This chapter examines the interactions between the bakla as an embodiment of femininity and global transgender discourse by looking at how acts of transitioning and embodiment are represented in films from the Philippines. Bakla is a...
moreThis chapter examines the interactions between the bakla as an embodiment of femininity and global transgender discourse by looking at how acts of transitioning and embodiment are represented in films from the Philippines. Bakla is a Tagalog term and gendered identity that is a hybrid of the ideas of male homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, and effeminacy. The most common bakla trope is that of a woman trapped inside a man’s body – a concept that is similar to how transgenderism is understood.
I argue that while both global trans discourse and kabaklaan (being bakla) are rooted in an interiorized disconnect between the body, mind, and spirit, kabaklaan offers an alternative discourse to this interiority that does not pathologize or medicalize this disconnect. I further argue that because many other performative aspects of kabaklaan resonate with global trans discourses, local social movements have adopted these global discourses in framing their struggle under legal Human Rights frameworks. Philippine cinema, however, offers an alternative viewpoint that does not necessarily reflect trans struggles as a human rights issue, but rather as an issue of social, particularly familial, acceptance.
The Philippines’ unique colonial history has also influenced how the bakla is conceptualized: three centuries of Spanish Catholic rule attempted, unsuccessfully, to root out practices of transvestism and homosexuality as immoral, while fifty rapid years of modernization under the American regime brought into the country discourses that pathologized both cross-dressing and same-sex sexuality. The bakla, in short, has become doubly marginalized because of the dominant religious discourse that codes him and his sexuality as immoral and psychiatric discourse that brands him as mentally abnormal. As such, it is no surprise that the word is also commonly used as a pejorative. However, the word remains perhaps the most popular and common signifier for a (male) person whose performance of gender or sexuality falls short of heteronormative ideals.
The rise of LGBT rights social movements in the country, as well as the growing popularity of the global gay lifestyle, during the 1990s has also impacted how the bakla is understood in contemporary society. For many Filipino middle class gay men in urban settings, the term remains a pejorative drawn along lines of socio-economic status and the performance of classical masculinity, as well as sexual desire directed toward other gay men, instead of the bakla’s penchant for cisgender, heterosexual men. The term bakla is more commonly associated with the lower class, effeminate ‘parlor gays’ who work in lower class salons. The term bakla is also, quite oddly, rejected by many transwomen. The Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP) coined the term ‘transpinay’ in 2008 in an attempt to localize global trans discourse. The term is a combination of the words ‘trans’ and ‘pinay’, the colloquial Tagalog word for women. Bakla, for these transwomen, connotes maleness and the inability to embody womanhood, but I also argue that there is a strong class bias around the use of the word bakla in these transgender social movements, most of which are comprised of well-educated, middle class transgender people. While the word transpinay, and conversely transpinoy for transgender men, has gained some traction within the wider trans rights movements in the country, it remains unknown and unused outside of these circles – very rarely and only very recently have the media, for example, used the word to describe transgender women in the news.
In Philippine cinema, the word transgender does not exist. Occasionally, a film will use the word ‘transsexual’, most often to refer to a person who has undergone complete gender confirmation surgery. In this chapter, I examine the idea of bodily transformation mainly through two films – the camp superhero movie, Zsazsa Zaturnnah, which is based on a comic book penned by Carlo Vergara, and Miguel/Michelle, the story of a transwoman who returns to her provincial home town in the Philippines after years of living and transitioning in the United States.
In Zsazsa Zaturnnah, I examine the transformation of Ada, a bakla salon worker, into Zsazsa, a cisgender female superhero who is forced to battle a group of feminist aliens in an attempt to thwart their goal of eliminating all male forms from the universe. I see this transformation as a realization of the bakla’s ultimate dream – to embody womanhood. Ada’s transformation, however, causes a disconnect between Ada’s true self and his heroic alter ego. Zsazsa is portrayed as a temporary embodiment of female power that ultimately fails to defeat the colonialist radical feminist agenda. She is forced to transform back into Ada in order to defeat the aliens. I argue that this shows how the bakla challenges toxic feminism, which aims to exclude both transgender women and cisgender (gay) men from realms of power. Ada also challenges the privileges of the “fully transitioned” transgender woman by reclaiming his male anatomy and still being able to remain a feminine figure.
Miguel/Michelle follows the struggles of Michelle, a returned Overseas Filipino Worker, who has completed her transition abroad and has come home to seek her family’s acceptance. I read the film alongside transgender discourse in academia and activism, and argue that while these discourses push for the legal rights of trans people, in the Philippines, trans rights are centered around ideas of social acceptance and familial bond.
