11th Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR)

This year, we will partner with the first-ever TLBG student group in the University of the Philippines (UP) system, UP Babaylan to commemorate the International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) TDOR is meant to honor people who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. It began a decade ago after the death of Rita Hester who was brutally murdered in November 1998. Hester’s death resulted in the creation of the Remembering Our Dead website and a candlelight vigil in 1999. Henceforth, transgender people killed due to hatred are honored in annual TDOR activities worldwide.

We are holding TDOR week in UP and our activities are as follows:
November 24 - 27, 2009, UP Diliman Campus, Quezon City

Nov. 24 (Tue.)
10:00 AM, TDOR Exhibit Opening | Palma Hall Lobby (Exhibit runs until the 27th)

Nov. 27 (Fri.)
2:30 - 5:00 PM, TRANSCEND: Stories and Struggles of Transpeople in the Philippines (Forum) | UP Diliman Gender Office, Benton Hall

6:00 PM, Candle-lighting Ceremony | Palma Hall Lobby

We hope that you can join us in all these activities. We will really appreciate it. To participate or for inquiries, contact the following: mobile (0905.352.0943) and email (mushy.mae@gmail.com). Thank you. See you there!

The Same, But Different

The Same, But Different is the title of a documentary by Lisa Marie Evans, which takes a look at the lives of four trans people from the American Midwest. Yesterday, Tuesday, 22 September 2009,it was shown at the UP Diliman Gender Office (UPDGO) as the closing activity of the 17th year anniversary celebrations of the first LGBT student organization in the UP System, UP Babaylan. The current chair of UP Babaylan, Ms. Hender Gercio invited me to come see the movie and it was a treat to meet the film maker who was also there. The three of us took a picture together after the movie ended (see pic above). The film showing was attended by students, staff of the UPDGO, and members of UP Babaylan.

The documentary itself is ordinary but it is the people in it that make it extraordinary. The movie features Jaron, a trans man who transitioned in his 40s. After identifying for a long time as a lesbian, he finally reconciles with the fact that he has always felt male. The same is true with Claven who also lived life as a lesbian before taking male hormones to masculinize himself. Claven is a self-identified fundamentalist Christian who is shown later in the film to have detransitioned or gone back to presenting as female ultimately following her religious beliefs. Then there is Pooch or Andrea, a Social Science professor, who presents as male on days marked blue and female on days marked pink in the calendar by his/her girlfriend. The last character is Nicole, a transsexual woman who is divorced from her wife but maintains a close relationship with their children.

All four people show the audience a slice of life as lived by a person of transgender experience. Jaron talks about his personal life, the difficulty of dating women and coming out to his parents. Claven discusses his religious leanings and his difficulty finding a church that would accept him. Pooch or Andrea talks about relationship, work, and being able to dress up as both a man and a woman. Nicole, on the other hand, begins by talking about how much she has spent on McDonald's working as a trucker, her work as a comic, and her relationship with her kids. All four allow the audience an intimate peak into the real lives they are living right in the heart of Middle America. The film shows us that as human beings with hopes, desires, aspirations and dreams, we are all different but ultimately the same. Our commonality is our humanity.

After the screening, Lisa gave out DVDs to audience members who mustered the courage to ask questions. I think she gave away around 5 DVDs in all. We also took more pictures together (see our pic below). After, it was time to say goodbye. Lisa will go to a place outside Manila next and on Saturday will fly back home to the US. It was truly a pleasure meeting her. I wish her all the best in her future artistic endeavors.

August highlights

I just realized, based on my experience last month, that I am an overly-scheduled person. On top of work, I am also working on my Master's thesis at the University of the Philippines, attending Spanish classes every Saturday, running three times a week and going to the gym for the same number of days. Add to these doing advocacy work for the LGBT community. My life will probably look more hectic compared to the average person. No matter, I like it this way. I enjoy being busy and I hate being idle although I do feel sometimes that there are just too many things to do in so little time.

Last month alone I was in several activities involving the LGBT community. First I was a speaker at the Alternative Classroom Learning Experience (ACLE) forum on coming out (see pic above) of the University of the Philippines (UP) Babaylan, an LGBT students rights advocacy group in the UP system. I shared my coming out experience with the mainly student audience. I told them that in the past because I did not know any better and nobody told me otherwise, I identified and came out as gay to my family first. Later on as I tried to make sense of my experience however, I realized that even if I had a sexual preference for men, I saw myself largely as a woman. That's when I realized that I was not a gay man but a transsexual woman. Clarifying the difference required me to separate sexual orientation from gender identity and researching transgenderism and its attendant issues. At any rate, the experience required me to come out once again. This time, I proudly declared myself a Filipina of transgender experience.

Next I was invited to a meeting with the publisher and writers of Ketchup, the only remaining LGBT-oriented magazine on print in the Philippines. The people behind Ketchup wanted to meet with LGBT leaders to explore possible tie-ups in the future. They asked various organizations to attend a lunch at Dencio's Restaurant, located near the compound of a major TV network here, ABS-CBN to ask for support and any other kind of help we could extend them given the financial crisis and Ketchup's relative unfamiliarity in the community. I told them that I was willing to do my part and asked them to a meet-and-greet meeting with members of STRAP so that they could learn more about the experiences of trans-identified Filipino women. At the meeting was Hender Gercio, also a member of STRAP and the current chair of UP Babaylan (see pic below).



Last weekend, I flew to Cagayan De Oro (CDO) City which is also known as the City of Golden Friendship. To the younger set though it is just CDO. I was there to meet with an exclusively lesbian organization called People Like Us (PLUS) CDO (see pic below). Members of PLUS CDO met me at the airport where I gave them a tarp for Ang Ladlad, the national organization of LGBT Filipinos. PLUS CDO individual members have signed up to become members of Ang Ladlad and they assured me that they would do their best to spread the word about Ang Ladlad in their city. Already they have reached out to gay and transgender residents of CDO to talk about Ang Ladlad. Before I left back for Manila, they proposed a possible joint project between Ang Ladlad and PLUS CDO involving the gay and transgender communities there which so far have no organized groups yet. I am very excited about this future prospect.



That same day, members of the Gays, Bisexuals & Transgenders United for Peace & Solidarity (GUPS), an organized group in Iligan City, which is two hours away from CDO, picked me up to bring me to Iligan that night. GUPS founder, Bong Enriquez, a long-time member of Ang Ladlad, has been inviting Ang Ladlad officers to visit GUPS in Lanao Del Norte. GUPS members number close to a hundred and many of them are trans and so Bong was happy to have me in Iligan for the weekend. I went there to orient GUPS members on Ang Ladlad, give a Trans 101 lecture and talk about the Yogyakarta Principles (YyP). Before the day ended, all of the almost 20 members of GUPS who were there signed up to be part of Ang Ladlad (see pic below).



On Sunday, Bong and his partner JayR brought me back to CDO where they were having a staff training for their office. Members of PLUS CDO then fetched me at a mall to bring me to the house of their president, Norma Adecer, for lunch. It was a hearty meal of sweet and sour fish and shrimp. Over lunch the PLUS CDO members told me about their lives in CDO, their experience organizing in their city and their plans for the future. Like the people in Iligan, they touched my heart with their sincerity and their genuine desire for things to change for the better for them and for the generations to come. I hope that we will have a working relationship that will last a long time. After lunch, they graciously offered to take me back to the airport (see pic below) using Norma's amazing yellow jeep and I found it really sweet and touching. I will never forget the kindness, generosity and hospitality of the people in Iligan and CDO. They are truly a class of their own and I cannot wait to work with them and see them again soon.

Out is in!

When I was in college at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman, one of the exciting things to look forward to every semester was the Alternative Classroom Learning Experience (ACLE). The ACLE was conceptualized by the University Student Council (USC) as a respite from the tedium of students' regular classes. It started out as a yearly activity which later became a semestral one. Every semester, the USC coordinates with different student organizations that volunteer to hold various fora on topics of their choice. The idea is for each organization (or in students' speak, org) to exercise as much freedom as possible and talk about issues that are not the usual fodder for classroom discussion. The best-selling ones would usually be around sexuality, religion, and politics. Of course, there is more to choose from than that.

Classes are suspended during the ACLE; but students who have classes on the day in which it falls are required by their teachers to attend an ACLE session. There, the students get an attendance slip which they need to present back to their professors. Each time the ACLE is held, the USC releases a list of organizations, the topics they will deal with and the venue of the forum, which are usually classrooms all around the UP campus. The orgs try to outdo each other in publicizing their ACLE activity by releasing catchy fliers and posters and going around or online to advertise. They also try to make things interesting by inviting speakers that catch students' fancy: celebrities, politicians and other high-profile personalities from different fields and professions.

This first semester, UP Babaylan, the first LGBT students' organization in the UP system, has invited me to be one of the speakers in their ACLE forum on coming out entitled Out Is In (see poster above). The poster uses the logo of a popular motel chain and has a line in Filipino that says "There are no secrets that won't come out." It's a really good poster and I'm sure it will be an equally enjoyable session. The forum will be held on Thursday, August 20 and I hope you can come and join me on that day. Along with a gay man, a lesbian woman and a bisexual speaker, I have been given 15-20 minutes to talk about being out and coming out from a trans perspective. I cannot wait to be among UP students that day. UP students, aside from being the best of their generation, are also know for being outspoken, irreverent and opinionated; so I am sure that this Thursday's talk will be an unforgettable experience.

Warning to all: Be very very careful

I just read from someone's email in a community mailing group that it seems that the "serial killer" who has been targeting gay men and who has not yet been apprehended by police has struck again. Around three to four years ago, if I'm not mistaken, several gay men were found dead via multiple stab wounds in their apartments around the Quezon City area. The victims included a fashion designer, TV producer, hair stylist and many others. There were rumors that have remained unconfirmed until now that one of the killer's victims was, in fact, a priest.

The serial killer angle came to a head when one of the alleged victims' stories was solved. That person was someone I knew personally: Larry Estandarte. Larry was one of the founding members of the University of the Philippines (UP) Babaylan, the first LGBT students' organization in the UP system. By the time I became a member of UP Babaylan, Larry was already one of our alumni members and had long been working as a researcher for ABS-CBN, a major TV network in the Philippines. One time, a good friend of mine Telly, also a Babaylan member, asked me to accompany him to Larry's house near the UP campus. It was not my first time to meet Larry as we had met in Babaylan activities in the past; but it was the first time we had a chance to sit down and chat.

With all due respect, I'd like to refer to Larry in the feminine. I knew that Larry never identified herself out and out as a woman but I was aware that she was taking female hormones to feminize herself. She wore her hair long, behaved in a very feminine way, had a girlish voice and dressed up en femme at home and at work. Everybody knew her as Larry though and I guess that she just wanted to retain her name.

My first impression of Larry was that she was, physically, very soft and frail. She was also very accommodating and was genuinely interested in what I had to say. She kept asking me questions that ranged from my relationship status to my family to my job. I found it really sweet. We were sitting outside the house where she was renting a room and she was wearing very skimpy shorts and a baby t-shirt at that time. I remarked at how pretty she was and how fair her skin was. She thanked me for my compliments. That was more than 10 or so years ago and the last time I'd ever see her. The next time I heard of her was in the news in August 2005 when her decomposing body was found in her room, in the same place we visited her a decade or so back. The neighbors discovered her body because of the smell. When the police came, they saw Larry's body on the floor with her arms up. She had stab wounds on her palms and arms. That meant she tried to shield herself from her attackers using her hands.

The police did their work fortunately and caught Larry's killers. It was a group of young men in Larry's neighborhood. The police captured them through Larry's missing cellphone. One of the cops investigating the case or at least someone ordered by the police pretended to be a random mobile phone user who just happened to send Larry's number a message. The person using Larry's missing phone or SIM card responded. A friendly relationship began via SMS. When the guy asked to meet later, the police showed up and arrested him. Later, the guy would tell the police what happened to Larry that night and who was responsible. Larry's case was solved. It demonstrated that Larry's case was an isolated incident and raised doubts on the existence of a serial killer.

UP Babaylan honored Larry's death by publishing a literary folio, which included one of my short, long-forgotten poems that I had written in an old log book back in college. Back in the day, if you found yourself hanging around the org kiosk at the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) building, you could while the time away by doodling, writing, and drawing on the Babaylan log book. The folio editor decided to include something I had written in one of the old log books for that special tribute to Larry. I am very thankful for that.

After Larry's case, the serial killer was not heard from again until recently. This week, another gay man was found in his apartment dead from multiple stab wounds. His name was Winton Lou Ynion. He was a writer and a teacher at De La Salle University. I hope the police do everything in their power to arrest Winton's murderer. It can be that serial killer from four years ago or it can also be an impostor. Either way, someone's son, best friend, boy friend, cousin, mentor, favorite teacher, etc. is now gone.

I am sure this recent case will be used to argue for hate crimes legislation in the Philippines. I am all for it as long as the debates do not invisibilize trans people and due accommodation is made to punish crimes motivated by prejudice based on actual or perceived gender and/or gender identity and expression. In the mean time, I urge everyone to choose who you let into your house. Sexual needs can make people reckless but with your life potentially on the line, it does not hurt to be very very careful.