Filipinos & Filipino Diaspora
Since America occupied the Philippines during the years of 1898 to 1946, migration has been known to have existed initially through government–sponsored educational grants but eventually for laborers. Poor working conditions for migrant workers led to the branching out of more locations from Hawaii to the U.S. west coast in particular. When nationality quotas in the American immigration law were lifted, more healthcare workers were able to migrate and fill demands in U.S. health sectors. Family-based migration is the most preferred form among Filipinos, and the sentiment of a “family” has always been prominent among Filipino migrant workers, the term balikbayan symbolizing their connection with their home country and their memories of said country mainly coming from actively being part of a Filipino family. Filipino immigrants tend to assimilate with fellow Filipinos to emulate familial and communal dynamics they yearn from their home country. Religion is also a common way for diasporic groups to bind together, Filipino diaspora being no exception (Pacoma, 2020).
Queer Identities in the Philippines
LGBTQ+ Filipinos have always communed into spaces for themselves, in order to survive, both offline within the country and online. Noted examples are gay bars in Malate and Metro Manila. However, lockdown was established during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, LGBTQ+ spaces started shifting to online. However, even years before, LGBTQ+ Filipinos have always used online spaces to explore and discuss queerness with more freedom due to the anonymity that came with the internet (Tan, 2023).
The queer culture in the Philippines is not a recent development, as even before the arrival of Spanish colonists, pre-colonial culture in the region today known as the Philippines valued a human identity that went beyond conventional gender roles. Babaylans, who were cultural leaders in pre-colonial societies, were believed to embody both masculine and feminine energies, which is also reflected in that males, females, and intersex can take up these positions. A deity pre-colonial Filipinos believed in, Ikapati, also reflected this culture, having both male and female genitalia that correlates it to the cyclical nature of fertility and bountiful harvests. It is also important to note that Filipino is a very gender-neutral language. Gender-specific pronouns used to refer exclusively to men or women do not exist, instead, terms like siya, or sila, may refer to anyone. Ancient Filipinos did not necessarily categorize individuals as strictly male or female, instead acknowledging the balance between the two energies. (Villanueva, 2024)
From a study titled “Gay Man or Transwoman: A Metaethical Discourse on Gender and Sexuality”, based on a source dated 2004 but still relied on by many (Garcia), the perception of queerness specifically homosexuality in the Philippines is more on tolerating than full on accepting. As mentioned earlier, despite the current view on LGBTQ+ Filipinos, the culture was prominent even in pre-colonial times, that when Spaniards had arrived they found themselves intimidated by how gender-crossing pre-colonial Filipinos had power and status, even properly recognized as their preferred identities in their communities. This then changed during Spanish colonization as, in intersectional fashion, women’s loss of status and rights had changed the perception of queer pre-colonial Filipinos, to the point that the original term of bayoguin meaning effeminate man in Tagalog-speaking regions were degraded into the now known term bakla (Soberano, 2022).
Bakla is translated into English with multiple meanings and connotations. Some refer to sexuality, and others to gender identity. In Filipino usage, the term usually refers to both concepts. The typical image of Bakla is a flamboyant man with effeminate mannerisms. As stated previously, queerness has been present in Filipino culture since pre-colonial times. In the 16th century, some documents mentioned the term Asog, meaning men were essentially treated the same way as women – dressing femininely, having sexual relations with men, and marrying men. In the current time, bakla still is used with negative connotations, though there are efforts to reclaim the slur for those who identify with bakla and its derivatives (Salazar, 2022).
Between Race and Identity
LGBTQ+ Asian Americans may face “intersectional invisibility” where their other minority identities aren’t recognized in the respective communities they’re in (Shen et. al., 2023). Many LGBTQ+ Asian Americans experience stress and depression due to many factors that “other” them such as conflicting cultural values, religion, and the struggle that come with assimilating after migration, and their alienation from western LGBTQ+ spaces along with judgment from their families keep them from accessing proper mental health resources (Esquivel, 2023).
In specific cases, LGBTQ+ Japanese migrants stay in the U.S. as a way of queer liberation, to be able to live freely as their identities without judgment from family, friends, and work associates from their home country. They also do so to escape from compulsory heterosexuality and a patriarchal society prominent in their home country. However, they struggle as they face discrimination for being Japanese and Asian in forms of economic disparity, orientalism, etc. From this, their image of a romanticized, metropolitan queer lifestyle in the west being challenged. They have also felt unfit in collectivist queer communities in Japan (Hanafusa, 2020).
Conflict with Filipino counterparts
Family relationships served as a key factor to the LGBTQ+ individuals’ feelings towards their home country– members of immigrant families that were not accepted by their kin due to their sexuality found it hard to connect with their heritage. Some individuals report having to keep their sexuality discrete due to their parents warning them that “no one from their country of origin would understand your sexuality.” They reported that they worried about their physical safety being threatened. (Eleazar, A. S., 2022).
Because of heavily religious ties, LGBTQ+ Filipinos tend to struggle with self-acceptance due to discriminatory practices and lack of support Filipino church members tend to perpetuate. More traditional Filipinos are shown to be resistant in changing their views toward LGBTQ+ members, even going so far as to exclude them from Filipino communities and activities. It also ends up in changing their perception of religion, leading them to question their faith and religious identity in relation to their cultural identity (Libiran, 2024).
Filipino diaspora tend to be divided in their opinions regarding LGBTQ+ culture in the Philippines, each individual having different personal reasons. Certain terminology can be considered limiting, un-inclusive, and have negative connotations regardless of their reclamation. However they are also considered valid “entry points” for LGBTQ+ Filipinos in exploring their identities, along with having cultural nuances that capture LGBTQ+ Filipinos’ experiences differently from white LGBTQ+ representation (Pitargue, 2021).
There is also theorization of the Filipino diaspora internalizing settler colonialism in a way that disregards indigenous Filipino culture, LGBTQ+ or not, due to the heteronormativity in Philippine society, painting the western spaces in a more progressive and liberating light. The reductive practice of homogenizing the usual racial nuances within Filipino queerness, the usage of “x” in “Filipinx” as the diaspora’s way of wanting to convey inclusivity and openness, and the want for idealized queerness that might clash with queer indigenous ideas in their home country are all observed (Bolton, 2021).
Conflict with white and western counterparts
Whiteness is implicitly known as the face of queerness. Within an LGBTQ+ circle in Canada, Asian members of the community experienced being excluded and rejected. It was observed that western perspectives on queerness are more positioned as superior. Racism is denied through their censoring of the racial aspects queer Asians try to share about their experiences, the concepts of intersectionality being distanced from and considered impolite to talk about, which inadvertently prevents queer Asians from fully participating (Lee, 2023).
Even in the Caribbean region, located right underneath the United States, the Western-centric or white-centric concepts of queerness differ considerably from the concepts of queerness from a person of color – which has traces of the region’s multiethnic culture embedded into it. The difference in concept especially comes up in Western-centric activism, the values that should be targeted, for example, the tremendously patriarchal culture in the Caribbean or the concept of “machismo.” Many white people in the queer community still see non-western regions as “uncivilized” due to their lack of rights which feeds into an imperialist mindset – all while ignoring the long history of queerphobia in Western societies. This mindset does not mesh well with non-western countries, especially those with past experiences in colonialism (Browne, 2024).
In Toronto, queer South Asian women face racial microaggressions from LGBTQ+ spaces due to not assimilating to western standards of queerness and do not fit their image of a queer woman, erasing the cultural ties these women have (Patel, 2019). Within queer South Asian diaspora, who experience feelings of undesirability due to preconceived notions of their ethnicity, they have their own readings and customs of queerness that aren’t typically seen as such, considered “non-normative genders and sexualities”, but are proposed as alternatives to the usual western/white practices. There is also a commonly observed theme of queer South Asian diaspora of finding a “home”, a physical and shared space due to their displacement from their many different identities (Khubchandani, 2019).
In an earlier mentioned study by Hanafusa (2020), sentiments such as “I can’t cut myself off from family” and “I didn’t grow up in individualism, but in collectivism” were recorded from queer Japanese migrants when describing their conflict in choosing between staying in the U.S. or moving back to their home country to stay with their queerphobic family. As LGBTQ+ Asians retreat to western spaces for freedom of their identities, they struggle with having their difficulties seen and understood by the people of those spaces.