In the Philippines, a bakla is a male-bodied person who is exclusively attracted to men. Baklas are often considered a third gender, and most baklas display feminine mannerisms and dress as women. Some identify as women.
Baklas are socially and economically integrated into Filipino society, and are considered an important part of society. The stereotype of a bakla is a parlorista, a cross-dresser who works in a beauty salon. Some Filipinos disapprove of baklas, usually for religious reasons.
The term bakla is sometimes used in a derogatory sense to refer to any gay man. Baklas have largely embraced the term, however, and consider themselves different from gay men in other countries.
George, Meet James
Wow, this is depressing to read. It’s also not even a little surprising.
In light of all that, then, I shouldn’t have been surprised that using a male pseudonym had such a dramatic effect on Chartrand’s career. Death threats and sexually degrading commentary directed at women writers seem very 21st century — so modern! so fresh! — but being paid half as much for the same work? Landing fewer jobs? Receiving more criticism and less respect? That just sounds so old-fashioned. I learned about women posing as men to get work in elementary school history lessons, not when I went to grad school for writing. The thought that if I’d tried writing as, say, Kevin Harding, I might have earned far more money, opportunity and authority than I have, is almost as inconceivable as it is chilling. Since the Brontë days, says Chartrand, “we’ve had feminism. We have the right to vote, to own property, to be members of Parliament and Congress, to get a job, and to be the main breadwinner of the family. And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.”
Maybe I should have been George and not Helen after all.
Ronald Gold Just Hasn’t Met the Right Woman
I mean, really, this isn’t a joke?
I’m going to say again: those of us with queer genders who aren’t trans seem to have a beam in our own eye on this one. We just don’t get it, over & over & over again. No, female & male personalities don’t exist. But male & female people DO — wither social construction & all.
It’d be laughable for a man who actively resisted being pathologized to turn around & pathologize others if it weren’t awful. Shame on you, Ronald Gold. You should know better than to distrust the narratives of people who are a minority & misunderstood, but perhaps you’ve forgotten you are one, too.
So Mr. Gold, try to dust off your brain & remember when people told you that you just hadn’t met the right woman, because the argument you make concerning trans people is about as uninformed, inexperienced & myopic. & I say that with utmost respect for what you’ve achieved.
What a Woman Is
I’m starting to think I could teach a whole Gender Studies coiurse on the Caster Semenya hullabaloo, since this ad, by a South African strip club, pretty much constructs woman to mean bimbo.
Dress Codes in High School
A decent article in the NYT about high schools, crossdressing, and identity:
At Wesson Attendance Center, a Mississippi public school, just that sort of fight erupted over senior portraits. Last summer, during her photo session, Ceara Sturgis, 17, dutifully tried on the traditional black drape, the open-necked robe that reveals the collarbone, a hint of bare shoulder.
“It was terrible!” said Ms. Sturgis, an honors student, band president and soccer goalie, who has been openly gay since 10th grade. “If you put a boy in a drape, that’s me! I have big shoulders and ooh, it didn’t look like me! I said, ‘I can’t do this!’ So my mom said, ‘Try on the tux.’ And that looked normal.”
Shortly thereafter, students were informed that girls had to wear drapes for yearbook portraits; boys, tuxedos.
The Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to the school. Rickey Clopton, superintendent of Copiah County schools, did not return phone calls. Last month he released a statement affirming that the school’s decision was “based upon sound educational policy and legal precedent.”
Last month, Veronica Rodriguez, Ms. Sturgis’s mother, paid for a full-page ad in the yearbook that is to include a photograph of her daughter in a tuxedo.
He’s in Fashion: Men in Skirts
It’s not always the male-bodied people who crossdress or who are transgender that wear skirts; sometimes guys who identify as guys do. Sometimes even models do.
At Skirt Cafe (www.skirtcafe.org), skirt-minded men and people of other genders get together to talk about hemlines. As Bob explains:
At SkirtCafe, we are dedicated to the idea of “Fashion Freedom” for men. The basic idea is… if you want to wear a skirt, just do it; now you’re a man wearing a skirt. Men might want to wear skirts for many reasons. Some guys just like to be different, some want comfort, some want to look and feel beautiful, some have experienced gender dysphoria in one way or another. But whatever the reason, we are committed to the idea that we can just do it, as a man wearing a skirt.
We don’t need to go through elaborate makeup routines, or emulate a stilted notion of femininity, or consider changing our body through strong drugs and surgery, or orient our lives around our fashion choice, or call ourselves “Suzi” for the evening, or hide from everyone we know. There is no closet, and no secrets. Unlike the CD community, we really are no different from the woman who decides to wear a buttondown, described in your introduction. It’s just a fashion choice.
We have demonstrated, again and again, that a guy wearing a skirt in public is no big deal — a “non event.” We’ve experienced little or no rejection or discrimination, and we don’t bother much to hide our identity or fashion choice from the world.
Over at New Male Fashion, the blogger asks:
Wouldn’t it be likewise fair for us males in need of displaying our creativity, sense of style, and flare, who enjoy keeping in touch with our “feminine side”, to have the freedom to adopt styles, colours, and garments that were once considered too “feminine”?
Public opinion is moving tardily but steadily in that direction. Designers come up with innovations and creativity in their masculine lines, as opposed to the dullness and uniformity that has been so far the main feature of male garments. New proffers include not only more daring colours and designs, but also male skirts, high heels, dresses, and other garments that used to be kept at the other side of the aisle.
A “New Male” is under construction. Hopefully, a more balanced, understanding, sensitive, creative male.
The statement is beautifully underlined by the photo of the coy “new male” model that accompanies this post, & there’s a lot more like them there, including clothes by Westwood, Pugh, and Baratashvili.
(Ana de Gregorio styled by Ash Stymest, photographed by JM Ferrater.)
Blue Walls
I was looking up the condition commonly known as “blue balls” (you know, because I could) and found this little gendered bit on Wiki:
Homologous condition in women
Women can also experience discomfort due to unrelieved vasocongestion as their pelvic area also becomes engorged with blood during sexual arousal. They can experience pelvic heaviness (aka blue walls, blue labia, blue box, or blue curtains) and aching if they do not reach orgasm. The general term pelvic congestion refers to such pain as it occurs in either sex.
I’d never heard any of these but have argued for years that women can, indeed, experience something akin to what guys describe as blue balls. Turns out I was right.
It’s Your Booty
These are straight guys: how queer is that?
(btw, FB is blocking this content. feh to FB.)
Morehouse Crossdressing Policy
Morehouse College has chosen to have a clothing policy that prohibits crossdressing:
The dress-wearing ban is aimed at a small part of the private college’s 2,700-member student body, said Dr. William Bynum, vice president for Student Services.
“We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men,” he said.
Before the school released the policy, Bynum said, he met with Morehouse Safe Space, the campus’ gay organization.
“We talked about it and then they took a vote,” he said. “Of the 27 people in the room, only three were against it.”
There has been a positive response along with some criticism throughout the campus, he said.
Senior Devon Watson said he disagrees with parts of the new policy, especially those that tell students what they should wear in free time outside of the classroom.
I’m wondering if someone needs to tell them about straight crossdressers, and about pre-transition MTF trans people. Hopefully Morehouse’s Safe Space already does – but I doubt it.
Crossdressing Photos
Despite the lack of context or explanation, SF Gate has a nice series of (mostly) rural photos of people who are crossdressed. It’s unclear whether it’s Halloween or some other event, or even if they were taken anywhere near each other, but still, it’s an interesting if not atypical collection of 52 photos. The one pictured is my favorite, as it reminds me of quite a few families I’ve met over the time I’ve been doing research on crossdressing. My guess is that none of these people are crossdressers per se, but of course all I’ve got to go on is the images themselves.