I stand with Israel. I always have and I always will. Am Yisrael Chai!
Originally posted 2019-08-15 10:36:58.
On our last visit to Subic we chanced across a baby ladyboy, a batang bakla, called Maria. This is the interview we did with her and my thoughts.
Please support my work:
Originally posted 2019-08-12 12:37:51.
Subic beach trip in July 2019 with Sam. Excellent stuff. Here’s the video.
Originally posted 2019-06-17 07:22:12.
‘Transgender’ is a catch-all term that is used, today, to include all forms of ‘Gender Non-Conformity’ or (better) ‘Sex Non-Conformity’. These are expressions in which individuals, for a variety of reasons, reject the social norms of dress and behaviour. Most ‘transgenders’ in the West today are in fact expressing fashionable youthful rebellion, just as hippies, punks, New Romantics and Emos did, in their turn.
However, there are some for whom this is a much deeper issue. Individuals of one sex who wish to appear to be and even live as a member of the opposite sex, do exist, although the numbers are hard to pin down.
To understand this, we need to quickly recap on sex, sexuality and gender.
Continue reading “Transgender? Sex, Sexuality, Orientation and Gender”
Originally posted 2017-01-15 06:00:48.
Some time ago I visited Bataan, here in the Philippines, for the first time. I was amazed by the scenery, which is remarkable; beautiful mountains, beaches and sea views, amongst everything else. What a richness this country has! Anyway, the highlight of the tour was when a friend suggested going to Las Casas de Acuzar at Bagac.
Bagac is south of Olongapo on Subic Bay and is accessible by bus. Once again, the scenery en route is spectacular.
I was expecting a beach and maybe a nice old village — my friend and guide, Belgie, said ‘There are old houses’. I wasn’t even slightly prepared for what I saw.
Originally posted 2019-01-18 04:57:31.
‘Gay’ is not an orientation or a preference, it is a lifestyle. In fact it is two lifestyles, transgressive and conservative. In the West, from its beginning in the 1950s, it has become strongly transgressive, after the ideals of homosexuals like Harry Hay, one of the founders.
Hay was a card-carrying Communist Party member who finally realised that Communists hated homosexuals even more than mainstream society did; so his solution to destroying the culture he lived in was to organise and use homosexuality as a battering-ram. Naturally, he had learned how to do this from his Communist Party mentors. So right from its inception, the Western transgressive form was completely rooted in Communism and a desire to overthrow the status quo.
This is completely different from the situation outside the West, where gay lifestyles are usually conservative both socially and politically.
[kofi]
Continue reading “Transgressive and Conservative gay: two models”
Originally posted 2019-01-06 07:22:45.
I’ll admit to being averse to hairy. I find it very offputting. Once, years ago, I was dating — in between relationships, having as much fun as possible; and believe me when I tell you, a single man can have a lot of fun in Manila — when I was approached by a femboy. A short-hair bakla, that is. He suggested meeting for coffee at a place near my condo so I couldn’t refuse. Jeff, he was called.
Continue reading “Hairy is not an option: attraction and revulsion”
Originally posted 2024-12-11 14:58:08.
I’m uploading this here because i have been asked by a follower to elaborate on the various types of Trans expression found here. I have covered this ground before but not in this form. So these are the types of ladyboys found in the Philippines.
Classifying the types of ladyboys in the Philippines is complicated because they are in part influenced by individual sexuality but also by the culture they appear in. The Philippines is similar to but not the same as other south-east Asian countries and markedly different, in significant ways, from the Anglo-West. It has a good deal in common with cultures found in both Latin America and Southern Europe but is not identical to either.
The Philippines itself does not have a homogeneous culture. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the country is a huge archipelago of over seven thousand islands. In fact, new islands are being discovered all the time. Although many are not populated by humans, most are and this has led to significant cultural diversity between them. It has a population of approximately 120 million souls.
The second cause is the location, on two major navigation routes: east-west and north-south. For hundreds if not thousands of years, visitors have been coming to the islands and implanting both their genes and their cultures. But these implantations have not been uniform; they have varied in effect greatly, say from Mindanao in the south to Luzon in the north.
Today, Filipino culture remains essentially Malay, which is part of the Austronesian family, but on top of that are European/Christian influences, especially through Spain, as well as Arabic/Muslim, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and of course, US American ones. All of these have had an effect on the overall culture of the Philippines and the precise flavour of the mix is unique. There is no other country in the world quite like it.
In Asian Culture, the terms ladyboy and gay are the standard English translations for a plethora of local terms such as bakla, kathoey, waria, nuhafu and many others, which all describe the same thing: an unmasculine male. Not all of these present as girls by any means but all consider themselves to be ‘girls inside.’ The dichotomy of gender identity here is not man and woman, but man and not-man. (Professor Don Kulick explains this well.) One is either a man or a not-man; that’s it. All the ridiculous made-up ‘genders’ that are so fashionable in the West are subsumed into one: not-man. To be a man, one must be male, masculine and a penetrator, in sexual terms. Everyone else is a not-man. I belabour this point because in the first place it is crucial to understanding gender in Southeast Asia, indeed anywhere outside the West and also because so many Westerners seem incapable of understanding it.
Essentially, ladyboys and their equivalents are unmasculine males who either pursue sexual and romantic relations with masculine men (not others like themselves,) or make a show of doing so. Note again, the Platonic notion of ‘like goes with like’ is regarded as absurd here; opposites attract, as is logical. Although some ladyboys do have sex with each other, this is situational: they can’t find men to do the honours. Ladyboys in relationships like this will typically identify as Bisexuals, of which more below.
Originally posted 2022-02-14 14:47:08.
They tend to have their first ‘feelings’ at around the age of 15-16 and begin HRT, usually in the form of contraceptive pills, soon after that. While late-transitioning autogynephilic transvestites do exist, they are rarely public. A good recent example would be Ian King, a racing driver and son of a wealthy ‘Fil-Am’ family. Social class and gender are strongly linked, as we shall see.
King fits the Western profile of the Autogynephilic transvestite exactly, but that appears to be related to his social class. This is interesting, because a similar social divide is found between masculine presenting Homosexuals, macho gays or pa-men locally or the New Gay Man, and the traditional highly feminised type, the ladyboy and nearly a hundred equivalent titles in Asia alone. Here again, the former tends to be rare and found only in higher social strata, while the latter is both much more common and more associated with lower social class.
Originally posted 2018-10-04 09:07:50.
My dearest and truest friend, my distant confidante and beloved adopted sister, Andie, is sitting on the brown vinyl sofa in my rented condo in Pasig. She has delicately hoisted the hem of her long floral skirt with one hand and with the other she is holding one of her slippers — flipflops in Filipino — against her leg.
‘Ugh,’ she says. ‘You see? My feet are longer than half the length of my shin.’
She drops the slipper and the hem and takes to regarding her feet with evident distaste, elbow on knee, chin cupped in her hand. She wiggles her toes.
‘I could possibly cut them off,’ she muses. ‘I should cut them off.’
Continue reading “Ladyboys are like hobbits: travels with a ladyboy”
Originally posted 2021-05-07 14:28:41.
A pageant can be a small local affair with a stage set up on the back of a truck, or as grandiose as the Miss Tiffany contests, held in Thailand, or Super Syrena, in the Philippines.
To read the story, click the Read More link
Continue reading “Pageant Bakla: Memoir of a Filipina beauconera”
You must be logged in to post a comment.