Originally posted 2021-09-30 07:42:37. <\/small><\/p>
Here, ‘gay’ does not mean what it does in the West. It means you are male but not a man; that you have ‘green blood’. You are an unmasculine male. In Luzon, the most popular local term is ‘bakla’. Their lifestyle is called ‘kabaklaan’.<\/p>\n
Within traditional ‘two group’ societies, found ll over the world, the domestic space is entirely matriarchal. Women are in charge of the home, the household budgets, discipline, educating the younger children and so on.<\/p>\n
This culture is not focussed outwardly, but inwardly. Its function is to make babies and rear children. Women build their homes and families around themselves like nests.<\/p>\n
As girls, they are their mothers’ lieutenants, helping to keep the house and care for the younger children. As mothers they become captains, in charge of their own families. As grandmothers, they are the matriarchs of their clans, in absolute authority. And as they age past this, they become beloved arri\u00e8re-grand-m\u00e8res<\/em>, repositories of wisdom and family history, always with a great-grandson or daughter on their knee.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Men, on the other hand, have to toil and sweat. They have long since foregone, in most cultures, the playful camaraderie of the hunt, the loss of which pleasure was lamented in cycles from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Genesis. Today, for them awaits only the backbreaking work of the fields, or the endless hours as tricycle or jeepney pilots.<\/p>\n
Perhaps they work in construction, giving their lives for a pittance. Or in faceless offices in faceless cubicles, where all individuality is removed. And don’t imagine it’s just the workers who suffer; stress is piled high on the managers, the engineers and lawyers. The potential rewards are thinly spread indeed and only those at the top of the hierarchy may access them.<\/p>\n
Members of the group of men are strictly policed in terms of behaviour and standards of dress, by the other men<\/em>, but also by the women. A man who refuses the challenges of manhood will be mocked and shunned from the group. Similarly, one who contravenes the social rules; and amongst these, the most important of all is ‘no homo’. A man who enjoys being penetrated, if this is discovered, will find that his feet do not touch the ground on the way out. He has ‘green blood’ which is not only condemning but also contagious. He has to be isolated, quarantined.<\/p>\n
‘Bakla’ has been translated as ‘coward’ but a better and more sensitive translation might be ‘timid one’ or perhaps ‘sissy’. Its sense as homosexual is almost secondary. Rather, it signifies ‘beautiful male’.<\/p>\n
Kabaklaan, the way of the bakla, is therefore the male performance of beauty. \u00a0Beauty is a gendered concept, though this is often forgotten. It is feminine and the masculine equivalent is ‘sublime’. So the performance of beauty is also the performance of femininity. More important is the purpose of beauty: it is how women make themselves attractive to men.<\/p>\n
Right across the world, from southern Europe going eastwards through the Middle and Far East, India, Asia, China, Japan, southeast Asia, Pacifica and the whole of the Americas, anal sex between males was and remains normalised as long as one of them adopted the role of a woman.<\/em><\/p>\n
Kabaklaan gives those boys who, for whatever reason, cannot join the men group, a social space and an identity. It is a system through which they are protected from abuse by the ‘men’ group, by being given a role equivalent but not identical to that of a woman and so acquiring the protection of the women around them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While baklas enthusiastically adopt feminine gender, they know they are male and can never be ‘real’ women. Why? Because they can never be mothers and motherhood is the foundation of female status in the matriarchy.<\/p>\n
In mythological terms, natal women become Ereshkigal when they have children, whereas baklas remain locked forever in the form of Inanna. More simply, women become matrons but baklas are always maidens. That is why baklas make the most they can of their charis, their performance of beauty. They can never have the beauty of the Mother, so they make the best of what they have. However, they always defer to ‘real’ women. Kabaklaan formalises this and gives it a social context.<\/p>\n
When a bakla says ‘I’m a girl,’ she means it in social and behavioural senses, in particular her sexuality, which is female\/passive. She knows perfectly well what she is and she’s proud of it. She’s a bakla: male but not a man, woman but not female.<\/p>\n
More, every time a bakla steps out on the stage in a pageant, or catches a man’s eye in the street or in a bar, \u00a0and feels that visceral response as he is mesmerised by her, she wins. She is affirmed. ‘Yes! I am Woman! Behold my beauty! I am Inanna incarnate and you will<\/em> dash yourself at my feet!’<\/p>\n
Behind every ladyboy is a batang bakla; a cute, sensitive, gentle, artistic, sweet, daydreaming boy who either could not be a man, or just didn’t want to be one. A boy who dreamed of being kissed by older boys and whose hot gaze followed the young men of the village.<\/p>\n
Kabaklaan has few rules. Other than compulsory respect for the matriarchal hierarchy, the main one is this: boys go with girls and girls go with boys. It is one a bakla must observe; it is the key to her freedom. In this context, lesbians or ‘tomboys’ always appear to be boys, just as baklas appear to be girls.<\/p>\n
Both the types recognised in the West, homosexual transsexuals (Complete Sexual Inverts) and nonhomosexual transitioners (Autogynephilic males) appear here but crucially, they are united in kabaklaan, through the performance of beauty, of feminine gender. And this has one undeniable end: to make oneself sexually attractive to men.<\/em><\/p>\n
To put that another way, a batang bakla who is fascinated by being a girl, dresses as a girl and has crushes on men by the age of six, will be advised, within kabaklaan, to complete as a woman and get a boyfriend.\u00a0 At the same time, the late bloomer, fascinated by feminine beauty, will be told the same thing. What is the point of being beautiful if it doesn’t attract men?<\/p>\n
Liaisons with men are central to bakla life, no matter how the girl became one. For the batang bakla, bonding with a man who will stay with her is a life-goal, a dream, and she will do everything she can to achieve that. For the late bloomer, sex with a man sets the seal on her self as a woman. It is like two sides of one coin; kabaklaan is a nexus that unites all baklas as sisters. And it exists, under different names, everywhere in the world, outside the Benighted West.<\/p>\n
Inside kabaklaan it doesn’t matter if your wrist is limp, your elbow flexed or you mince when you walk. Eyeing up the boys with open sexual desire is just what you’re expected to do; everybody knows baklas are crazy about men. If your passion is dancing, dressmaking, cosmetics or any one of a long list of ‘feminine’ occupations, those are fine too. Kabaklaan gives a bakla almost complete freedom and more, will defend her and her choices.<\/p>\n