After Eon...
Dear Mr. Isagani Cruz
The first time I read your article, my first reaction was "duh." Just three letters your honor. For someone who once wrote a revelation about the prevailing homosexual culture in our jails, I find it ironic that you are the same person who would raise a concern about the prevailing homosexual trends our society is enjoying nowadays.
I understand that you came from a generation where people like us do not exist. You see us as subhumans, people who everyone considers an abomination in the eyes of God. How many men and women have wasted their entire lifetime hiding inside their closets in order to protect their secret identities from a society who would surely condemn them to hell? How many young boys were molested by their elders, who actually knew their preference, but because of such repressive society you were living in, focused their carnal attention to the defenseless youth around them?
I want you to know that most of these victims became the next generation of homosexuals you are seeing today.
Ten years ago, all the queer guys I knew were effeminates or what we now call parloristas. They are your friendly neighborhood beauticians, cooks, yayas - and all those fine, ladylike men who are the typical escorts and entourage of some prima donna woman parading herself in the entire baranggay going from house to house, visiting funerals, birthday parties and filling up padasal (prayer services) organized in the community. These gays were considered far more reliable to women than their brothers, fathers and husbands that in the end, these soft men were treated like ladies and girls as well.
When I was a kid, there was this young boy with the same age as me. Everyone in the neighborhood calls him Strawberry. By all accounts, he was the only gay guy in our part of the baranggay. He was one of my first buddies when I started exploring the environment beyond the gates of my home and his warmth and accomodation helped me establish friendships with the other more "macho" boys in our community.
As far as I can remember, he mingled with girls while enduring snide remarks and mockery from every old person who knows him. His mom would call him Edwina as his dad sits quietly in one corner regretful and disappointed with his "bunso's" girly actions.
I know that his story is just one of the countless stories of young effeminates and parloristas of my generation. Their kind took all the brunt of mockery and insults with pride and patience long enough for us - masculines to realize that there's no point in hiding inside our closets forever. With the advancement of the internet, we found our own voice.
In your columm, I had an idea that your objections are directed against the most obvious and campy-like among us. You were alarmed by the growing number of gays coming out of their closets in schools and other academic institutions. You have also suspected how these queers in the media directly influences the Filipino culture with the inclusion of their subculture in the national psyche.
Well your honor, if I tell you the truth, your observations are far less substantial than what is in reality. If you think of the gay population as a "compromise between the strong and the weak," what would you say then to the countless engineers, educators, doctors, nurses, soldiers, policemen, computer programmers, call center agents, farmers, fishermen, vehicle drivers, government and NGO workers and leaders who are actually gay themselves yet they hold this nation together. How can you ignore the powerful Pink Peso that fuels our service-based economy?
How unfortunate that someone supposed to be as wise and intelligent as you failed to see the bigger picture of homosexuals in the country. How baseless and alarming your concerns are, when in fact, all over the progressive world, the gay population whom you call mere "sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues" are the ones leading to make changes in the global society for good? I sincerely wish that you and those people who think like you live long enough to see an openly gay leader run a country effectively and efficiently which no straight guy could do .
Lastly, Conrado De Quiros should have included you in his lists of people who doesn't look back in the past in order to see an insightful future: Long before your kind took the light from us, we were already generals and leaders of the most liberal civilizations this world has ever seen. Nobody could take that truth away from us anymore... Not you, and not those self-righteous bigots who continue to condemm us to burn in hell.
You are destined to obscurity your honor. Our time is just starting.
- Pulsar, The Phanksmaster.
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Separate Opinion : ‘Don we now our gay apparel’By Isagani Cruz
Columnist
Inquirer
Posted date:
August 12, 2006
HOMOSEXUALS before were mocked and derided, but now they are regarded with new-found respect and, in many cases, even treated as celebrities. Only recently, the more impressionable among our people wildly welcomed a group of entertainers whose main proud advertisement was that they were “queer.” It seems that the present society has developed a new sense of values that have rejected our religious people’s traditional ideas of propriety and morality on the pretext of being “modern” and “broad-minded.”
The observations I will here make against homosexuals in general do not include the members of their group who have conducted themselves decorously, with proper regard not only for their own persons but also for the gay population in general. A number of our local couturiers, to take but one example, are less than manly but they have behaved in a reserved and discreet manner unlike the vulgar members of the gay community who have degraded and scandalized it. I offer abject apologies to those blameless people I may unintentionally include in my not inclusive criticisms. They have my admiration and respect.
The change in the popular attitude toward homosexuals is not particular to the Philippines. It has become an international trend even in the so-called sophisticated regions with more liberal concepts than in our comparatively conservative society. Gay marriages have been legally recognized in a number of European countries and in some parts of the United States. Queer people — that’s the sarcastic term for them — have come out of the closet where before they carefully concealed their condition. The permissive belief now is that homosexuals belong to a separate third sex with equal rights as male and female persons instead of just an illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there.
When I was studying in the Legarda Elementary School in Manila during the last 1930s, the big student population had only one, just one, homosexual. His name was Jose but we all called him Josefa. He was a quiet and friendly boy whom everybody liked to josh but not offensively. In the whole district of Sampaloc where I lived, there was only one homosexual who roamed the streets peddling “kalamay” and “puto” and other treats for snacks. He provided diversion to his genial customers and did not mind their familiar amiable teasing. I think he actually enjoyed being a “binabae” [effeminate].
The change came, I think, when an association of homos dirtied the beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo by parading their kind as the “sagalas” instead of the comely young maidens who should have been chosen to grace the procession. Instead of being outraged by the blasphemy, the watchers were amused and, I suppose, indirectly encouraged the fairies to project themselves. It must have been then that they realized that they were what they were, whether they liked it or not, and that the time for hiding their condition was over.
Now homosexuals are everywhere, coming at first in timorous and eventually alarming and audacious number. Beauty salons now are served mostly by gay attendants including effeminate bearded hairdressers to whom male barbers have lost many of their macho customers. Local shows have their share of “siyoke” [gay men], including actors like the one rejected by a beautiful wife in favor of a more masculine if less handsome partner. And, of course, there are lady-like directors who are probably the reason why every movie and TV drama must have the off-color “bading” [gay] or two to cheapen the proceedings.
And the schools are now fertile ground for the gay invasion.
Walking along the University belt one day, I passed by a group of boys chattering among themselves, with one of them exclaiming seriously, “Aalis na ako. Magpapasuso pa ako!” [“I’m leaving. I still have to breastfeed!”] That pansy would have been mauled in the school where my five sons (all machos) studied during the ’70s when all the students were certifiably masculine. Now many of its pupils are gay, and I don’t mean happy. I suppose they have been influenced by such shows as “Brokeback Mountain,” our own “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” (both of which won awards), “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and that talk program of Ellen Degeneres, an admitted lesbian.
Is our population getting to be predominantly pansy? Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues? Let us be warned against the gay population, which is per se a compromise between the strong and the weak and therefore only somewhat and not the absolute of either of the two qualities. Be alert lest the Philippine flag be made of delicate lace and adorned with embroidered frills.
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