The Philippine Online Chronicles

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. – Audre Lorde

Sometimes I wonder why some activists make a delineation of their realities when it comes to advocacies. I understand the need to prioritize issues and concerns, but shouldn’t these issues and concerns intersect with other concerns that directly involve one’s identity?

I remember an earlier discussion on feminism when I first worked for an international feminist media NGO in Metro Manila. Since the NGO had a vast library full of feminist resources, I satisfied my curiosity and fed my intellect on volumes discussing the different realities of women in different parts of the world, with a special focus on western-based feminism and Asia-Pacific based advocacy work. Since I was identifying as a lesbian feminist back then (early 2000s), I was hungry for knowledge about my identities – that of being a feminist, and being a lesbian, and being from the global south, and also being Filipino, and then being based in Metro Manila. One might think that it’s ridiculous to slice up my persona that way, but if you discuss sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues, then it is important to peel the different layers of what makes up a person in order to further understand the levels of discrimination one undergoes and also to comprehend the levels of advocacy one needs to undertake to eradicate such discrimination.

I found it particularly fascinating when I conversed with fellow feminists my age – heterosexual and lesbian-identifying – and learned of their herstories during their anti-Marcos activism days, some of them even going underground and fighting with the armed struggle alongside their nationalist comrades to hopefully topple the dictatorship. But it also saddened me to learn that even in their supposedly liberating circles back then, some of the lesbian-identifying comrades suffered several forms of discrimination based on their SOGI.

I couldn’t forget one such story when a lesbian feminist friend of mine reacted in a women’s meeting, where she said that the leaders of their time dismissed the “lesbian issues” because they will be prioritizing “women’s issues” first. Regardless whether my friend and her fellow lesbians in the movement identified as butch or femme, they reacted because it seemed that another form of othering took place – within the often othered community of women, women who identified as lesbians were othered anew by not having their issues included in the priority of things. “Bakit di kami kasali, e babae rin naman kami,” my friend quipped. Apparently, to some people in their movement, being a lesbian is different from being a woman. Strange.

These anecdotes really baffled me when I heard my lesbian feminist friends discuss such states. Shouldn’t people fighting to liberate the country from tyranny also free themselves of tyrannical viewpoints leading to discriminatory practices within their movement? I’m not so sure how such movement will “move” progressively if some of them will place bumps on the road to liberation to make others’ journeys really rough and difficult.

Post-dictatorship times, there are also a few anecdotes for the younger feminists to share – meaning feminists my age back then. When a handful of my lesbian feminist-identifying friends decided to create a new lesbian organization in the late 1990s, we were welcomed by the LGBTQ community with open arms. But there were also a few lesbian feminists who didn’t see the relevance of what we were trying to do. We aimed to create a safe space for young lesbians at the University of the Philippines Diliman, and it was quite successful in the beginning. But our lives took different turns back then, and we were never able to sustain the group, leading to its dissolution. But that’s fine; such is the nature of groupings. However, nationalist lesbian feminists saw it differently: they said that an urban-centered lesbian organization like ours will not really succeed because there is no mass base to begin with. When we asked what kind of mass base they are talking about, they said that it should be similar to what the nationalist movements are doing – going to the rural areas where the “real” struggles are, and do our advocacy work there.

I guess there really is a huge disconnect for some lesbians who work in nationalist struggles to intersect their advocacy to that of their SOGI. In a recent forum I attended, this reiteration that “there is no real LGBTQ movement in the Philippines because it has no mass base in the rural areas” got repeated once again. Sometimes I wonder about such lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders who believe in such a statement. Once, I asked one lesbian why she doesn’t involve herself in queer-centric issues like before, and she said that her priority is nationalist issues already. Again, it’s like echoing what my older lesbian feminist ex-underground activist friends were saying: that to some, being a nationalist comes first before being queer, and being a woman or man.

Such delineations of advocacies and concerns really give me intellectual nosebleeds sometimes. I wonder why some nationalists believe in separating issues. Like what Audre Lorde said, we do not live single-issue lives, so isn’t it logical to intersect all our lives to better sharpen our advocacies? Not only do we intersect our advocacies but we also intersect other aspects of our being. For instance, those queers who believe in spirituality issues intersect their beliefs with their SOGI, producing another viewpoint of LGBTQ activism (for same-sex marriage, for example). What about queers who are artists, who use their art to advocate for what they believe in? This was also being done before during the Marcos era when poets who went underground wrote “subversive” poetry to show their disgust for the dictator, and got jailed because of that. It even came to the extent where a National Artist for Literature bargained with the dictator, when he was being awarded this prestigious title, to release one of the jailed nationalist activist poets in exchange for his “agreement” to accept this prestigious title.

September 21 is upon us again, the reason why we thought of writing about intersecting struggles that highlight nationalism and SOGI issues. It was on that fateful day in September a year before I was born (1972) when the Philippines was put under martial law, and thus, all throughout my childhood, we lived under such stifling circumstances in this country for more than a decade. About 38 years later, I still don’t believe that we have garnered a true (or perhaps functioning) democracy, but regardless, we Filipinos, especially us queer Filipinos, still try to find our place in the sun, here in the pearl of the orient we call the Philippines, even if those who advocate for this country say that struggles should be prioritized and advocacies should have a mass base.  Perhaps it’s time to see that struggles take different forms, so thus, achieving towards affirmative goals would start by recognizing this diversity, to work towards genuine unity.

We queers are all for that.

Libay Linsangan Cantor is a Manila-based writer, film school professor and queer advocate. You can email her at leaflens@gmail.com. She blogs at leaflenspopmedia.wordpress.com.