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.
[kofi]
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.
‘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.
Women should not be hairy. Not if they want to attract men, anyway. I mean feminists have fuck all chance of attracting a man anyway, so for them, who cares? But for all other women, being hairy is a real no-no; well, it is if they want a man.
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.
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.
Although she works in Thailand, Yuki is Filipina. Pic courtesy of Cine de Rose Ladyboys
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.
The cover picture shows me with two ladyboys, just so you know its all real; one of them is Homosexual, the other Autogynephilic, but can you tell which is which?
A unique culture
Today, Filipino culture remains essentially Malay, which is part of the Austronesian language 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.
Gays in Manila
Ladyboys and gays
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.
I have met significantly more than a few Asian autogynephilic transvestites and the majority profile is quite clear.
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.
