What am I to you?

I have never really been confronted by homophobia. Growing up, I was not the typical rambunctious boy. I was a well-behaved boy who preferred studying than playing with other children. Because of my precocity, I was already in high school at age 11. At that time I still had no idea that I might be gay, even though I was already fooling around with a 14 year-old family friend that time (another story). My childhood countenance remained the same in high school: I kept to myself, writing and drawing, indifferent to the posturing and preening of the other boys in my class. I liked certain girls in my class but never thought much of those feelings. My sexual activities happened outside of school, so it was easily compartmentalized away. In school I wasn’t effeminate, but I wasn’t masculine either. I was teased for being overweight, for being a nerd, but I never received any taunting because I was ‘gay’.

When I came out to my (immediate) family and friends in 1997, homophobia was not too much of an issue as well. To be fair, my mother was very supportive in spite of her Catholic background. I could feel that she really tried to understand and accept me. What made it difficult for her was not her religion but her social background. Like most people of her generation, she grew up around certain stereotypes of gayness (loving only straight men, financially supporting lovers, gay men preying on young boys, etc.) that she feared for my physical and mental well-being. I had to explain that I did not like sleeping with straight men (not all the time), that I didn’t financially support my lovers (emotional support is priceless), and that I didn’t prey on young boys (I like my men older, even now). It took her a long time to disassociate me from those things. Our misunderstandings were mostly about issues of trust, and not my being gay.

None of my friends abandoned me when I came out to them. E, one of my oldest friends, was living in Australia that time and I sent him a letter informing him of the things I had been going through. Among my college friends, E could easily be considered as the group clown. His disposition and behavior is seldom serious, and it was easy to dismiss him as a goof ball. It was difficult to sit him down for a serious talk. But he was surprisingly supportive and I remember feeling extremely touched by his message to me. We remain friends up to this day, even though life has brought us physically apart. 

Homophobia was also never an issue in any of my work. In the nineties, gayness was almost a given if you worked in the AIDS field. The first NGO I worked for was staffed with only gay men and fag hags that a running joke among us was, should any of us be interviewed by the media, we should begin our statement by saying that our NGO is not a gay organization. When I eventually worked for media (broadcast and print), it was the same: being gay was a non-issue.

Whether this is a testament to my good fortune in having an understanding and supportive family, my skills in selecting the only broad-minded and sensitive friends or the most appropriate jobs is still subject for debate. Because, as it turns out, even if I didn’t experience the traumatic manifestations of homophobia, I still encountered it. It’s a different kind, though. Less confrontational, often expressed with a small smile on the face, and in a kind of sympathetic and confiding tone. I do not know which is worse: getting beat up for being a fag or getting ‘accepted’ as if you’re an inevitability one must endure.

This became especially apparent when I came to Cambodia. In Cambodia there is a huge same-sex subculture that the ‘polite’ society does not acknowledge. Cultural quirks make it easy for men to have sex with each other with absolutely no strings attached. One of these ’strings’ is an identity. There is no specific word for gay in the Khmer language. Not even something close to our bakla. This non-existence has many implications for the Cambodian gay man. Because in spite of this sexual behavior/preference, he is still expected to carry out his obligations as a man: marry a woman, father children, and support his family. For me, this non-existence is a most extreme form of homophobia. And it’s going to take a long time for this to change, if it will change at all.

Because my lover is Cambodian, I am indirectly affected by this. It took him a long time to accept himself fully as a gay man. And now he feels that the only way for him to be able to live freely as a gay man is if he leaves the country. But my direct experiences with homophobia did not happen with Cambodians, it happened with other Filipinos.

The first happened around May this year. I had participated in the planning of activities for the Independence Day celebration of the Filipino community here in Phnom Penh. There were grand plans for the celebration: entertainment, sports, and forums. I decided to help out in the forums. V, a consultant, was spearheading this aspect of the celebrations. There were 2 planned forums: one was a serious discussion on migration-related issues (as far as I remember) while the other was a light-hearted look at Filipinos here who have married outside of their nationality. I was sitting across V in the table, while another guy sat at my left. I suggested the inclusion of Filipino gay men who are in relationships with foreigners to round up the potential guest list. When V heard this, she smiled (she likes to smile) at me and nodded. And then, still smiling, she turned to the guy at my left and said, ‘XX, isama na din natin yung bestiality mo (XX, let’s also include your bestiality)’. Nervous laughter from me. I kept quiet from then on but by the time I went home I was fuming mad but not really knowing why. I asked K if I should be upset by V’s remark and he said yes. Before I continue, let me just say that V is known for being tactless. My other friends would attest to this. But I had no reason to dislike her because we weren’t close. With this, I felt frustrated. How could someone who works in the development sector be so homophobic? This is not being tactless, which to me is tolerable.

The second happened more recently. Three nights ago I was happily having dinner with friends and we were casually conversing about mundane things. G and L are two ladies who share a flat. G works in the IT sector while L is a college professor. Both were married and with grown children in Manila. N and I like to tease them that they’re probably a lesbian couple and other lesbian sex-related jokes that will probably get me in trouble with my lesbian friends (me being insensitive). But the pleasure of seeing them groan with frustrated protest offsets the need to be PC so we do it. That night, however, N and I weren’t teasing them. We just told them that we saw what appeared to be a butch Cambodian lesbian riding a motorcycle with a pretty lady. I felt like sharing this because it is a rare sight in Cambodia. Then L sort of confided that she really felt uncomfortable around lesbians, and that she’s fine with ‘the gays’ but not with them. G echoed this sentiment by telling us how, as a child, she was chased around by a lesbian who desired her, leaving her ‘traumatized’. I have heard this story many, many times already and that night, it somehow struck a nerve. A phobia is an irrational fear of some thing or some situation. L couldn’t explain her discomfort towards lesbians while G rationalizes it with that almost-molestation story.  That, to me, is homophobia. I wanted to yell at her, ‘Get over it!’. And I felt sad. I blurted out my feelings, which they of course dismissed as me joking once again.

But I felt really sad. I mean, if they were my relatives, I could have responded with a clever, scathing retort. But they’re my friends. Unlike my relatives, I chose these people as friends. How could I have homophobic friends? How could they accept me when at the back of their minds, they are rejecting my lesbian sisters? What am I to them? I felt so frustrated that night.

Now that I have given it thought, I realized that homophobia is indeed an insidious part of our lives. It can manifest in the most unexpected situations, expressed by people that we never thought will express it, and experienced by even the most jaded. It’s important to speak out against homophobia and call it as such when one hears it, even from their friends. Homophobia is often borne out of ignorance but sometimes, it also comes from not being able to understand the unknown. We humans are creatures of habit, and more often the different is met with fear.

And, it is up to us whether we accept or reject people we see as homophobic. I ended my participation in the Independence Day festivities because I didn’t want to see or talk with V. Anyway, she’s not a friend. I choose to remain friends with these 2 ladies because I think they’re good people. I can accept this quirk, and hope they change their views through my support and friendship. If they don’t, well, I can continuously rant about them in this blog.