An Open Letter of a Transgender Woman in the Philippines
Below is an open letter of Sass Rogando Sassot, a transgender woman, who experienced discrimination at one bar in Makati.
PEOPLE LIKE US
An Open Letter of a Transgender Woman in the Philippines
[25 May 2008 / Sunday / 6.04 AM to 6.45 AM]No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt
My friends and I have been made to feel inferior approximately five hours before I wrote this letter. I’d like to sweep this incident under the proverbial rug but there is no more space to accommodate it.
On the 24th of May 2008, my friends and I were celebrating the anniversary of our organization the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines (STRAP), the first transsexual women’s support group and transgender rights advocacy organization in the Philippines. We settled to celebrate it in Ice Vodka Bar, located in Greenbelt 3, 3rd level Ayala Center, Makati City, Metro Manila. It was my first time in that bar. Two in our group have been there before and they had nothing bad to say about it.
There were five of us. I was leading the way. The bouncer stopped us. I asked why. His reason was we were dressed “inappropriately”. We were rather dressed decently, tastefully, and most importantly just like any other human being who lives her life as female 24 hours a day.
I asked for the manager. The bouncer was nice enough to let me in. The manager, Ms Belle Castro, accommodated me. I don’t know if I spelled her name right. I asked for a business card but she had none available. Her telling feature though was her braced teeth.
I Kell You!
I’m sure many of you have already heard this audio file of this call made by an irate customer to a local helpdesk. It’s so hilarious that I played it on loop in my media player.
And since I am so fond of transcribing stuff, I transcribed the whole conversation and turned it into a video.
Why “I Kell You?” Watch the video (with an I Kell You transcript) to find out. Continue Reading>>>
Ms Gay Philippines 2008
When I was a young boy, I was so scared of trannies. I don’t know why but I really was. However, over the years, I have learned to understand them in the same why that I understand my sexuality. And now, I don’t just understand them, I appreciate them and am proud of them.
One of the reasons why I’m proud of them is gay beauty pageants. It is quite sad that many people automatically think of question and answer boo-boos whenever the term “gay beauty pageant” is mentioned. However, what I’ve noticed is that our transsexual and/transvestite sistahs who join beauty pageants are getting more and more intelligent. All the more reason to be proud of the T in LGBT!
George, one of our readers from England, asked us if we were gonna cover the Miss Gay Philippines 2008 pageant. Ironically, I did not anything about the pageant had George not sent me an email about it. So I did some research online but most of the search results pointed to websites of gay beauty pageant boo-boos.
Apparently, the contest Miss Gay Philippines is on its 29th Continue Reading this entry– »
Out Magazine’s Power 50 Gays and Lesbians
Out Magazine has just released their list of 50 most powerful gays and lesbians in the United States.
We are fascinated by power, how people get it, wield it, and lose it. To create our second list, we restricted our candidates to those who are gay and living and working primarily in North America—sorry again, Elton. The rankings were determined by scoring each candidate on these criteria: (1) political clout; (2) pop-cultural resonance; (3) individual wealth; and (4) current personal profile. – Out Magazine
While we don’t know many of those in the list, it is quite interesting to see some familiar names. (Full list after the jump) Need I say more?
Altar Boyz
They’re finally here! Altar Boyz, the world-famous Christian Boy Band, is in town and will be playing on all weekends of April! You read that right, Matthew, Mark, John, Luke, and Abraham are in Manila to sing sweet serenades, flirt, and bust out jaw dropping hip hop moves – all while praising the Lord! And, they’re all set to rock out masses of all denominations right here in Manila.
The Altar Boyz, in case you’re wondering, is a Continue Reading this entry – »
Anti-Discrimination: A Bill in the 14th Congress
Last week, I received an inquiry (through my YouTube channel) about gay marriage or any gay news coming from the Philippines. They are civil partners (one is Filipino) who live in Northern Ireland.
Here is their original message:
Hi There AJ
This is Ian and Roel in North East England(We live near Newcastle upon Tyne) I was actually looking through google for info on Gay News in the Philippines, Roel is from Las Pinas and we wanted to get more upto date news on whats going on regarding “Gay Marriage” and all that other legal stuff.. and your website might be just the ticket!
So many sites are either out of date or diffrcult to upload through po-ups or whatever..
Hope that you might be able to help?
Many Thanks
Ian & Roel (Civil Partners)
I was overwhelmed with the message and I’d like to thank Ian and Roel for trusting me to give them information about “Gay Marriage”. Everyday, I read about updates and news about gay marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnership laws being enacted in other parts of the world through various gay news feeds. However, that doesn’t make me an authority on gay marriage. So the views that you will see in the next block quote are mine alone and should not be construed as the view of all gay men in the Philippines.
Here’s my reply: Continue Reading this entry – »
Online Petition For Janina?
It seems like the controversial Binibining Pilipinas World 2008 Janina San Miguel will never hear the end of it. Janina Miller San Miguel, a broadcast communication student at the University of the East, has received countless criticisms because of her answer in the semi-finals interview portion (click here to read full transcript of Janina’s answer and here for the transcript of the answers of the other finalists). She has been called names and even branded as the next Melanie Marquez – the country’s reigning queen of malapropisms. And based on interviews with her after the pageant, it seems like she will not budge. Janina seems like a strong woman and she probably is hell-bent on proving her detractors wrong and prove to the world that she is tough. After all, she is one of the tough ten!
Many Filipinos from all over the world were dismayed with the decision and are blaming the judges and the Binibining Pilipinas Charities for allowing contestants with poor communication skills to enter the contest. Some also blame (though only partly) the country’s educational system for producing students that are very poor in English. Others argue that she is a Filipina and there’s nothing wrong with speaking English with incorrect grammar. Some also suggest that we send an interpreter with her to the Miss World competiton (after all, other countries send interpreters too!).Over at the Binibining Pilipinas official website, a Press Release >>> Continue Reading this entry >>>
Tama Na Kay Janina, Yung Ibang TAF Ten Naman!
By now you all should have seen the video (and its numerous remixes) of the interview answer of Binibining Pilipinas World 2008 Janina San Miguel. Her answer in the Q&A segment of the show has made her an international household name. But what you might have missed out on are the answers of the other candidates in the TAF TEN! Watching the videos of the other contestants answering the judges questions has made me think that these girls may just have proven beauty pageant detractors that these contests are not really all about brains.
We have to understand that these girls, even though they are not as viral as Janina has become, have to be given the limelight too. Because after all, they are also important persons in my life! Thank you!
So here are the transcripts and the videos of the answers of some of the finalists:
Q&A Transcript: Binibining Pilipinas World 2008
I’m sure many of you have seen clips of this on YouTube or watched the coronation night of Binibing Pilipinas 2008 on television. And I’m sure that many of you fell off your seats either in laughter, disappointment, frustration, or a combination of the three.
Earlier, I shared my two cents’ worth on what’s wrong with Binibini so I will no longer bore you with rants about the whole joke that the pageant has become. Instead, I’ll share with you the transcript of the answer of contestant number 15, Janina San Miguel, to judge Vivian Tan’s question in the Top Ten interview portion.
Janina eventually went home with the Binibining Pilipinas World 2008 title and will represent the country in the Miss World pageants sometime in the last quarter of this year. The challenge now is for the Binibining Pilipinas Charities to coach her on her language skills. They have at least six months to do that. Continue Reading this entry »
Bakla’s Video Blogs
In 2006, I started a series of video blogs about my silly and boring life on my personal blog. It started out well but didn’t end. Yes, it didn’t end since like the Writers’ Guild of America, my brain went on strike. I left it hanging and all my two avid viewers were eagerly awaiting for a fourth episode (I stopped after the third).
Fast forward to the year 2007 when I started Bakla Ako, May Reklamo? and ventured into so many things aside from plain blogging. I did podcasts, created some videos, and well, new blogs.
Sometime last year, I launched the Bakla Goes Live! campaign with a bang but didn’t really do a follow-through. I did a collaboration with the premiere video blogger in the country today — Coy Caballes aka Cokskiblue. The only follow-up video I made was the Hot Filipina video, which was an entry to the Filipina Writing Project. Oh and yeah, that Vlogging Memoirs of a Gay-Siya video too! After that, it was zilch.
So today, we are re-launching the Bakla Goes Live! campaign with the pilot episode of our new series — “Are You ‘A’ Gay?†You would notice that the article “a†is unnecessary and is wrong to use. I will not go out of my way to defend that and say that it’s correct because it isn’t. Continue Reading >>>
