating experiences of several Filipina transwomen who had passed through Hong Kong immigration. Apparently, transwomen have been singled out by Hong Kong airport officers for "standard security checks". This means that once a transwoman approaches an immigration counter to exit into Hong Kong, she has no assurance of entry. Instead, she will be passed on to a chain of several people until she finds herself in a holding room where she will be interviewed by a senior immigration officer, the end result of which is anyone's guess.

There the interview will vary from a brief polite exchange to insulting, heated argument between the transwoman and immigration official on why the former wants to enter Hong Kong. Through the trans community grapevine we have heard of transwomen who have seen the insides of that infamous holding room of being accused of illegal activity in the Chinese Special Administrative Region (SAR), being required to empty out their wallets to prove their financial capacity to stay in Hong Kong, and the worst one yet--of being asked to strip naked for a body search. STRAP members have not been exempt from these troubling practice and we have had members who were slapped with a limited number of visitation days (the standard is 14 for all tourists) by being allowed to stay between one to two days only, detained in the holding room for varying lengths of time (sometimes under an hour, sometimes more), and the worst of all--deported back to Manila immediately which in local Filipino slang is called "airport to airport" or A to A.

So it was with great trepidation that I approached this trip. But although I was anxious, at the back of my head, I still kept thinking that this immigration hitch was never going to happen to me. I was so wrong.

As Santy and I approached the immigration lines, Santy who also knows about the anti-trans immigration procedure, immediately spotted a transwoman being taken away by airport security. My heart lurched but I calmed myself down. Deep inside I thought that if you were above board, then nothing could go wrong. Our turn came and Santy and I agreed to stay in one line and let her go first.

The process began harmlessly enough. Santy handed over her passport to the Chinese man at the immigration counter. He went through her information, entered them into his computer and ran her passport through the validation machine. Next, he asked Santy how long she was staying in Hong Kong. Santy answered and the immigration guy
asked to see her return ticket. He looked at her return ticket then suddenly whipped out a long white form, half the size of standard bond paper. He started jotting down information from Santy's passport and her return ticket. Santy pointed at me and informed the immigration officer that we were together. The immigration officer asked for my passport as well. He went through the same process with my passport and when he seemed finished and satisfied (the entire thing took about 15 minutes), he called over an older guy, handed him our passports and spoke to him in Chinese. Guy Number 2 in a terse tone then told us, "You two, follow me."

At that point I started to get angry. While trying to follow after Guy Number 2, I said in a curt and cutting tone, "Excuse me sir, but what seems to be the problem?". Guy Number 2 seemed to have sensed the unhappy tenor in my voice and answered nicely, "Oh just standard security check." After passing through the immigration line but not yet exiting, we got to the middle of the airport where Guy Number 2 stopped at a group of airport security-looking people and then handed us over to another person, Guy Number 3. Guy Number 3 began escorting us and so I asked him the same question. With a hint of a smile and very politely he said, "It's just standard security check." I asked him, "How long is this going to take? We have someone outside waiting for us." Guy Number 3 answered. "Just around 20 minutes or so."

At that point, there seemed to be nothing that I could do but just go through the process. Santy and I followed Guy Number 3 who ended up taking us to the infamous holding room. There we took a seat and saw the transwoman who was taken away earlier than us already in one of the cubicles along the side of the room talking vigorously with a lady immigration officer. After waiting for a few more minutes, we were asked
to see a senior looking officer, Guy Number 4.

He took us into one of the cubicles and asked us harmless questions (i.e., What are you here for? When are you leaving? May I see your return ticket?). After noting our return flights, he thanked us. We went back to the reception area and after a few minutes we were good to go. Santy and I figured out that the other transgirl was Thai and we had a brief exchange from opposite ends of the waiting room. I asked how she was and when it was time for us to go, we bade her goodbye. I was so sad that she was still there.

This time, a lady immigration officer escorted us to a special immigration counter where a surly looking guy took our passports and one after the other asked us what our names were as if indirectly ordering us to declare ourselves. It was a bit awkward and now that I look back at it, quite laughable actually. We passed by him and exited into the baggage claim area.

And so it came to pass. What I had been dreading finally happened to me. How silly of me to think that I was "special" and immune from such treatment. I know this is a bit of a thorny issue and I will talk about that point in another post. But my main point is: all transwomen affected by this issue should come together and discuss how to move forward in responding to this humiliating process already institutionalized at the Hong Kong airport. At this point, there is no sense in finding who to blame because as it were, it is a problem that already affects us all. We must unite and stand up to this unneeded harassment and not exclude anyone in the conversation. After all, this is a clear case of discrimination that does not choose, that includes us all.

27 days down, 338 more to go

2010-01-26T17:51:00.000-08:00

I apologize for taking long to get to this second post this month. My life has been a little hectic lately what with concerns in STRAP, my work and my graduate studies. In December, I decided to quit work actually to be able to go back to my MA thesis. I am currently working on a research in Language Education but because I have gone over the maximum residency rule for Master's students, I was required per University rule to enrol in a penalty course. Because I thought it was going to be easy, I chose to enrol in a basic Psychology of Reading class. Little did I know that it was going to be reading and writing intensive.

In January alone, I worked on three different assignments for the class. A set of comprehension questions based on a text of my choice, a set of assignment questions based on Schema Theory, and a written and oral report on a reading. The class was given a reading list to choose from and the selections had to do with reading, writing, the reader, the writer, the contexts where reading and writing take place, and language. The reading list was a healthy mix of novels, non-fiction work and even children's literature. We had a choice among Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, On Writing by Stephen King, Someday by Isaac Asimov, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink and others. Among the children's books there were The War Between the Vowels & the Consonants which I absolutely loved, Maniac Magee, Inkheart and many more.

I chose to read Fahrenheit 451 for I have never gotten a copy of that science fiction classic and found it to be a work of pure virtuosity. It is set in the very distant future where firemen, instead of putting out fires, start them by burning down houses with inhabitants known to read books, a crime in that far-off time. The title of the book refers to the temperature at which paper burns.

For the oral and written report that I needed to present in class, I looked up available footage of the 1966 movie of the same title and found a really nice part to show to my classmates. It was the scene where an old lady, ratted on by her own neighbor, chose to go up in flames with her beloved books instead of surrendering to the firemen and the police. It was a chilling scene but also a significant moment in the life of the story's protagonist Guy Montag. I hope more people get the chance to read this compelling novel about the power of the printed word and how it threatens the stable order of a world that is continuously rendering it useless and obsolete.

After the class reporting, I borrowed The Reader from classmates who worked on that book and also loved it. After reading it, I watched the DVD of the movie starring Kate Winslet and found that I was emotionally responding to the film because of my recollection of how it was written. It was a little strange experience for me and something really new. I guess my reading and viewing stances have become much more aligned. I have evolved as a mature, adult reader.

This month STRAP also held a Support Group Meeting (SGM) (see our group pic above). We met at the conference room of Isis International on the third Sunday of the month and had an education discussion on transsexualism and gender, sexuality and human rights. The former was discussed by our first clinical psychologist, Brenda Alegre (see her pic below) while I took care of the latter. The STRAP officers agreed that the organization needs to have educational discussions like these to keep abreast with developments in the disciplines and activist work devoted to transsexual issues. Next month, we will tackle transgender human rights and I cannot wait to share thoughts and opinions with the STRAP girls on this topic.

I am in Hong Kong now by the way, upon the invitation of Dr. Sam Winter, the author of the Transgender Asia Research website. He invited me to speak in an undergraduate class called Sexual & Gender Diversity, which is one of a handful of so-called broadening courses in the University of Hong Kong. I am getting ready for that session now and I will tell you more about that in my succeeding posts. In the mean time keep safe and I hope that all is well at your end.

Rica comes home

2010-01-03T19:26:00.000-08:00

After almost 100 days in the Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) Double Up house, our STRAP sister Rica Paras (see pic above) finally exits the best reality show on Philippine TV. On 2 January 2009, Saturday night, I along with STRAP officers, Santy Layno, Joy Cruz and Rica’s sister Eds went to the PBB Double Up house for the live eviction night (see pic below). Rica was up for eviction that evening along with three other housemates, Paul Jake, Sam and Johan. I thought it was going to be either of the three above not Rica who was going out that night.

The show itself started uneventfully with the three hosts Mariel Rodriguez, Toni Ganzaga and Bianca Gonzales coming out on stage (see pic below). The highlight of the evening was the live telecast of the New Year concert that the housemates put together. Rica hosted the concert from inside the PBB Double Up house. The concert was the housemates’ weekly group task. To pass the task, the housemates were to commit only 10 mistakes in their sing-and-dance routines. Each time a housemate mouthed the wrong lyrics or made a misstep, a buzzer would go off. The housemates ended up committing 40 plus mistakes and failed the task.

After the concert, the hosts turned to the housemates nominated for eviction. Around three weeks ago, the show introduced a new twist in the viewers’ casting of text votes. Viewers of the show now had two options, to vote to evict or to vote to save. Each housemate nominated for eviction will then have two scores, evict and save votes with the former subtracted from the latter resulting in their final ranking. When the votes were revealed, Rica unbelievably had the lowest number of evict and save votes and was announced evicted.

I was so shocked and could not believe my ears. I had to ask Joy and Santy if I heard the announcement right. They confirmed my fear. Rica was instructed to say goodbye to her housemates and was escorted outside the house onto the stage fronting the PBB Double Up house where a live audience was waiting. As she stepped out, the crowd cheered and started calling out to Rica. Rica waved at the fans and gave a very heartwarming speech. She said that she was happy to be out and that she hoped that with her story people will learn to stand up for their loved ones who are different. The entire time she was poised and looked very calm. She handled it really well.

After the show ended we had to wait for instructions before we could see Rica. She was asked to stay the night near the PBB Double Up house to ease her slowly into life outside the show. She was going to be debriefed by the show’s psychologist first before being released back to the real world. We were ushered into a small conference room to see her. When she came in we all hugged her in joy and she shrieked in delight about being happy to be finally out. We all chatted and our phones were ringing off with friends calling to ask how Rica was doing. Rica spoke to her friends and family on the phone and we were with her till around 2 in the morning when we had to leave her finally. Before we left, we took one last group pic (see below) with Rica’s aunt Espie and another STRAP officer Mae Hernandez.

Rica is now set for a new chapter in her life. I hope it brings her happiness and success. Her being the first transpinay on PBB is truly a groundbreaking achievement and she has given a new and refreshing face to the community of transgender women in the Philippines. She represented us very well on the show and we are so proud of her. She is to me truly STRAP’s Woman of the Year for 2010. Soar high my sister. Your time to shine has come!

Happy Holidays to All!!!

2009-12-24T16:35:00.000-08:00

May this season bring us all joy, love and peace!!!

Asia Pacific Transgender Network launched

2009-12-23T22:28:00.000-08:00

Below is the press statement of the newly-formed Asia Pacific Transgender Network (APTN) which I am cross-posting from Leona Lo's blog here. Transwomen from Singapore, Nepal, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Cambodia, Thailand and Bangladesh came together in Bangkok, Thailand in early December to form APTN. For some reason, no one from the Philippines was invited to take part in the meetings.

I have personally met three of the members of APTN. Hua from Thailand I met during the 60th anniversary celebrations by Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (LBT) Asian women of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in December 2008 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Luluk from Indonesia I met at a sexuality and rights training in May 2009 conducted by TARSHI. Manisha from Nepal I met in Copenhagen for the 2nd International Conference on LGBT Human Rights which was part of World Outgames 2009.

And then there's Leona who I have not met yet but have much respect for. I am very happy that she is part of APTN. I hope that in the next meetings of APTN, a transpinay will be invited to share her own perspective on protecting transgender human rights, health and well-being in the Asia Pacific Region. Nonetheless, I would like to congratulate my sisters for this pioneering initiative. Everything that each of us does to further the cause of improving the lives of transpeople in the world must be recognized and celebrated. Great job to all those who make up APTN! Long live the strong, smart, beautiful and independent-minded transwomen from Asia and the Pacific!

World’s First Asia Pacific Transgender Network Launched to Champion Health and Rights of Transgender Women in the Region

Diverse groups from warias, kathoeys and hijras to be represented

22 December 09, Singapore. Transgender women from 10 Asia Pacific countries and areas are coming together to say “No!” to discrimination and marginalisation by forming the world’s first Asia Pacific Transgender Network (APTN). After three days of intense meetings, it was decided that the APTN, composed entirely of transgender women across the region, will champion transgender women’s health, legal and social rights.

Ms. Khartini Slamah, Founding Working Group member and Core-Group Chair of the Transgender Programme in Pink Triangle (PT) Foundation, Malaysia, says this represents a milestone in the history of transgender women in the region. She says, “For a long time transgender women have been represented among the MSM (men who have sex with men) sub-population group, but there is now a recognition that we are a distinct demographic with our own unique needs. We wish to be separated from the MSM umbrella and inform The United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to stop clustering us under the MSM umbrella. Transgender women are not men – we have different issues and needs. Thus we have formed a network addressing the needs of transgender women only.”

From hijras in South Asia to warias in Indonesia

The group represents a broad spectrum of transgender women from sex workers to career women, from hijras (South Asia), warias (Indonesia), kathoeys (Thailand) and sao praphet songs (Thailand) to specialised interest groups such as youth, Muslims and elderly transgender women.

Ms Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, another Founding Working Group member and one of the most recognisable faces of hijras in India, says she is pleased the community is being represented by the network. She says, “For the first time in history, hijras from Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are joining hands with our transgender sisters from Asia Pacific to say ‘No!’ to being treated like second-class citizens. We know there is strength in numbers. Together, we can advance and improve the health, legal and social rights of transgender women.”

The network will also tackle issues in the region such as HIV prevalence among transgender sex workers, especially in countries such as Indonesia and Cambodia, where infection rates are extremely high and resources in place are inadequate to ensure access to quality healthcare, as well as to protect the rights of the sex workers.

Outreach activities

The network is developing a workplan for the next two to three years. The Working Group will identify and explore key populations/ groups in immediate need of support and plan activities to reach out to these target groups. Transgender representatives have also been appointed from every sub-region and from key sub-populations to rally transgender organisations within their respective sub-regions or areas to become members of the network.

Ms Sitthiphan (Hua) Boonyapisomparn, APTN Coordinator who is based in Bangkok, says, “At this stage, it is important that we develop a comprehensive workplan that addresses the needs of APTN members. We are already in discussion with potential donors and sponsors to explore how they might support APTN programmes.”

For more information about the network or to support its programmes, please contact Ms Sitthiphan at huab2007@gmail. com.

Note to Editors

The APTN is categorised according to seven sub-regions and seven key populations. Each group is represented as follows:

Danisha (Malaysia) for transgender drug users

Jetsada Taesombat (Thailand) for transgender youth

Jin Qiu (China) for China Sub-Region

Khartini Slamah (Malaysia) for senior transgender women

Laxmi Narayan Iripathi (India) for India Sub-region

Leona Lo (Singapore) for Developed Asia Sub-region

Luluk Surahman (Indonesia) for Insular Southeast Asia Sub-region

Manisha (Nepal) for South Asia Sub-region

Prempreeda Pramos Na Ayutthaya (Thailand) for the Greater Mekong Sub-region

Sam Sela (Cambodia) for transgender people living with HIV

Sulastri (Malaysia) for transgender sex workers

Zahida Hijra (Bangladesh) for hijras

Vacant – for transgender Muslims

Vacant – for Pacific Sub-region

About APTN

The mission of APTN is to enable transgender women in the Asia Pacific region to organise and advocate to improve their health, protect their human rights, and enhance their social well-being and the quality of their lives. The network startup is supported by the 7 Sisters Coalition of Asia Pacific Regional Networks on HIV/AIDS, Asia Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health (APCOM), and Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW)

- Ends -

Media Enquiries

- Ms Sitthiphan (Hua) Boonyapisomparn

APTN Coordinator

Email: huab2007@gmail. com

- Ms Leona Lo

Founding Working Group member, APTN

Email: leona@talksense. biz

STRAP Christmas Party 2009

2009-12-22T04:36:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, 20 December 2009, STRAP held its Christmas Party at the Patio of the offices of Isis International. Isis, a feminist NGO, recently gave STRAP a gift check amounting to free use of any of their facilities for eight hours in exchange for our participation as respondents in a new research they are conducting on Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (LBT) women in Asia. We asked Isis if we could use their patio for our Christmas party and they said yes. The Isis patio is interesting because in one corner one will find a statue of the Virgin Mary. A few feet away from the Blessed Virgin is a fountain where another statue, this time of a naked woman sits. The first time I saw the statues I instantly thought, "The virgin and the vamp!"

When our Internal Affairs Head, Santy Layno and I were discussing preparations for the STRAP Christmas Party, we decided hands down that the theme would be Virgin or Vamp where the girls will come to the party as one or the other.

I chose to come as a vamp (see pic below):

I was overjoyed that around 18 STRAP members showed up at the party with many new faces. Rain, who recently won Queen of Cebu, was there. For most of us, it was our first time to meet her and I was very happy to finally see her face-to-face. Rain, it turns out, has been working as a Recruitment Officer for one of the big call centers in the Philippines. There were also other new girls around for whom the party was also their first time to be with their STRAP family. There was Barbie, who is business owner and a veteran of the beauty pageant circuit. Then there were Thad, a men's wear fashion designer and Asia a student at the University of the Philippines. The girls' pic follows below:

One of the heartwarming highlights of the party was the presence of some of the girls' friends, husbands, fiancees and boyfriends who we fondly call the Family and Friends of STRAP (FFS). Some of them have escorted their transpinay girlfriends at various STRAP functions. Some of them we were meeting for the first time. That we were seeing them in person during this holiday season made the experience more special. These are people to whom STRAP is indebted for the things that they have done for STRAP, our members and our activities. A picture of the couples present during the party is below:

Of course the party would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the STRAP officers particularly our treasurer Joy Cruz (in blue in the pice below) and Santy Layno (in red) who took charge of preparing the venue and food. The other officers present were Gia Nolasco, membership coordinator in pink and our secretary Mae Hernandez in gray:

It was a great party. The food and drinks were overflowing and one of our members Char Williams prepared games that everyone enjoyed. I am still on a high from the party actually and am sorely missing everyone who was there. I pray that this holiday season, they will all be safe and happy. I love STRAP and the Family and Friends of STRAP. They inspire me and just bring me so much joy!

STRAP joins the 2009 UP Diliman Lantern Parade

2009-12-19T22:17:00.000-08:00

On Friday, 18 December 2009, STRAP members and I went to the premiere state university, the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman campus to join this year’s lantern parade (see pic above). With me were (from L to R) Santy Layno, Gia Nolasco and Bemz Benedito.

The lantern parade is a traditional UP activity and one of the highlights of the national university’s annual academic calendar. Each year, right before the students go on holiday, usually on the last school day before Christmas, the different UP colleges, schools, organizations, other constituent campuses and all other academic, research and extension arms of the University come out with their Christmas lanterns and parade around the UP Diliman campus for what has now become the annual lantern parade.

I have attended different lantern parades as a UP student in college in the past. The last lantern parade I attended was last year during the University’s celebration of its centennial anniversary. I attended it as an employee of one of UP’s constituent campuses which number 7 in all: UP Diliman, UP Manila, UP Los Baños, UP Baguio, UP Open University (UPOU), UP Visayas, and UP Mindanao. All these campuses save for UPOU hold their own lantern parades in fact. But last year, all campuses sent representatives to the Centennial Lantern Parade in UP Diliman.

I was very happy that this year, I was able to attend this annual festivity as a member of STRAP. During the STRAP officers’ planning meeting, we agreed to bring more vigorously the discourse of gender identity and expression to academe. Good thing that STRAP was invited by the UP Center for Women’s Studies (CWS) to join the annual lantern parade. I think it is a good start. The UP CWS carried the issue of human rights this year and there is no better way to initiate the University to the transgender struggle for equality and acceptance than having transpinays at the parade. When we passed by the three main points where the lantern parade participants had to stop and present themselves—the old Arts and Science building now known as Palma Hall, the College of Engineering and the Administration building—we heard people cheer us on shouting, “Go transpinays!” It was a very heartwarming experience.

As usual, the College of Fine Arts (CFA) which is now a Hall of Famer of the parade, having won the Best Lantern prize one year after another in the past, outdid itself. CFA students made larger than life lanterns which were truly a sight to see. Below are pictures of some of the lanterns that caught my attention: a Buddhist temple, a dragon, and a giant female head/figure.

Next year, I hope more transpinays will make it to the lantern parade. It is truly something to look forward to.

Transpinays go to Congress

2009-12-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

On Monday afternoon, 14 December 2009, I along with three other STRAP members went to the House of Representatives (see pic above). The Lower House was in joint session with the Senate that day to deliberate on the President's Martial Law declaration in Maguindanao following the now infamous massacre there orchestrated by the powerful Ampatuan clan, said to be very close to the President. The Maguindanao massacre where almost 60 people were murdered in broad daylight including women, journalists and innocent passerby, is now being touted as the defining moment of the morally bankrupt rule of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA). It trumps the other scandals that rocked her administration including the corruption allegations regarding the building of the Macapagal highway, named after her father, the Hello Garci scandal, the ZTE scandal and so many others.

While we have rallied against GMA, it was not because of her that we were in Congress last Monday. We were there to have a brief audience with Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel of AKBAYAN (see pic above). In the picture from right to left are me, STRAP treasurer Joy Cruz, Cong. Baraquel, STRAP members Santy Layno and Bemz Benedito who was with her boyfriend Gary, far left.

Rep. Baraquel joined the 2009 Manila Pride March where we were formally introduced by her assistant, a long-time friend of mine, Jet. When we saw each other last Monday, she said she could not forget the sari I wore during the Pride March. I actually wore a traditional Indian dress not a sari during the Pride Parade but I chose not correct her. I told her that we were there to discuss the possibility of her helping the Filipino trans community by filing a gender recognition law similar to the one in place in the UK and elsewhere. Although STRAP joins the bigger TLBG community in the struggle against discrimination, our main legislative agenda is to ensure that transgender and transsexual Filipinos are recognized as persons under the law by recognizing their gender identity first and foremost.

Risa was about to speak in the deliberations that afternoon so she just asked us to set up another meeting with her office where STRAP could discuss this initiative with her further. We thanked her for her time and told her that we would schedule a meeting as soon as possible. I know that I may be aiming too high and I do want to be realistic. But I have hope that if STRAP does what it needs to do, that is if it continues educating people and brings its advocacy all over the country, getting a Gender Recognition Law passed in the Philippines is not too big a dream. It is always, always a possibility.

I hope it becomes reality in my lifetime.

Taking a stand on HIV/AIDS

2009-12-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

In the hustle and bustle leading up to the 2009 Manila Pride March, I almost forgot that I along with two other members of the Executive Committee (ExeCom) of Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines 2009 joined a World AIDS Day (WAD) campaign initiated by the writer and make-up artist, Anna Santos. Anna, who has taken up HIV/AIDS advocacy recently, attended the 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) in Bali, Indonesia in August.

It was in Bali that she thought up the idea of a "Dare to Bare" WAD campaign. The campaign was going to showcase photographs of various advocates wearing nothing but the iconic AIDS ribbon "to make a stand, and to hopefully change the way (people) look at HIV/AIDS" and would be carried by different publications including the Manila Times, Spot, Herword, WMN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA)and Cosmo magazine online near or around 1 December 2009.

Anna asked the TFP ExeCom to pose as a group for the shoot (see pic below). In the end (from L to R) only me, a lesbian rights advocate under the name Queer Silver and Dee Mendoza made it. The write-up on TFP for this WAD campaign, is also published in the new issue of Outrage, the only online zine for TLBG Filipinos. You can see the article here.

My personal interest in joining this campaign has to do with my growing frustration with how transgender (TG) and HIV/AIDS is framed in the Philippines. For the most part, transgender people which includes men and women have been lumped with the Males who have Sex with other Males (MSM) category in HIV/AIDS work. I have always maintained that using this framework is problematic because:
1. it disrespects trans people's identity particularly transwomen's identity because they do not see themselves as men who have sex with other men;
2. it reduces people to their sexual behavior conflating it with sexual orientation and gender identity. These concepts are not equivalent with each other.
3. it invisibilizes the particular health care needs of transgender people like access to hormones, surgeries, medical professionals who are well-versed in trans issues, etc.

Although I personally welcome the new three-year UNDP program that will provide intervention packages to vulnerable and at-risk groups including MSM and TG, I feel that the intervention packages to these two highly different groups should be separate. I hope that the NGOs working with UNDP, UNAIDS, UNFPA and other agencies working towards the Millennium Development Goal 6 of combating malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases will do their best to consult existing trans organizations like STRAP because even if STRAP does not have an HIV/AIDS program in place, we can provide insight on how HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care intersect with and impact on our being transgender. For me, a comprehensive HIV/AIDS intervention program for the trans community is one that is cognizant of the health care needs of all transpeople not only of those who are doing sex work. Therefore, such a program should be created in collaboration with the people it aims to serve, transpeople themselves. Above all such a program should put a premium on respecting gender identity, something that is sorely missing in programs that are currently in place.

Reclaiming the lucidity of our hearts

2009-12-11T01:42:00.000-08:00

Below is the speech of Sass Rogando Sasot, which she delivered on International Human Rights Day (Dec.10) at the ECOSOC Chamber of the UN headquarters in New York. Sass, who was one of the founding members of STRAP, was invited by the permanent mission of Sweden to the UN to share her thoughts on opposing grave human rights violations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). You can also listen to the speech here. I am posting her speech in full. Long live the transpinay!

Reclaiming the lucidity of our hearts
“Opposing grave human rights violations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity”
ECOSOC Chamber, United Nations Headquarters, New York
Thursday, December 10th 2009 at 1.15 p.m. – 2.45 p.m

Let me begin by expressing my warmest gratitude to the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, and to the coalition of non-government organizations defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Thank you for making this event possible and for giving us this opportunity to contribute our voices to this ongoing conversation for change. Our esteemed participants, beautiful beings, and profound expressions of this Universe, a warm, vibrant, and dignified afternoon to each and every one of you!

Burned at stake. Strangled and hanged. Raped and shot and stabbed to death. Throats slashed. Left to bleed to death. These are just some of the ways transgender people were killed in different parts of the world, in different times in the history of humanity. These are just the tip, the violent tip, of the iceberg of our suffering. I can go on and on, reciting a litany of indignity upon indignity, but my time is not enough to name all the acts of atrocious cruelty that transgender people experience. But what is the point of counting the dead bodies of our fellow human beings, of narrating how we suffer, and of opposing violence against us if we don’t challenge the root of our oppression?

The sincerity of our intention to address the human rights violations against transgender people rests upon the depth of our appreciation of human diversity and the breadth of our understanding of why transgender people suffer these indignities.

The root of our oppression is the belief that there is only one and only one way to be male or female. And this starts from our birth. Upon a quick look on our genitals, we are assigned into either male or female. This declaration is more than just a statement of what’s between our legs. It is a prescription of how we should and must live our lives. It is a dictation of what we should think about ourselves, the roles we should play, the clothes we should wear, the way we should move, and the people with whom we should have romantic or erotic relationships. But the existence of people whose identities, bodies, and experiences do not conform to gender norms is a proof that this belief is wrong.

Nonetheless, even though the truth of human diversity is so evident and clear to us, we choose to hang on to our current beliefs about gender, a belief that rejects reality and forces people to live a lie. This is the belief that leads to attacks on our physical and mental integrity, to different forms of discrimination against us, and to our social marginalization. This is the belief that led to Joan of Arc to be burned at stake because she was cross-dressing. This is the belief that motivated the rape and murder of Brandon Teena on December 31, 1993. This is the belief that led to the stabbing to death of Ebru Soykan, a prominent transgender human rights activist in Turkey, on March 10, 2009. This is the belief that led to the arrest of 67 Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia for cross-dressing in June this year. This is the belief that keeps the list of transgender people being harassed, killed, and violated growing year after year. And it is very unfortunate that our legal systems, religions, and cultures are being used to glorify, justify, and sanctify the violent expressions of this belief.

So we question: Is human life less precious than this belief? Is our right to life, to dignified existence, to liberty, and pursuit of happiness subservient to gender norms? This doesn’t need a complicated answer. You want to be born, to live, and die with dignity – so do we! You want the freedom to express the uniqueness of the life force within you – so do we! You want to live with authenticity – so do we!

Now is the time that we realize that diversity does not diminish our humanity; that respecting diversity does not make us less human; that understanding and accepting our differences do not make us cruel. And in fact, history has shown us that denying and rejecting human variability is the one that has lead us to inflict indignity upon indignity towards each other.

We are human beings of transgender experience. We are your children, your partners, your friends, your siblings, your students, your teachers, your workers, your citizens.

Let our lives delight in the same freedom of expression that you enjoy as you manifest to the outside world your unique and graceful selves.

Let us live together in the fertile ground of our common humanity for this is the ground where religion is not a motivation to hate but a way to appreciate the profound beauty and mysteries of life;

for this is the ground where laws are not tools to eliminate those who are different from us but are there to facilitate our harmonious relationship with each other;

for this is the ground where culture is not a channel to express the brutality of our limited perception but a means to express the nobility of our souls;

for this is the ground where the promise of the universality of human rights can be fulfilled!

And we will be in this ground if we let the sanity of our desires, the tenacity of our compassion, and the lucidity of our hearts reign in our lives.

Thank you!

Pride March gets mentioned on Inquirer.net

2009-12-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

Below is a news article that appeared on Inquirer.net on the day before the March. Enjoy!

Gays, lesbians to hold ‘Pride March’ in Manila
Friday, 04 December 2009 11:59 Abigail Kwok/Inquirer.net

MANILA - Members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community are set to hold a colorful parade Saturday to promote equal rights for all genders in the Philippines.

The march is also meant to protest the Commission on Election’s decision rejecting the party-list bid of gay and lesbian group “Ang Ladlad”.

This year’s theme, “We Dare. We Care,” signifies the LGBT community’s proactive stance in addressing the human rights issues confronting the sector, according to Great Ancheta, head coordinator of Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines 2009.

“We shall no longer be complacent. We dare to remind the Philippine government and the rest of society that we have an obligation under international human rights law to promote and protect the rights and well-being of all people, including LGBT Filipinos, who are being threatened by the looming economic crisis, natural disasters, armed conflict, religious intolerance and lack of political will of some government officials,” Ancheta said.

The group will hold the parade in Manila’s Malate district and assembly begins 3 p.m. at Remedios Circle. The program will start with a grand parade, which will be followed by pageants and partying, the group said.

The TFP said the march was set in time for international observance of the Human Rights week.

“The LGBT community will march to show their indignation and concern over the lack of human rights protections for LGBT Filipinos as shown in the recent decision of the Comelec not to accredit Ang Ladlad, a party-list group for LGBT Filipinos, the non-passage of the Anti-Discrimination Bill and the increasing incidence of violence and discrimination committed against them in large-scale because of their sexual orientation and gender identity,” Ancheta said.

The “Pride March” was the Filipino’s expression of solidarity with other members of the LGBT communities in Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and other parts of the world to “fight discrimination, homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia and transphobia at the national and international levels,” said Naomi Fontanos also of TFP.

The march has gained support from various human rights groups.

Dr. Sriprapha Petcharamesree, the Thai representative to the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights, said in her solidarity message, “the rights of everyone [have] to be guaranteed and the space has to be equally created without which the building of ASEAN Community could not be fully realized.”

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines also endorsed the 2009 Manila Pride March.

CHR Chair Leila De Lima in her message of solidarity said, “We laud TFP Philippines for organizing this annual Pride March, and we recognize the courage of those who choose to participate in it. The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines stands ready to offer whatever support it can, not only in relation to this event, but also in order to generally advance respect for, and the protection of, the human rights of the LGBT community.”

The 2009 Manila Pride March is organized by Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines, a network of LGBT and LGBT-supportive groups and individuals who seek to promote positive visibility for the LGBT community.

Transpinays make a splash at the 2009 Manila Pride March

2009-12-07T01:06:00.000-08:00

Last December 5 was the 2009 Manila Pride March: Parade, Program, Pageant and Party and of course STRAP was not going to miss it for the world (see our pic above). The girls who came this year include (from L to R) Joy, Phoejay, Brenda, Seanel, myself, Rio, Santy, Greta, Gia and Dee. STRAP had to make hasty preparations for it given that it was going to happen just a week after the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. Good thing that our 2009 Manila Pride March Project Leader Dee Mendoza organized STRAP's participation with the skill and quick-thinking of a seasoned marketing person and events organizer. Dee conceptualized everything from STRAP's costume and color (white), to the float (a truck) to the float design (adorned with balloons bearing STRAP's official colors of white, pink and purple and of course tarps bearing STRAP's name, a tarp in honor of Rica Paras on Pinoy Big Brother Double Up and another bearing STRAP's campaign for the year each placed on the 3 sides of the truck). I particularly liked how Dee was able to make everything lighthearted without forgetting our advocacy. Our main tarp said: Celebrate gender diversity with the transpinays! It's just lovely. I like that it's not so grim and determined.

There were grim and determined Baptist protesters (see pic above) again this year like last year's Pride March. The protesters were sternly warned to keep a safe distance from the Pride March participants so it was all good. I welcome protesters to the annual Pride outing of the TLBG community because I think they add another layer to the struggle for human rights. They remind everyone of the need to keep doing advocacy work because bigotry exists up to now.

I was not going to be fazed though in my Indian-inspired outift (see pic above). I chose to ignore them although did not stop the girls who had a verbal tussle with them while we were on board our float. The Baptist bigots kept yelling hateful chants and hurtful, insulting words. There was just no point in answering them back. Their minds have already been set. It was going to be an exercise in futility. Brenda Alegre, our STRAP resident psychologist, had a field day engaging with them though. In a private moment, she said she thought it was fun. It was like therapy for her. That made me chuckle and made me cheer her on.

After the Parade, I had to immediately change clothes because I was going to host the post-parade program (see pic above). It was another enjoyable part of Pride celebrations that day. I was particularly wowed by the presentation of a young group of guys called One Bacardi. One Bacardi is an organization of young gay and bisexual men who initiate socio-civic projects for TLBG and non-TLBG people. They are simply adorable. Their group gave a dance and song number for the Program and their energy and enthusiasm were truly infectious.

I was hungry after the Program and asked Phoejay to join me for dinner (see our pic above). We had a drink after and rushed back to the stage area for the Pageant, the 2009 Miss Queen Philippines. I was asked along with Dee to give out special awards that night so we had to stay.

The organizers also asked me to do the voice-over for the latter half of the pageant so I along with the STRAP girls hung out backstage where the contestants were. I saw the 2008 Miss Queen Philippines, Kristina Cassandra and immediately went to her side to recruit her to STRAP. She said she wanted to join STRAP. I asked Dee to take our pic (see above).

At around 2 am, the new Miss Queen Philippines, Lesly Ann Francisco was crowned. Lesly was the first runner-up last year and I was glad that she took home the crown this time. Phoejay and I had a chance to walk around Orosa, the Malate street we closed for the Pride festivities. Our major sponsors EZ Lubricating Jelly and Frenzy Condoms had two big booths in the middle of Orosa. I dropped by there to get my picture taken with the EZ Boyz (see pic above).

Over all, I was quite happy with the organizing of the 2009 Pride activities. There were bumps and missteps along the way, but because of the overwhelming participation this year of nearly 50 TLBG and non-TLBG organizations, everyone in Task Force Pride (TFP) Philippines, the official network that organizes the annual TLBG Pride March in Manila, is looking forward to the success of the 2010 Manila Pride March. I cannot wait. I hope to see you next year!

5 days to go...

2009-12-01T01:42:00.000-08:00

...before Pride (see poster below)! See you there!

Stop Transphobia sa Bahay ni Kuya!!! (Stop Transphobia in the Pinoy Big Brother House!!!)

2009-11-26T05:42:00.000-08:00

Official Statement of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP) on the recent happenings inside the Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) House involving Rica Paras
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
--Anonymous

She-man. Mumu (Ghost). Half-half. Samson and Delilah. These are just a few of the derogatory comments heard recently from PBB Double Up Housemates Rob Stumvol, Patrick Villanueva, Hermes Bautista, Mariel Sorino, Yuri Okawa and most especially Rocky Salumbides in referring to Rica Paras. We, her sisters in STRAP, join the rest of the world’s loyal audiences who watch PBB Double Up diligently in expressing our dismay, disappointment and disbelief in this blatant show of anti-transgender prejudice or transphobia. STRAP condemns to the highest degree this senseless bigotry and calls on Big Brother to intervene and put a stop to the hate happening right under his watchful eye.

Ever since Rica entered the PBB House, she has always carried herself well. She has never been a burden to her housemates but instead has proven to be an asset to them with her leadership skills, quick thinking and positive attitude. She has helped in household chores, shared her talents selflessly, related wholeheartedly with her housemates, and always contributed to the completion of tasks in the best way she could. The whole world knows that Rica has been nothing but a consistent team player, a shoulder to cry on, a loyal friend and a loving and reliable sister to all of her housemates.

We are therefore calling on all the housemates to STOP BASHING RICA for she has done nobody any harm. STOP DISRESPECTING RICA for she has only treated all of them with grace and care. STOP DISPARAGING RICA for she is simply being herself. The asinine machismo being directed at her is the same kind of misogyny that leads to violence against women. The narrow-mindedness being displayed by some of the PBB Double Up housemates is the same kind of bias that leads to abuse, insensitivity and cruelty towards others. This is totally unacceptable behavior and must be stopped at all costs.

This has to stop if we believe in the equality of all persons. This has to stop if we want to create a world where the uniqueness of all is valued. This has to stop if we want to create a better world where kindness, compassion and respect reign, a world that upholds the inherent dignity of all. STOP TRANSPHOBIA SA BAHAY NI KUYA!