The California Proposition 8 has been already out in the news and I guess you already know what happened, it was PASSED. 52.3% voted yes and 47.7% voted no. It was a close fight but we were not able to succeed. If you already know me personally, I am based here in the Manila and maybe you’re asking why I said WE were not able to succeed. I am saying WE because WE may belong to a different ethnicity, geographical location, etc…but WE are part of the global LGBT community. We may not have same sex marriages here in the Philippines but we are part of the community that is being discriminated by hypocrites.
I was watching the show “The View” yesterday and what really struck me is what Whoopi Goldberg said. It’s just an issue of semantics ( and that’s what I also believe ). These hypocrites only relate the word marriage as the sacrament and would like to claim ownership among “their kind”. They don’t want the word gay beside the word marriage probably because it insults the “holiness” of the word itself. Bottomline, just change the word “marriage” into UNION. The hypocrites want to own the word marriage so give it to them. In my own opinion, I would get married not because of its religious functions but because of practical reasons. I am concerned about have equal rights with my partner in some legal documents like owning a property ( conjugality ) or the right to claim my partner’s body if ever she dies ( I’m not wishing this to happen to my partner). It’s just the pragmatism of it so that we as members of the LGBT can work our way out also with these mostly heterosexual-made laws. This is far cry from happening here in the Philippines. I would like the Anti Discrimination Bill to be passed first before asking for same-sex unions.

Oppose Prop 8!

Manila Pride March 2008: Show Your Pride!

Dear Friends,
Rainbow Greetings!

Task Force Pride, the official network that has been organizing the annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride March since 1999, would like to invite you and your organization/group to participate in this year’s celebration of LGBT Pride in Malate on 6 December 2008, Saturday, 3 PM to 5 PM.

Theme. This years Pride March is a tribute to the last 10 years of LGBT human rights advocacy. Hence, the theme is: A decade of dignity: Our rights, our lives, our loves, our selves.

Route. The route of this year’s march is: Remedios Circle-Adriatico St.-P.Faura-Roxas Blvd.-Rajah Sulayman-Remedios Circle-Adriatico St.-Nakpil St.-Orosa St .

The march will be followed by a brief cultural program showcasing both LGBT and non-LGBT talents.

Significance. The Pride March is known for its overwhelming attendance. It attracts thousands of participants and generates extensive local and international media attention.

This year’s Pride March is particularly significant as it coincides with the celebration of the 60th year of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the launch in Manila
of the Yogyakarta Principles (www.yogyakartaprinciples.org), an international declaration which affirms sexual orientation and gender identity and expression as fundamental human rights.

We hope that you will choose to make this year’s Pride celebration a more festive, colorful and meaningful event with your participation. Should you have inquiries, please do not hesitate to contact Bruce Amoroto, head of our Participation Committee at 0916.282.6781 (bruce.amoroto@gmail.com) or Peach Natividad, head of our Program Committee at 0917.539.2742 (peach_rmn@hotmail.com).

Thank you.

Sincerely,

(Ms) Pau
M. Fontanos
Co-Coordinator, TFP 2008

(Ms) Sass Rogando Sasot
Co-Coordinator, TFP 2008

MANILA, Philippines – Remember the “flower platoon”?

Back when the Reserve Officers Training Course (ROTC) was still mandatory for male college students, it symbolized discrimination against gay students. Real men marched in real platoons; gay students were with their pansy fellows in the flower platoon. Their only duty was to cheer for their manly counterparts or run errands for them.

Well, the “flower platoon” disappeared with the abolition of compulsory ROTC in 2001, but the underlying biases that created it still persist. They come in the form of unwritten rules or the ubiquitous “morality clause” in the student manual. They are meant to crack the whip on what some sectors still describe as “moral deviants”—lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT), as well as unmarried pregnant students.

Some schools run by religious congregations or organizations, like St. Joseph’s College in Quezon City, ask unwed pregnant students to drop out or take a leave of absence until after they deliver their babies.

An admissions officer at the Saint Pedro Poveda College in Quezon City says the issue is simply about being consistent with the Catholic faith. “Pregnancy outside of marriage sends the wrong message about premarital sex,” she explains.

But for women’s rights activists, policies against pregnant students are discriminatory. Dr. Guy Estrada-Claudio of the UP Center for Women Studies believes that these policies are very judgmental on women’s sexuality. “It punishes women in the end. To be pregnant, women have to be in a heterosexual marriage. They are not given a choice,” she says.

She cautions, too, about the danger of schools being complicit in sexual abuse, especially if the context of the pregnancy is unknown. “Schools could be punishing students who are in fact victims of rape or incest,” she adds.

Not all Catholic schools discriminate against unmarried pregnant students though. The College of the Holy Spirit in Manila and Miriam College in Quezon City, for instance, have taken a progressive stance on the issue.

In De La Salle University, however, while unmarried pregnant students are not punished, the prohibition could apply to unmarried pregnant female faculty members, if the rather vague clause “public scandal” in the faculty manual were applied.

Notes DLSU professor Natty Manauat: “The rule is contained in a broad and vague morality clause in the faculty manual, but I don’t think it has ever been applied. But that’s exactly the problem—it is there and it can be arbitrarily imposed.”

The same vague policies on morality hound lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students, who are brought under control through their attire and physical appearance. In the Philippine Normal University in Manila, effeminate gay students are barred from sporting long hair, using make-up, or wearing earrings while inside the university. Curiously though, masculine and ostensibly heterosexual students are allowed to wear long hair and earrings, and even apply foundation on their face.

In San Beda College in Manila, masculinity tests used to be imposed on presumably gay students. Students can’t enrol if they fail the arbitrary test administered by a panel composed of school officials and faculty members who rate a student according to their perception of masculinity.

Even in the more liberal enclave of the University of the Philippines, discrimination still exists. Perci Cendaña, the first openly gay chair of the UP University Student Council, recounts that during the campaign period, homophobes resorted to nasty tactics against him. “There were even graffiti in some men’s restrooms during the campaign period with phrases like ‘Perci Kadiri’ and ‘Bading ’wag iboto.’ It was a great disappointment because this was UP,” he says.

How then does one address discrimination and stigma against LGBT students and unmarried pregnant students? The Student Council Alliance of the Philippines, a broad network of student councils and governments, views discrimination as a sign of a poor democracy. “Education knows no sex, religion, physical status or gender,” says SCAP Sec. Gen. Bianca Lapus.

SCAP has been pushing for the passage of the Students Rights and Welfare Bill (HB2584) to ensure equality inside schools and campuses. Also pending in Congress is the Anti-Discrimination Bill (HB956), authored by Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel in partnership with the Lesbian and Gay Legislative Advocacy Network (LAGABLAB), which would penalize discrimination against LGBTs in schools, workplaces, and other areas.

Unless these bills are enacted, kicking stigma out of our schools remains a test we all have to face and pass.

I am the boy who never finished high school, because I got called a fag everyday

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

I am the man who fears that I will never be able to be myself, to be free of this secret because I won’t risk loosing my family and friends.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don’t believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends I’m a lesbian, because they constantly make fun of them.

I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two straight men wanted to “teach me a lesson”

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HOMOPHOBIA IS WRONG … PLEASE REPOST THIS ON YOUR BLOG

A little vignette here: While we were watching a program, I was able to converse with a woman who was sitting beside me on stage.While Karla was busy taking pictures, that woman who I thought was a lesbian, talked to me and was asking me some questions about the program. She looked foreign so I entertained her. She introduced herself to me, her name was Abby and she asked for my number. She asked if I was gay, I said yes and she couldn’t believe it. I saw Karla glanced, thinking maybe this woman is making the moves to you know.. Well fortunately, she wasn’t. She’s straight and was actually nice because she’s open about homosexuality. She said she had a husband before but got separated. I am thinking she’s in the middle of identity crisis and not really confirming about it. She looks butch though. The program ended, our conversation ended. She kissed both of us on the cheek and said good luck to our relationship. Isn’t that sweet? Hehe.

After the program, we went to Shakey’s to have dinner. I wasn’t expecting my orgmates are gonna be there but anyway we still ate dinner with them. The good thing is Dan, one of Babaylan’s alumnus, treated all of us for dinner. Isn’t that cool? Heheh. He works in HongKong Disneyland as a dancer. hehe. I just miss hearing gay conversations that I don’t usually hear in the “normal world”. I hear gay lingo all around.. Well I couldn’t speak fluently but I could only understand some terms. I became Karla’s translator for the night for her to be able to grasp the meanings from the conversations. After dinner, we don’t have anywhere to go so we decided to check out Penguin, Armi said there’s an “exclusive” there.. So we came to Penguin, it was Karla’s virgin moment. Kadangyan played that night, we sat there smoked some cigarettes, saw some familiar people and drank a couple of beers. Kate, one of our common friends, asked us to come with her to Bed ( not bed- bed but Bed, a gay bar in Malate) where my orgmates in Babaylan are partying. So we went inside, full of discreet male gays and only a couple of women inside. Karla and I danced the night away, this time much closer and *ahem*. Hehe. Got tired of dancing, we ate sisig in Cart Noodle then ended the night with a kiss and took a cab.

This is called the “gay gimmick night” because we’re gay, we’re with gays and proud to be gays.

here are the pix:
http://rockerfem.multiply.com/photos/album/24/Pride_March_

HONOLULU — This is not an easy piece to write. It’s probably the most unusual and unprecedented case the Philippine Supreme Court has had to deal with in its history. It will be many, many years before the high court can have some kind of “transgender law” to guide its future deliberations on transgender cases.

The Court recently denied the petition of Rommel Jacinto Dantes Silverio, a transsexual, to change the entries in his birth certificate in the Office of the Civil Registrar — specifically, his gender from male to female and his first name to “Mely.” This despite the fact that Silverio had undergone what is technically called a “sex-reassignment surgery” in Bangkok in 2001 to become a biological woman. The Court, however, ruled that while the petitioner “may have succeeded in altering his body and appearance through the intervention of modern surgery, no law authorizes the change of entry as to sex in the civil registry for that reason. There is no special law in the country governing sex reassignment and its effect. This is fatal to petitioner’s case.” The Court concluded that it is up to Congress, if it chooses, “to determine what guidelines should govern the recognition of the effects of sex reassignment.”

The riveting story of Rommel/Mely Silverio is detailed in an intimate Internet account titled “My Life as a Transsexual Woman,” which he/she divides into: (1) pre-gender transition from birth to 1995; (2) pre-surgery days in Hawaii from 1996 to 2000; and (3) post-surgery life in the Philippines from 2001 to the present.

It was as a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa that I came to know Rommel very well. His late mother Anita I knew back in Manila. He was all of 230 pounds but over time I could notice a gradual change in his appearance. He had embarked on a regimen of female hormone pills and estrogen shots. I teasingly told him one day that he was becoming “sexy” but to be “careful.” By the end of 1996, he had already lost 50 pounds. He continued the routine until he lost another 30 pounds. So by now, he was down to 155 pounds evenly distributed in his 5’8” frame. He was becoming a woman and gaining a “greater sense of self-esteem and confidence.”

He went on to defend his dissertation on youth sexual behavior in 2000, and had acquired a “boyfriend” who consented to have him go to Bangkok for the sex change. For about three hours, a renowned Thai surgeon performed vaginoplasty and breast augmentation, increasing her breast size from A to D. Her recovery and post-surgery therapy lasted 18 months, after which she introduced her boyfriend, the man she was going to marry, to her family.

While Rommel had become Mely, for which she was ecstatic, several problems arose. The name on her passport was that of a man and inspectors couldn’t reconcile this with the tall, svelte and well-dressed woman standing in front of them. She had to have two sets of documentation all the time to attest to the fact that Rommel and Mely were one and the same. Bank personnel would do all sorts of checking, so she would seek out only those that already knew her to avoid any confusion and embarrassment. And so on. She could have easily come back to the United States where she wouldn’t have these hassles.

But discriminatory comments such as that the Philippines is not ready for transsexual women like her only increased her resolve to be treated equally and justly. Such remarks only “added fuel to my desire to be regarded as a professional colleague, to be treated with respect as a woman, and to be given a fair chance at life in general.” She escalated her personal struggle to attain “full legal recognition as a woman here in the Philippines, my country of birth” by petitioning the courts to change her gender and first name. The Court of Appeals denied her petition, which was a devastating blow. I am certain that the Supreme Court verdict upholding the lower court was even more devastating.

So, what now? I have great compassion for Mely — whom I will always remember as Rommel — who is really a very bright and likable individual. What does it matter really — Rommel or Mely, man or woman — it’s the same human being! And she has gone through the whole process with extreme pain of validating the essence of her identity and humanity. What more can we ask? But the law as they say is cruel, but it’s the law.

As a footnote, the large majority of transsexual (TS) transitions work out very well over the long term as documented in Lynn’s “Transsexual Women’s Successes.” However, in some cases, complete TS transitions “fail to meet very unrealistic expectations, and way too late the transitioner may realize that undergoing sex reassignment surgery (SRS) was a BIG mistake.” Among the “regretters” is Renee Richards, who was born a male but transitioned as a female via surgery in 1975 at age 40 and became a famous tennis player. She wished she had not done it, but too late. She realized she would always be seen as a transsexual and never as a real woman that she had earlier hoped to become.

My only hope for Rommel/Mely is that she won’t regret the biggest decision she made in her life, and that society will become increasingly tolerant, if not accepting, of diversity in all its possible senses and meanings.

Belinda A. Aquino is director of Philippine Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she has been professor of Political Science and Asian Studies.

copied from

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=98045

MY COMMENTARY

I only heard about Ma’am Mely Silverio ( formerly Rommel Silverio) when I was in college in UPD. A friend of mine who is in a higher batch than me told me stories about Ma’am Silverio. Well actually Ma’am Silverio was her professor in Social Stat 180 then. She’s a really a brilliant teacher according to her. I wished I could be her student but unfortunately, she had to go on a sabbatical leave I think.

Upon reading this article only made me think that we really need laws to protect the LGBT. UP babaylan has been pushing for the Anti-Discrimination Bill which until now haven’t been passed in Congress due to the fear, I believe, that by approving the bill our fellow LGBTs will ask for gay marriage at once ( paranoia.. duhh). We can’t blame the Supreme Court for not allowing her to change her name on her legal documents into her female name because there isn’t really a law that could make it possible. Philippine society isn’t really ready for transexualism yet, but at least treat transexuals equally just like ‘hetero’ men and women. If only Congress sees this situation and be pragmatic about it without thinking about prejudice and bigotry there shouldn’t be a problem.

The dichotomy of nature vs. nurture is very evident in this issue. People still have the notion that everything is determined by nature and cannot deviate from it, thus making homosexuality an “abnormal” thing because there is a notion that people should act and behave according to their nature. I believe that the basic premise of our lawmakers is coming from that notion of pre-determination. On the other side of the dichotomy, nurture, has a notion that everything is socially determined. Some social theorists think that homosexuality is influenced by the people around you and not because it is inherited. These 2 dichotomies have been long debated and until now there is no unified answer as to why homosexuality exists. This issue has been there for centuries and were initiated by “hetero” people who wants to study the absurd. Isn’t it very insulting that “hetero” people have to do that because they think they “normal”? Why don’t we change the situation, why don’t we gay people study why there are “hetero” people? Why are you acting the way you are?

Coming from a social science background, I understand where homophobia and bigotry comes from. People act the way they are because that is how they were socialized in this world. All that they have to do is know how to listen and understand where “we” are coming from too. It is hard to debate with people who are closed minded and would not accept the fact that “we” co-exist in this world. We will always be struggling for our existence and do an extra effort to be accepted in this society.

It felt so good because she did not condemn me. Of course she said the usual things like “how are u going to have a family?” “who’s gonna take care of me when i get old” etc… She still believes that this is just a phase in my life and i’m gonna change and marry someone. I can’t blame her orientation, that is her socialization. Even though she’s still in denial, i am happy. REALLY, I AM HAPPY. I am thankful for having a mom like her. She may have flaws but I love her and she loves me.