Desiring Sameness: Globalization, Agency, and the Filipino Gay Imaginary¹

Abstract

This article grapples with the issues of sameness and difference in the context of the globalization of gay male identity, particularly in terms of the growing identification of upper class Filipinos with "global gayness." The figure of the global gay is investigated as a hegemonic, yet unstable, point of self-identification that enables the production of anxious subjects that are simultaneously privileged and marginalized, local and global, indigenous and cosmopolitan. I attempt to explore these contradictions by rereading the globalization of gay identity as a product of Althusserian interpellation processes, understood in terms of self-identification (subscription rather than ascription) animated by narrative pleasure and by reexamining mimicry as a never-to-be-completed task that involves the reproduction of a regime of Whiteness. I also examine how journeys to "gay" metropoles serve to rupture dreams of belonging and conclude with a preliminary exploration of how globalization carries the potential for an ethics of sexual difference grounded on indeterminacy and in-betweenness.

Cruising Through Spaces: Exploring the Mediatization of Gay Cruising in the Philippines

“…But to look further, beyond the mere affordances of the technologies and the physical spaces themselves, looms the wider media environment that further complicate the mediation of gay cruising. Benedicto (2008a) argued that we are not puppets-on-strings as we consciously subscribe to the notion of the global gay and the desire for the Western.…”

“…Even the image (stereotypes) of gay men also changed: from screaming parloristas to every day professional guys who just happen to like guys as well. Benedicto (2008a;2008b) claims that the contemporary gay scene has been a result of the neoliberal configurations as a marketplace of gay globality and the American or Western imaginary. Certainly, as a former colony of the US, "borrowing" Western standards is too easy (Tan, 2001) especially where most of the media consumed come from Hollywood and that global American conglomerates can easily disseminate their Apple gadgets carrying apps like Scruff where announcements of the next gay circuit parties in Manila is placed or that the newest designs of Andrew Christian underwear are available online.…”

“…In Philippine homosexuality literature, scholars agree that there exists the stereotype of the bakla as lower class because of their close association to the low-end salon profession (Benedicto, 2008a;Tan, 2001). On the other hand, it is the middle-and upper-class gay yuppies who are exposed to the globalizing gay scenes though travel and technologies, and the ones who contribute to the desire for the white male stereotype (Bendicto, 2008a).…”

Purple-Collar Labor

“…These emergent distinctions among gay, bakla , and trans are complicated by socioeconomic class. Bobby Benedicto (2008, 294) documents affluent gay Filipino men’s repudiation of the effeminacy of low-income bakla , who provide a “crucial foil against which a position of privilege is established.” 4 Similarly, upwardly mobile gender-variant Filipinas are beginning to adopt “transgender” or “transpinay” to distance themselves from bakla , whose “longstanding association with beauty and transformation has meant that they are traditionally employed as hairstylists, beauticians, designers, entertainers, and wedding planners” (Thoreson 2011, 499). This association arises, in part, from limited occupational opportunities for transgender Filipinas.…”

Sexuality and culture.

“…The gay life and identity that is promoted and understood as normal is one rooted in a middle-class framework (Valocchi, 1999;see Chapters 7 and 8, this volume). This class-based framework of gayness has also traveled to other parts of the world, in the context of the globalization of gay male identity, particularly gay identification within the middle and upper classes (Benedicto, 2008). Middle-class standards also frame the understanding of gender and heterosexuality.…”