GEOG100: My Story

 

MY STORY

Miriam College

(image via mc.edu.ph retrieved 8 August 2023)

- Miriam College was an all-girls school

- I went to this school from kindergarten to 10th grade and I think it was the most influential place to the person I am today, and the place that most shaped the views and moral compass I have.

- The culture of the students of the school was very socially conscious

- In Miriam College High School (MCHS) culture everyone was of course very supportive of women's rights because it was an all girls school, and also very supportive of LGBTQ+ rights because as we progressed from primary school up, people would be more exposed to LGBTQ+ students in the school and we would teach each other about it and help each other unlearn homophobic and transphobic teachings we may have learned from our families or churches.

- The Catholic church, which most of us were part of, was of course not as accepting as the students were; and Roman Catholicism is one of the most vital or major cultural system elements when looking at the Philippines.

- When I think about it now, it’s interesting to think about the discrepancy between Philippine culture and Philippine politics and religion. In Philippine politics, same-sex activity in the Philippines is not criminalized, but same-sex marriage is also not legally recognized. Some anti-bullying legislation has been passed, but the main Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Expression (SOGIE) Equality Bill has been denied and refiled over and over since the year 2000. In general, while not overtly hostile towards the LGBTQ+, Philippine politics are also not particularly friendly or receptive to the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. This more directly aligns with the religious belief system of the Roman Catholic church, against the LGBTQ+. We could say that the religion of the country shaped the politics. We can even see that in the way politicians will often defend their stances against the SOGIE Bill and LGBTQ+ people using God or the Bible.

- However, the politics and religion do not align as clearly with the Philippine culture towards the LGBTQ+. From my view now, I still think that the Philippines is generally quite tolerant of the LGBTQ+, sometimes even accepting. Although I didn’t want to come out to my extended family, fearing their judgment, I’ve never had to feel much fear for my life from being LGBTQ+ like many people in other countries do, as I had been aware of but would only come face to face with after talks with LGBTQ+ youth from different parts of the world in FIC. In the Philippines I felt unaccepted by my state and their legislation, and by my church and religion, but I felt accepted by my peers and community and close family and friends, both at the same time. But I generally felt safe and secure in my skin. I still hid parts of myself from my extended family, but I didn’t feel so much like I needed to hide to protect myself, or that if people found out, my life would be ruined.

- When I suggested to my friends in FIC that we go to the Vancouver Pride March, most of them excitedly told me that it would be their first time attending a pride event. I asked them if their cities had pride parades while they were in highschool, and if so, why hadn’t they attended before, and most of them that I’d asked told me that their cities didn’t have pride parades. It was illegal. Or with few people whose cities did have pride parades, they couldn’t go because they couldn’t risk their families or peers in school finding out, because even though it wasn’t illegal, it definitely wasn’t accepted within their culture, whether it be the culture of their country, or just of their school.

- I think that the Philippines is relatively more accepting of the LGBTQ+ than many other countries, although definitely not fully accepting. However that wasn’t always the case. Yes, as with many places, it was less accepting in the near past (even as recent as the late 2000s when my brothers were in middle to high school). However, if you look into the deeper history of the Philippines you’ll see that the Philippines used to be much more accepting of different sexualities and genders. I won’t go much into detail, but in the precolonial period of the Philippines, LGBT(using current terms, not that the term LGBT existed back then, or that any of this was even in English) people and women could not only exist, but they could hold much power and religious authority. Gender was much more fluid and people could love people of the same sex without judgment. It was only with colonialism and Spanish influence and coercion of the Philippines into Catholicism that the culture and cultural traits of unequal gender and heterosexuality as the only one correct sexuality became widespread.

- Majority of the Philippines is Catholic, and all of the schools I went to in the Philippines were Catholic schools, so Catholic education and daily prayers were mandatory.

- Many of our Catholic education teachers, as well as teachers from other subjects who were also just Catholic, would tell us that being gay is a sin, and other things like that, but not all of our teachers were like that. Surprisingly many of our teachers were also supportive of the LGBTQ+ community and other things we students believed in. Actually many of them ended up being support for the students whose families weren't as accepting.

- And many families of course weren't as accepting as soon as the students went home. I know I felt and heard some of the homophobic comments from my parents (although they’ve grown to be more accepting now!) and aunts and uncles. And we still had to go to church and pray together even though I felt disconnected from the church and partly from my family since I had to hide and never bring up a big part of my personhood that I normally felt totally free to discuss in my school and with my friends and peers (I’ve been able to come out to my siblings and parents since graduating highschool though! My siblings and dad took it great and my mom took it well but it was a bit more complicated).

- Because of my surroundings in MCHS, I thought most young people were like this too in the Philippines.

- There were a few times where someone in the class might say something offensive, and I, and lots of the people in the class, would usually just start arguing or debating with them that they shouldn't say things like that and that that's offensive or wrong. I felt like my impact on the school was minimal but was just reinforcing the culture that was already there.

Basically how it felt in MC in retrospect:

                                     (image via istockphoto.com retrieved 8 August 2023)

Ateneo Senior High School

(image via ateneo.edu retrieved 8 August 2023)

- It was a previously all-boys school that had just opened to girls, so it would be like 90% or more boys and only 10% or less girls

- It was the first time I interacted with a lot of boys

- Many of the boys I met were very into "dark humor" which was pretty much just racism and sexism under the guise of a joke to avoid accountability, and some of them were worse, some were just openly sexist and homophobic.

- It was the first time I interacted with people my age with conflicting views from me. I had heard things like this before but only from older people in my family or community.

- I still think for the most part, the people I met had similar values as me, but there were some people who didn't and that was a shock to me.

- In fact, the school was surprisingly very LGBTQ+ friendly and anti-discrimination in many aspects, especially because of the student government which was a mix of genders and sexualities of people that were seniors in the school. They even painted the entrance stairs rainbow for pride month and had a bulletin board to write messages for pride. The student government (including the university students) also held events like "One Big Pride" (a play on the Ateneo motto "One Big Fight") which celebrated Pride along with International Women's Month and Zero Discrimination Day.

(article from rappler.com, photo retrieved 8 August 2023)

(image via ateneo.edu retrieved 8 August 2023)

(image via The Guidon theguidon.com retrieved 8 August 2023)

(image via Ateneo Sanggunian oursanggu.com retrieved 8 August 2023)

- I realize now especially after talking to many different people from all over the world in FIC that that amount of support is actually very rare. Talking to LGBTQ+ people from even just neighboring Southeast Asian countries made me realize that my schools were more like the exception not the rule.

- I wonder why that’s the case, and I’m not exactly sure why my schools in my country are more accepting, but I have a few theories. I feel like it might be this way because the Philippines gets a lot of western influence due to globalization, although western influence is why we probably gained these homophobic and sexist mindsets in the first place. After the American colonial rule, English became widely spoken in the Philippines, even becoming one of our two official languages, alongside Filipino. People in the Philippines consume lots of western media which may have helped spread information about LGBTQ+ rights, even the terminology in English of LGBTQ+.

- In terms of LGBTQ+ language in the Philippines many also are originally from Filipino though. In Filipino or Tagalog, there are whole dialects associated with gay subcultures in the Philippines. It was even taught to us by our senior high school language teacher. One of our final projects was to decode “beki” slang into standard English.

- But I think the introduction of English terms such as “transgender,” “nonbinary,” and “lesbian” helped the Philippine LGBTQ+ community because it helped explain the differences between the members of the community, since in the Philippines, the word “bakla” has basically been used as an umbrella term for gay, trans, queer, and the whole LGBTQ+ community, with just a few other commonly used terms like “tomboy” for queer women.

- But I don’t think it’s always necessary as different communities have different needs and wants, and it’s important to see that there are people and lived experiences outside the western lens, and many LGBTQ+ or “bakla” people prefer not to use the western terms for it and not use so many labels and simply refer to themselves as “bakla.”

- So back to the topic of Ateneo, I have conflicting feelings. I feel like most or many of the people and even the student council in the school are like me in terms of values and beliefs, but I still felt shocked by how often I was still able to hear some of the things some of the students thought or said.

- Sometimes some of the boys would say things that were just sexual harassment, and I didn’t even know what to do at first because I’d never actually experienced anything like that before. It was so hard for me to stand up for myself because I felt like it was so normalized because of the culture of the boys there that I would be alone if I were to get angry or say that was wrong. Even now I still hold grudges against some of them and have some anger towards myself for not doing more about it.

- It took me a while to learn how to stand up for myself in that context and to this day I regret not standing up for myself more in some situations.

- The culture in Ateneo in their junior highschool and lower (tenth grade and lower when it was still all boys) was very "machismo," as I would come to learn.

- Later on, I even learned from my brothers who went to this school from primary school that while I was enjoying my life in Miriam in a very kind and LGBTQ+ friendly community and culture, my brothers in Ateneo were being insulted and called gay slurs.

- But I didn't see this nearly as much in my time there, and I think it's because of the sudden influx of new female students that helped disrupt the culture.

- Pretty much every time I saw someone getting called out for problematic behavior, it was by a new student and a girl.

- I was only there from grades 11 to 12 but I felt the difference in the culture and attitudes from my first day as a new student there to the time we were graduating.

- These are chats with one of my friends I met in Ateneo who I was in a big friend group with, with mostly "homegrown" Atenean boys. I was worried about the conflict because we all said some bad things to each other because of our conflicting views, but after we talked about it and understood each other we were only able to get closer, and I'm really glad for that. I think the situation helped all of us grow and mature as people.

- I think I impacted it because I was one of the new people to not accept the behavior of some of the people in the school. I got into some fights with my friends because of it but in the end I saw how they learned how the things they did or said were hurtful. I'm so glad I saw the people I cared about change for the better to be kinder and more empathetic people, instead of just being angry that "women are too sensitive." And it changed me for the better too by making me become a more empathetic person but also a person who stood up for myself and against what I thought was wrong.

- It impacted me greatly by starting to teach me that people will have different views from me and it's important to understand them first instead of getting angry and cutting them off because I think only I'M always right. I now realize how listening is one of the most important things for healthy debates.

- I'm so glad I went to this school first instead of going to an all girls school then immediately jumping into the deep end with not just different genders, but completely different backgrounds and cultures and beliefs.

- It was like the next step for training for the real world, and then FIC would be the next.

FIC

(image via idomedia.ca retrieved 8 August 2023)

- This is the first time I'm meeting so many people from completely different cultures and mindsets from me.

- It frustrated me more than anything

- (not super related but I met actual andrew tate fans irl.... I honestly didn't realize they were real people even my ateneo friends would make fun of andrew tate and I thought that was normal)

- I would complain to my friends back home about the things some of the men would say in my Gender Talk class and even Geography class. It really bothered me how I felt they were so disrespectful and stubborn to argue with the teachers and students who did research in the debate that they're wrong.

- I met people with REAL real homophobia, the kind that they don't even laugh off as a joke.

- I met men who really didn't see women as their equals.

- And I met women and LGBTQ+ people from countries where this was the norm, and they were ALWAYS surprised that I was able to be so open about all these things in my previous schools and country, and that I didn't come to Canada very afraid of outing myself as certain things because I didn't have the same homophobic highschool trauma.

- To be honest I argued with some people here about things they said, but...

- I'm worried it's impact on me is that I'm becoming complacent, even though I think I'm just being more patient/accepting, as I should. But I don't know if I'm just staying silent on serious issues because now I'm just too much of a coward to stand up for what I believe is right.

- And it's the perfect outlet for me to speak but I still get too shy or embarrassed sometimes.

- Like in Gender Talk, I wanted to argue so badly with them but I only spoke during the debate when I had to, and I couldn't get my points out well even though I researched really hard because I just got too much stage fright to say what I wanted to say.

- And in GEOG100, the class I'm making this blog for, I wanted so many times to argue with some of the people in my class, but instead I just tell it to my female classmates and complain about them instead of just saying it to their face like I might have in highschool.

- During the GEOG100 field trip, they kept arguing about how Canada should just totally criminalize all drugs to fix the problem, and they sounded so sure of themselves that it was making me so angry. I'm from one of those countries where it is just heavily criminalized, and it didn't solve the problem. All it did was create a new problem of insane levels of extrajudicial killings.

- And I wanted to tell them that because all their proof of it working was anecdotal evidence or Putin's evidence. So I have my own anecdotal evidence and I see in my own country journalists being jailed or even killed when exposing the truth.

- I worry that I've become complacent because of this, but I hope to leave a positive impact so I'm not sure how to balance it.

- I think the only way I've really impacted things here was by being some people's first gay friend. Which isn't much. But I'm hoping maybe that'll start to change the way people think about the LGBTQ+ community as less of outsiders or less like a concept and more like real people.