Global Divas

IV Martin F. Manalansan IV Manalansan

Description

A vivid ethnography of the global and transnational dimensions of gay identity as lived by Filipino immigrants in New York City, Global Divas challenges beliefs about the progressive development of a gay world and the eventual assimilation of all queer folks into gay modernity. Insisting that gay identity is not teleological but fraught with fissures, Martin Manalansan IV describes how Filipino gay immigrants, like many queers of color, are creating alternative paths to queer modernity and citizenship. He makes a compelling argument for the significance of diaspora and immigration as sites for investigating the complexities of gender, race, and sexuality.Manalansan locates diasporic, transnational, and global dimensions of gay and other queer identities within a framework of quotidian struggles ranging from everyday domesticity to public engagements with racialized and gendered images to life-threatening situations involving AIDS. He reveals the gritty, mundane, and often contradictory deeds and utterances of Filipino gay men as key elements of queer globalization and transnationalism. Through careful and sensitive analysis of these men's lives and rituals, he demonstrates that transnational gay identity is not merely a consumable product or lifestyle, but rather a pivotal element in the multiple, shifting relationships that queer immigrants of color mobilize as they confront the tribulations of a changing world.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Biological anthropology
• Philippines

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 10 décembre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385172
• Langue: English

Extrait

G L O B A L D I VA S

Perverse

Modernities

A series edited by

Judith Halberstam

and Lisa Lowe

A J O H N H O P E F R A N K L I N C E N T E R B O O K

M A R T I N F . M A N A L A N S A N I V

Filipino Gay Men in the ● Diaspora

GLOBAL DIVAS

D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

D U R H A M A N D L O N D O N 2 0 0 3

The distribution of this book is supported

by a generous grant from the Gill Foundation

2nd printing, 2004

∫2003Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Rebecca Giménez

by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Typeset in Sabon and Futura

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in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Contents ●

Preface, vii Introduction: Points of Departure, 1 1 The Borders betweenBaklaandGay, 21 2 Speaking in Transit: Queer Language and Translated Lives, 45 3 ‘‘Out There’’: The Topography of Race and Desire in the Global City, 62 4 The Biyuti and Drama of Everyday Life, 89 5 ‘‘To Play with the World’’: The Pageantry of Identities, 126 6 Tita Aida: Intimate Geographies of Suffering, 152 Conclusion: Locating the Diasporic Deviant/Diva, 184 Notes, 193 An Elusive Glossary, 199 Works Cited, 205 Index, 219

Preface ●

Resty, a Filipino gay man in his thirties and one of the people I inter- viewed for this book, once asked me, ‘‘What is the title of the book you ∞ are writing?’’ ‘‘Global Divas,’’ I answered. ‘‘Global divas?’’ Looking puzzled for a minute, Resty then smiled and exclaimed, ‘‘Ah! Global ’di va?’’ [Global, isn’t it?] Resty realized another meaning of the book’s title by utilizingsward- speak,which is a particular argot deployed by Filipino gay men. He per- formed a linguistic play on the worddivaby using neither mainstream English nor Tagalog. Had he used standard Tagalog, the sentence would have been ‘‘Global, ’di ba?’’ But by substituting a ‘‘v’’ instead of a ‘‘b,’’ he playfully transformed the worddivainto a conspiratorial and rhetorical question in a style that encoded the speaker as gay. This short encounter between Resty and me speaks to the important

ways in which this book confronts and queries globalization and dias- pora via vernacular and queer terms through the lives and words of Filipino gay men living in New York City. By doing so, this book presents a critical view of globalized modern gay identity. While nu- merous scholars and activists have heralded the coming of age of global gay identities, it has increasingly become apparent that even the gayest global spaces such as New York City are rife with cultural fissures and divides between various queer communities. Throughout the book, I use the termgayboth provisionally and strategically. My usage points both to the various ways in which the histories and lives of Filipino men are enmeshed with the cultural poli- tics of gay identity and to the fact that other identity categories such as ≤ transgender are not typical in their arsenal of categories. In this book, the termqueermarks the moments whengayis insufficient or inap- propriate and highlights these Filipinos’ cultural and socialdis-ease and displacement from mainstream gay practices. Global Divasis an ethnographic study of Filipino gay men in New York City. Of course, this study does not purport to give a complete picture, nor does it pretend to represent all Filipino gay experiences at all times and spaces. As in any ethnographic project, the views and ideas are always partial and highly specific. Based on fieldwork and ≥ interviews conducted between 1990 and 1995, this work focuses on the life narratives of fifty Filipino gay men who create a sense of self and belonging, or citizenship, amid the exigencies of immigration and in the face of emerging notions of global gay identity and cultural practices. These life narratives are diverse, but taken together they ∂ show how these informants are agentive narrators and social actors. The life-narrative interviews were semistructured and were conducted ∑ mostly in Taglish. The interviews included questions about life experi- ences such as growing up and immigration. In addition, I solicited informants’ views about racial, ethnic, and class issues, identity cate- ∏ gories, and theaidsI placed ads to recruit poten-pandemic. Although tial informants in a gay-Asian organization newsletter, most of the life- narrative interviews came about through word of mouth and social networks. The fifty main informants lived in the greater New York area with a majority residing in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Jersey City, New Jersey. Their ages ranged from twenty-two to more than sixty years (two mature informants were intentionally vague π about their ages) with a median age of thirty-one.

viiiPreface

This work draws on participant observation in various private and public sites such as homes, bars, hospitals, and Filipino restaurants, as well as public social gatherings (both gay and straight) such as the Gay Pride Parade and the Philippine Independence Day Parades. From 1990 until 1999, I also conducted short informal interviews with more than a hundred Filipino gay men in New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia; among these men were Filipino gay men who were tourists visiting from the Philippines. Family mem- bers and non-Filipino partners or boyfriends of these men were also interviewed. In addition to interviews and observations, I critically draw from various cultural forms such as novels and theatrical perfor- mances. I demonstrate how these men negotiate between Filipino and Amer- ican sexual and gender traditions, more specifically betweenbaklaand gay ideologies.Baklais the Tagalog term that encompasses homosex- uality, hermaphroditism, cross-dressing, and effeminacy. One of the bakla’s singular attributes is a sense of self entrenched in the process of transformation. Works by anthropologists Fenella Cannell (1999) and Mark Johnson (1997) suggest that Filipino queers are concerned with the processes of transformation and shifting of selves that are not moored to any fixed category. Both authors were concerned with the idea of beauty as a process where selves are made and remade in such public events as the beauty pageant. Both agree that beauty is about appropriating American symbols of glamour, creating hybrid cultures, and gaining a level of intimacy with the powerful yet distant America. Throughout the book, I focus on two idioms,biyutianddrama,that permeate swardspeak discourse and which, more than anything, re- flect the self-conscious construction of the bakla not as a static mono- lithic category but as a basis of multiple performances. My use of biyutirather than the English wordbeautyfaithfully captures the ways in which Filipino gay men manipulate its pronunciation and meanings. While biyuti’s provenance is clearly from the English word, its precise meaning can shift depending on its context and the person of whom it is used. In this context, it means both physical feminine beauty and countenance. In many conversations, informants would refer to their person or present state of mind using the termbiyuti.For example, if the informant wanted to show how something or someone has ruined his day or dampened his disposition, he could say,nasira ang biyuti ko ornaukray ang biyuti ko.Both literally mean ‘‘my biyuti was ruined,’’

Prefaceix