Subliminal Spaces: Queer Pinay Visibility in Southern California

Subliminal Spaces:
Queer Pinay Visibility
in
Southern California
Karen Marie Maliwat Villa
California State University, San Marcos
Sociological Practice, MA candidate
November 2015
Committee:
Dr. Theresa Suarez, Ph.D. (chair)
Dr. Richelle Swan, Ph.D.
Dr. Kristin Bates, Ph.D.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ 5
CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM ..................................................................................... 6
Introduction .............................................................................................................. 6
Research Question .................................................................................................. 8
Background .............................................................................................................. 9
Vanishing Filipina/os in US Racism ...................................................................... 9
Queer US History and Co-Optation .................................................................... 10
Sexuality Versus Family and Imperialism ........................................................... 11
Gender and Labor: Imperialism, Globalization, and Potential ............................. 12
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ................................................................. 14
Reconsidering Corporeal Discourses ..................................................................... 15
Why Queer Pinay Film? ......................................................................................... 19
Going Down: Queer Pinay Subjectivities and Counternarratives ........................... 27
Reconceptualizing the Cultural Geography of Queer Pinay Bodies ....................... 35
in Southern California............................................................................................. 35
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................ 39
Arte and Hiya: Balancing Empowerment and Social Implications .......................... 40
Participant Recruitment .......................................................................................... 44
Research Sample................................................................................................... 47
Roles in Research: Pinays Playing with Power ...................................................... 51
CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS ........................................................................................... 57
Tainga/Lapayag: Listening for Community ............................................................. 61
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Music as a Narrative ........................................................................................... 68
Constructing Music, Place, and Utang on Film ................................................... 70
Queer Pinay Kinship: Reimagining Communes in Oneself and in Others .............. 73
Words and Wounds ............................................................................................ 76
Collective Queer Pinay Artistry in Poetry and Film ............................................. 85
Breaching: Labor and Transport............................................................................. 87
Narratives in Mobilization ................................................................................... 96
Balancing Interpretation in Visual Ethnographic Empowerment ....................... 101
From Labas to Loob: Reconsidering Pinay Women-Loving Ontologies ............... 102
The Weight of Labas ........................................................................................ 105
Challenging Femininity and Masculinity ............................................................ 108
Self as Survival: Power in the Queer Pinay Loob ............................................. 116
Empathy and Resilience: Queer Pinay Self-Preservation................................. 120
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .................................. 124
Implications .......................................................................................................... 124
Recommendations ............................................................................................... 131
Significance .......................................................................................................... 132
Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 133
BIBLIIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 136
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ABSTRACT
Although there is significant amount of literature on Asian Americans, gender, sexuality,
and the media few studies have examined how queer Filipino women express
themselves in film. To advance the literature, the present study focuses on narratives
that queer Pinays created through documentary film. I examined the messages,
semantics, and aesthetics in creating the documentary and the social implications in
reflecting the lives of queer Pinays through utang na loob, a system of values and
behaviors in Filipino kinship. Participants highlight their involvement in the arts, music,
athletics, and social justice. They avoided from commenting on and filming family,
religion, and employment. They used film to discuss how to navigate queer Pinay
femininity and queer Pinay masculinity. Participants demonstrated difficulty
communicating regional nuances from the diverse communities represented in the
monolith Philippine nation and its global implications on queer Pinays in the US. The
results demonstrate a need to consider how gender roles and labor shape the lives of
queer Pinays living in Southern California.
Keywords: Filipina, Asian American women, Filipino American, Pinay, Southern
California, queer diaspora, space, Pinay masculinity, female masculinity, labor,
sexuality, gender, documentary film, visibility, media.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you Mom for your voice, laughter, tears, and strength. And the many ways that
you live on in Shae, Nat, and I. I will never forget your determination and struggle. As I
heed your words: Swallow the sun. Avoid the fog.
Shae, I grow and learn more because of you. Thank you for the hours of listening and
seeing me through these major steps in life. Mia and Iris couldn’t have picked a better
mom. I’ll always be here for you no matter what.
Nat, thank you for showing me the light on the other side of each challenge. I know you
carry it inside you and I am learning every day from you. And thank you for talking about
things I like to talk about!
Joni, this has been a narrow road. Thank you for encouraging me and looking into the
future. And thank you for being down for the ride. Mahal na mahal kita, Tagalog for “You
had me at hello.” 
Dr. Theresa Suarez, thank you for sharing your strength, resilience, and determination
and seeing me through this process. Thank you for pushing me beyond what limits I
thought I had. You are truly the gem that I never expected to find and I remain inspired
in all things important thanks to you.
Dr. Swan, thank you for your kindness, patience, and encouragement through the
program as I approached you with absolute confusion. I am especially thankful for your
calm and cool while you taught me that media and visibility are sociological pursuits.
Dr. Bates, I’ll have what you’re having. You have been one of the most fierce, loving,
and inspiring mentors I have ever come across in my student life. I am grateful for your
down-to-earth academic integrity. The foot you leave in the door means the world.
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM
Introduction
When I decided to concentrate on the visibility of queer Pinays from Southern
California for this project, I was not expecting to personally elaborate on why it was
important. I tried everything to avoid this story. I told my mom in 2002 that I was hit in
the face with a doorknob when she saw the popped blood vessels in my left eye. They
didn’t heal quickly enough. To hide what I had done, I wore turtlenecks and hoodies
until the gash on my neck disappeared. As queer Pinays, our earliest sources of
livelihood, our families create in us unique challenges that make it difficult to resist and
respond to our social in/visibility. The perception of our individual narratives will always
measure and reflect on our families. It is taboo to unsettle our family dynamics in order
to pursue a sense of self because of larger implications in Filipino gender and
heterosexuality. Increasing a discourse on queer Pinay in/visibility is important to
understand multiple vulnerabilities in which queer Pinays face and how these shape our
perspectives in life. Queer Pinay visibility in Southern California focuses on how film
captures the diversity of experiences and looks for opportunities in subjectivity despite
the social fracturing of static political identities. The reason why creating queer Pinay
visibility is so important is because we do our damn best to keep our stories invisible. To
hide how we have been damaged. And we continue to remain anonymous, never
asking the questions. The elephant in the room. When we hear that another one of us
has decided to give up. We don’t ask. We stay quiet.
When I asked my sister what I looked like, she stared at me and said, “Like
someone choked you” before she began to cry. My dad’s belt that I used to wrap around
my neck was on the floor in the closet that I tried to hang myself in. Ironically, it was my
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dad who I screamed out for when I realized I wanted to live. During one of my first visits
home after I left for college, I took my little brother Berns on a walk to the mailbox down
the street in the evening. We couldn’t speak freely in the house because my dad always
listened and turned everyone against each other. I was checking up on him and how it
was at home since I had been gone. I am the oldest daughter out of five children, I have
an older brother, a younger brother and two younger sisters. I told him, “Berns, you
have to take care of Mom.” And he began to cry and said, “Ate it’s too hard.” I hugged
him and said, “I know it is. But you have to do it. I’m not here anymore.”
Family expectations obligate queer Pinays in gender roles that determine the
ability to assist Filipino families with surviving in the US. Pinay gender roles and
heterosexuality conflict with queer Pinays’ abilities to gain a sense of self. The fact that
everyone including myself kept my suicide attempt from my mother points to an
abandonment of individual subjectivity for the unity of the family. Despite queerness,
Pinays struggle to remain helpful and supportive in our families’ eyes as matriarchal
subjects particularly because survival underlies Filipino family dynamics in the US. Our
queer Pinay subjectivity flies in the face of patriarchy and heterosexuality while our
families struggle to navigate a lack of control over other social factors that inevitably
impact survival, such as race, class, and citizenship. Heterosexuality and patriarchy are
insidious as they streamline potential difficulty while members of the family attempt to
work individually and collectively to live in the US. Queer and lesbian Pinays experience
exclusion when they differentiate from family agendas because racism, citizenship, and
masculinity are more established ways to make strides in the US. When queer Pinays
come out or rebel against these known tools of survival, their families misrecognize and
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forecast their behavior as selfish or destructive to the family’s unity and future. They are
no longer considered in step with helping to survive in the US and experience alienation
from the people that have been the most influential and significant in their lives.
Queer Pinay visibility in Southern California captures a diversity of experiences
on film and looks for opportunities to speak and see from the perspectives of queer
Pinays. Increasing a discourse on queer Pinay in/visibility is important to understand
multiple sites of oppression and empowerment for queer/Filipino/women. The silence
and invisibility that queer Pinays experience in their families, relationships, and
employment shape the focus of this study to showcase how queer Pinays navigate
issues of difference and create new ways of belonging. We are not just the bruises on
my neck. Queer Pinays create narratives that speak, vocalize, live, and enjoy in the
margins. Queer Pinay desires reflect on the importance of labor, recreation, art, music,
masculinity, femme identity, internal resilience, empathy, and self-preservation. Queer
Pinays’ stories demonstrate a very different perspective in creating empowerment and
visibility informed by the difficulties we understand in ourselves, our families, and our
communities.
Research Question
This is a qualitative study on how queer Pinays use film to inform about and
represent themselves. I examine queer Pinay and Pinay lesbian perspectives on film,
and how their different expressions of life enable an understanding of queer Pinay and
Pinay lesbian visibility and subjectivity. As points of departure, the political discourses of
race, class, gender, sexuality, and immigration may impact how queer Pinays from
Southern California create our stories. Despite, the social fracturing of political
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discourses, I explore how queer Pinays draw on multiple narratives to represent
themselves.
Through an interdisciplinary approach to visual sociology I explore documentary
film as a mechanism of seeing (Pink 2013; White 2003; MacDougall 1994) queer Pinay
and Pinay lesbian empowerment. Informed by Asian American, feminist, queer, and
visual theory, I construct how queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians use film to contend for
and against in/visibility. Empowerment on film interrupts queer Pinay invisibility and
forges new narratives. Queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians were invited to film narratives
about their identities. Filming queer Pinay stories in Southern California is different from
other regions. The documentary highlights how Southern California queer Pinays see
and are seen. Because silence may occur within families, friends, employment,
churches, etc., the visibility of a documentary may help to foster a needed narrative that
we are unable to forge on our own. Documentary film responds to the challenges of
invisibility and reconstructs a sense of self from the misrecognitions that our Southern
California/queerness/Pinayness/womanliness represent.
Background
Vanishing Filipina/os in US Racism
Filipinos, as a transnational population experience impact from US systems of
race, gender, sexuality and globalization. US immigration policies represent capitalist
interests that exploit immigrants and shape their experiences in, with, and against the
US culture (Lowe 1996a; Espiritu 2003a). After the Spanish American War in 1898, the
Philippines were appropriated as a US “territory” from Spain and were utilized to prevent
the spread of communism in Asia (Cruz 2011). The 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act defined
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Filipinos in double negation “noncitizen nonalien,” enacting contradictory legal, cultural,
and racial immigration agendas (Espiritu 2003a; Ponce 2012). During modernity, the US
restricted Filipino community development, asexualized Asian masculinity, and created
a bachelor population through the limitation of Filipina immigrants (Espiritu 2003a; De
Jesus 2002). Readjustments through the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act lifted
national-origin restrictions to encourage family reunification (Espiritu 2003a; Lowe
1996a). Hyper-sexualized Asian feminine cultural representations demonstrated
assimilationist and nationalist military concessions in the Pacific (Aguirre and Lio 2008;
t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999). Today, Filipinos in the US continue to face alienation
through race, class, gender, citizenship and heterosexism (Aguilar-San Juan 1998;
Alvarez and Jung 2010). Neocolonial implications retain Filipino Americans in a state of
perpetual amnesia, as is suggested by Amy Kaplan, (Kaplan and Pease 1993) “that the
invisibility of the Philippines in American history has everything to do with the invisibility
of American imperialism to itself” ( t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999; Campamones 1995).
Queer US History and Co-Optation
Heterosexism continues to shape queer women and lesbians in deviance,
disease, and immorality. Prior to the 1870s, while same-sex desire and behaviors were
practiced, significant identifiers of such in language were uncommon (Foucault 1981).
After the 1870s, to explore same-sex desire and deviance the term “homosexuality” in
Western language established the scientific rhetoric that constructed same-sex
sexuality as a mental condition and an abnormal behavior (Foucault 1981). Until the
1960s, practicing same-sex desire continued in more subtle communities through the
homophile movement (Jagose 1996). Influenced by the civil rights movement, non-
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heterosexual practicing communities politicized in the 1960s, creating the label
"LGBTQ" and reappropriating the word “gay” (Jagose 1996). Homosexuality, and less
remarkably lesbianism, reconstituted again in science, cathected with the AIDS
epidemic (Jagose 1996). Western academics and activists reclaimed the word "queer,"
again politicizing the community's identity in the 1990s (Jagose 1996). There have been
continual attempts by the LGBTQ community to counter an ongoing association with
disease and deviance while the community’s mobility is tied to health agency funding
( t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999). Co-opting the instrumentalism of the queer marginalization,
US foreign policy and economic interests abroad imported the narrative of global
marriage equality (Puar 2002; Said 1979).
Sexuality Versus Family and Imperialism
Family structure and religion for Filipinos in the US reinforce race, gender,
citizenship, and sexual inequality and manifest in cultural representations (Hall 1994).
Attitudes and values that fluctuate between perceived familial “honor” and “shame”
regulate appropriate sexual behaviors (Okazaki 2002). Non-marital sexual expression
outside is considered inappropriate and threatens the collectivist, patriarchal, and
interdependent social order of family structure (Okazaki 2002). Rooted in Spanish
colonization, Filipino Catholicism scorns premarital sex, contraceptives, and abortion
(Tiongson 1997). Filipino values perceive Western sexuality as liberal and indecent,
constructing racial and ethnic values in “normative” and “moral” sexuality for Pinays
(Espiritu 2001).
Racial and ethnic communities condemn homosexuality as a “white disease” as a
proponent for racial advancement (Shah 1998). Dichotomies between hypersexualized
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Filipina exploitation and economic martyrdom in the global economy impact Pinays
(Parreñas 2001). Diasporic subjects in global economies such as the Philippines
naturalize conjugal heterosexuality in the “homeland” while promoting overseas
Western capitalism that fracture at local social structures (Alexander 1994;
t lvaro-
Hormillosa 1999). Geopolitics complicate US/Eurocentric systems of race, gender, and
sexuality for transnational sexual minorities (Benedicto 2008; Manalansan 2003;
Ordona 1994). Globalization reconceptualizes “home” for diasporic communities in the
continued development of modernity.
Gender and Labor: Imperialism, Globalization, and Potential
Western expansionism reorganized global gender and labor establishing western
male dominance in systems of race, sexuality, and imperialism (McClintock 1995). The
Victorian era naturalized women’s and children’s subordination through “the family”
(McClintock 1995). As a response, women practiced in gender mimicry and colonial
ambivalence in a masquerade of heterosexuality (McClintock 1995). To support western
interests in the Pacific region, the US exploited Filipino feminine labor during the Cold
War (Cruz 2011). Filipina social and political engagement unsettles male dominance in
Western imperialism that continues to shape Filipinas as a subordinate racialized
gendered labor group. As Tadiar (2004) argues, feminine labor has been “subsequently
integrated, assimilated, subordinated and extracted—in a word, exploited—by others
through various apparati of capture” (244). The concept of kabanayan, or a productivelaboring Filipina subjectivity is present in social activism and globalized work (Tadiar
2004). Filipino women informed and reshaped the Filipino social and political sphere
during the American colonial enterprise in the Philippines (Choy 2006). Filipinas shape
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their lives toward a future temporality through sampalataya, or faithfulness (Tadiar
2004). Queer Pinay labor expands on the importance of feminized faith in the aesthetics
of work.
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CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
As Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays, our experiences have undergone the
trauma and resultant in/visibility in race, gender, sexuality, and imperialism, domestically
and globally. A visual project focused on queer Pinay desires and its iterations, despite
multiply impacted social disenfranchisements, champions our survival and resistance to
the onslaught of social implications that reinforce our subordination. Filming queer
Pinays resists the objectification of our bodies through hypersexualization and
submissiveness, an uneven in/visibility that mainstream media constructs. Visualizing
queer Pinays creates openings and healings to a world that continues to fracture and
impact our lives.
I draw on the disciplines of Asian American Studies, queer theory, feminist
psychoanalytic theory, visual sociology, cultural studies, and Filipina feminist
discourses. I used interdisciplinary research methodologies that established points of
departure from race, gender, sexuality, and migration. I also focused on expanding the
discourse on visual research methodologies to include the potential for advocacy. The
fields of art and performance may provide scholarly discourse. Visual sociology has the
capacity to impact marginalized communities through participant engagement,
particularly through creativity, reflexivity, and multivocality. Rethinking qualitative
methods through other disciplines offers discursive development and more fully
addresses the social impact that an issue may have. A documentary on queer Pinay
visualization not only investigates but uncovers and foments involvement in the lives
and communities they reflect.
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In “Reconsidering Corporeal Discourses,” I interrogate the implications of
imperialism on Pinay bodies, highlight nuanced understandings of Filipino gender and
sexuality, and construct alternatives in understanding queer Pinay sexuality through
labor, anti-externality, and masquerade. “Why Queer Pinay Film?” assembles the roles
of agency, resistance, and image ownership in queer Pinay filmmaking. I examine
scholarship on visual methodology as multivocality in consideration of subjecthood and
social implications. Through feminist film discourses, I argue film recasts social science
methodologies to better reflect research subjects, resituates sexuality as a structuring
narrative, reconsiders the social implications of film over science’s quest for authenticity,
impacts visual culture, and re-centers on the interactive experiences of researching
marginalized communities. In “Going Down: Queer Pinay Subjectivities and
Counternarratives,” I consider the possibility of constructing narratives from marginality
through an examination of the relationships between imperialism and Filipino
subjectivity, sexuality and nation, and heterosexism and Filipina feminism. Additionally, I
highlight the importance of hybridity in Asian American Studies and how images resist
social closures while constructing language and recognition between contending
communities. “Reconceptualizing the Cultural Geography of Queer Pinay Bodies in
Southern California” focuses on spatiotemporal discourses in Southern California, the
gendered implications of geopolitical polarity between the US and the Philippines, and
the imperialist condition of spatial displacement in Filipino ontologies.
Reconsidering Corporeal Discourses
As many scholars have argued, Filipina/o national identity projects have waged
against western colonialism through multiple battles for the Pinay condition (Rafael
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2000; Cruz 2012; Tadiar 2004; Choy 2003). This fight extends to Pinay sexuality. Yen
Le Espiritu (2001) argues that the moral condition of Pinay sexuality highlights the
contrasting cultural superiority of the Philippines over the US. A familiar immigrant
parental narrative holds that daughters should not have sex [with men] until they are
married. As the narrative of heterosexual marriage dominates the dialogue in which the
discourse and practice of sex is communicated and understood for Pinays, our queer
sexuality represents a misrecognition to the Filipina/o community when men are not our
objects of desire.
Espiritu (2001) suggests immigrant Filipina/o parents restrict their daughters’
sexuality to resist white colonial racism. Pinay sexuality is framed in bondage to
heteropatriarchal chastity so that as colonial subjects, Filipinas/os through the values of
Pinay sexual discernment over white women’s sexual liberation reconsiders western
superiority. As Espiritu suggests, the practices of Pinay gender and sexuality are
restricted through cultural superiority:
As immigrant parents, they have the authority to determine if their
daughters are "authentic" members of their racial-ethnic community.
Largely unacquainted with the "home" country, U.S.-born children depend
on their parents' tutelage to craft and affirm their ethnic self and thus are
particularly vulnerable to charges of cultural ignorance and/or betrayal
(Espiritu 1994) (Espiritu, 2001: 435).
“Betrayal” becomes a structuring factor in creating queer Pinay film visibility. Queer
Pinays make considerations about how their narratives reflect their families as they
negotiate the subordination and alienation that their Americanness and queerness
manifest as women removed from “the home country” and from the family’s values in
heterosexuality. In debt to parents, queer Pinays navigate the misrecognitions that their
lives represent. Ongoing sanctions around Filipina sexuality demonstrates how
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imperialism and family are interrelated. Queer Pinay sexuality increases queer of color
political discourse through an understanding of diasporic Filipinas subjectivities and the
impact of US regimes in imperialism, race, gender, and sexuality. Queer Pinays may
reflect and respond to familial expectations of culturally specific heterosexuality that
charts transgressive political discourses.
Focusing on labor is a way to negotiate Americanness and queerness as queer
Pinays sidestep sexual subordination. Labor extends the corporeality of Pinay sexuality,
prioritizing work while negotiating with “appropriate” Pinay sexual practices. That is,
assuming that one is heterosexual. Instead of focusing on the discourse of sexual
freedom or liberation from “the closet”, Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays may choose to
deploy the known practices of labor value and aesthetics that remain constant in
Filipina/o immigrant culture, as the bondage of Pinay bodies represents a continuous
wage of sexual ascendancy over white American imperialism. Pinay lesbians and queer
Pinays may reappropriate laboring narratives to counter heterosexism, understanding
that work remains a significant marker of social currency among Filipina/os and is
indirectly encouraged, perhaps, because of implications of financial hardship,
regardless of sexuality. Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays may instead draw upon
Filipina/o narratives of being “self-sufficient”, “hard-working”, and as Espiritu argues,
morally superior while remaining masked in heterosexual chastity. Espiritu states, “[that]
the process of parenting is gendered in that immigrant parents tend to restrict the
autonomy, mobility, and personal decision making of their daughters more than that of
their sons” (Espiritu 2001: 431). Contending between the multiple binds of race, gender,
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labor, and sexuality provides the context in which Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays
struggle for self-determination on film.
Western narratives that externalize queer sexuality create instability for queer
Pinays. Queer liberation and identity are limited to “the closet” which disempowers
Asian American sexualities (Alimahomed 2010) due to colonial implications, which
proclaim sexuality and sexual mastery over the world. Roderick Ferguson (2007) further
expands on how power through an analysis of Foucault’s work in heterogeneity and the
technologies of race and sexuality consider discourses of race, class, gender, sex, and
diaspora upon marginalized populations. He states, “…the study of race applied to
sexuality names the multiple periods and national locations that account for the diversity
of sexuality, rendering sexuality into a category characterized by spatial and temporal
heterogeneity” (117). Meaning, filming queer Pinays represents spatiotemporal
discourses that challenges the imperial historicism of diasporic communities. In addition,
image-control of Asian American women’s sexualities perpetuates binary gender and
sexuality constructs between macho and emasculation without providing a discussion
on the privilege given to externalized displays of white masculine sexuality that impact
Asian American gender and sexuality (Shimizu 2007, 2012). Queering a racialized
perspective on gender identity allows Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays to engage in
desirability and approximate ourselves as sexually discriminating “warriors” in
consideration of Asian American masculinity.
Bound by multiple social constraints, queer Pinays create other epistemologies to
circulate. Utang is the debt in Filipino kinship value systems (Rafael 1993). Both
Mcclintock and Shimizu (2007) identify how disenfranchised subjects find empowerment
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despite limitation as “the bottom”, or subordinate role, in a sadomasochistic bondage. In
recognizing our disempowerment in narratives of heterosexuality, such as marriage or
boyfriends, queer Pinays can draw on sexual ambiguity in favor of different practices of
utang. De Lauretis (1994) observes:
Different forms of mimicry such as passing and cross-dressing deploy
ambiguity in different ways; critical distinctions are lost if these historically
variant cultural practices are collapsed under the ahistorical sign of the
same. Racial passing is not the same as gender cross-dressing; black
voguing is not the same as whites performing in blackface; black
minstrelsy is not the same as lesbian drag. In the fetish scene,
transvestism often involves the flagrant exhibition of ambiguity (the hairy
knee under the silk skirt); indeed, much of the scandal of transvestism
resides in its theatrical parading of identity as difference. Passing, by
contrast, more often involves the careful masking of ambiguity: difference
as identity (McClintock 1995: 65).
For queer Pinays who perform in non-normative sex-gender practices, culturally defined
gender roles inform how we deploy masquerade to loosen the bondage experienced as
a woman/Pinay while simultaneously upholding moral Filipino sexual ascendancies
against white supremacy. I expand below on how the feminine labor aesthetic is
significant to queer Pinay self-determination through work and play.
Why Queer Pinay Film?
A project in queer Pinay visualization provides collaborative and communal
knowledge production. Suggesting that sexuality is a technology in space and time to
critique its place in nationalist projects, a film project on women-loving Pinays offers
heterogeneity, reconstructing a sense of time and timelessness attached to imagery
from which our subjectivities may be drawn. Queer Pinays create stories that challenge
how our narratives have been “stolen” and misappropriated with a lasting impact on how
our lives are understood. This project calls in to question the US systems of race,
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gender, sexuality, colonialism, and migration that are vexed in invisibility,
hypersexualization, exoticization, and western sexual consumption. Visualizing queer
Pinays aims to question and present the nuanced experiences of women-loving Pinays
in, of, and against [un]familiar discourses of social empowerment and disempowerment,
and offers resistant visibility through queer Pinay authorship, narrative, and film.
Constructing Filipina queer lives establishes new directions for what is contended
as lesbian/queer desire on film. Teresa de Lauretis examines the camera, its
spectators, and film subjects in The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse
Desire (1994). The camera enables multiple ways to see and witness same-sex female
desire. Desire may then mean many things in considering how power manifests
between the camera, spectators, and film subjects. Queer Pinays juxtapose these
elements to issue different stories on film that reconfigure “desire.” The visual field
manifests desire between identifying feminized perspectives between the camera,
spectators, and film subjects. Desire may be observed in the interactions created on film
between each other and off film with the audience. Observing these interactions and
relationships unearth the potential for queer Pinay film subjects, filmmakers, and
spectators to communicate want and need while resituating image ownership in the
hands of queer Pinays (Mulvey 1975). The perspectives of Filipina same-sex womanly
desire can unearth and produce dreams and fantasies to impact social imaginaries and
realities.
Considering the potential impact of imagery and how it reflects our stories and
the social world, filming queer Pinays unsettles the problem of authenticity. Neferti X. M.
Tadiar (2004) calls for alternative epistemologies to understand everyday living and the
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material conversations about inequality contending between historical and future
circumstances. She argues that faithfulness, or sampalataya, reconstructs film’s
foreclosing properties that attempt to capture “truth” narratives, differentiating between
what is real and what larger social forces may be responsible for the themes showcased
on film. Karin Aguilar-San Juan (1998) problematizes authenticity discourse when she
says:
I wondered to myself, with some sarcasm, Could we be assuming that
every lesbian in the Philippines wants a chance to be out in the Mission
and to be free to eat hippie-style tofu, fly a rainbow flag, wear freedom
rings, and march under an “international” banner every year at the Gay
Parade? (29).
Visual representation reduces a population to a particular viewpoint, opinion, or
perspective. Film projects in empowerment must consider both concepts of reflection
and representation. Visualizing empowerment moves thought and practice from
different points of reality from which Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays just so happen to
hail.
The technologies of desire and faith frame capacity for empowerment while
resisting film’s historical medium in the white male imperialist gaze. Social reality is
reproduced and contestable by way of “fantasy-production,” suggesting film creates new
moments to enact and imagine desire and motivation. Imagining and performing
difference through film’s apparatus in fantasy-production produces understandings in
how queer Pinays experience race, gender, sexuality, and imperialism while it
constructs, forecasts, and contends for a dreaming future condition.
Gender inequalities propel feminist scholars to offer resistant perspectives in film.
Narrative film is phallocentric, a medium of scopophilic, or voyeuristic, desire. Mulvey
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(1975) argues, “[T]he female figure…connotes something that the look continually
circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and
hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the visually
ascertainable absence of the penis, the material evidence on which is based the
castration complex essential for the organisation of [gender]” (Mulvey 1975: 42).
Women do not own the images in narrative film. Our images represent an abject
psychosocial fear in genital violence housed in male-dominated descriptions of desire.
The direction of looking, or the gaze, Mulvey argues, deploys and reinforces binary
gender subordination: active/male versus passive/female. When women display their
perspectives on film it is a contestation for a right to desire or fear and reclaims the
perversion in which women’s bodies represent in the image. Filming women-loving
Pinays builds toward our semantic custody behind image making and film’s ability to
drive socio-imaginations. Visualizing queer Pinays challenges occidental perspectives
on camera as manifest destiny over Pinay bodies while considering new points of
departure. Neferti X. M. Tadiar and Angela Davis (2005) further state:
Speaking as political and personal subjects at the intersections of racial,
gendered, and sexual oppression and freedom…foreground[s] their
subjectivity as a critical enactment of difference, making the photographs
a presentation of difference and possibility—a “may-be”—rather than a
representation of sameness and reality—an “is” (8).
This “may-be” implies how film can employ a sense of sampalataya, offering faith in how
the image may represent our symbolic desires as it converses with the future through
hope, fear, and motivation. Exposing film’s illusion of “reality” gives potential for film as
empowerment. Queer Pinay voices create different possibilities as producers and
consumers and as spectators and spectacles. Feminist scholars challenge the medium
23
of the gaze and examine its apparatus of power in image ownership. Queer Pinay film
inspects “for whom?,” “by whom?,” and how our visualization constructs our socioimaginations envisioned in the future.
Queer Pinay film calls into question positivist perspectives in data accumulation.
Feminist and queer scholars disrupt historical hierarchies of power in social science
research through collaborative and alternative methodologies. When queer Pinays
engage film in our own theories, interpretations, and experiences, we offer narratives
that depart from our exclusion in research and media. Occidental practices reproduce
knowledge that is static, factual, and one-directional situating the perspective of
researcher(s). Knowledge production is localized through privileged positions in race,
gender, and colonialism and questions the imbalance of power between researchers
and their subjects (Haraway 1988). Knowledge as a socialized continuum between
researchers and subjects provides a greater potential in expanding research
capabilities. Using visual methods provides research subjects greater agency. Subjects
engage in the creation and consumption of research and knowledge. Feminist visual
methodology recasts power practiced between participants and observers (Kindon
2003). Using queer theory to inform subject engagement in performativity and
narrativization on film creates differently situated epistemologies. Ruth Holliday (2000)
states:
Having been invisible for so long in writing, the media, law and culture
more generally, as well as being literally invisible on the bodies of subjects
(you can’t tell by looking)…queer subjects are often highly skilled in the
communication and interpretation of visual signs… Visual research is a
method which has strong resonances with queer research, and one in
which its subjects may have considerable expertise (517).
24
Performance and behavior resituate queer perspectives in research through their
relationship with imagery. Looking as an active interpretation of discourse (“Is she
gay?”) is much different than looking as an act of consumption (“She is gay.”). Using
film narratives as a question expands on the possibilities for visual methodology as
signs, semantics, and symbols are other ways of knowing that provide queer Pinays
discursive creativity in imagery.
Asian American female sexuality in film creates empowerment potential for queer
Pinays. Hijacking Asian American female hypersexuality to instead politically situate
actors and film narrative reinterprets Asian American female representation (Shimizu
and Lee 2004). Catalyzing film’s white male gaze reconsiders sexuality as a delicate
social discussion in the film’s narrative structure. Resexualizing hypersexuality to
expand subjecthood on film poses challenges for queer Pinays who understand family
gender restrictions of moral Filipina sexuality (Espiritu 2001). Film as a critical art
however may transform spaces from which they create visibility and form new spatial
imaginaries to develop more reflexive social discourses ( t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999).
The creative decision to repurpose hypersexuality in film leans on the relationship
between the film and the audience and may present a prematurely imagined postmodern sexually liberated Pinay condition. This concept, however, inspires how queer
Pinay visibility may reappropriate, operationalize, and depart with queer/Asian American
female sexuality and instead engage in visual inquiry to introduce other perspectives
and narratives that empower queer Pinays.
Visualizing queer Pinays reconsiders debates in “authenticity” through the
engagement between filmmakers/researchers and subjects. “Speaking nearby” (Chen
25
and Minh-ha 1994) situates the significance of sampalataya in queer Pinay filmmaking.
Authenticity, reflexivity, and multivocality are ways that interrogate the division between
what is real and what is imagined. Trinh Minh-ha argues reflexivity and multivocality
create nuanced narrative potential, as she states, “filmmaking has all to gain when
conceived as a performance that engages as well as questions (its own) language”
(441). Through reflexivity, queer Pinay filmmaking allows for the creativity of
collaborative narrative between Pinay filmmakers and Pinay subjects. Through
multivocality, the image of queer Pinays creates meanings and symbols indicative of
larger social systems such as race, gender, sexuality, and migration. Sampalataya, or
faithfulness, allows to interrogate film as a fantasy-production against
authenticity/reality. As Trinh Minh-ha argues, “a speaking that does not objectify, does
not point to an object as if it is distant from the speaking subject or absent from the
speaking place. A speaking that reflects on itself and can come very close to a subject
without, however, seizing or claiming it. A speaking in brief, whose closures are only
moments of transition opening up to other possible moments of transition” (443).
Visualizing queer Pinays resets boundaries between researchers and subjects. The
project also attempts to construct empowerment through socio-imagination as it
negotiates the real and unimagined impact of images on queer Pinay lives.
Feminism and social science contest the distance between subjects and
researchers to better include the benefits of visual ethnography (Pink 2013). Visual
images are a medium of knowledge and experience and not simply a means for data
accumulation. Instead, video ethnography highlights the moment of encounter between
researchers and subjects producing and exchanging knowledge (Pink 2013: 106).
26
Queer Pinay filmmaking is a collaborative engagement, “as part of the process of
learning to see as others do” (Pink 2013: 112) in and against multiple social
considerations and relationships between researchers, participants, and lived
experiences through participatory and reflexive visual ethnography.
Interrupting the polarity between social science and art, film creates liminal and
in-depth possibilities. Multivocality unsettles disciplinary research forged in words,
writing, and positivism (MacDougall 2011). The interpretation of film includes the
potential knowledge in analyzing what is and is not visible, as well as considering the
viewer as another source of knowledge. This includes examining film subjects through
movement, voice, sounds, etc. as discrete and inter-relative social phenomena. Visual
methodology situates the capacity of one or many aspects that emerge in film that
include and depart from positivist tradition.
Visual ethnography emphasizes the stories between everyday and eventful
moments as participants co-create their lives on film. The emergence of visual methods
during a moment that visual culture has become significant shows a need to focus on
the sociological importance of increasing queer Pinay visibility. Visual images articulate
contexts that are not observable through other methods, such as interviews and surveys
(Rose 2013). To examine the social significance behind participant-generated
contributions and collaborations demonstrates how queer Pinays “see” themselves and
points to the social implications their messages and contributions indicate, or “visualize.”
Visual empowerment negotiates between visibility for the sake of research to reflect a
sample and visuality to point to the challenges that face participants. Rose (2013)
argues, “This uninterest in the visual creativity of research participants occurs even in
27
studies that otherwise explore in highly nuanced ways the agency of research
participants” (31). Visualizing queer Pinays seeks to meet this challenge and include an
investigation of the dynamics behind how queer Pinays author themselves in film.
Going Down: Queer Pinay Subjectivities and Counternarratives
Indigenous scholars reconsider the insider-outsider paradigm in social science
and its implications on a community constructed in what Gayatri Spivak (1988)
describes as the “subaltern.” Academia reinforces historically constructed racial and
global imperialism distorting how power manifests in research. As marginalized
researchers and subjects, we must question our own conditions of possibility to produce
alternative ways of knowing. “The narrow epistemic violence of imperialism,” Spivak
argues, “gives us an imperfect allegory of the general violence that is the possibility of
an episteme” (28). Scholastic epistemes have materialized through sex-gendered
discourses of annihilation upon non-western identities, communities, and cultures.
There have been limited available means to argue into visibility a type of subaltern
consciousness that is transposable and “successful” in superseding the Westernized
entryways that continue to construct knowledge. The limitations of colonial epistemes
may be challenged through the acknowledgement of a subaltern possibility. Inspired by
feminist theory, indigenous scholars challenge western regimes in research, resituating
knowledge production through communal epistemologies. Hall (2009) states,
“Reconstructing tradition and memory is a vital element of indigenous survival, and
there is nothing simple or one-dimensional about the process of reconstruction” (31).
Social science has had the privilege to go into marginalized communities to conduct
research and bring it back to academia. This provides limited agency to the community
28
in producing our own knowledge and distorts how our community is depicted in
research. Indigenous scholars call for academic work that is created for and through
community engagement while casting a queer feminist eye on how researchers,
research subjects, and research recipients manifest resistant technologies in
decolonized research (Te Awekotuku 2007; Hall 2009). Co-constructing Pinay lesbian
and queer Pinay stories is an attempt to assemble memory and counternarratives and
to reconsider the discourses of difference between insiders and outsiders.
Filipino colonialism impacts queer Pinays in framing ourselves on film. Subject to
global exploitation and western militarization, Filipino nationalism operates in perpetual
crisis as a response to and negotiation with our imperialism (Rafael 2000; Lowe 1996b;
t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999; Reyes 2011; Ponce 2012). Filming queer Pinay and Pinay
lesbian lives materializes this imperial assimilatory crisis. Acknowledging Filipino
in/visibility in the US materializes the historical violence that the US has enacted upon
Filipinos as colonial subjects and is evident in the continuing immigration from the
Philippines to the US (Reyes 2011). Situated in imperialist remembering and forgetting
(Campomanes 1995) Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays are approximated in the trauma
and amnesia of western militarized violence and capitalist expansion (Kaplan and
Pease 1993; Campomanes 1995; Reyes 2011). Victor Bascara (2005), further explains:
It has customarily and persuasively been argued that this amnesia is an
epiphenomenon of the amnesia around U.S. colonialism in the Pacific at
the turn of the century… The institution of America’s official national
culture was not equipped to recognize the presence of colonies and
colonial subjects… Colonies are what the United States used to be, not
what America would aspire to acquire… [V]isions of America’s colonialism
in the Pacific ironically evaporated in the face of its actual realization
(123).
29
Filming queer Pinays is not separate from the imperial project of disappearing these
colonies. Imperial amnesia impacts the lives of queer Pinays while heterosexism may
complicate how queer Pinays search for a sense of “home.” Contentions with colonial
otherness cause expressions of manifest historicism to reconfigure and romanticize the
distance between a colonial subject and the Philippines, a country which in its existence
represents the colonial subject’s displacement or homelessness (Reyes 2011). The
urge to reappropriate nativism to resolve colonialism’s lack of memory distorts the
transnational distance and in fact is a symptom of colonial subjectivity (Reyes 2011).
Questioning narratives of home against queer Pinay lives, either physically or imagined,
provides the ability to gain and imagine “a different condition” in the perspective of the
Filipino colonial subject and creates alternative possibilities to escape the opposing
narratives of native essentialism in re- rientalism toward “the motherland” and the
cultural stripping of assimilation enforced through US racial politics.
Heterosexism in Filipino nationalism further impacts queer Pinay selfdetermination. Scholars recognize that queerness as an identity falls short of the
instrumentalism that it represents in imperial exploitation and extermination on
marginalized individuals (Bascara 2005). Filipino nation-building promotes “proper”
domesticity and continues to displace Pinay queerness. Creating queer Pinay visibility
reconsiders the heterosexism that Filipino nationalist discourses use to wage against
imperialism. Filipino machismo and heterosexism (Rafael 2000) ignores the
experiences of queer Pinays and how our narratives complicate the conditions of
Filipinos as subjects in imperialism and modernism. Filipinas have been used in the
national construction of labor martyrdom (Choy 2003; Parreñas 2001). Waging for the
30
nation of the Philippines has occurred through paternalist discourses for land that
objectify Filipinas. “Rescuing” the Philippines and Filipinas withholds the agency of
queer Pinays while heterosexism coerces Filipinas to uphold nationalist discourses
forged in female gender and land. Because of Filipino nationalism, Pinays are eternally
objectified, victimized, and unblemished as sacrifices, martyrs, or “radical” accomplices
against the onslaught of colonialism. Nationalist discourses are less about the Pinay
condition and are instead manifestations of a heterosexual and masculinized fear
associated with the temporal futures of Filipinas and the Philippines. Under
heterosexual frameworks of Filipino nationalism, Pinays remain static and voiceless in
the collision of colonial male posturing. Queer Pinays complicate the discourses of
aggression and victimization needed to support an imagined political unity as it is
constructed through the fictional gaze of a male-centric and heterosexist romance with
Filipino nationalism. The experience of women-loving Pinays upsets the heterosexuality
and paternalism behind Filipino nation-building.
Asian American discourses and frameworks are also limited to heteronormative
conventionalism. Drawing upon Black feminist theory’s womanism, the Black racial
critique of white feminism, pinayism as a theroretical standpoint locates the dialogue of
ethnic-specific, racialized, and gendered experiences in the U.S. for Filipino women
(Tintiangco-Cubales 1995). Although pinayism suggests importability for the global
context to provide opportunities in understanding how colonialism may affect Pinay
lesbians and queer Pinays abroad, the theory is situated for and from Pinays in the US.
Filming the expressions and experiences of Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays requires
the deconstruction of how sexuality indicates variable social formations between
31
heterosexual and queer Pinay subjectivities. Tintiangco-Cubales describes “pain” as the
constructed divisiveness between Pinays in public spaces through the policing of
“downness,” or upholding the hierarchy of esteemed Pinay identity constructs as social
capital. She explains, “These hands have created room for only one Jessica Hagedorn,
one Pauline Agbayani-Siewart, one beauty queen, one Maria Clara” (1995: 145). This
supposition, however, excludes how Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays disrupt
essentialist Pinay roles through the love and affection between two, or more for that
matter, women. Thus, Tintiangco-Cubales’ framework in “pain” distracts from the social
formations and implications of queerness that constitute where love, pain, and growth
occur simultaneously or irrespective of each other.
Queer Filipinas create a different sense of Pinay camaraderie and alternative
ways in understanding how to build community that transgress from a
heterosexual/homosocial romanticism rooted in imperialism that is responsible for the
loss of queer Pinay stories and perspectives. Pinayism also focuses on how difference
is a problem instead of a complication in Pinay solidarity without recognizing the
porousness of queerness. The embodied, visceral, or surreal understandings of “home”
for queer Pinays do not fit within a pinayism model. Pinayism does not observe how
space and time, the performance of bodies, and the negotiations of home may be
queered. Pinayism does not address our invisibility as Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays
and the significance of the “homelessness” that we feel in our heterosexual Filipino
communities and/or in predominantly queer white spaces (Reyes 1995;
t lvaro-
Hormillosa 1999). Pinayism as resistance then reproduces discursive inelasticity
concerning Pinay identity politics, rendering self-determination of Pinay lesbians and
32
queer Pinays in particular unattainable. As such, Pinayism cannot account for Pinay
lesbian and queer love and everyday experiences of lesbian and queer womanism.
Arguably, the theoretical model for Pinayism reconstitutes a heteronormative model for
social science research.
As producers, creators, and subjects of our own images queer Pinays challenge
the authorship of narratives that distort Pinay lives in Filipino nationalist discourses.
Denise Cruz’s Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina (2012)
examines how elite Filipinas wrote into history their sense of ideal heterosexual gender
as transnational responses to Spanish, Japanese, and American colonization. She
carefully identifies four types, “the Spanish mestizo Maria Clara, the Westernized
Filipina coed, the romanticized barrio girl, and the precolonial india,” (25) that emerge
during the period of modernity between the 1930s to the 1950s and expands on Choy’s
2003 work in her construction of the “uncaring nurse.” In an earlier publication Cruz
(2011) argues that the creation of Filipino nationalism is inherently “heterosexualized” in
idealizing Filipina femininity upholding the gender binary for women as caregivers and
coeds while constructing within the colonial romanticism of "home." Examining these
categories, however, excludes the contestations of queer Pinays. For example, the
picture on the book cover has been “made modern” and altered with color. A nativelooking building made of a type of tanned natural grass or wood is enhanced in the
background and surrounded by seemingly lush green trees and foliage. This represents
the romanticized nativism in Cruz’s illustration of elite Filipina transpacific femininities.
The bows in two of the women’s hair are colored in with a bright fuchsia, lips and
cheeks have a touch of makeup “now” on their faces and bodies. Coloring the black and
33
white picture is a temporal maneuver of using the
spectacle of binary feminine gender. This
coloring admits these images of past “realities”
into contemporary Pinay feminist discourses.
Significantly, a third alteration of the picture cuts
the image below the waists of the three women in
the bottom row, excluding the basketball in which
the woman in the middle is holding. This
demonstrates that in fact the picture is not of a
group of Filipino women in blue dresses
arbitrarily posing on a large luxurious lawn in front of a native building, but indeed of a
Filipino women’s basketball team. The original picture is shown on page 45 in black and
white and the caption reads “The 1910 women’s basketball team of the Mary J. Johnson
Methodist Hospital (Photo by George E. Carrothers. The Bentley Historical Library,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, BL003763, B XI).” Hetero-washing Pinay
subjectivities enacts our literal and figurative disembodiment. These modern alterations
exemplify how Pinay nationalism renders invisible the nuanced potentialities of queer
Pinays and our place in constructing Filipina feminism.
Asian American scholars argue that collectivism in Asian American racial
discourses reduces the experiences of ethnic communities in the US (Lowe 1996b;
Espiritu 1992). Yen Le Espiritu (1992) suggests that Asian American discourses must
work to expand on the differences that Filipinos experience. When US racial and
imperial politics lump ethnicities together, it reinforces Filipina/o American invisibility and
34
hypervisibility. Kevin Nadal et. al (2012) reports that Filipina/os occupy several racial,
gendered, migratory, and sexual dispositions at any given time that result in multiple
potential vulnerabilities in discrimination. Lisa Lowe (1996b) argues that particular
communities are nuanced through hybridity and multiplicity, calling to expand on the
monolith Asian American identity and the reproduction of racial universality among
Asian Americans. An effort to encompass the vastly heterogeneous experiences of any
Asian American community such as the Pinay community underestimates the existential
crises of multiplicity. Lowe provides opportunities for queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians to
reconstruct Filipino American subjectivities, unsettling and resituating the discourses of
race, gender, sexuality, and diaspora.
Queerness, racialization, gender, and diasporic formations create different
sociological conditions for queer Pinays. Queer Pinays respond to these foreclosures
and create value in their difference. Laura Kang (2002) argues “to reconsider the ways
in which mediated image, perceived identity, and felt subjectivity have been too readily
linked and indeed collapsed together through the presumed unity and coherence of the
categories of “Asian women” and “Asian American women” (75). Expanding through
particularity, visualizing queer Pinay images, identity politics, and lived experiences
resists the foreclosures of race, gender, sexuality, and migration. At times there are no
established methods of recognition between differential community formations, a
misrecognition that paralyzes potential collaborations and understanding (Takagi 1994).
Observing how Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays facilitate these discourses in
themselves and in their lives reconsiders the image, identity politics, and subjectivities
to help inform how social formations fracture at the lives and communities of queer
35
Pinays. Queer Pinays represent different ways to heal tensions and misrecognitions
between contending community interests by demonstrating embodied subversive
strategies unique to the lives and perspectives of Pinay lesbians and queer Pinays.
Reconceptualizing the Cultural Geography of Queer Pinay Bodies
in Southern California
Critical artistic practices, such as film, become spaces where new
articulations of citizenship, identity, and desire can occur.
- t lvaro-Hormillosa (1993: 113)
In Southern California, queer spatial politics informs and reconsiders a sense of
community formation for women-loving Pinays. Geography and migration create
regional nuances between East and West Coast Filipino Americans and influence their
racial and gendered roles and expectations (Revilla 1997). The 1965 Immigration Act
carved Southern California immigrant settlement communities while building the values
of safety and pro-capitalism from the post-Cold War political atmosphere (Tongson
2011). Manifest Destiny continued in the establishment of Southern California’s
suburbs, which create a unique social formation for queers of color. Phallocentric and
queer male metronormativity does not reflect queer Pinay experiences, yet shapes the
queerness in which Pinays may practice through geographical and spatiotemporal
privilege. Southern California queer metronormative sociality excludes queer Pinay lives
at the margins of suburbia. Styles, pop culture, and capitalist consumption may more
appropriately reflect the potential to understand queer Pinay lives (Tongson 2011).
There are multiple constellations of non-gay male stories in not-so-white reaches of
Southern California’s spatiotemporal imperial drag. While California’s gay regions of
36
West Hollywood, Hillcrest, or the Castro continue to reproduce geographical privilege,
queer Pinays in Southern California reconsider queerness for the cul-de-sac (Tongson
2011). Spatiotemporal settings create different manifestations for subjecthood (Kang
2002) while women of color in California practice in cultural ascriptions of femininity that
rely on strength (Lewis 2014).
Focusing on queerness does not reduce the differences of experience between
and among genders in Filipina/o American colonial subjecthood. Centralizing the queer
Filipino experience on the social formation of the bakla1 homogenizes queerness,
reflecting a gay Filipino male perspective and disappearing the lived subordination in
women’s subjectivities ( t lvaro-Hormillosa 2000). Geopolitical social formations based
on displacement expand the understanding of these differences in gender privilege as
Pinays in the US or balikbayans in the Philippines represent a geopolitical historical
moment in imperialism ( t lvaro-Hormillosa 2000; Reyes 2011). Queer global identity
(indeed, geopolitical) and its iterations in colonial imaginaries of feminized gender
ignores queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians. Recognizing the global fragmentation of
gender and sexuality, visualizing queer Pinays responds to the social formations that
observe and uphold the privilege of spatial and gender regimes between the US and the
Philippines ( t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999). Filming queer Pinays locates global fissures
and searches for ways to challenge feminized disembodiments (Espiritu 2003b).
Despite multiple misrecognitions in diasporic, gendered, and heterosexual implications,
Robert Diaz (2015) states: “Bakla often denotes gay male identity, male-to-female transgender identity,
effeminized or hyperbolic gay identity, and gay identity that belongs to the lower class. The term is thus
conditional and contextual, and its deployment often points to the geographic, temporal, and material
constraints of its usage. Martin Manalansan provides a capacious and useful meaning of bakla in Global Divas:
Gay Filipinos in the Diaspora (2003). Discussing how his diasporic informants identify with the term, he
writes: “bakla is not a premodern antecedent to gay but rather, in diasporic spaces, bakla is recuperated and
becomes an alternative form of modernity” (21). Kabaklaan generally indexes performances that are assumed
with bakla identity in the Philippines, such as flamboyance, crass humor, and exaggerated campiness” (721).
1
37
queer Pinays navigate through social and political limitations and produce questions to
re-approximate queer/Filipino/women subjectivity.
Some queer Filipino scholars reinforce the dichotomy of genders. Trans tomboy
masculinities (Fajardo 2008) marginalizes queer Pinays. Exalting external masculine
performativity disregards femme-presenting and femme-bodied women-loving Pinays
who participate in similar male/masculine gendered performances. Descriptive
examples of tomboy masculinity include working class identity, drinking alcohol, eating
pulutan, talking about sweethearts and lovers, relationships and family discussions and
problems, singing Tagalog songs on karaoke, and cheering on Manny Pacquiao
(Fajardo 2008). These may also be practiced by non-trans queer/Pinays. The concept
of tomboy masculinities fails to analyze how Pinay bodies experience and live the facets
of tomboy masculinity. Implying that these practices among other performances of
masculinity belong exclusively to male/masculine bodies creates trans-heteronormative
coalitions that displace the feminine-identified working class, queer Pinay, Pinay
lesbian, or straight Filipina for that matter, who also participates in such activities, but is,
however, invalidated through binary notions that restrict ownership and participation in
such lifestyles to male-identified actors of masculinity. This monopolizes particular
masculine gendered narratives in labor and leisure as synonymous to male-identified
bodies. Tomboy masculinities does not divest in phallocentric male-identified binaries
and does not wage against the exclusionist and alienating rhetoric found in westernized
notions of maleness or masculinity upon women of color. Overzealously, it collapses
difference in experience with difference in performance between trans masculinity and
Pinay femininity in an expansion of diasporic masculinity.
38
Queer scholars recognize a need to reconsider US/European frameworks that
have imported queer theory and gender variance to global and diasporic communities
(Halberstam 2012). Separating the practice of masculinity from the identity of
masculinity may better inform how queer Pinays in Southern California create selfdetermination on film. Asian American ethical manhood may be described as
accountable to the community, sacrificial of one’s own interests and bodily desires of
sex, and the regret of violence (Shimizu 2012). Through race, Asian American
masculinity responds to white male heterosexual hegemonic constructs of manhood
that reproduce conquest and colonialism upon womanly bodies to define one’s sexuality
or gender. Queer Pinays may exhibit Asian American manhood through self,
community, and anti-violence. Phallocentricism in seafaring tomboy masculinities
excludes the possibilities of Asian American manhood present in queer Pinays lives.
Cultural nationalist frameworks situated through the geopolitical positioning of
queer Filipino scholars (Manalansan 2003; Benedicto 2009; Fajardo 2008) circumscribe
the experiences of queer Pinays situated in and against US systems of race, gender,
sexual orientation, and nation. Eric Estuar Reyes (2011) argues:
Just as [Edward Said’s] insights connect the relationship between the
exilic condition and the production of a critical intellectual elite, I am
suggesting that fictions of return [or nationalist superlatives] form a similar
function for Filipino and Filipino American aesthetics. As the unfulfilled
yearning for an expected “authentic” relationship to place — a rootedness
to a physical geography from which flows without contest who we are,
where we are from, and who we see ourselves as — the fictions of return
[and origin] function as the epistemic cornerstone of the Filipino American
exhibitionary complex” (108-109).
By problematizing exhibitionism through an analysis of western imperialism and the
manifestations of colonial romanticism with origin, distance, and alienation, Filipina/o
39
queer scholars must be aware of how identity (race, class, gender, sexuality) and its
effects on different bodies materializes in the medium of imperialism.
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
I strive to create film as a question instead of an answer (Pink 2013) on the
perspectives of queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians in Southern California, and the
processes of our multiple foreclosures (Kang 2002) in society – indeed, our visibility/
invisibility (Kang 2002; Tadiar and Davis 2005). Queer Pinay visual representation
juxtaposes ontological discourses (e.g. exotic, hypersexualized, submissive foreigners)
with discourses of rupture (e.g. masculine, independent, vocal) (Kang 2002; Shimizu
and Lee 2004). Constructing visual queer Pinay and Pinay lesbian counternarratives
responds to the social factors that foreclose possibilities of self and social
empowerment. Practicing visual methodology calls on alternative epistemologies in
knowledge production. Interdisciplinary techniques in analysis and including imagery in
research (i.e. photographs or videos) are indicative of knowledge as opposed to
knowledge itself (Pink 2013). Visual ethnography is a narrative experience rather than
an account of truth through methods of reflexivity, collaboration, and participatory
engagement (Pink 2013). Conducting visual research creates the opportunity to
understand multiple social factors that may be at play in the lives of queer Pinays and
Pinay lesbians.
The concepts of reflexivity, collaborative, and/or participatory methods are central
in realizing the project’s focus on how participants engage in co-narration. Participants
were challenged to reflect on what aspects of their lives they considered valuable for
filming. This included allowing participants to help conceptualize their contribution prior
40
to filming and allowing them creative freedom to edit their own footage. Collaboration
manifested in several ways. Corresponding participant schedules, spontaneously
developing narratives in the moment of filming, and asking follow up questions for
clarification were necessary elements to inform analysis and structuring themes for the
documentary. The relationship between the filmmaker and research subjects is
challenging and develops over the course of the project (MacDougall 2011). Building
participant trust and rapport assisted in the analytical and creative process for the film.
Over time, most participants felt comfortable to offer more information or supplementary
material to add to the documentary.
Arte and Hiya: Balancing Empowerment and Social Implications
One of the challenges is how to refigure the sexualized image of Asian
women, how to make them whole and human and emotionally complex,
and also how to signal that their sexuality is also somehow specific to
them, to their background. I want to do this in ways that don’t smack of
didacticism or give us another tiresome rehearsal of race.
-Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Helen Lee (2004: 1388-1389)
I focused on the social dynamics between participants, researcher/filmmaker,
and audience and how their narratives communicated empowerment and reflected
challenges to social mobility. Visual data is multisensory and allows for participants to
better express themselves (Jung 2014). I attempted to remain loyal to the various
expressions of queer Pinay lives while I searched for how the footage and emerging
contexts added or expanded on their experiences with larger social discourses. Chen
and Minh-ha (1994) state, “this is where the challenge lies…the personal is not naturally
political…it is difficult to draw that fine line between what is merely individualistic and
what may be relevant to a wider number of people” (435). To balance between
41
individuals and the social importance of their narratives, I often shifted in my role
between researcher and project facilitator. As a researcher, I used my positionality to
communicate the significance of their participation and to find how contributing their
narratives may impact audiences and larger social systems. As a project facilitator on
shoots or through correspondence on participant-produced material, I worked with
participants to identify and create emergent themes from their contributions. I
approached sensitive topics (i.e. as class, mixed-race identity, and family) with
apprehension and respect, considering how exposing these issues may impact
participant reputations and audience interpretation of the community.
As the project progressed, the rapport developed a connectedness and sense of
community as participants engaged in identifying and creating value in their filmed
subjectivities. Video has considerable potential in empowerment and forges
relationships between researchers and subjects (Kindon 2003). Sustaining participant
investment in the project produces impact beyond the reflexive, creative process.
Participants communicated their intent to share the finished project with their family
members and friends, to attend conferences or events where the film may be shown to
engage in discourse, and to meet with the other participants in the future for networking.
Respecting participant confidentiality required sensitivity about how film
portrayed their lives. Generally, participants avoided the topics of alienation, family, past
relationships, religion, class, suicide ideation, and masculinity although these themes
emerged from their footage. These omissions occurred during interviews as participants
avoided these topics, asked not to include these portions in the edited version, or
excluded these portions themselves in editing the film. I juxtaposed examining the
42
invisibility of these topics against the fact that I communicated to participants that the
project’s intent was to create community empowerment. Drawing attention to this ethical
dilemma in image ownership (Pink 2013), I rationalize the omission of these topics
during data collection and to some degree in my analysis by weighing how using these
topics as structuring themes to create participant subjectivities on film may further
disempower queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians. Meaning, if participants experienced a
sense of disempowerment while reflecting on their individual film narratives, how may
others from the same community possibly benefit in witnessing this? Notably, one
potential participant who was still in the closet to some of her family members, wanted
her contribution to focus on her mixed-raced identity and her estranged relationship with
her Filipino father. Facing the deadline I provided for her to participate, she decided to
opt out of the project altogether. As a highly marginalized population, concerns of
confidentiality and ascertaining data to identify impending issues remain a delicate
negotiation. I do not completely ignore an analysis of these issues and consider them
while I focus on the narrative construction of empowerment.
Film has ethical considerations for a project in participant empowerment and
social impact. The project generated a significant amount of footage and offered
different ways to construct participant narratives. For example, I created three versions
of Menchie’s edited film before I felt that it decently conveyed her subjectivity. Film
allows for the exploration and ability to communicate multiple messages and purposes
(Pink 2013; White 2003; MacDougall 2011). MacDougall states, “Ethics committees
attempt to cover all the eventualities, but they cannot. There are some situations in
which a legalistic interpretation of rights is useless, and filmmakers must ultimately be
43
guided by their own consciences and understanding” (MacDougall 2011: 106). While
most times participants deferred from directly addressing sensitive topics, I aimed at
constructing an understanding that these issues are present although I do not center my
analysis to address these issues unless the participant’s narrative highlights sensitive
content in their contribution. For example, Jerrica’s narrative showcases three
spokenword performances and her poems deal with the issues of alienation, past
relationships, religion, family, assault, physical ailment, and suicide ideation. I felt
analyzing these issues and how they relate to her subjectivity and to larger social
implications was suitable because the content was already public through her
performance and she volunteered these clips as her contribution. She also verbally
gave me “artistic freedom” with her footage. Jerrica’s narrative was, however, the
exception, not the rule and I provide attention to these issues in her analysis.
Film engages in the various positions of the researcher, film subjects, and the
audience (Mulvey 1975; Haraway 1988; Kindon 2003; Holliday 2000). The stakes of the
researcher, film subject, and audience when using film as methodology entailed a
project design encompassing multiple operations. As an insider, my positionality as a
researcher required I collect data on their lives to construct a visual narrative with social
significance. Research subjects participate in the project to work collaboratively on
visual advocacy for the audience and the researcher. As an audience, people who
watch and witness the documentary want to gain a better understanding of the
community and share in the potential of social impact. Because of the differing stakes
between all three parties involved, the project’s collaborative methodology uniquely
designs how messages can be conveyed. As a researcher, I control the project’s
44
capacity and focus on significant and familiar narratives. As participants, film subjects
help create awareness and also receive a way to understand value in themselves. As
an audience, the film must focus on themes that are recognizable in order to experience
its impact. Film informs research design because it uniquely presents information that is
multiply interpretative.
The debates about film’s ability to present research and knowledge created the
nuanced challenges of creating queer Pinay visibility. After investments in time and
energy, participants and I exchanged ideas and concepts to focus upon for their
contributions to the project - considering confidentiality, social impact, and how to
construct their narratives. The presentation of data is highly subjective in nature
because of the different ways in which perspective was constructed in the development
of participant rapport and project coordination. The issues of bias and reliability remain
spurious as they do in ethnographic writing (MacDougall 2011). The debate between
authorship and transparency draws on an archaic belief that qualitative research is able
to remain objective. What remained constant was my choice to emphasize how footage
composed a narrative between creating representation and empowerment. MacDougall
(2011) argues, “Art and science need not be opposed if the art is in the service of more
accurate description” (102). A project on creating visibility implies that the population is
difficult to see because of race, gender, sexuality, and multiple other social factors. For
this project, investigation and visual advocacy are inseparable.
Participant Recruitment
I used a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and snowball sampling to recruit
participants, based on networks from academic, personal, and social media. In 2002
45
when I first came out, I volunteered in the Asian American LGBTQ community. From
this experience, I used networking skills I learned to approach participant recruitment.
This included seeking and making connections through an involvement in these
organizations during the two years before the study began, and required frequent and
significant travel to offer my physical presence. I hoped these efforts demonstrated my
personal investment to each participant and my role in collaboratively portraying their
subjectivities.
Based on first-hand organizing experiences, I felt that these organizations might
have members who fit the description of the study’s target participant pool. These
organizations included a Filipino LGBTQ organization based in Los Angeles called
Barangay LA, an Asian American women’s organization in San Diego called National
Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, and the San Gabriel Valley Asian Pacific
Islander PFLAG. I met and worked with a fellow member of Barangay LA, Barbara, on a
film project during the summer of 2014 to present at the annual Festival of Philippine
Arts and Culture on behalf of Barangay LA.
I also accessed the Internet and social media to advertise the research project. I
attended the Queer People of Color Conference (QPOCC) at San Diego State
University in 2014 and there I was fortunate to have taken a writing workshop with
Jerrica, whom afterward I connected to via Facebook about my thesis project. Also from
the conference, I created a Facebook page to keep in contact with students that
attended the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus at QPOCC; one of the conference
coordinators found the page, and connected with me via Facebook about my thesis
project. When I had advertised on social media for participants in my research study,
46
the conference coordinator referred me to someone that they knew of who may be
interested. This is how I met Kayla, who identifies as He or They/She in that preferential
order. At the time of the study, Kayla had just moved to San Diego from Long Beach
and they provided some of their contacts in Long Beach who might be interested. Kayla
knew these women in their work with several Filipino community organizations such as
GABRIELA, a national Filipino women’s organization, and Anakbayan, a grassroots
Filipino organization. This is how I met Menchie.
In addition, I attended meetings and events where I felt individuals might attend
that may value the project’s aim. I attended two events in Riverside. The first was an
open mic event called “Resilient Realities: Revolutionizing the QTP C Narrative”
hosted by five UCR students. At the open mic, I reached out to one of the coordinators
from “Resilient Realities” (who looked like she could be Filipino) to ask her if she knew
anyone who might identify as a queer Pinay and who may be interested in the project.
She responded that she was interested. We scheduled a follow-up meeting at a café in
Riverside where she had brought a friend of hers, Maria, who at the time of this study
was a graduate student at UCR. The second event I attended was an art exhibit called
“Queer Sites and Sounds.” A friend had invited me and I met her in the summer of 2014
in Monterey Bay while attending a writing class. At the meeting with Maria and the open
mic event coordinator, we spoke about “Resilient Realities” and “Queer Sites and
Sounds” and they began to talk about who they knew who may be interested in
participating in my research project.
To add variation, I recruited through various websites and performed online
searches. These searches included organizations based out of Long Beach, Ventura
47
County, Santa Barbara, and the Inland Empire. While I did not find any formal
organizations that served Asian American/Filipino, women, and LGBTQ simultaneously
from these areas, I was led to social network engines such as pof.com (Plenty of Fish),
linkedin.com, and meetup.com. On these sites, I either created profiles or updated my
profile to recruit participants. Grace and I know each other from the church we attended
as children in my hometown of Oxnard. I had found out Grace was gay around the time
I first came out in 2002-2003 when she was dating a friend of a woman whom I was
dating at the time. Through LinkedIn, I reconnected with her.
For a community that is difficult to find because queer sexuality is invisible,
meaning one cannot tell if one is queer, I used snowball sampling from individuals who I
knew were queer Pinays and Pinays lesbians or asked individuals and organizations
who may know anyone in the targeted population. Similar to how Grace was recruited,
some of the participants include individuals from my personal and social networks. I
have known Cheryll and Joy since high school and at the time that I came out in 2002,
these women were two of the most important people to support me emotionally during
the process. We went to weekly social events together in West Hollywood and have
been friends for most of our queer adult lives. I had met Joni through a mutual friend in
2005 at a now defunct annual social event that was held to counter the racial noninclusiveness of the San Diego Pride festival. Joni and I have since been romantic
partners for nine years.
Research Sample
Southern California’s relaxed style presents an opportunity for queer Pinays and
Pinay lesbians to resist external definitions of queerness. Meaning, this allows for them
48
to more readily define their queer lifestyles versus conforming to extroverted, hyperpoliticized social constructions in sexual identity. Because the geographic spread of the
region, Karen Tongson (2011) argues that Southern California creates a difference in
experience for queer women of color communities. Freeways, theme park culture, social
media, and suburban capitalism shape lives that differ from metropolitan queer spaces
established in city centrals. The region of Southern California represents several major
metropolitans and respectively different cultures. In addition, California is politically
considered a liberal state, which assisted in providing access to my participant pool.
This study reflects a “West Coast” perspective with an substantial Asian American
presence. Meaning what impacted the filmed subjectivities of queer Pinays in Southern
California may be unique with consideration to California’s geography, political climate,
and demographics. I had access to queer Pinays in a way that other regions might not
have had available and may have impacted the participant pool in different ways. If this
study, for instance, was conducted in the South where there may be less representation
of queer Pinays, it may have reflected a more black-white racial paradigm.
Analyzing class distinctions in participants remained anomalous. While there are
instances in which this information was indirectly communicated, respondents were less
open in sharing their class position. Conducting qualitative research on queer Pinay and
Pinay lesbian class positions is a nuanced and delicate task precisely because asking
questions about class was equated with jeopardizing participant confidentiality. I did not
request information on categories that may offer an analysis in class such as education
level, homeownership/renter status, or employment. Class discussions cause
participants to engage in acts of showing off or feeling ashamed, which in most cases
49
was undesirable and unwelcome (Suarez 2015). I did however search for
manifestations of class from the footage produced or contributed. This offered minimal
findings in order to accurately analyze class implications in the sample.
The exact location(s) from which the participants were recruited is more
complicated than simply identifying each individual with a city or metropolitan area. Our
queer transience and decentered visibility, or our “dykesporic” social formations, are
representative of this particular complexity. Barbara, while she is living in in the heart of
Hollywood, was raised in South Bay San Diego. Cheryll lives in Anaheim but is from
Oxnard and spent a few years of her adult life in Reno, Nevada. Grace is also from
Oxnard but is currently living in Tustin and claims local to Orange County. Jerrica is
from San Diego and is currently living in North County San Diego. Joni spent her
childhood in San Fernando Valley and Ventura County and lives in Temecula, a suburb
between Riverside (Inland Empire) and San Diego. Joy was born in the Philippines, her
family moved to New Jersey, then Oxnard, and then she moved to San Fernando
Valley. She currently lives in Los Angeles and spent a few years of her adult life in the
Bay Area. Maria is from Manilatown in Los Angeles, went to college in the Bay Area and
currently lives in Riverside. Menchie was born and raised in Long Beach, lived in the
San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston for college and currently resides in Long Beach.
As a Pinay lesbian, I have taken on this project with a sense of “shared
marginalization” (Villenas 1996) as one of the nine research participants who identifies
as queer Pinay or Pinay lesbian. I was born and raised in Oxnard and went to college in
the Bay Area and currently reside in Temecula. Thus, it is important that I critically
interrogate my intent, lines of questioning, and how my subjectivities (i.e. queer,
50
daughter, poor, second-generation, Pinay, Southern Californian, etc.) materialize as
potential practices of my own privileges and disenfranchisements, while simultaneously
considering that film may reinforce the foreclosure of our subjectivities (Kang 2002). My
participation in the project considers how film actively engages in resisting the reduction
of descriptively queer and lesbian Pinay experiences. I question how footage engages
and impacts a larger understanding in race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. I
search for moments in the footage that create new modes of thought or reconsiders
established epistemologies in order to create opportunities for visual discourses in
empowerment and subjectivity. This includes identifying when certain social categories
such as race, class, gender and sexuality, become structuring methods of visual
communication or are significantly focused on or ignored in the content of participant
narratives. Identifying these social narratives through my own lenses creates an
opportunity for epistemological development and grows a collaborative understanding in
how these social categories may or may not reflect the visual resilience in queer Pinays
or Pinay lesbians.
Below is a table describing several categories in which the participants are willing
to socially situate themselves. For any items missing, the participants chose not to
include it in the study or documentary.
Name
Race/
Ethnicity
Barbara
Mestiza
Cheryll
Filipino/
Eskimo
Grace
Filipino
Jerrica
Filipino
Region
P.I.
Angeles
City,
Pampan
ga
Ilocos
Sur/
Bataan
Pampan
ga
Language
Sexuality
Age
Religio
n
Raised
English
Lesbian
26
English
Lesbian
37
Iglesia
ni
Christo
English
Lesbian
40
Catholi
c
English
Queer
27
Catholi
c
Industr
y
How I know
Location
Educat
ion
Barangay LA
Hollywood
High School
Anaheim
Forens
ics
LinkedIn/
Church
Tustin
Educat
ion
QPOC
Conference
San Diego
51
Joni
Filipino
Joy
Filipino
Karen
Filipino
Maria
Filipino
Menchie
Filipino
Ilocos
Sur
Pasig
City,
Philippin
es
Pampan
ga/
Ilocano
Nueva
Ecija
Dilan/
Pangasi
nan
English
Lesbian
32
Catholi
c
Iglesia
ni
Christo
Bankin
g
Nurse
English
Lesbian
41
English
Lesbian/
Queer
35
Catholi
c
English
Queer
23
Bisexual
27
Catholi
c
Catholi
c
English
SDSU
Partner
Temecula
High School
Los
Angeles
Educat
ion
Self
Temecula
Educat
ion
Behavi
oral
Scienc
e
Snowball
Riverside
Snowball
Long
Beach
Roles in Research: Pinays Playing with Power
The femme foregrounds her masquerade by playing to a butch, another
woman in a role; likewise, the butch exhibits her penis to a woman who is
playing the role of compensatory castration. This raises the question of
"penis, penis, who's got the penis," because there is no referent in sight;
rather, the fictions of penis and castration become ironized and "camped
up.”
-Sue Ellen Case (1988: 64)
The difficulty and the need to use various formal and informal research methods
in recruitment points to the larger issues of queer/Pinay/invisibility. The most important
tool in recruitment was my status as an insider to this study. Sofia Villenas’s (1996)
biographical account of her fieldwork experience provides a deep self-analysis exposing
the ethical considerations of her position as a Chicana ethnographer studying the
Latina/o community. She recognizes her privilege as a trained academic and how she
shares marginalization as a woman of color. Empowerment is possible through insiderbased research. This redefines my role in relation to my research participants as the
“activist-scholar” (Villenas 1996). As a researcher, I have the ability to distort, exoticize,
and reshape my observed community for personal gain in the academic world, yet, I
may also choose to find ways to fight this privilege as a practice of academic activism
52
for the marginalized community wherein I find myself inside and outside the colonial
factors that continue to impact the academy.
I experienced shifts in power in meeting participants for recruitment. I considered
femme-presenting or soft butch-presenting beauty aesthetics when meeting
participants. I also spoke very little of my graduate student and elite researcher
positionality in order to not intimidate or create issues of dominance and tension that
this capital may represent. I used my physical presence, my online presence, and
phone text messages to correspond with participants on a semi-regular basis at the
beginning of getting to know (or re-connect) with each one. As an insider with shared
marginality, I confronted moments in recruitment that required I navigate ambiguous
power dynamics of gender and sexuality. I needed to get to know the participants in
ways that are very similar to dating, (i.e. going for coffee or dinner and creating rapport).
Nine total potential participants who were at first interested eventually opted out of the
study. This included three from San Diego, three from Los Angeles, one from Long
Beach, and two from the Inland Empire.
In addition, I drew on Filipino kinship, or utang na loob, which is a Filipino system
of exchange that affects codes of behavior, social rank, and value through an
indebtedness from inside oneself to others outside (Rafael 1993). Engaging potential
participants in Filipino kinship created value in one’s participation. It also helped to
forecast the value of one’s participation as it related to creating a collective project.
Participants could measure their own level of engagement and capacity prior to
participation depending on their ability to relate and envision the value of the project’s
outcome. I identified myself ahead of time and during first meetings as a fellow queer
53
Pinay to potentially construct a sense of community investment, practicing in utang na
loob. The initial meetings gauged their level of interest in the project and how this would
fit into their capacity. The interactions created between the participants tested the
boundaries of formal methods in recruitment as we talked about many personal issues
on the first meeting such as coming out, family dynamics, dating, and relationships.
Queer project work rapport constructs different iterations of utang and is
significant in collaborating to create queer Pinay visibility. To build rapport, and to keep
in mind the central importance of their own subjectivities, I wanted them to think about
their inclusion in the project on their own terms. I communicated to participants that the
project’s intent was to create a documentary for queer pinay visibility, asking in
particular for them to produce their own footage or to complete an interview on film.
Their imaginations of the project required more or less some prompting. Visibility
ushered reflection in anticipation for how filming their lives can contribute and
communicate to a larger discourse on queer Pinay visibility. For example, I emphasized
the importance of creating a documentary and advocacy piece about the queer Pinay
and Pinay lesbian community. Most times, participants requested additional information
and elaboration on the project’s goals while other times they requested to know what
other participants were doing to gain a sense about their own possible contribution.
Their nervousness or excitement about the project also implies that they understand the
potential impact of a creative film project and the power of visual media on their lives
(Rose 2006). When they contributed their footage or accepted my invitation to interview
on film, they communicated that they understood the goal of the project in creating
visibility and to highlight on queer Pinay perspectives in documentary film.
54
The recruitment process practiced a queer Pinay version of utang na loob. There
were moments in which I needed to adjust the performance of my positionality as a
researcher. To encourage one’s participation, I drew on other social aspects of my
subjectivity to highlight commonalities and rearticulate different values that the project
could represent. This did not always work and there were moments in which my shifting
performances were not flexible enough to retain an investment in the project based on
their capacities and value systems. There were several reasons why some potential
participants decided to opt out of the project after first agreeing to participate. The
project’s focus on visibility may have threatened a sense of security in one’s anonymity.
Also, several participants opted out because they did not have the capacity to continue
corresponding on a semi-regular basis. This included two women from San Diego, one
woman from the Inland Empire, and one woman from the Los Angeles area. As the
researcher, I was aware that Filipino kinship constructed a sense of obligation on
participation. There were times that participants actually apologized about not
participating or not immediately returning correspondence. Capacity, goals, and my
researcher positionality represent some of the limits in accessing a wider array of
participants. The absence of these four queer Pinays reshapes the film project
indefinitely, as their narratives may have helped to expand on how labor and capacity
limit queer Pinay visibility.
The project’s design changed over time. Initially, I had prompts in which I
attempted to have the participants respond to or capture on film. Below is an example of
some of the prompts:
Family:
Where did you grow up?
55
Where is your family from? (Parents, siblings, grandparents, etc.)
Talk about tradition.
What are some things that you do with your family?
Sex and Dating:
When did you realize you were attracted to women?
Do you have a type?
When did you realize you were a lesbian?
Describe your first kiss with a woman.
Identity:
Describe your culture.
Describe your sexuality.
Describe your gender.
Describe your nationality.
Describe your identity.
Do you feel masculine?
Do you feel feminine?
Describe your religion.
I felt that beginning with broad concepts might help participants to have more agency in
the project and determine how they would like to interpret each prompt. Eventually,
sending prompts was only feasible for one of the participants and I eliminated most of
the questions. Here is a sample of questions that Barbara responded to in her audio
files:
How was your experience being in this documentary?
What does it mean to be a queer Pin*y or a Pin*y lesbian from Southern
California for you?
What would you like to tell other queer Pin*ys or Pin*y lesbians?
What message do you have for parents, families, or friends about the queer
Pin*y or Pin*y lesbian experience?
Anything else you'd like to talk about!
For all other participants, I spent time meeting and discussing with them what they
would like to focus on for their contributions to the film. I had more success beginning
the creative process for the remaining eight participants through this more informal
method of communication.
56
I document not only queer Pinay positionalities as they are socially situated, but
also create a way to witness our lives on film as responses to race, gender, imperialist,
and sexual subordination. I unexpectedly received several forms of data. The data
includes filmed participant interviews and participant-produced material, such as photos
and audio files. Below is a diagram of the material collected from each participant:
Participant
Barbara
Cheryll
Grace
Jerrica
Joni
Joy
Karen
Maria
Menchie
Data Type 1
Self-produced footage
Self-produced footage
Filmed interview
Co-produced footage
Self-edited footage
Filmed interview
Self-edited footage
Filmed interview
Filmed interview
Data Type 2
Self-produced audio
Data Type 3
Co-produced footage
Self-edited footage
Self-produced footage
Self-produced footage
Co-produced footage
Co-produced photos
“Self-produced footage” and “Self-produced audio” mean that the participant created the
footage or audio on their own.
“Filmed interview” means that the participant and I filmed an interview together.
“Co-produced footage” and “Co-produced photos” means that either a third party or I
shot supplemental footage or photos of the participant, excluding interviews.
“Self-edited footage” means that the participant edited their own footage, whether selfproduced or co-produced.
For self-produced footage, co-produced footage, filmed interviews, and self-edited
footage, I analyzed the transcription and the content of the corresponding video
moment. For self-produced audio, I analyzed the transcription. For co-produced photos,
I analyzed their visual content.
57
CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS
I analyze three narratives in-depth, while I organize the remaining six narratives
thematically. Concentrating on Menchie, Jerrica, and Barbara, I examine how film
facilitates the construction of their lives as queer Pinays. They use their voice, bodies,
and movement to demonstrate resistance against race, class, gender, sexuality, and
migration. Queer Pinays continue to negotiate and disrupt these discourses on film.
Their experiences display moments of displacement with external expectations.
The last six participants, Cheryll, Grace, Maria, myself, Joni, and Joy, I analyze
how queer sexuality visualizes descriptively different experiences. Queer Pinay
sexualities resist external expressions of sexual identity and political discourses that
agitate for outness. Queer Pinays seldom focus on our queer sexualities during filming.
We carve out spaces that reconsider other social boundaries and reimagine a sense of
self in hindsight of sexual externalities from labas. Ethnographic visual empowerment
constructs how queer Pinays see and are seen, creating different notions of location for
opportunities in empowerment.
Desexualization occurs significantly with all participants on film. Queer Pinays
choose other narratives to construct our lives on film. Desexuality exercises queer Pinay
authorship, circumscribing stolen Asian women’s corporeal images while resituating
their images in discussion. Queer Pinays resist hypersexualized narratives that
dominate both Pinay and queer discourses. For example, Menchie says that “it sucks”
that external queer identity forecloses her other subjectivities. She tells a story about
how friends relay to her that they “met a bunch of lesbians and dykes.” She quips, “How
is that relevant with me?” Queer Pinays choose more important aspects to showcase
58
queer Pinay visibility. These other narratives reclaim queer Pinay narratives and
complicate mainstream queer liberation narratives. This does not necessarily remove
sexuality from the experiences of queer Pinays but instead places it in the structuring
sediment while creating visibility. Queer Pinays opted to use our visual advocacy to
promote other aspects of our lives that go unnoticed. While sexuality may be mentioned
marginally, we reclaim ourselves from hypersexuality through desexuality on film.
Initially, I also wanted to explore differences between “queer” and “lesbian”
identities. During the process of collecting data, I did not observe any apparent patterns
or differences to explore a warranted separation. Throughout the study I defer to “queer”
for efficiency and readability. Participants did not elaborate on the importance of their
preferred labels of sexual identity. My decision to reconsider my focus from the
distinction between labels of sexuality relies on the concept that any potential nuanced
observations for Pinays to create a new understanding of politicized sexual identity that
may be less hegemonic than “queer/bisexual” or “lesbian” must be forged over time as a
community in order to negotiate appropriate expressions of our Pinay experiences and
how we have come to understand “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “queer,” etc. in the US and
globally. When asked, each participant responded how they identified, but during
meetings or correspondence, most did not care to focus on these labels.
Participants who identified as “lesbian” and participants who identified as “queer”
or “bisexual” may reflect socio-historical nuances in political language about sexuality. I
have spent a significant amount of time socially with participants who identified as
“lesbians” at bars, family gatherings, or church events: Barbara, Cheryll, Grace, Joni,
and Joy. I have met relatively recently through academia and activism those who
59
identified as “queer” or “bisexual:” Jerrica, Maria, and Menchie. At the beginning of this
study, I politically identified as a lesbian and toward the end, I felt my sexual identity
was interchangeable between “lesbian” and “queer.” There may be factors in education
and activism that impact the difference between lesbian and queer/bisexual identities.
Also, as a lesbian, participants whom I have known longer may reflect my own
positionality. Age or generation may also reorganize sexual identity. Five women who
identified as lesbians were over 30 years old at the time I began the study, with
exception of Barbara. The development of political terminologies over time available to
women-loving Pinays may shape how we define our sexual identity. Decisions in sexual
terminology may also consider larger discourses of diasporic-imperial proximity
( t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999). Further attention should be given to expand on the
differences of experience in lesbian and queer/bisexual Pinay lives.
I approached the topic of religion cautiously as it represents the private matter of
family, a subject that participants generally avoided. Six of the nine participants were
raised Catholic: Grace, Jerrica, Joni, myself, Maria, and Menchie. Catholic-raised
participants were comfortable in letting me know they were raised Catholic. Of the six
Catholic-raised participants, four (Jerrica, Joni, Menchie, and myself) informed me that
they do not practice it currently, and were at ease in providing this information. Two
participants were raised Iglesia ni Christo, Cheryll and Joy. They expressed some
contention when I asked about religion. Joy no longer practices and expressed that she
stopped after she came out. Cheryll did not divulge whether or not she still practices.
She responded via text, “Where’s it leading to?” when I asked generally if I should look
at religion in the documentary. Barbara did not wish to divulge her religion for the study.
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Queer Pinays who are not raised in the majority Filipino Catholic religion may
experience more contention with religion. In addition, religious discourses may not
significantly account for the experiences of queer mixed-raced Pinays.
I also present how Filipino kinship assists in understanding queer Pinays and
their relationship to the social world through Filipino values that facilitate self and
community. Queer Pinays may reappropriate utang na loob, a system of kinship and
exchange through indebtedness from inside oneself to others outside (Rafael 1993).
Utang shapes how queer Pinays create visibility and points to the values and people
that we are in debt to or honor. The negotiations between one’s self and one’s
community shows that queer Pinays are burdened with resolving externally defined
differentiations between us and our Filipino families, coworkers, friends, and religious
institutions. Focusing on how queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians engage in utang na loob
identifies the challenges of belonging while emphasizing strategies for selfdetermination.
Participants also unsettled the discourses of nativism and assimilation with a
variety of responses to the diasporic and imperial dislocation of Filipino subjectivity in
the US (Lowe 1996;
t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999). Barbara uses geography and spatial
mobility to unsettle the discourses that imply a separation of nations. Cheryll and
Menchie draw on Asian American and Ilocano identity and Filipino activism to
circumscribe assimilation. Grace vocalizes her parents’ perspective on the
instrumentalism of assimilation in the US and its importance in immigrant survival while
she acknowledges a continuum of the contention in the next generation for her nieces
and nephews. Jerrica collapses the difference she experiences in her family through a
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general deconstruction of “normal” in favor of social transgression. The slippage in
geopolitical implications creates arrested and temporal experiences of subjectivity that
continue to operate in and depart from geographical approximation. For this reason,
throughout the study, I interchange between the terms “Pinay” and “Filipina.” I focused
on the difficulties and struggles of queer Pinays while Barbara, Joni, and Joy
concentrated on self-sufficiency and labor as strategies in life, which may be indicative
of immigrant values in survival. Queer Pinay lives demonstrate the instability that
suppose and reinforce a geopolitical dichotomy between the US and the Philippines,
further displacing the potential for imagining and practicing alternative ways to create
agency in Filipino diasporic colonial subjectivities.
Tainga/Lapayag: Listening for Community
Menchie’s film resists foreclosing narratives in race, sexuality, and imperialism.
Her work in music creates in her a sense of leadership, empowerment, and fluidity as
she mobilizes between different aspects of her life. Menchie demonstrates how queer
Pinays attempt to do what is wanted or needed in ourselves and in the surrounding
communities in which we are engaged, i.e. our families, organizations, and cities.
Menchie produces social value in her musical talent and uses it to collaborate on
various community projects in the Long Beach music scene. I observed her as busy,
constantly putting herself in the purpose of others and chose to construct her film with
her musical talent as a form of gratifying work. I focused on three of her musical projects
on film. Her film reflects the creative relationship between two queer Pinays, one who
performs as the other observes.
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Menchie’s film transitions between her individual, musician, and organizer
stories. Queer Pinays practice in utang to navigate how our talents may benefit
ourselves and others, i.e. families, community organizations, etc. Menchie’s musical
subjectivity is an exchange in utang as she listens for potentialities of activism and
liberation in others as she relates to the potentialities others create in herself. Music
mediates Menchie’s offerings in Filipino kinship. Menchie uses her musical talent in
different community projects to benefit Long Beach, Filipino communities, and her own
artistic expression. Menchie’s film is rooted in the vehicle of music for herself and for
others. Tainga/Lapayag in Tagalog and Ilocano respectively are the words for “ear.”
Through Menchie’s film, I offer another way of “listening” to queer Pinay subjectivities as
her story reflects the voices of many.
Menchie contributed five photos that she wanted to be included in the
documentary. She had a promotional photo shoot for her band during the study as they
were working to gain more momentum in the music scene. These photos construct
parts of her visual subjectivity in Long Beach and music as she works on her band’s
progress. Menchie’s intersubjectivity between a film project on queer Pinays and
promoting her band demonstrates the practice of resource-sharing that typically goes
unnoticed in gendered labor. Analyzing the visual content in the photos, I realized each
image she contributed represents how Menchie labors as a protective leader over her
band. Shimizu (2012) suggests that Asian American manhoods are constructed in
ethical accountability and sacrifice. Menchie’s laboring narrative in music reconsiders
gender norms that reinforce subordinate feminine social roles. As a protective,
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hardworking, community-oriented woman, Menchie’s narrative showcases how she
queers the selflessness in Asian American manhood.
I met Menchie through another potential participant from Long Beach. I made
arrangements to meet Menchie across the street from the Long Beach LGBTQ Center
at 9pm because I was planning on attending a lesbian movie night there to recruit that
focused on two Thai women before meeting her. When the movie night was cancelled, I
made arrangements to meet Menchie earlier at her friend’s house. Below, my field
notes describe Menchie’s friend’s gathering and how her group of friends practice in
Filipino American community building:
she said that she could meet at 8pm and asked if it would be ok to meet at
her friend E---’s house where she was going to attend a small gathering
with other ‘kasamas’.
Kasamas is a Tagalog-based Filipino American word that draws on the notion of
kasama, one that is included, such as a partner, companion, or comrade. Pluralizing the
word “kasama” into “kasamas” uses English to re-contextualize the idea of
companionship from singular inclusive
subjectivity to communally inclusive. The
word “kasamas” does not exist in Tagalog.
Filipino Americans in grassroots
organizations use ‘kasamas’ to express a
one-ness among many. “Kasamas” filters Tagalog through English, signaling Filipino
American re-articulation and a political awareness of Filipino American colonialism.
Menchie’s narrative uses this one-ness among many through music.
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I chose the image (left) as Menchie’s opening shot because I wanted to center on
her story as a musician. Music constructs her film narrative because it became part of
her life at an early age. It also helped her through the difficulty of being bisexual. It also
demonstrates how she uses it toward labas in her band Bootleg Orchestra and her work
in Society for Long Beach Music. This opening scene shows a close relationship
between music and labor. Menchie’s musical instruments are also tools to create art.
After, she motions at one of the event assistants, conveying a sense of logistical
command to execute a successful show. Her influential leadership of the band and
helping to coordinate the event shows how she is able to recast traditional female
gender roles. She describes her priorities
as follows:
Even though I’m gay and I’m
proud, it’s not the first thing I
identify as when I meet people. I
identify first as a musician, and as
a researcher, and as a Filipino
American woman but then it’s
much later when I say that I’m also
gay.
This shows that Menchie organizes her
sense of self through art, education, and
ethnicity before her queerness. Sexuality
remains marginal as her film centers on
her musical talent. Menchie explains that
sexuality is a private matter, something
she “shares personally” with people.
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Shimizu (2012) explains, “Sex is the thing to hide in his bow” (61), explaining Asian
American manhood and sexuality. In her film, Menchie’s dialogue above correlates to
the visual moment Menchie bobs her head during her performance while plugging her
left ear to the loud music. Menchie’s life in music shows how queer Pinays do not wage
for subjectivity based on sexuality alone. We select other narratives in creating queer
Pinay visibility.
Menchie’s story challenges her marginalization as a woman of color. At 3:03 in
her raw footage, Menchie connects her experience with being bi to her activist work:
I didn’t’ realize I was a triple threat until I joined this progressive Filipino
organization called Habi Arts. And I recognized that I was a triple threat
because not only am I a woman, and an LGBT woman, but I’m also a
woman of color. And that is you know very different from a white
heteronormative society that I live in, that we all live in. So a lot of my, I
guess, my process with becoming bi, has a lot to do with my process
learning about the national democratic movement of the Philippines. Just
because I learned where my community stands as Filipino people.
While the association between sexuality and politics may appear uneven, Ordona et. al
(2005) discuss how sexuality manifests in politics because of a lesbian and queer crisis
in naming. Menchie’s association between the private and the public demonstrates how
she navigates loob and labas illustrating a meso-subjectivity. Menchie’s coming out
experience demonstrates how queer Pinays engage in processes of sexual awareness
and liberation that connects Pinay sexuality through the socialization of “kasamas.”
Menchie’s queerness relates to others, specifically “the national democratic movement
of the Philippines” through her understanding of oppression.
I didn’t know my culture until I joined Bayan USA, which is the umbrella
organization that Habi Arts falls under. In general, the Filipino people have
one struggle. You know all the Filipino people have one struggle. Each
region has its own struggles, but we’re still treated like second-class
citizens here in the States.
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Sexuality and Filipino identity as political discourses in liberation shows how she
recognizes a common otherness. This shared “queerness” transgresses between
sexuality and Filipino identity. Menchie chooses to re-purpose the alienation that she
experiences through the practice of empowerment for others, or “kasamas,” one among
many Filipinos. She opts to situate herself through her prioritized identities: music,
education, and ethnicity. In the medium of alienation, Menchie resource-shares herself
to benefit the Filipino American community.
Upon first meeting Menchie, I recalled an exchange where she asserted
differences between Tagalog and Ilocano parents. I asked her about this later on in her
interview. Below she states:
In high school, one of my Tagalog friends said, “ h you’re Ilocano? You’re
like the black people of the Philippines...” Back then, I had some
prejudices too about black people. So I was even more offended. But
looking back, I realize “Wow there’s a lot of internal racism in the
Philippines.” And a lot of internal racism that I still have that I’m working
on… I still don’t know the full extent of Ilocano prejudices. [Pause.]
Menchie describes the discrimination that Ilocanos experience through US racial
discourses. In her raw footage, she narrates a Tagalog friend’s discrimination against
Ilocanos, complicates it through the narrative of the Marcos Regime that benefited the
Ilocano people, signals a change in the Ilocano consciousness after the Marcos regime,
follows with her relationship as a daughter to Ilocano parents, and ends with her Filipino
American subjectivity in the US. Menchie’s experience shows how stereotypical
prejudices against Ilocanos persist. Menchie constructs a transnational connection of
US-Philippines racial systems in anti-black, anti-Ilocano discourses. Her Ilocano
subjectivity represents how monolithic Filipino identity discourses obfuscate nuanced
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regional contexts. The images (below) show the Ilocano region in the Philippines and its
vicinity to the Ifugao region, an area that is championed in representing native Filipino
resistance and heritage in Filipino American activist communities. The Ifugao, one of the
survived and endangered indigenous areas in the Philippines, continues to resist
modernity and is located
directly to the east of the
Ilocos region. Ilocanos may
experience discrimination
based on the imperialist
practices of modernity that
situate dark and racialized
global populations in
suppositions of extinction and historicism (McClintock 1995; Ferguson 2007). Menchie’s
Ilocano identity complicates the monolithic political discourses that have yet to provide
an understanding of regional, linguistic, and even colonial historical differences of Pinay
subjectivities overshadowed in Filipino collectivism.
Menchie’s story demonstrates that queer Pinays practice in self and selflessness
selecting her subjectivity in music, education, and Filipino identity. Her sexual
awareness shows an understanding of shared difference as she approximates her
capacity and priorities with work projects in various Long Beach communities.
Menchie’s story demonstrates a need to support Filipino and artistic community
organizations that can engage queer Pinays who experience alienation from racial
68
oppression. Menchie’s story also shows the need for a more expansive discourse on
Filipino experiences as an Ilocano Filipino American.
Music as a Narrative
Raising consciousness through music is how Menchie survives and understands
her queer sexuality. Her film centers on the role music plays in her life, emphasizing her
band Bootleg Orchestra, the significance of music while coming to terms with her
bisexuality, and her work with Long Beach Society for Music. Menchie describes how
music creates possibilities in herself and her communities:
So I’ll talk about music, my journey with music. I’ve played music since I
was 7. I’ve played the piano, I learned a lot of Filipino folk songs, actually
they were Ilocano folk songs! [Laughs.] Yeah so, I played Ilocano folk
songs, then I stopped, played a few more instruments. But it was really the
guitar that stuck with me. I’ve always been sort of a singer-songwriter
person since high school and throughout my years at Berklee, I was a jazz
principal, or I’m sorry a guitar principal. Music is very important to me. It’s
actually how I dealt with coming out. [Pauses.] So, I didn’t know I was gay.
But I was sad and depressed in my senior year of high school. Up until my
first girlfriend, when I met my first girlfriend who really helped me make
sense of my feelings. During that time when I was really confused I wrote
a lot of songs. And I think that might explain why I became a music
therapy major because I know how empowering and life-saving music can
be. So I create music for my mental health.
Music is empowering and life-saving. It aided when she felt sad, depressed, and
confused. Queer sexuality represents a moment of consciousness that creates in
Pinays the difficulty to recognize themselves. Songs and music demonstrate how
Menchie reconstructs self-recognition. Music enables her to draw from what she knows
from her upbringing and empowers her as an adult coming out. Furthermore, in terms of
clarifying the influence of an indigenous cultural framework, music represents a medium
of transfer in utang. Menchie’s difference expressed through confusion and depression
constructs how ideal Pinay heterosexuality removes recognition of the self, or loob
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based on a heterosexual labas. Menchie’s “mental health” or loob leans on music to
mediate feelings of isolation due to difference from external expectations on one’s self.
Queer Pinays are tasked with resolving our differences and the importance of music in
Menchie’s story points to the uneven burden between queer Pinay sexuality and Filipino
kinship.
Menchie is one of two song producers for Bootleg Orchestra’s music. The band’s
mission brings different possibilities for resistance through social awareness and artistic
expression. Menchie communicates several messages through her songs and mentions
two songs in particular during her interview.
Right now I’m with Bootleg rchestra… We want to create music that has
a social impact. Good music that encourages listeners to think more
critically about human rights issues, or any issue that’s an injustice to
communities.
So we try to do that but not in a very in-your-face sort of way. We use
words that are universal. Then we’ll sprinkle in more specific words. Like
one song is, “We Need a Phenomenon” which is very broad but the song
is about we need change we need people to step it up. And demand
change it’s not really gonna happen itself.
Her song, “We Need a Phenomenon” is a call for social change and the second “Here
We Are,” is an ode that she wrote for the undocumented immigrant community.
Menchie integrates an artist/activist perspective to create awareness for the hardships
she understands in marginalized communities.
And we also have another song called, “Here We Are” which I wrote about
undocumented immigrants. That campaign, really, the whole immigration
reform movement, spoke out to me because I can’t really imagine what’s
it’s like to be here undocumented. I imagine a lot of fear but at the same
time a lot of courage for being here. A lot of immigrants don’t want to be
here. They’re here because they’ve been forced out of their country due to
lack of job creation, lack of security, lack of basic needs…The chorus is,
“Here we are, what we’ll bring, history unfold me.” That “history unfold me”
is very impactful to me because I think when you know you’re people’s
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history you know yourself a lot more. The next lyric is, “All I know is what
we’ll be” which is all I know is the future that I’m fighting for. I’m very
committed to that. And then “what brings you here to live” is the last part of
the chorus.
Menchie’s musical expression in empathy for undocumented immigrants shows another
way that she constructs recognition, to “know [herself] a lot more”. Through music,
Menchie listens, understands, and returns vocalization through artistic discourse
recognizing difficulty, i.e. “lack of job creation, lack of security, lack of basic needs.” Her
musical empathy knows the displacement of undocumented immigrants as she has
similar experiences as a queer Pinay multiply displaced in the US.
Constructing Music, Place, and Utang on Film
Queer Pinays proclaim visualizing narratives other than sexuality. Menchie’s film
concentrates on music and its significance in her current projects with Bootleg
Orchestra and Society for Long Beach Music and in constructing her coming out
narrative. The film captures how music carries her story through social justice,
community work, and personal wellbeing. Menchie’s dialogue below layers over the last
moments of her film during Bootleg Orchestra’s performance of “Here We Are.”:
Yes we have jobs, yes we have bills to pay, but when we’re gone, what
kind of impact do we wanna leave?” You know it’s just not about us, it’s
about everyone…
I begin with a close-up of Menchie. At this point in the film I layered Menchie’s
voiceover, “You know it’s just not about us, it’s about everyone…” Zooming out, the
frame shows all three band members in my attempt to visually frame “kasamas” and
what she says, “…it’s about everyone.”
The challenge in creating her film was in visually communicating Menchie’s
intersubjectivity, as she elided “I” and “we” during her interview. This complicates how
71
visual narrative may include the perspectives of many as one or one as many and the
Menchie’s exchange between singular and plural subjectivity, or “kasamas.” Using film
as advocacy required an analysis between micro and macro epistemologies. Film tends
to reduce subjectivities, requiring me to consider its creative capacity in showcasing
complexity. I attempt to reconsider film’s responsibility toward the discourses of “many.”
I omitted some of the raw footage and opted to concentrate on how to expand the
dominant theme that came from each participant’s narrative. In Menchie’s film, I made
creative choices to include an idea of “kasamas” in the framing of visual discourse
hoping to communicate overall how she represents several group projects and
organizations. For instance, Menchie elaborated on Bootleg Orchestra’s purpose in
social justice:
So I try to create songs that are very
warm and get straight to the
humanity of issues without saying
things like “Take down the system,
Rage-Against-Machine style.” That’s
Bootleg Orchestra, we try to create
music with social meaning.
I included several songs from the live
performance to layer in the background of
her interview footage, attempting to
construct Menchie’s multiple subjectivities
in music. Below is the last portion of her
unedited interview transcription, the bold
script is what was used in the edited
version:
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There is one more thing when you were talking about “What’s it like
growing up in Long Beach?” k so, I co-founded this group called
Society for Long Beach Music, which I hope it’s a non-profit someday.
But it’s only a year old. Basically it’s an organization that tries to look at
how music of Long Beach reflects its communities. So for example,
Snoop Dogg who was rapping about police brutality in the early ‘90s.
Well why was he saying that? Was there something going on in Long
Beach? Because Snoop Dogg is from Long Beach, if that’s not clear.
[Laughs.] So there must be a reason why he’s rapping about police
brutality which as a listener I’m like, “ kay, he’s experiencing something.
He’s putting it into the music.” So I wanna know what else is going on in
Long Beach that is relevant to what Snoop Dogg is singing about. So it’s
kinda like looking at music as a narrative for the communities of
Long Beach. So that’s what we’re trying to do as an organization. But
also the other half of it is “How has Long Beach music impacted pop
music. So without Snoop Dogg and without Sublime who were largely
based in Long Beach in the 80s and 90s, what would rock music sound
like? What would G-Funk sound like? These are people who really
created a huge wave in a trend of music. And a lot of it has to do with
living in Long Beach. Look at Sublime. There’s a bunch of white boys
from Long Beach, but they were able to combine so many different genres
because they’re exposed to so many different cultures here… Living in
Long Beach as a musician, you’re taking in a lot of interesting
sounds. And the output of that is something really unique unlike any
other city. So that is what we try to do as an org.
Above (3) the image sequence plays as Menchie says, “Living in Long Beach as a
musician, you’re taking in a lot of interesting sounds.” Through listening, Menchie
explains how music impacts Long Beach, individual welfare, and social issues, such as
police brutality and undocumented immigration. She uses music in an attempt to
influence micro, meso, and macro issues as it reflects her response to the social
inequalities she has come to understand and experience. Like music, her film attempts
at multi-functionality. Menchie’s story creates a deeper understanding in how queer
Pinay adversity negotiates the outside from within and finds other ways to “rage against
the machine.” Music becomes her narrative in Filipino kinship, showing what benefits
the community also helps in re-affirming her sense of self.
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Queer Pinay Kinship: Reimagining Communes in Oneself and in Others
Because Asian female sexuality on screen typically signifies a particular
racial perversity, to bring emotions such as pain and discomfort to bear on
representations of intimacy renders their sexuality in a very different way.
- Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Helen Lee (2004: 1387)
Jerrica’s contribution points to the importance of art and community engagement.
She chose to showcase her spokenword performance competing for the San Diego
National Slam Team. Her film captures how she performs narratives from queer Pinay
marginality and engages the spokenword community in a shared understanding of
adversity, inspiration, and hope. Her courage and sacrifice through art creates a space
for political discourse inviting her audience to emotionally observe and situate her
stories as a queer Pinay momentarily in their own lives. Jerrica uses performance to
reclaim her memories over past experiences in adversity while her artistic work
emotionally moves and captivates others.
Jerrica’s film documents the San Diego Grand Slam Finals competition. She
invited me to attend and witness the event while her friend filmed alongside. The setting
of the venue was exciting and vibrant. Her story uncovers how queer Pinays create
visibility for themselves and creates exposure for the unique spaces wherein we find our
marginalized subjectivities. I met Jerrica at the Queer People of Color Conference held
at San Diego State University in 2014. I attended her writing workshop, “Who We Are
When We Say We Are: A Workshop on Writing the Self.” Connecting with another queer
Pinay through academia demonstrates the difficulty of finding other queer Pinays
altogether as college and education typically reflect social privilege. Academic privilege
may also inform queer Pinay experiences and opportunities in creating community. We
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find each other by chance, for example between an academic conference and at a San
Diego spokenword event. This calls to rethink how sexuality is less important than
creating access to spaces for shared queer Pinay interests.
The San Diego performance art community represents a cross-section of San
Diego’s diversity. Unlike queerness and a tendency to locate similarity through
sexuality, Jerrica’s film shows how anonymity and ambiguity manifest other
opportunities for queer Pinays to express themselves. For instance, Jerrica performed
in a room filled with many types of communities present. I greeted Jerrica with a hug
upon entry and she introduced me to her wife and friend filming the event. Her friend
was also another queer pinay. I sat in a row near them. At the event, there were youth,
young adults in their 30s, LGBTQ,
straight people, people of color, and
white people. The event and the
space reimagines, obscures, and
abandons social boundaries through a
conglomeration of social difference
enabling for queer Pinays to
experience a sense of self in such
queer-like spaces.
Forging spaces that allow for
ambiguity requires sacrifice and effort,
ultimately left in the hands of people that patronize and coordinate spokenword events.
Notably, Jerrica was the only Pinay competing and the competitors were predominantly
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male. The venue was packed at the beginning requiring more chairs to be set up. There
were close to 300 people in the room at one time while the room was less than 1,000
square feet. The two pictures below demonstrate that the San Diego spokenword
community works collaboratively from within to sustain itself. For example, the crowd’s
applause and noise level after each performance pushed forth some poets over others
in the process of elimination. The first elimination round took over an hour to complete
with no breaks. The crowd thinned significantly toward the end of the first round. After
each round the crowd grew thinner and the handful of audience members left behind
helped the winners and the coordinators put the chairs away. Outside of the venue
some of the poets and audience members stayed to talk and socialize. The diversity of
the San Diego spokenword and performance community is sustained through
grassroots efforts and requires additional support for queer Pinays in art to continue to
express and affirm their stories.
Above, the host facilitates the
selection of judges from the
audience in and an image of one of
the judge’s score for Jerrica’s
second piece.
Art has the potential to build community for queer Pinays. Lucy Mae San Pablo
Burns (2012) argues that political theatre conflates space and distance between the
76
audience and the performer. Jerrica uses her writing, voice, and body to connect with
the audience as she reaches for their engagement. Audience reinforcement,
encouragement, and praise impact Jerrica’s ability and desire to make the team. Neferti
Xina M. Tadiar (2004) argues that performance can transfer into lived reality in
moments of social engagement. Jerrica instrumentalized the distance and closeness
that performance allows, keeping a sense of ambiguity between her artist and performer
roles. The San Diego spokenword community is a space that allows Jerrica to create
opportunities for her self-expression, as a spot on the national team would further her
ability to do this. She performed three poems during the event. In my analysis below, I
center on moments from these three performances that show how storytelling reclaims
her prior (and temporal) wounds in areas of romantic relationships, family, and
emotional and physical assault. Jerrica practices in utang as she exchanges her artistic
capacity for the resonation and validation of the crowd in hopes of moving forward in the
competition. Her offerings are painful and from the very inside of her loob as she
courageously uses her voice to create inspiration in herself and in the spokenword
community, demonstrating another form of utang na loob.
Words and Wounds
The filmed event, the 2015 San Diego Grand Slam Finals was held in April 2015
in North Park San Diego. Jerrica’s poem “Sometimes Love” which she performed as her
first piece appears in her 2014 co-published collection of poems with Gill Sotu called
How to Love Gods and Acrobats. I used the published version as a guide for the
performance transcription since the performance varies somewhat from the printed
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version. Below I analyze the artistic moments in her live performance that demonstrate
Jerrica’s queer Pinay experience.
Spokenword is performance art, a moment to open the performer’s life to an
audience and communicate a social message. Jerrica demonstrates how she uses her
performance and her voice to create value in her experiences. Her piece “Sometimes
Love” reclaims a bad experience in a past relationship and the victimization and
helplessness she felt. There is a moment
that she addresses the
difference of the loob from the labas as she uses feminism to resituate her agency on
her heart:
I never let anyone with hands—full of good intentions—touch me in the
parts that are used to caving in.
Her use of the word “cave” signifies Pinay feminine gender as a phallocentric castration
in patriarchy. In the footage at this moment, she shields herself with one hand as she
covers her chest with her other hand. Jerrica uses her body and the spatiotemporal
passages between the outside and the inside to appropriate patriarchal definitions of
female subordination. Her poem re-centers the castration narrative instead on the
“cave” of her chest, or her heart. Queer Pinays navigate against fracturing social
identities and the difficulty of difference through utang. Jerrica’s story resituates queer
Pinay externalities through the potential of defining the loob.
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Jerrica’s performance also raises issues about how queer Pinays experience
helplessness. She uses performance to focus on moments of adversity.
ne’s
participation in Filipino kinship may be predicated on the subordination one experiences
in relation to more influential actors (Rafael 1993). In “Sometimes Love” she says:
Sometimes love is violent / And
you took your loaded
insecurities / and threatened me
at gunpoint the whole time I
loved you diligently
This representation of frustration
demonstrates how queer Pinays are
situated as subordinate actors and may internalize social incongruence to turn it upon
ourselves. Although the poem is about an ex-lover, Jerrica’s hand in the form of a gun
shows how she elides the separation between others and herself, labas and loob. Her
art expresses difficulty and disempowerment and signals to moments that utang
reinforces moments of inequality in the lives of queer Pinays.
Jerrica uses performance to communicate how queer Pinays experience and
resist the violence of heterosexism and other externalities. Her second performance
appears in the footage “063A1052.M V.” This piece contemplates the social definitions
of “normal.” Her second and third pieces do not appear in her publication How to Love
Gods and Acrobats. I use sections of the video’s transcription to concentrate on themes
from her second and third poems, respectively they deconstruct normality and reclaim
her body for self-empowerment. Her second poem focuses on her struggles as a queer
Pinay in her family, a story about herself during middle school, and a queer married
woman in heteronormative society.
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Jerrica performs the difficulty of coming out in her second performance. The
option for dying becomes a “split second” thought during this restaging. Her mother’s
characterization displays how utang responds to queer Pinay sexuality. The phrase,
“she wept on our kitchen table” / “and said it wasn’t normal” are two different moments
of Filipino kinship exchange that help to deconstruct when queer Pinays come out to
parents and family members. Jerrica’s mother’s weeping communicates her mother’s
internal struggle as she takes her queerness into her own loob, now possessing the
difficulty of Jerrica’s queerness. Sadness and disappointment mediate this exchange as
Jerrica performs this internal/external conflict. Her mother’s response, “…it wasn’t
normal,” externalizes in heterosexism. Coming out for queer Pinays demonstrates the
conflicting messages that heterosexism produces in utang making it difficult on both the
sender and receiver of Pinay queerness. When Jerrica performs this moment of distress
on stage, she interrupts Filipino heterosexuality with a critique of normality.
…for a split second, dying seems a lot better than facing a man who has
built my whole life with his two hands, and telling him that I am nothing of
what he expected me to be.
When I told my mother that I
was in love with another
woman, she wept on our
kitchen table and said it wasn’t
normal. Normal. I asked her,
what does it even mean to
actually be normal?
Lacking familial understanding
of queer sexuality creates the underlying conflict in Jerrica’s performance. Restaging
her coming out narratives helps to navigate the past experiences of familial pressure
and ongoing heterosexism. It also focuses on how unbalanced emotional labor is in
resolving the difference her queer sexuality represents in her family. Her response to
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her family’s difficulty lacks conviction with her father and is formed as a question to her
mother. Instead of queer liberation narratives that focus on “chosen family,” or people
who are adopted as “family” because of alienation, Jerrica redirects her resistance to
heterosexism at large. This implies that her family and their process of coming to terms
with her queer sexuality remain important.
The first time I made out with my boyfriend in the seventh grade, I called
him the next day and told him I didn’t wanna do it again because it made
me feel like a whore. And he broke up with me. Got with a girl the next day
that didn’t mind him sucking her face. I found out, went to the park where
he played basketball with his friends. I stopped the game, smacked him in
front of his boys and called him an asshole. Later I was told by teachers
that behavior for girls actually isn’t normal.
Jerrica constructs Pinay sexuality in morality as she tells the story about a boy
she “made out with.” Filipino parents restrict their daughters’ sexuality in moral
discourses to resist white supremacy (Espiritu 2001). Jerrica disassociates with
mainstream women’s sexuality when she restages the incident and says, “it made me
feel like a whore” and “a girl…that didn’t mind him sucking her face.” Clearly, Jerrica
does not identify as a whore. This account of her smacking a boy produces both a
feminist and Pinay counter-memory as a young girl navigating between American
mainstream female hypersexuality and her aggressive response against female
subordination. When her teachers reprimand her behavior, her story demonstrates the
conflicting discourses that remove her agency in ethical Filipina heterosexuality and her
unfeminine aggression against subordinate female gender. Her subjectivity as a queer
Pinay counters multiple foreclosures. Jerrica’s second performance reconsiders
arbitrary social boundaries and fights for her stories as a daughter, a Filipina, and a
woman.
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Jerrica’s third piece is a meditation on assault. Using the narrative of the mythical
aswang, I attempt to center on her artistic discourses of the wound that result in queer
Pinay disembodiment. In her performance, Jerrica talks about violence as she
experienced it on her body, either self-inflicted or externally. An aswang is a mythical
Filipino figure that emerged during the time of Spanish colonization and is survived
through orientalist historicism of native communities during the time of imperialist
expansion (Rafael 1993; McClintock 1995). The gendered symbolism of monstrosity
that the aswang represents is an imaginative allegory for the violence of multiple
displacements in which Pinays experience and has been reappropriated by various
Pinay artists such as Lynda Barry (de Jesus 2004) and Barbara Jane Reyes (2015). I
argue that Jerrica’s third piece contends and appropriates the narrative of
disembodiment that queer Pinays experience as social outcasts. Melinda de Jesus
(2004) describes:
In Tagalog (Pilipino) aswang means “demon or ghost,” but it most often
refers to a specific kind of monster: a strikingly beautiful woman during the
day (or in Barry’s telling, a dog); at night the aswang is transformed into a
malevolent vampire of sorts, who cuts herself in half at the waist (leaving
her lower half hidden in the trees) to search for an unsuspecting pregnant
woman from whom she can suck out the liver of the unborn child with her
long, needle-like tongue. (7)
Jerrica’s third performance situates her body as a vessel and in a state of
occupation. She shares a moment of passage of something from externality into her
loob.
When your body is invaded by an unwanted visitor whose diligence and
determination shuts down your body long enough almost to where the
silence in which you react with acts like a step to the side. Or a weary
invitation to come in. When this visitor festers and cackles within the
confines of your stomach it is a lot like being robbed at gunpoint.
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She expresses this occupation is from a type of monstrosity. She performs her
helplessness to the audience. The
foreign assaulting agent is not yet
identified and Jerrica employs the
mutable discourse of assault to
discuss different moments she has
experienced a loss of agency.
but instead you give bits of memories, parts of your life to save your own,
and you feed a demon. Something with legs. Something that has the
ability to run you. When there are events that happen out of your control…
Jerrica’s performance describes her decision to fracture and disembody from herself for
her survival. Her survival requires a type of sacrifice, “to save [her] own” while she
moves inside and outside the discourses of her body to resist the assault.
How do you keep the bravery to look people in the eye and tell them once,
you were given news of a planet that honed itself inside of your core and
you couldn’t decide whether to tell your brain to explore the new world or
stay grounded on the earth you already know.
Assault and isolation result from multiple moments of social fragmentation. The
word “worth,” demonstrates how queer Pinays construct in themselves a sense of
worthlessness because of loneliness. “New company” represents the benefits of
receiving exchange value as it is esteemed through others’ investments to be with us.
This contentious relationship of “worth” draws on a sense of irony. Her helplessness in
this assault inversely correlates to the past hope for a different, more loving per se,
“occupier” from externality.
I have never been one to believe that my body was worth new company.
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Too often I have let unwanted visitors come/cum inside me. I let them
mark my skin. branded what’s theirs and now another thing stays inside of
me. I thought I was finished treating myself like a stray. Like an
undeserving animal without a home to call my own.
She conflates different types of occupiers, “visitors,” with the word “come/cum.” The
elision between “come” and “cum” suggests physical and non-physical assault. The
word “come” can be interpreted as allowing someone into her heart, while the word
“cum” can be interpreted as “allowing” someone to ejaculate into her body. Her poem
helps to discuss multiple vulnerabilities that queer Pinays face. Jerrica’s story is about
how her body’s devaluation leads to estrangement and loss of power.
Jerrica also communicates a sense of homelessness, while there are still “things”
inside of her.
I thought I was finished
treating myself like a
stray, like an
undeserving animal
without a home to call
my own.
Having survived moments in
her own self-harm, Jerrica’s
piece navigates her lack of a home and being on both sides of the aswang’s tongue, the
attacker and the attacked. Exchange value constructs her homelessness as “a stray”
and “an undeserving animal.” Without “room” in herself, she continues to experience
disembodiment. “Home” is situated against unwanted entry, assault, and selfdisembodiment. Her resolve and agency come from the ability to house the temporal
“stray” and the “underserving animal” while she fights against the assault.
when this body has honed my spirit for what seems like centuries of
rebuilding, how is it that my body turns on itself and produced something
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within me that’s treating my insides the
same way I treated myself for far too many
years?
the irony of doctors telling you there is a
tumor in the same place that digests all of
the bullshit I’ve ever fed myself to swallow. I
don’t want it to be too late to tell my body
that I never meant those things long
enough to let it seep into this thick skin.
You could’ve killed me. Each time I told
myself I wasn’t worth a damn thing, I
could’ve killed myself.
Jerrica’s poem is about self and social
neglect. Her discourse of assault transgresses
between physical and emotional struggle (i.e. “a
tumor” and “bullshit”). She resituates agency over
her body as she reimagines utang in herself.
Jerrica’s story expresses how queer Pinays must
imagine a different “home” inside of themselves.
To be sure, below is the finale of her poem with its
corresponding visual moments.
I don’t want it to be too late to tell my body
that I never meant those things long
enough to let it seep into this thick skin.
You could’ve killed me. Each time I told
myself I wasn’t worth a damn thing, I
could’ve killed myself.
And now, now is the most important time to
remind myself that I am still alive. That this
body is my home.
And I have every right and movement in my
bones to force unwanted visitors out this
planet.
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At the core of my universe is not worthy any type of exploration. I already
know where I am headed.
And it is not toward foreign land. With the possibility of no resources to
survive.
I know now to choose my guests more wisely. I know now the ones I am
supposed to let in will never bang on my door with their fists. They will
know how to ring the doorbell with music that sounds like wind chimes. Or
wedding bells. Cleanse your homes.
Decorate the inside of your walls of framed photos of yourself and stop
acting that this will make you self-absorbed. Or vain.
It just means you know now what it feels like to love yourself from the
inside.
Collective Queer Pinay Artistry in Poetry and Film
I used Jerrica’s cinematography to construct a juxtaposition between her singular
subjectivity while immersed in the San Diego spokenword scene. Attending the event
allowed for me to experience the setting firsthand and impacted my decision in
constructing her film to reflect an ethnographic account of the spokenword community.
Jerrica’s cinematographer focused on B roll footage to construct the spatial imaginary of
the venue. She also shot Jerrica in moments of isolation from the crowd that could help
in situating her singular subjectivity independent from the night’s event. In the film, I
focused on her work as a queer Pinay poet and the social dynamics of the event.
Jerrica’s friend represents the importance of queer Pinay agency in film. Her
cinematographer greatly impacted her film’s perspective in framing different potential
narratives. I felt fortunate that the documentarian was also a queer Pinay living in San
Diego. I considered how her friend’s footage may inform shared stakes in queer Pinay
visibility and thought about asking her to be part of the project, Her work can be
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considered as a co-contribution between her and Jerrica. Identifying other individuals
with common interests in queer Pinay visibility is beneficial. It creates a collaborative
perspective on film. In several moments in the footage, one can hear her friend
prompting Jerrica to speak a bit, using the motion of her corporeal image to engage with
the viewer. The frame below is casted from Jerrica’s left shoulder and above her head
as her friend shoots from behind her. This technique constructs a shared gaze of the
venue between the film subject and the audience. The direction of power in the shot is
more balanced between Jerrica and the viewer. Having a queer Pinay behind the
camera helps to minimize Jerrica’s objectification on film, conjoining agency between
the seer and the seen.
Jerrica’s film draws on her performative corporeal empowerment. Because the
footage is ethnographic in nature, or B roll footage, I looked for moments in the film for
Jerrica’s narrative as a Pinay artist performing in the San Diego spokenword scene.
To allow participants liberty to build their own film subjectivities, I took on the role of a
project facilitator as a supportive bystander (White 2003). Jerrica’s cinematographer
captured footage of Jerrica in performance, between performances, and in short
interactions with people
around her. There is
virtually no dialogue.
This made editing a
challenge for narrative
cohesion. Her film
reflects the
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chronological progression of the night’s event. Because Jerrica’s footage focuses on her
performances significantly, I negotiated between how her art may be misinterpreted as
her filmed subjectivity. Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns (2012) recognizes this “mimesis,” or
how performance tends to misinterpret subjecthood. I negotiated how the viewers may
see her performance in words and wounds in a film project on queer Pinay
empowerment and limited when her performance poetry may have constructed her as a
static and helpless image in observation. I prioritized Jerrica’s agency as an artist on
film and attempted to balance the shock that her poetry’s content may create in viewers.
Breaching: Labor and Transport
Barbara’s story shows how queer Pinays [b]reach spatiotemporal socioimaginaries and contest boundaries in gender, sexuality, and nation. She showcases
how queer Pinays pass through social and structural limitations despite multiple forms
of exclusion or disenfranchisement. Barbara documents herself in various domestic
projects and in recreational transit to different destinations. Her narrative follows her at
home, at work, and on trips to the reaches of Southern California. Barbara films herself
in narratives of labor and mobility.
Balancing visual advocacy and ethnographic inquiry requires constant shifting in
queer Pinay collaborate perspectives. There are challenges created through
relationships between researchers and participants which complicate visual
methodology’s potential in empowerment (Rose 2013; Pink 2013; MacDougall 2011). B
Roll footage, or supplementary footage, expands imaginary spatio-temporal settings,
showcasing physical elements and relationships of power in queer Pinay lives. B roll
footage and supplementary material, such as pictures from Menchie’s photo shoot, the
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audience shot in Jerrica’s narrative, or below in Barbara’s video contributions, represent
an entirely different visual narrative from participant interviews. B roll footage locates the
participants’ bodies in the materialization of their visible surroundings. The amount of B
roll footage used also creates a multitude of ways to convey queer Pinay lives.
Sometimes participants used the camera as a conversation for social discourse. Other
times participants used the camera as a way of allowing people to observe them.
Participants also used B roll footage to expand on their interviews. For those who
depended upon B roll footage and chose not to interview, B roll footage became the
main focus of the discourse, resulting in a more ethnographic or interpretive visual
project. These ethnographic or interpretive contributions lean on the interaction of the
viewer, providing the viewer more power to engage in the discourses that emerge from
queer Pinay film. For those that used interview, or A roll footage, as the main source of
their narrative, their corporeal images maintained control over the content. This means,
for interviews, what the participants contributed verbally became the source of social
discourse.
Because film allows for a multitude of methods to construct queer Pinay
narratives, supplementary material helps expand on conventional interviews. Some
participants combined interview content with ethnographic or interpretive filming to
construct their stories on film. Two examples are the stories of Grace and Menchie who
both interviewed on film and allowed me to capture supplementary footage in a selected
activity or setting, hockey and music. Sometimes queer Pinays struggle with being given
agency in constructing our own narratives. We respond in various ways. We remove our
bodies’ images from the film, we enact the erotic gaze back to the viewer, we engage in
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our own film editing, we let someone else speak for us, or we use our interview content
or audio voiceovers to construct our narratives.
My experience being in this documentary was in a word, “awkward”
because I really didn’t know what to do. But I just hope the footage is
enlightening.
Barbara’s tone of disappointment toward the end of her audio contribution above in
“Voice00005.3gp” demonstrates that film is not innocent and has historically displaced
and obscured the raced, gendered, and sexualized subjectivities that impact queer
Pinays. Barbara’s tone demonstrates that there is a significant amount of contention in
her participation with the project. After hearing this portion in her audio contribution, I
wanted to find ways to repair the power relations that may have made it difficult for
Barbara to contribute her narrative. I relate to her awkwardness as I myself opted not to
appear in my edited footage. It is awkward to see our bodies on film because film is
invasive and displaces the comfort that marginalized identities benefit in our anonymity.
The immediate intimacy that film creates can perpetuate power dynamics that make our
bodies vulnerable and open for scrutiny.
Anguish, difficulty, and suffering on camera alter and shape queer Pinay films
and stories. When we show we are hurting we sacrifice our confidentiality to create
discourse, hoping that our stories not only belong to ourselves, but also to the viewers.
We must observe how film may or may not move certain discourses that affect queer
Pinays and make sure that our participation in film truly leads to the potential to reclaim
our subjectivity and to find empowerment in the portrayal of our lives.
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Barbara recorded her answers to a list of prompts that I emailed her, one of
which was, “What does it mean to be a Pinay lesbian/queer Pinay from Southern
California for you?”:
I haven’t seen much discourse around Filipino lesbian identities so it’s
pretty awesome. Keep doing what you’re doing. Stay true to yourself. You
gotta do what makes you happy. Follow your heart. Follow your own truth.
Barbara directs her voice to the queer Pinay community. She encourages us to
recognize value in ourselves and in our lives. This points to a theme in her films, the
work aesthetic. Sending a general message about work and accomplishing something,
anything, Barbara takes a moment to communicate inspiration, imagining a sort of reach
and community that this project targets. She does not shy from giving credit to queer
Pinay or lesbian Pinay accomplishments, encouraging us to “do what makes us happy.”
She also answers, the question “What message do you have to parents, families, or
friends about the queer Pinay/Pinay lesbian experience?”:
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being queer. There’s nothing wrong with
being a lesbian. That’s it.
While this answer may seem short, it shows that parents, families, and friends are
important factors in understanding the difficulties that queer Pinays face. The question
posed to Barbara did not focus on any particular context in which to talk about “parents,
families, or friends.” Barbara’s response and interpretation of this question shows that
“parents, families, or friends” continue to disempower the queer Pinay experience. She
challenges the moral discourses of heterosexism that make it difficult on queer Pinays
and Pinay lesbians to belong. Her conclusion, “That’s it.” comes across abrupt and
unapologetic and points to the limits of our capacity to educate the larger society on
heterosexism. Her message is a brief and straightforward commentary that shows how
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queer Pinays respond to heterosexism. It signals that she answers to herself first, loob,
as she encourages others to do the same.
Barbara also comments on queer Pinay complexity. Barbara introduces other
areas to consider in the documentary.
To me, to be a lesbian and to be a mestiza from So Cal those are all
facets within my identity. Your identity is made up of a bunch of complex
parts. And those just so happen to be a few facets of that. Being a mestiza
from the South Bay, and knowing that you’re doing a project about other
queer pinays or lesbian pinays from So Cal. I mean it’s pretty cool, ‘cause
it’s like you’re doing an investigation of a group or identity that is
marginalized within the margins of the marginalized you know.
Through personal communication,
Barbara informed that she was
born and raised in South Bay, San
Diego. She mentions her mestiza
identity above to introduce
additional mixed-race discourse in
understanding Pinays. Mixed-raced
queer Pinays reconsider the racial and geopolitical discourses that depend on an
understanding of social separation and structural boundaries. Mixed-raced Pinays may
have vastly different experiences and perspectives on race and migration to expand on
an understanding of gender and sexuality. In addition, because mixed-raced Pinays
may appear phenotypically different than non-mixed raced Pinays, their experience with
in/visibility may be marginalized in race and migration discourses.
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Barbara’s films resist the devaluation that disappears in the cult of domesticity2.
In Barbara’s film, “Movie on 7-21-15 at 10.18PM,” she enacts the erotic gaze as she
washes dishes and tidies the kitchen counter. This moment acknowledges a sense of
awkwardness of putting her life on film. Playing in the background is the song “I Can’t
Wait” by Nu Shooz. The song is an example of a mid- to late-1980s style of music,
called freestyle. The below lyrics are the portion that plays:
My love, tell me what it's all about
You've got something that I can't live without
Happiness, is so hard to find
Hey baby, tell me what is on your mind
Coz I can't wait (baby I can't wait) till you call me on the telephone
I can't wait (baby I can't wait) till we're all alone
The music frames her choice to focus on the labor aesthetic. She draws on the upbeat
dance style of freestyle music to help her power through her day and through different
work projects at home, such as washing dishes and cleaning. She concludes the movie
as she wipes down the counter, turns off the garbage disposal and running water, and
wipes the sweat from her forehead.
Barbara reshapes how
representations of queer Pinays at
home transcend women’s gender
roles. She does not offer commentary
in her footage, she merely glances at
the camera every now and then. While
her work in the kitchen does not necessarily veer from traditional women’s domestic
In Anne McClintock’s (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, she
explains that the Victorian era exploited women’s labor and created gender divisions based on western
imperial propriety. This redefined female labor as “domestic activity.”
2
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roles, her additional contributions show how Barbara queers herself in the variable
displays of gender in the labor she completes. Although her choice to use B roll footage
without verbally addressing the camera makes her image vulnerable to scrutiny, her
silence reshapes power dynamics between her and viewers. Barbara’s lack of
acknowledgement of the camera actually enables her to control as she chooses the
moments to engage with viewers. At the beginning of her videos that showcase
domestic tasks, she enacts the erotic gaze and only acknowledges the viewer again
when she turns the camera off. She places herself among work projects, making light of
the viewer’s presence witnessing her domestic labor. In doing this, she places more
importance on completing her labor, reducing the significance of an external subject’s
perspective on her body in the intimate settings of her home. Completing her work
projects with little attention for the viewer constructs the importance she places on her
work.
Barbara creates empowerment in her body’s image as it diminishes the
perspective of the viewer and creates control over herself and the task at hand, the flat
tire. Barbara’s angle communicates her dominance on film. Using this angle may also
point to a lack of certain equipment
that can offer more ideal visual
framing, as is similar with other queer
Pinays in the project, i.e. Joni. While
the camera is intrusive in nature, this
framing leaves the viewer with limited
access of power over the queer
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Pinay’s body on film. Also, the equal reduction that Barbara practices in this angle
between herself and the viewer and her work project shows how she equates the viewer
with the bike. During the course of the film, she walks from the left of frame to the bike,
looks at the camera, and fixes her shirt. She picks up a bike pump and attaches the tire
to the rim. With her left hand she begins to pump air into the tire. She moves her hands
over the tire to feel the tire pressure. Her facility over the bike also signifies her ability to
potentially complete “work” on the viewer, constructing a scene of shared desire in
which Barbara’s portrayal of labor entices the viewer as a potential receiver/witness of
her work.
Barbara’s non-acknowledgement of the viewer in the midst of her labor displays
and empowers her nonchalant attitude on film, situating herself in work. While the
viewer peers into this scene as a voyeur, Barbara’s piecemeal acknowledgement of the
viewer prioritizes the value of labor her body completes, with or without witness. She
draws on queer erotic desire, as she performs masculine labor. During the time she
pumps air into the bike, she stops, feels both tires, and then moves the pump to the
right of the frame. Then she picks up another item off the floor, examines it, and wipes
the sweat from her forehead. Sweat is further evidence of Barbara’s completed labor.
She also utilizes the intimacy of her home to unsettle the spatial boundaries between
herself and the viewer. Through her contributions at home between dishes and fixing a
flat tire, completing both masculine and feminine labor, Barbara draws on a queer
feminine appreciation for labor that is typically associated with the male body. She also
engages in erotic desire with the audience when she conflates the viewer with the flat
tire she fixes. Barbara’s film shows her laboring prowess as she moves between
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different gender performances in domestic work. Viewers witness her project from start
to finish. Documenting her labor, Barbara creates value where it is typically nonexistent, in the home. In the last few moments of this movie, she spins both tires and
examines the bike chain before she turns the camera off. Barbara’s film on domestic
work presents herself as a laboring gender deviant and contends for an eroticized queer
Pinay appreciation around labor.
Barbara’s clothes while washing dishes and fixing a flat are comfortable for labor.
Her work clothes in “Work 7-21-15.MP4,” however show how the queer Pinay labor
aesthetic transitions into the public work sector. Behind her are office cabinets and a
boxed item on display. To the left behind her is a white wall with wood-type paneled
cabinets below it. On her left wrist is a watch. She leans on a desk that has paperwork
on it. This film represents Barbara’s transition from domestic queer Pinay to
professional queer Pinay, keeping value of her labor constant. She reads something on
her screen and she begins typing. At the end of the movie, Barbara puts an additional
layer of clothing on. Her films represent how queer Pinays move about, between
masculine and feminine gender roles, between paid and unpaid forms of labor, and
between domesticity and outside the home.
Barbara’s footage demonstrates how clothes showcase how queer Pinay work
can transition between gender performances, from feminine to masculine labor. They
also signal a transition from domestic to public labor. Gender is deconstructed between
various forms of her work. Barbara situates herself in queer Pinay desirability, as she
directs her films toward audiences that may appreciate the work she performs, while
she transgresses between femininity and masculinity. Barbara demystifies work as
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masculine and women as idle. Queer Pinays showcase our erotic independence via
labor. To be sure, in many instances, Barbara’s scenes result in her sweat. It shows on
her forehead, which she wipes away with her sleeve on several occasions, and it shows
on her clothes. While sweat itself is not necessarily erotic, its acknowledgement
visualizes queer Pinay labor and hints at other physical activities, which result in sweat.
Barbara’s physical capabilities queer her gender performance, as her accomplishments
target the viewer and construct “her” as passive receptor for whom Barbara visibly toils.
Narratives in Mobilization
Asian Pacific Queers have access to different types of territory beyond the
physical territory to which political citizenship is limited, and this
deterritorialization leads to opportunities in which Asian Pacific Queers
demand different forms of cultural citizenships.
-Sonia
t lvaro-Hormillosa (1999: 112)
Barbara’s ethnographic contributions display her life as a commuter. The
backside of another passenger appears a couple rows in front of her. The date “JULY
30, 2015 10:12 AM” moves across the electronic marquee. Daylight shines through the
windshield. The tops of automobiles can be seen. Noises of the bus engine are heard
throughout her film. At 0:30, Barbara moves the frame to capture a view outside of the
bus and a paved walkway with conjoining lawns with a tree. At 0:36, the frame displays
the bus passing by cars at a busy intersection. In Barbara’s series “Bus Life,” she
transitions the power of the gaze from her previous contributions from film subject to
director. In looking at others, Barbara situates herself as auto-ethnographer, reclaiming
power from behind the camera. At 0:46, the bus passes by the Beverly Hills Hotel. One
begins to realize the bus is driving through an affluent neighborhood. In addition to the
Beverly Hills Hotel, the surrounding landscaping is lush with several palm trees lining
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the intersections of highwalled neighborhood
communities. Then the shot
gets momentarily blurry
before the camera is turned
off at 1:32. The
chronological order of the
video demonstrates
Barbara’s public transit life.
The video begins from
inside the bus, filming her view as a passenger. It concludes peering out at other cars
and at an affluent metropolitan neighborhood. While this constructs her location, Los
Angeles, this contribution is also involves a discourse in commuting and socioeconomic
status. The viewer takes on Barbara’s perspective as a passenger and peers at various
objects along the bus route, the motorists, the cars on the street, the Beverly Hills Hotel,
and the lush landscaping. Barbara films her class distinction as one that peers at the
geographical privilege while she constructs in the viewer her perspective as one who
passes by. Her films also capture an ease in passing by intersections and through
affluent neighborhoods. Filming her bus commute implies two potential themes. She
films herself as an L.A. resident without a car as she peers at the affluence of her
surroundings, the Beverly Hills Hotel and the lush landscaping. On the other hand, her
transit narrative also demonstrates a sense of roving power. Barbara’s other film
contributions focus on this transport narrative. “Bus Life” demonstrates Barbara’s
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context in Los Angeles as a passenger, but it also sets the pace to analyze how transit
shapes her other film contributions.
Barbara’s
mobile/mobilizing
subjectivity demonstrates
a sense of deviance,
reclaiming freedom as
one who uses public
transportation to differentiate from socioeconomic privilege and to arrive at desired
destinations. The transit narrative continues in Barbara’s other films. She documents
her journey to San Diego Pride. The frame begins with a bus at an opposite corner of an
intersection. The bus approaches and before Barbara boards it, she quickly films the
bus marquee’s desired bus stop “Hillcrest.” Her hand enters the frame holding her bus
pass. She then turns the video off prior to seating. Barbara begins her video “San Diego
Pride 2015 20150719_114440” with herself in the shot. She is walking in what appears
to be a city central. After a few steps, Barbara films her reaction as she documents the
culmination of this series. Barbara’s choice to film herself walking shows how her
movement empowers her. Her smiles captures how she feels as she arrives at her
destination, Hillcrest.
Barbara’s films display the importance of queer-identified spaces. Queer women
do not have the privilege to live in or near city centrals established as queer-identified
spaces. We must travel distances to celebrate our queerness in safety. Barbara’s smile
creates in viewers a sense of jubilee and joy in arriving at Hillcrest for San Diego Pride.
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Barbara also captures the spatiotemporal imagination of Hillcrest, showing white men
walking along sidewalks, the traffic, and local businesses. Her clip ends with the lit
letters “B-E” the top half of a sign that reads “BEER” on a building located in Hillcrest.
Despite the journey, gay white male dominance, and traffic, this clip demonstrates the
geographical implications of queerness in Southern California. It takes effort to go to
places that allow for us to work, play and openly practice our queer lifestyles.
Barbara’s story also shows how she navigates
between race, class, sexuality, and migration. The last
series of videos entitled “Tijuana 7/26/15,” capture her
travels to a music event in Tijuana. Barbara and I
became friends from our work together in Barangay LA,
an LGBTQ Filipino American organization based in Los
Angeles. I learned that her partner is the bass guitar
player for the band La Infinita. Her partner is seen
momentarily in this series of movies while they attend
the event. The transit narrative sequentially fuels a
discourse of nation and borders between each of her
film collections. From taking the bus to work, to taking
the bus to San Diego Pride for queer Pinay play, to a
scene of a mosh pit at a music event in Tijuana.
Barbara focuses in on the trombone player on stage in
one of these films. At 0:41 the band begins to play a
rendition of “Don’t Let Me Down” by the Beatles. The
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crowd continues to dance as they watch the performance. Toward the end of the clip,
the band speeds up the beat, signaling their reappropriation of the song as Barbara
turns off the camera. I wanted to see more, and realize that this desire to see her
empowered mobility to cross borders was perhaps what she intended as she abruptly
cuts the film off, suspending the viewer’s gaze as she wonders how the performance
ends.
This series also shows the realities of the US-Mexico border. The last
contribution of the series “Tijuana 72615 VID_95460131_073228,” begins with the
image of a tower and a bridge and follows a barred fence over three people as it
concludes peering out to sea. The written fragments of phrases on the bars showcase
the humanity behind keeping people and land separated. The view of the camera
places the fence on the right side facing the shore. This shows she is on the Mexico
side of the border. She documents the structures of migrant surveillance and
separation. As Barbara films, she includes people and the beach, two different ways to
contrast the erected structures of borders, as it affects communities and the land. The
three structures, the tower, the bridge, and the barred fence are examples of how
nations use structures to keep people and land separated. The watchtower
demonstrates a sense of national surveillance over those who migrate. Barbara uses
the images of people and a stretch of beach to create a political narrative in resistance
and sadness. The phrases “Border Angels” and remnants of other phrases “Si Se
Puede” “chip migra” “hora mas que nunca” “freedom is not” appear on the bars.
Barbara’s film captures the internment of people and land located at the US-Mexico
border. Barbara uses her mobilized subjectivity in travel to make a political statement
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about the affects of the US-Mexican border. Her contributions demonstrate a sense of
her porousness as Barbara has the ability to breach, to move in, out, and through
spaces in separation and exclusion. This is evident in her travels in and out of the
affluent neighborhoods of Beverly Hills, to spaces of gay white male meccas, and to the
Mexico side of the border in Tijuana. Barbara’s mobilized narrative as a passenger,
passerby, commuter, trespasser informs how different spatial breaches lead to political
awareness and queer Pinay empowerment.
Balancing Interpretation in Visual Ethnographic Empowerment
Barbara’s contribution posed challenges in creating queer Pinay visual
empowerment. Her contributions included B roll footage while she completed different
projects at home and in documenting her travels. She also provided audio clips of her
answers to several general prompts I provided. I began to value her footage very
differently from other participants because it captured moments of vulnerability, such as
filming in the intimacy of her home and in the midst of her labor. The footage also
implies socioeconomic discourse on public transportation. I wanted to maintain my
intent to create queer Pinay visual empowerment as initially communicated to
participants. I decided that her laboring narrative was significant in this attempt. I
minimized my editing to focus on the ethnographic capacity of her footage. I edited
several audio clips over moments when Barbara is completing tasks to center on her
work. I also focused on her laboring subjectivity because I had a modest amount of
footage to develop a visual narrative in Barbara’s other subjectivities. For instance,
Barbara gave me two clips that documented travelling on the bus, two clips about San
Diego Pride, and four clips about her trip to Tijuana. All but one of these were under one
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minute in length. Many of her work project clips drew more footage and varied from two
to twelve minutes long. Therefore, I used these shorter contributions to build on her
laboring theme. I incorporated them at the opening and closing shots of her film and
marginally throughout to consider her other narratives. I also used one song to carry her
laboring narrative throughout her film while attempting to accommodate the various
other stories in her footage. Although it takes from her film’s aesthetics, I decided to
keep the freestyle music that she used in the background to split ownership over her
laboring story on film between her and the viewer.
There may be implications of privilege in terms of quantity and quality of footage
provided. Barbara’s footage was shot from her phone and from a laptop. I felt that
editing her footage with similar consideration in aesthetics that I employed with other
participants’ footage would diminish parts of Barbara’s perspectives. I decided to limit
my editing for this reason in an attempt to give more ownership to Barbara as a fellow
investigator in visual ethnography.
From Labas to Loob: Reconsidering Pinay Women-Loving Ontologies
Queer Pinay lives and our misrecognition in heteronormativity and white maledominated queerness create in us a sense of homelessness. Queer Pinays and Pinay
lesbians potentially introduce new ways to shape femininity that transgress queer-asidentity queer discourses and Filipino discourses in queer-masculine or hetero-feminine
gender performance. Queer Pinays express other manifestations of femininity that
depart from social expectations. Filming queer Pinays showcases how participants
create new ontologies rooted from the loob. Queer Pinays unsettle heteronormative
femininity, externalized queer exceptionalism, and tomboy masculinity.
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Below I examine the six participant narratives of Cheryll, Grace, Maria, Joni, Joy,
and myself. “The Weight of the Labas” shows how conflict between labas and loob that
queer Pinays experience creates social displacement. I center on the deaths of two
queer Pinays to connect the difficulties that shape queer Pinay success and struggle. In
“Queer Pinay Femininities: Queer Pinays Challenge Femininity and Masculinity” I
explain how queer Pinays resist binary and non-binary gender performativity between
Filipino masculinity and femininity. I also showcase how queer Pinays perform
masculinity in spaces and activities that permit social ambiguity. Grace’s narrative
highlights her tomboy subjectivity in sports as she connects her queer Pinay masculinity
through narratives of family and heternormativity. Maria constructs her external femme
performance as necessarily subversive to male dominance in the queer Filipino
community and masculine performance dominance in the queer women’s community. In
“Self as Survival: Power in the Queer Pinay Loob” I showcase how Joni centers on
internal capacity and the instrumentalism of a laboring narrative and how playing
basketball creates value. “Empathy and Resilience: Queer Pinay Self-Preservation”
demonstrates how Joy’s caring labor expands on Joni’s narrative from loob as she
carries it into her work as a nurse for the labas. Joy explains the difficulty that queer
people experience as she shares her personal challenges with religion, parents, and in
the labor sector.
Queer Pinay femininity challenges iterations of queer conformity in female
masculinity while reconsidering Pinay gender and tomboy masculinity (Fajardo 2008).
Our lived realities against patriarchy exclude us from experiencing at liberty the
privileges of masculinity and deploy a nuanced difference through Pinay feminine
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queerness. The stories of Cheryll, Grace, Joni, and Maria express this unrecognized
ontology and challenge a “new-boy club” binarism in tomboy masculinity. Maria’s femme
identity is notably a distinctive outwardly “look,” or gender performance, in which nearly
all participants share. This calls to include the experiences of queer Pinays and an
understanding of potential shared experiences between queer Pinays and tomboys via
behavior while instead performing queer Pinay womanliness and femininity externally.
Queer Pinays resituate the discourses that differentiate their experiences from tomboy
and Asian American masculinity.
Queer Pinay ontologies deconstruct the separation between what is typically
accepted as labor and recreation. We diligently reimagine our lives in ways that may not
differentiate work from play. This presents other possibilities to resituate Pinay gender
and queerness that disappear in the sustained polarity between labor and recreation.
Visualizing queer Pinays requires an understanding that work and play constantly
intersect in our lives. Respect for our capacities demonstrates how many participants
are aligned with the intent of a documentary. Although interested, some women were
unable to contribute time and effort outside of already established priorities to
participate. Below my notes describe the lifestyles of two women who opted out of the
study and the negotiation of queer Pinay capacities:
We then talked about some of the upcoming events that we are working
on together and exchanged notes from the last meeting we had for N-----‘s
committee… I formally became a member earlier this month after
attending a weekend retreat. I volunteered to work on an upcoming event
for this weekend and let her know I could help facilitate a small group
activity.
We then talked about C---’s event in January and I asked her if she was
going to throw another one. She perked up and said she wasn’t sure and
asked what we would want to see at the event. I let her know I liked the
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open mic and gallery combination that was done at the last one. She
informed that the event has been thrown twice and that she is on the
board for the queer Asian student organization at UCR.
Queer Pinay lifestyles include a host of other projects, i.e., community work. Queer
Pinay time and capacity creates value for the projects we choose to work on that shape
our lifestyles. While women’s labor typically goes unnoticed, the above experiences of
two women that could not participate in this project demonstrate that designating our
time outside of work helps to create social value as we deconstruct a separation
between labor and recreation. This shows that queer Pinays externalize labor as
preferred subjectivities as opposed to externally performing their queerness. Queer
Pinay labor contends with the narratives of female domesticity and idleness that erase
women’s work inside and outside of the home.
The Weight of Labas
Creating queer Pinay visual empowerment exposes the challenges that we face
in navigating social difference. Queer Pinays demonstrate ways to center on the loob to
resist the isolation that we experience from labas. Each participant faces a sense of
alienation and attempts to define empowerment and resolve differently. One resolution
that helps to empower queer Pinays on film is practicing in Pinay tomboy subjectivities.
Barbara performs queer gendered domestic work. Cheryll smokes and plays basketball.
Grace enjoys women’s camaraderie in a masculinized sport. Jerrica’s poem about junior
high distances her from normative feminine behavior. Joni works on her loob playing
basketball. Menchie maintains leadership roles in the Long Beach music scene. Queer
Pinays construct their empowered visibility in multiple ways, aware that our loob is
seldom fully reflected in the labas.
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In contrast to Grace’s subjectivity in women’s roller hockey, Joni is unable to
capture a sense of camaraderie on film as basketball is also a team sport. Barbara,
Cheryll, Grace, Jerrica, and Joni’s laboring and playing tomboy masculinities show the
need for sustained scholarly attention on queer Pinay masculinity. Queer Pinay visibility
on film demonstrates a sense of alienation and the challenges that require a
considerable amount of inner-strength and creativity. Queer Pinay resilience attempts to
offset the shortcomings of Filipino kinship and how queerness and our Pinayness create
moments of isolation and unbalance. Queer Pinays turn inward toward the loob to
sustain our sense of self against how the outside world fractures at us. Our isolation
also implies a need to create and maintain access to different spaces and activities that
allow for queer Pinays to flourish.
Filming queer Pinays is an emergence from the security of invisibility, with
expected and anticipated social response and repercussion from the labas. As Joy’s
narrative in nursing highlights below, empathy and resilience are important to our
survival. This is why the choice to contribute a story about two queer Pinays who have
died comes with great contention and
risk. The risk of filming ourselves
includes how the footage impacts our
professional and personal reputations.
As marginalized women, creating
instability in our lives is a considerable
gamble. In moments of vulnerability on screen, the weight of the story can move closer
or become distant from the viewer. My intention in filming this narrative was to create
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awareness about two members of our community to help mourn and acknowledge the
difficulties that queer Pinays experience from alienation, isolation, or lack of support.
Because film is able to transgress audiences, Abigail and Jacqueline’s narrative also
belongs to the community, through the outreaching of my loob. The film presents a need
to build and maintain the lifestyles of queer Pinays. One of the last shots in the edited
footage is from outside a cabin. The final sequence shows me walking from the back of
the cabin to a door. While filming this scene, I felt a sense of sadness as I was
wondering if the women, Abigail and Jacqueline, whose narratives I chose to help
construct my contribution were somehow “there” witnessing my filming. I felt I needed to
say goodbye to them. The music I laid over the footage at this moment includes a
melody of synthesized violins to convey reaching out to Abigail and Jacqueline. I
wanted to console them and myself as I filmed the location where their bodies were
found. The music cues to a solemn hip hop beat, before my hand drops. The frame then
pans to the right out to sea and then upwards above the cabin to the sky as if to look for
Abigail and Jacqueline. I was not aware that I was using the camera to somehow look
for their presence at the lodge. However, this is evident in the cinematography and in
how I decided to edit the footage. My contribution demonstrates how queer Pinays
continue to search for each other and our stories to salvage a sense of self from
moments of loss.
My contribution calls to mourn and heal the wounds of queer Pinay invisibility. In
Menchie’s contribution she says, “When you know your people’s history, you know
yourself a lot more.” Reconstructing memory to include our stories helps to accomplish
this. Honoring two members of our community who are no longer with us is a way to
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reconstruct loss of a queer Pinay self, emotionally or physically. Our stories are invisible
as a colonized, racialized, gendered, sexually marginalized group. Because of this,
queer Pinays may not have the privilege to wage in discourses that do not focus on our
successes. A film project focusing on our lives demonstrates limits to engage in difficult
and sensitive discourses that raise awareness to problems we often hide in order to
survive. My contribution therefore imagines a moment that focuses on the narratives
that negotiate between the thin lines of queer Pinay success and struggle.
Challenging Femininity and Masculinity
Queer Pinays complicate polarities that inform binary and non-binary genders
and queerness. Visualizing empowerment in queer Pinays reimagines heteronormative
gender and queer gender non-conformity (indeed conformity). As Pinay lesbians and
queer Pinays, Cheryll, Grace, Joni, and Maria demonstrate the need to recognize
different descriptive experiences of queer Pinay tomboy femininities. Cheryll’s smoking
and basketball and her feminine presentation as a lesbian complicate gender and
sexuality, redefining for herself the identities of “woman” and “lesbian.” Grace’s tomboy
femininity in recreational hockey showcases how she moves between gender
performances to situate her queer Pinayness in a male-identified sport. Joni’s labor
aesthetic and basketball narratives show how her queer Pinayness elides differences
between work and play. Maria’s queer femininity complicates the male domination and
gender non-conformity of queer Filipino spaces and resituates femme identity for queer
Pinays. Below, I analyze the visual narratives of Cheryll, Grace, Joni, and Maria and
demonstrate how their stories reconsider and depart from understandings in
queer/Pinay/women. Queer Pinay ontologies substantiate the values of the loob that
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disappear in politically situated discourses that privilege external gender performances
of queerness.
Cheryll rebuilds a sense of self in her experience as a feminine tomboy that
escapes external definitions of queerness and Pinayness. Cheryll’s narrative
showcases how she uses her filmed visibility as a platform to complicate her
queer/Pinay/femininity.
I’ve never thought of why I like to smoke. I like to smoke because it’s
literally my dirty little secret to have a cigarette and pick my mother up in
her Sunday dress. And she has no clue that I do this nasty habit. When I
think about why it happens and why I do this. It could go back to me
having a dirty little secret. Whether that being I’m a lesbian and people
don’t know that when they see me and they assume I’m one way and I
know that I’m not that way, I’m completely something else. I’ve stopped
but I’ve always gone back to it. I feel like it’s a way to claim myself in a
world that’s constantly telling you, as a woman, as a feminine woman,
what you should be and how you should behave. I’ve always gone against
the grain, whether it was me being a little tomboy and playing basketball
better than a girl should play basketball whether it was being a lesbian and
being a feminine lesbian. Even within the gay community, there are certain
ideas of normality that I never even fit in those scenes. I’m not
stereotypical. In some ways I am, but in how the world has this idea of
what a woman should be, I’ve always been outside the box… I don’t care,
I’ve never wanted the white picket fence and the husband and the two
kids. I’ve never wanted that. So this all goes back to why I smoke, I don’t
know how it all goes back to that. but in some little way, I feel like me
doing what I wanna do and not what I’m supposed to do, translates to me
lighting up over and over again on the corner of the street, late at night
when everybody’s sleeping and I sneak outside for a smoke or even when
I’m at a club and I sneak away to the alley where it’s quiet and dark,
somehow that comes to play when I light up.
Cheryll’s femininity constructs her against “the gay community.” Her smoking constructs
her against her mother and the heterosexual community. Her “being a little tomboy”
constructs her against femininity. Cheryll’s counternarrative creates visibility in how she
knows her inner queer Pinay, being aware of herself from the loob. She creates new
possibilities between and against established circumstances that identity discourses
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foreclose and shows how outside expectations get in the way of knowing the very inside
of her experience and why she continues to light up “over and over again.”
Grace’s story is an example of how Pinay lesbians use ambiguity to reimagine
spaces of masculinity, showcasing a stereotypical men’s sport, hockey. Grace’s footage
presents her experience playing in a recreational roller hockey league. Similar to Jerrica
and her life in San Diego’s spokenword scene, Grace recasts the lines of gender that
define hockey as a predominantly male sport. She appropriates straight femininity and
family narratives to demystify hockey’s maleness. Playing hockey is a way that Grace
side-steps social difference to enjoy in a moment of tomboy masculinity. Grace
reconsiders the male gendering of hockey to enable herself as a Pinay lesbian as well
as for others, in particular women and children. First, she includes some of the violence
that playing hockey entails in stories about her own injuries. She also edits her footage
to include her transition from her street clothes into the hockey equipment making it
clear that layers of protection are needed to play. The below shot begins this portion of
her contribution:
…it was really cool that it was just women ‘cause, everyone gets
intimidated. ne, it’s hockey. k, hockey, you think no teeth, and bruises,
and like you know, blood and sticks in your face.
Right? So that’s one. [Shot to Grace’s feet and legs below, she is wearing
rollerblades and partially dressed in her uniform getting ready. She is
putting her hair up.] And then two, you think, men right?
[Shot comes back to interview] With no teeth and [gestures with arms and
shoulders as if to demonstrate tough] going like this. [Shot of her fixing her
hair, while getting ready] So when I came to the rink to watch the game, I
was like, “Whoa, it’s only girls.”
I’m like, “ kay, I think I wanna try it. I play once a week [puts on jersey]
and I will never stop [shot back to interview] playing.
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Grace’s footage goes back and forth between her interview and B roll footage. This
creates a visual discourse that documents her corporeal image as it transitions between
her street clothes and her hockey uniform. Grace’s story of playing hockey shows how
she avoids external judgment that may identify in her a sense of gender and sexual
deviance, while she opts for the violence inherent in hockey.
I’ve got injured. Broken my ankle
twice. You know I’ve got
concussions. But I really love this
sport.
Grace transforms on film when she puts a
bandana over her hair, the moment
corresponds with her voiceover, “It’s the
camaraderie, playing on a team with a
bunch of women from all walks of life.”
Grace focuses on team camaraderie
instead of her identity as a lesbian or
tomboy that would only reinforce her
difference. Below she explains:
I’ve always been a tomboy. This
kinda fits in line because it’s more….
It’s always been considered a male
sport. I don’t think that’s the case.
When you come and watch the
game, you’ll see the kind of players
and the women playing and the kids
playing and, um. It’s not a men’s
sport. They call it a gentlemen’s
sport. I think they call golf that too.
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Hockey is a way for Grace to momentarily practice a sense of masculinity. Grace’s
difference disappears as she asserts that hockey allows her to play among women from
“all walks of life,” and to experience a sense of camaraderie playing on a team. To be
sure toward the end of her video, she concentrates on hockey as a universal narrative
between all types of people. Hockey offers a way to mute her sexual difference and her
sense of queer Pinay tomboyishness by locating herself in an activity that recasts
normative gender performance.
And I don’t feel, um, looked at as too tomboy, or too, “Hey you’re a
lesbian.” I don’t think anyone can tell.
At this rink, there’s not a lot of Filipinos. So, you know, I step in here as
one female two, a Filipino, and a lesbian. And in, in this sport, if you are a
girl and you, um, are playing, people find out you’re playing hockey,
they’re like, “ h you must be a lesbian.”
The ratio of straight women to lesbians, you know, is high. There’s a lot of
moms. Moms play in the women’s league, their husbands play on the over
40 and over league and their kids play.
In the footage, Grace skates between
two of her teammates. One is Asian
and femme-presenting and the other is
white and masculine presenting.
Hockey enables her to find comfort in
a sense of social ambiguity. She
expresses feminism through recreational hockey play. Grace’s story demonstrates how
her masculinity is enabled through feminist occupation of masculine athletics.
Camaraderie offsets feelings of difference in queer Pinays. Grace’s tomboy masculinity
is actually in line with women, children, and the narratives of the heterosexual family.
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Grace finds ways to bridge externalities and build a sense of self from within through
sampalataya toward the labas. Her story calls to redirect race, gender, and sexuality to
include the marginality of queer Pinay experiences.
Organizations and activities that unsettle normative gender and sexuality can
assist queer Pinays. With respect to queerness, without femme representation, Pinays
may unfairly experience alienation and pressure to conform to masculine queer
women’s identity. While Grace finds a sense of self as a tomboy in a women’s roller
hockey league, Maria’s story inversely reveals the difficulty she experiences while
searching for a sense of femme identity while she was an undergraduate at UC
Berkeley. Maria shares how she was unable to find a queer Pinay space to explore her
sexuality and describes how men dominated the queer Filipino student community on
her campus.
When you think of queerness in the Filipino American community, you
often think of this man or this boy that’s really loud, that’s really
flamboyant, that’s really femme, you know bakla, that’s what queerness
essentially is in the Filipino American community. [That] space was really
cliquey, was really male-dominated, just very extroverted. I identify as an
introvert with social anxiety. I have a really hard time socializing with
people. It takes me awhile to break out of my shell. That space I felt very
unwelcomed, very cliquey to me.
Queer and Filipino patriarchy focuses on the experiences of men performing feminized
gender presentations (Diaz 2015). In the Filipino
community, this externalization of one’s gay
sexuality through gender performance is called the
“bakla,” a social label for homosexual men.
Ultimately, Maria’s queerness and her Pinay
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femininity remain unsupported in spaces that center on queer Filipino manifestations of
masculinity that reproduce Pinay gender subordination.
I seriously thought, “Where are all the queer Pinays? Where were all the
other queer Filipino women? What were they doing? Where are they?
Where can I find their books? Where can I find their texts? Essentially I
was lost.
Confronted with the dominance of Filipino American gay masculinity and a focus on the
bakla, Maria expresses the isolation and alienation she felt in her queer Pinay gender.
Without spaces or communities to help queer Pinays understand their gender and
sexuality, queer Filipino organizations and movements overlook the importance of our
lives and imply a priority on male-identified queer Filipino lives. As an academic
presently in graduate school, Maria responds to her sense of loss with questions that
carve herself a separating queerness:
I began to think that maybe all queer
spaces were like this, maybe I can’t fit into
the definition of queer because I don’t seem
to be exhibiting qualities that are so viable
to identifying as queer. As a result I began
to disidentify with the queer label.
Maria’s story shows how the queer Filipino community makes Pinays feel unwelcomed.
Centering on gay Filipino masculinity mutes the different experiences of Pinays and the
nuanced challenges that queer/Pinay/women face when coming to terms with their
queer sexuality. Maria resolves the conflict by distancing herself from queer Filipino
bakla identity and spaces. This shows a need for Pinay representation and leadership in
queer-identified Filipino organizations. Maria finds a sense of self on her own when she
engages a renowned queer of color gender performance theorist, José Esteban Muñoz.
Without the support of the queer Filipino community, she must ultimately find a sense of
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self on her own that champions her queer femme identity. She narrates her celebration
of her difference:
I’m situating myself within, against the
various discourses in which queer
folks are being called or being
obligated to identify with and that’s not
bad.
Maria’s voice helps to include and construct
queer femme visibility from the exclusion she
experiences in organizations that prioritize male-identified Filipino queerness.
Maria also challenges the queer acceptance and conformity that masculinepresenting queer women receive over femme-presenting queers. Queer and queer of
color theorists demonstrate how race, gender, and citizenship inform the power
dynamics that may be present in queer Pinay sexuality. Queer scholars have helped to
deconstruct gender through performativity and argue that gender has been understood
as scientific, or “biological,” instead of social, or “binary;” recognizing differences of
power between people who practice binary and non-binary genders (Butler 1993;
Foucault 1980). Race and citizenship complicate and are complicated by queerness
(Puar 2007). In addition, binary constructs depend on a notion of separation that
disregards how seemingly disparate social factors such as race, gender, citizenship,
and sexuality may actually complement and interact through congruence and
incongruence (Lowe 1996a). As a femme-identified queer Pinay, Maria challenges other
queer folks to rethink the exceptionalism constructed from queerness that shows itself
through outwardly non-binary gender expression. She addresses how femininity is
excluded from being validly queer if one is a woman:
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I know a lot of people often think that
often blame other folks, especially folks who are femme identifying, you
know “You’re not…” women who are femme-identified, you know, “You’re
not being queer enough. You are conforming to those gender roles, you
know, that’s stopping us from achieving” quote-unquote “equality.”
Maria reimagines new possibilities in gender and sexuality and expresses how Pinays
can be both feminine and queer. Her story recasts what queer visibility means for
Pinays and implies a need for empowerment that transgresses queer appearances. She
builds a sense of self in her social difference and exclusion from male-dominated queer
Filipino organizations that continue to practice queerness for the labas through gender
performativity. Her story uses her strength and resistance to visualize the loob while she
proclaims resistance to queer non-binary conformity and its exclusion of her feminine
identity:
I don’t think being femme or femme-presenting completely annihilates the
queer movement or even takes us a step back. I proudly identify as
femme. Being femme or feminine has really helped me with my selfconfidence, with my self-esteem, with accepting the fact that I can be hella
queer, but I can also be really pretty…I hope that you all can understand
queer femininity is a very different, very unique whimsical thing. And you
should not undermine or shame queers that practice femininity.
Self as Survival: Power in the Queer Pinay Loob
Joni’s film concentrates on the contention between one’s inside, loob, with one’s
outside, labas. Jerrica reminds that “this body is my home.” Joni’s contribution focuses
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on how she houses the process of
her own development, creating
agency and ownership over her
capacities. Joni’s film contemplates
the meaning of success. Her
contribution uses two camera
angles, one from her phone and one mounted on our dog Yoda. She shoots several
free-throws as Stomp is played in the background. Joni uses the beats to create an
atmospheric simulation of being on a basketball court. The slapping, rhythmic beats
help imagine the adrenalin in athletics and competition. The fact that she appears alone
implies that the competition is not with an external opponent but in the challenges one
experiences from within. Joni also layers audio of a Coach John Wooden Ted Talk3
over her B roll footage while she shoots around on the court. The angle from the dog’s
camera shows her afar at the onset of the film. At certain moments she appears
massive, towering over the viewer’s perspective a sense of authority in her corporeal
image, similar to the framing in Barbara’s film.
Joni’s story demonstrates the importance of carving out the inside, or “character,”
and the potential involved in developing one’s ability. She uses the audio from John
Wooden’s Ted Talk to showcase an understanding of success “through self-satisfaction”
and then goes into defining a philosophical discussion between reputation and
character:
3http://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_on_the_difference_between_winning_and_success
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…it's like character and reputation -- your reputation is what you're
perceived to be; your character is what you really are. And I think that
character is much more important than what you are perceived to be.
The message’s generalization allows her subjectivity to escape social comparison or
judgment that comes from labas. She relocates value and worth in herself and is able to
define success in what one can “aspire” to become using self-measure. To be sure,
viewers witness her shooting alone. The only other company she has is her dog. Her
isolation communicates that she is working on herself, on her own terms. The audio
from John Wooden’s Ted Talk demystifies how goals are achieved, rupturing at the
internal difficulties that outwardly expectations create in personifying external values of
accumulation and possession. Through observing progress and measure from the
inside, Joni visualizes her loob and the possibility of building value in one’s process of
self-initiated effort and ability.
This internal process is
communicated through Joni playing
basketball as the audio draws on the labor
aesthetic narrative. Joni’s film
demonstrates how queer Pinays
interchange between work and recreation. Barbara, Grace, Jerrica, and Menchie’s
contributions also focus on recreational aspects of their lives. The urge to play operates
in tandem with the queer Pinay labor aesthetic. In Grace’s contribution, she talks about
her recreational involvement in hockey and how she appreciates the camaraderie of
working as a team. Barbara’s travels to Hillcrest and Tijuana centralizes her recreational
time while she documents the effort it takes for her to arrive. Jerrica’s choice to film her
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spokenword performance demonstrates the emotional labor in public art as a platform
for social discourses. Menchie moves between work and play to create her story in
music. As queer Pinays continue to focus from our loob, playing represents moments
that we practice working toward alternate realities. Through the narratives between work
and play, we create resistance to our dehumanization and social limitation.
Without a sense of self-progression, queer Pinays may feel loss or confusion. A
sense of homelessness emerges in participant narratives that deal with coming-out,
religion, heterosexism, and male dominance. Queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians are
tasked with adjusting to external systems to carve new possibilities for our internalized
selves to house the difference that is understood from within. Below, Joni’s contribution
creates value where the external world denies queer Pinay lifestyles, but also to pushes
the possibilities of queer Pinay potential:
I believe that we must believe, truly believe. Not just give it word service,
believe that things will work out as they should, providing we do what we
should. I think our tendency is to hope things will turn out the way we want
them to much of the time, but we don't do the things that are necessary to
make those things become reality.
By centering on a self-defined journey in sampalataya, queer Pinays are able to create
new spaces and value by placing ourselves as a priority. Joni’s contribution suggests
that returning to the loob, queer Pinays find empowerment to cast the potential for a
very different external reality. To be sure, Joni’s contribution unsettles what is known
between labas and the loob through a narrative of “winning:”
Just get out there, and whatever you're doing, do it to the best of your
ability. And no one can do more than that. I tried to get across, too, that -my opponents will tell you -- you never heard me mention winning. Never
mention winning. My idea is that you can lose when you outscore
somebody in a game, and you can win when you're outscored.
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Empathy and Resilience: Queer Pinay Self-Preservation
Joy’s story reveals values in self-affirmation, similar with Joni. She uses her labor
as a registered nurse to transmit inner resilience to others. Joy’s interview demonstrates
her sense of a dreaming reality, or fantasy-production, through her caring labor. Joy’s
story indicates how queer Pinays reorganize the labas to reflect a sense of self from
loob. As a nurse, she communicates messages of guidance and help and says, “You
need to focus yourself, on relationships and careers and family. Those are your main
goals.” She uses her nursing career to assist those who may experience a sense of
distress or confusion in their lives. Below she talks about her work:
It’s really hard nowadays when your family’s not accepting. I’ve seen a lot
of young adults in the emergency room that are suicidal or we call them
“5150,” they’re harmful to themselves because in relationships their family
wasn’t accepting or their friends weren’t accepting. My journey was to let
them know that there are resources out there. Support groups that can
help you. It doesn’t have to be your family…You just need to be intact. Be
positive. Find a way to understand that you can’t change the world. You
can’t do it by yourself. There’s other people
that you can join and be a group and
organize for that change.
By communicating the importance of selfpreservation, (i.e. relationships, careers, and family),
Joy focuses on how the work aesthetic is another way she carves at the labas as she
knows it in herself from her loob. Work and goals define her sense of self as she
expresses that she wants to teach and get married. She demonstrates her experience
in the health industry and offers messages of care and empathy.
Joy’s experience expands on the extreme difficulty that heterosexism causes in
queer lives, especially during the coming out process with families. Several participants
communicated a sense of difficulty with family members because of religious beliefs.
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For instance, Cheryll mentions with contention in her video “Smoker’s Lament” that she
is picking up her mother from church. In Grace’s raw footage, she discusses the
ongoing resistance her mother expressed because of religion in the period before her
and her partner’s wedding. Jerrica makes several references toward religion in her
poems and constructs her queerness against it. As queer Pinays are forced to retreat
from the social world that fractures us into definitions of difference that our lives
represent, Joy shares her experience and how she faced it:
[Me: How was the coming out process for your
parents?] It was challenging. They weren’t
approving of me coming out because of church.
The church prophesized that homosexuals will go
to hell. That, there I mean… [laughs]. You know of
course of course my parents are like, “You’re
going to hell [laughs].” I said, “I have a condo in
hell.” [Laughs] “Come and visit me.” [Laughs]
My mom was funny. She would like send me
scriptures from all denominations. And I said, “This
is not ours.” [Laughs] It’s from the Baptists or…
And so she was really not accepting for like a
good year, couple years, couple years. Until I think
my brother actually talked to her and said, “You
know what? She’s gonna be your daughter no
matter what. You can cry, you can be angry, and
do all these things. But she’s still gonna be in your
life.” My brother was influential in helping her,
kinda guide her.
Joy recounts how her mother and her brother became significant during her process of
coming out. Joy and her brother help redefine the experience of Filipino families through
her queerness. While religion guides the narrative, ultimately family shapes the
discourse of acceptance while her mother works on taking Joy’s queer sexuality into her
own loob.
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Queerness poses a threat to Pinay personal and professional lives. Joy explains
an experience with heterosexism in the workplace. Self-preservation is a way that she
focuses beyond these encounters and also demonstrates how experiencing
heterosexism is not about one’s loob. It may come from the externalization of a difficult
experience others have in their own lives. Similar to what Barbara expresses in her
contribution, “…follow your heart. Follow your own truth,” Joy helps to expand Barbara’s
and Joni’s narratives in singularity and as she explains a separation of processes
between individuals. Below, Joy explains:
I had a coworker that told me that she didn’t agree with my
lifestyle and I said, “You’re entitled to your opinion.” But
again, you need to focus on yourself. Be stronger in your
heart in your mind. She was telling me this, but she was
going through the process of her son going in the military
without telling her. You know, I don’t think that you should
focus on me. You should focus on your son who signed up
for the military without telling you. I think there’s going to be
a lot of people that are accepting and not accepting, but
you need to focus on yourself where you are, who you are.
You’re not gonna change for anyone. You need to focus
yourself on relationships and careers and family. Those are
your main goals.
As an emergency room nurse, she has experienced many life-or-death situations that
require her acute attention and ability to care for another person. In her self-produced
contribution, Joy’s use of second-person narrative constructs the audience as someone
to receive her care and guidance. She uses an individualized self-preservation narrative
to communicate the importance of inner
resilience. In her interview, she expresses her
perspective on coming out, encouraging the
viewer to include family when she was asked
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about what message she has for queer Pinays:
It’s also good to talk to a cousin or someone close to you, relative… on
coming out. That’s just gonna make it stronger as far as the lifestyle that
you choose.
While queer Pinays work at creating a sense of self, our families continue to weigh in on
our abilities to forge “dreaming realities” that include our Pinay queerness. Joy’s story
reimagines the temporal present and futures of the Filipino family to challenge social
limitations that queer Pinays face from labas.
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CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Implications
Film provides ways to express queer Pinay visibility and illustrates the potential
for interdisciplinary research. Film as a medium of inquiry allows for signs and
semantics indicative of empowerment and oppression to communicate hope and
hardship about challenges to selfhood in advocating for queer and lesbian Pinay
women. Queer Pinays responded to and identified with this study in a way that
communicated a desire for representation and a shared intent to emerge from
invisibility. The resulting documentary offers insight and ownership to a population that
struggles and celebrates in the margins while exhibiting how queer Pinays refuse to be
limited to discourses in race, gender, sexuality, and imperialism (Kang 2002).
Filming queer Pinays in Southern California encourages new understandings in
research methodology and challenges us to rethink the possibilities of interdisciplinary
studies. Engaging and challenging narratives of familiar political epistemologies, this
study reconsiders the fields of sociology, film studies, feminist and queer studies, and
Filipino American studies to create a sense of recognition and agency in a population
that has been rendered invisible. Scholarly research continues to defer to “big picture”
ideologies that ignore and reduce the possibility of difference and complexity that queer
Pinays represent. Researchers must be mindful of how social and political perspectives
enter the academy and create blind spots that hinder an ability to interrogate at other
truths. Interdisciplinarity readjusts the perspectives of positivist singularity that
reproduces inherited gaps in epistemological development. Qualitative research should
agitate at the limitations of disciplines to find more appropriate and accurate means in
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addressing the needs and voices of the marginalized communities in which they purport
to serve.
Film as a language, visually and culturally, departs from and combines different
fields to accomplish a very different way of analyzing social problems (Rose 2013; Pink
2013). I draw from multiple epistemologies to showcase how queer Pinays situate
themselves in other cultural “sites.” Through Filipino American discourses, cultural
studies, feminist psychoanalytic theory, and queer theory, I found that Jerrica’s poetry
and Menchie’s music use art as a way of being and transgressing, whether as queers,
Filipino Americans, or women. Through queer studies, feminist epistemologies, and
indigenous cultural frameworks, subjects find solace in gender ambiguity through
independence, interdependence, and/or collectivism in the arts, education, athletics,
and labor. In Menchie’s story, music helped in developing an understanding of her
queer sexuality and is also a way that she gives back to the Long Beach community.
Similarly, Jerrica demonstrates how art creates discourses in pain and struggle against
self- and social neglect and in reclaiming gender empowerment in her competition
against mostly male-identified performers in the San Diego spokenword community.
Feminist and ethnic studies discourses inform how Barbara, Grace, Maria, and Joni
facilitated new ways to resist gender subordination through domestic and professional
labor, hockey and basketball, and against queer Filipino American male dominance.
Barbara, Grace, Maria, Joni, and Joy reveal the significance of theories in cultural
studies such as kabanayan and the labor aesthetic to examine how gender ambiguity
offers sanctuary in narratives of independence, interdependence, and/or collectivity.
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Using cultural studies analysis, I engage a system of Filipino kinship, utang na
loob, to consider indigenous frameworks in scholarly discourses that center on
participant ontologies and the instrumentalism of fluidly between loob and labas. Jerrica,
Barbara, Cheryll, Maria, Joni and Joy express the importance of individual resilience
from within. Menchie and Grace highlight how collectivity and camaraderie facilitate a
sense of self. Jerrica, Cheryll, Maria, and I show the difficulties externality poses to
queer Pinay subjectivity, expressing moments of isolation from multiple sites of
vulnerability where we are rendered invisible. Representing the range of possible
epistemologies between individual, meso, and collective determinism involves new
ways to examine marginalized communities. Nearly all participants expressed feelings
of isolation and confusion in looking for a way to belong. The stories of Menchie,
Jerrica, Barbara, Cheryll, Grace, Maria, Joy and myself reflects a lack of support in
searching for community and difficulty with external expectations. Providing participants
with the agency to co-produce their narratives, this study attempts to uncover new ways
to understand how marginalized communities experience oppression and practice
resilience, whether highlighted or routine. Menchie, Jerrica, Barbara, Cheryll, Maria, and
myself confront their oppressions in ways that illustrate direct dialogue through art and
vocality. Grace and Joy demonstrate how they practice resistance from subordination
more discretely. Grace plays in a male-identified sport using the narrative of the
heterosexual family to highlight social ambiguity and Joy witnesses how heterosexism is
an underlying cause for gay suicidal patients. Participants also dialogue against the
difficulty from labas that their queerness poses, resituating instead perspectives of self
known from within. Jerrica concludes her third poem to reclaim her body, mitigating a
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sense of loss resulting from social expectations. Barbara encourages other queer
Pinays to focus on their “own truth.” Maria affirms her femme identity against maledominated queer conformity in school. Joni concentrates on self-measure while Joy, as
a nurse, communicates to “be stronger in your heart in your mind” when facing
heterosexism.
In respect to film studies and queer and feminist epistemologies, difference and
social transgression became communing themes in narratives of queer Pinay
empowerment on film as personhood was not necessarily bound by familiar and formal
discourses. Queer Pinays depart from heterosexual Pinay femininity and provide new
understandings to the Filipino American experience from the perspectives of Southern
California queer women. Resisting contemporary discourses in sexual politicization, the
queer Pinays in my study practice in desexualization on film. That is, film continues to
represent an area of negotiation against hypersexualization that constructs women’s
bodies as sexual commodities. Menchie highlights, “It’s not something I hide. But it’s
something I share very personally.” In addition, they resisted queer Filipino American
networks and male-dominated authenticity in discourses of recognized and esteemed
queer deviance and complicity. Contemporary queer discourses continue to focus on
the normalization, championing, and/or condemnation of male-identified queer
perspectives, such as the bakla, in gender and sexual polarity as they are performed
and politicized. Maria highlights how queer Pinays contend for a sense of self in and
against established notions of queer sexuality that are “unwelcomed” in patriarchal
establishments of queerness, whether in white mainstream or Filipino American queer
spaces. Gender inequality continues to create instabilities for queer Pinay self-
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determination despite politicization of queerness, as queer Pinays struggle to locate
appropriate resources and communities that can offer a way to reassemble selfrecognition while coming out. Externalized male-centered queerness constructs
loyalism in “real” queerness that makes queer and lesbian Pinay women unimaginable.
Queer gender performativity is inadequate in understanding how queer Pinays struggle
with heterosexism. The everydayness captured in this study illustrates how Pinays
move in and out of masculinity and femininity, as queering occurs in other narratives,
such as labor and recreation. Participants construct their sexualities in privacy, at
random, in social mobility, or in camaraderie through “facets of identity” that make
significant the multiple iterations of social contribution and wellbeing in utang na loob.
Queer Pinays relocate queerness through poetry and music, labor aesthetics, Asian
American and tomboy masculinities, and feminine identity. This study challenges the
reproduction of phallocentric queer sexuality and its discursive limitations. Queer
studies must consider how sexuality as an externalized discourse that conforms to the
mien of male-centered colonial queerness hinders possibilities for other queer
subjectivities.
Additionally, Southern California represents multiple metropolitans and diverse
social, cultural, and political perspectives that impact queer Pinay visibility.
Ontologically, participants map themselves and their narratives against temporal
challenges to their social mobility that expand on global and imperialist discourses in
sexuality (McClintock 1995; Gopinath 2005;
t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999; Tongson 2011).
Queer Pinays articulate moments of abandonment, nationalist alignment, and
ambivalence that demonstrate a range of responses to the impact of globalization. This
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pushes us to rethink the limitations of dominant discourses that focus on nativism and
assimilation as polar opposites, confronting how each perspective necessitates the
other. Looking at geographical and regional nuances brings greater ability to ground
discourses of globalization and imperialism in everyday living that may or may not have
to do with recognized forms of politicization but may often manifest in other instances of
resistance that create various possibilities in empowerment that is accessible, practiced
regularly, and important to participants. Unsettling methods of formal inquiry allows
researchers to raise issues and concerns from the experiences of research subjects
while seeking as many outlets available in how to examine oppression and social
mobility. Studies that are participant-centered demonstrate how to reckon with racial
inequality through personalized epistemologies strategized from everyday living.
Menchie elides her sense of self as a “triple threat,” a gay woman of color, with her
immigrant parents’ hardships and their inability to practice in their Ilocano culture in the
US. Grace highlights the temporal drag of colonialism, as she juxtaposes her life as a
second-generation Pinay whose parents wanted her to “assimilate very quickly” with her
concern for cultural retention among her nieces and nephews who are “now two
generations removed.” Joy expresses that her family lives in various locations all over
the US as she recounts why she feels family is important. Queer Pinays in my study
more often than not resist and expand on a nativist-assimilationist reduction of their
personhood. They practice in a sense of self by showcasing perspectives and activities
that depart from place- and nation-based geopolitical discourses that tend to focus on
imperialist/nativist assertions of subjectivity. Interdisciplinarity shows how one issue may
actually be multiply other issues.
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Queer Pinays associate closely with Filipino immigrant understandings in proper
Filipina gender roles and sexuality, but remain displaced through their queerness.
Desexuality on film allows for queer Pinays to remain honorable, showing their overall
alignment with ethnic-identified normative Filipina sexuality over publicized and
outwardly expressions of sexuality common in westernized queerness. Desexuality is
also instrumental in queer Pinay diasporic resistance that continues to exploit global
Pinay corporeality (Parreñas 2001; Cruz 2011; Tadiar 2004;
t lvaro-Hormillosa 1999).
Participants exhibited a number of other areas to contend for valid queer Pinay
subjectivities and a sense of agency. Desexuality enables the detachment of women’s
labor from the feminine body as Menchie, Jerrica, Grace, Maria, Joni and Joy use labor
as a language to communicate the importance of music, spokenword, athletic
camaraderie, education, internal strength, and self-preservation. The queer Pinays in
this study reappropriated labor aesthetics to practice in activities that are considered
masculine, queering work and recreation and challenging Filipino patriarchy (Okazaki
2002; Shimizu 2012). Menchie’s leadership in Bootleg Orchestra, Jerrica’s poetic
independence and vocality, Barbara’s domestic and professional labor, Grace’s values
in teamwork, and Joni’s appropriation of Coach Wooden’s speech demonstrate how
they create new ways of understanding queer female masculinity and their sustained
deconstruction of gender normativity. Queer Filipina subjectivity uses locality to contend
against female exploitation and subordination that expands on spatiotemporal
considerations, exhibiting a discourse of internalized resilience and facilitation.
Through cultural frameworks of utang na loob, I also argue that externalized
misrecognitions create challenges to queer Pinay selfhood and social mobility through
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ongoing sanctions in gender and heterosexist subordination. Negotiating between a
sense of self and selflessness, participants expressed moments of difficulty as they
side-stepped or historicized displays of adversity or misfortune in their lives in order to
create films that narrate self-preservation and empowerment. Participants avoided
filming or speaking at length about hardships experienced in their families, romantic
relationships, socioeconomic classes, and religions. Instead, they reconsider the
notions of limits, borders, and spaces that inform and impact their ability to transgress
through the capacities of the loob. This project helps to reimagine “a different condition”
from which to engage and wage for queer/Pinay/women subjectivities that contend for a
sense of self against “the outside” while co-producing the potential for subjecthood in
film as it is known and situated from “the inside” (Reyes 2011).
Recommendations
Social, educational, and political organizations that focus on the needs of Asian
Americans, women, families, and queer women should consider appropriate methods to
recruit, support, and sustain the lifestyles that Southern California queer Pinays exhibit.
Queer Pinays express a need to pursue additional projects that engage in the arts,
music, athletics, and social justice. Additional attention must be given to the gender
dynamics of these activities and organizations in order to equally represent the interests
of women. Further research should examine the relationship between queer Pinays and
paid and unpaid labor since workplace and social heterosexism and homophobia create
moments of hostility. In addition, the significant focus on recreation in queer Pinay lives
suggests that the available paid labor and employment wherein queer Pinays find
themselves may not fully serve their interests and/or needs. Religion as it is understood
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through family may create difficulty on queer Pinays. Organizations, educators, and
advocates should practice sensitivity in exploring how family and religion impact queer
Pinay lives, as there may be a difference between Filipinas who were raised Catholic
and Filipinas raised in religions that are less represented in the Philippines. Southern
California queer Pinays showcase the importance of practicing in masculinity instead of
presenting masculinity in their gender performance. This demonstrates the significance
of being able to freely express their feminine gender performance. Queer and Filipino
organizations should include programs and services that provide a space to develop
queer Pinay masculinity and queer Pinay femininity. Queer Pinays in Southern
California display empathy for immigrant issues. Further studies should examine
common interests between queer Pinays and other immigrant communities. An
expansion on Filipino identity should include perspectives that introduce historical and
regional contexts for the diverse populations and cultural/linguistic differences that
represent the conglomerate Philippine nation and their geopolitical implications on
Pinays in the US. Additional resources and funding should examine how to incorporate
these suggestions into programming that is designed to serve the needs of
queer/Pinay/women.
Significance
Studying Southern California queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians on film applies
interdisciplinary theoretical lenses—focusing on invisibility and visibility of a particular
population of women marginalized by race, gender, sexuality, and migration. I analyzed
the manifestations of queerness and gender performativity in various aspects that
women-loving Pinays decided to showcase on film—the daily, the highlighted, and the
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invisible. I draw upon the literature of Asian American Studies, queer theory, feminist
psychoanalytic theory, visual sociology, cultural studies, and Pinay feminist discourses
to clarify and reconfigure gender and sexuality in Southern California Pinays. The study
shows how race, gender, imperialism, and heterosexism propel the narratives of queer
Pinay labor and lifestyles between loob and labas to counter these formalities of social
exclusion. Queer Pinays instead occupy multiple subliminal spaces in creating visual
subjectivities in sampalataya, kabanayan, and desire in Southern California, a region
with uniquely diverse social and political contexts.
Conclusions
Women-loving Pinay visualization challenges the consumption of our images by
race, gender, sexuality, and migration while contending for different narratives to
describe our lives. If you conduct a Google image search on “pinay” you will find
pictures of women in scantily clad bikinis and tops that focus on consuming the
assortment of their corporeal images. Without adding queer sexuality to the visual
manifestations that already exist for Pinays, the search results are soul-shaking. Who
owns these images? These pictures shape a socio-imagination of a population of
women, hyper-commodified and sexualized through globalization and western
imperialism. Visualizing queer Pinays and Pinay lesbians is an attempt to dismantle the
different discourses that continue to construct our images as commodities and reduce
our lives to “living, breathing” replicas and representations captured and put on display
through white male imperial dreams. By situating queer desire as a communing medium
to create visibility and construct a documentary film, I have developed narratives in
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queer Pinay and Pinay lesbian visual empowerment that present other areas of our lives
that are unfamiliar and rendered invisible from the social world.
I focus on how queer Pinay subjectivities communicate multivocality in Southern
California. The participants display narratives that reorganize masculinity, femininity,
queerness, and Filipino identity while they make deliberate choices to desexualize
themselves on film. They avoided from constructing their lack of power in narratives that
have or continue to foreclose a sense of self such as race, family, religion, and
socioeconomic status. Emerging from invisibility, they offer narratives that bring to light
queer pinay and pinay lesbian epistemologies on labor, queer/Pinay masculinity, mixedrace experiences, art, performance, music, mental health, and college life. Queer
Pinays and Pinay lesbians contributed self-produced footage, photos, and audio clips
and also volunteered to have filmed interviews. In the documentary, I draw from
additional supplementary media such as participant recordings and music to interpret
and visually expand queer Pinay narratives in empowerment. The documentary gave
each participant a platform to focus on their individual lives.
Constructing self-hood became important in creating empowerment as
participants exposed the challenging implications of Filipino kinship. When facing
alienation, queer Pinays refashion utang na loob to negotiate the difficulties that their
queerness, Pinayness, or womanliness represent and cause. Participants find
sanctuary between their loob and labas, as they choose to focus on narratives that
resituate their individuality and the unique communities that house their marginal
subjectivities. These narratives include Pinay masculinity, labor, art, recreation, femme
presentation, and Filipino identity.
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Externalities impact the decision for queer Pinays to find a sense of self among
many, as in Menchie’s perspective of “kasamas,” Grace’s enjoyment of camaraderie, or
Jerrica’s participation in San Diego’s spokenword scene. Externalities also remove a
sense of self inside, expressed in the narratives of mine, Barbara, Cheryll, Jerrica, Joni,
Joy, and Maria. Looking for moments of similarity to shape how Southern California
queer Pinay lives fit into prevailing external expectations fails women-loving Pinays on
multiple fronts. Continuing deliberation between the labas and the loob does not erase
the contentions experienced and placed on queer Pinays when they present narratives
of dissimilarity on film. The documentary shows that resolve in which queer Pinays work
toward through kabanayan and sampalataya is momentarily situated between self and
selflessness.
At the onset, the goal of my project was to create visibility and counter the
multiple foreclosures of our lives through film. Documentary film and visual sociology
continue to contend with whether or not images reflect reality, as the corporeal image is
not separate from the discourse of its consumption. What images and visual advocacy
indeed accomplish is to resituate the importance of power in marginalized lives that
retort ownership for the image while creating possibilities for other ways to be a
Southern Californian/queer/Pinay. This project contends for ownership over one’s self
while creating potential for social impact through visuality.
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