Week 5 Day 1

 Post 5

This week’s readings grapple with the globalization of queer identities and how labels for different categories of sexualities change and grow over time in specific areas in the world, specifically observing the communities in the Philippines, the United States, or Thailand. While each author touches on this concept of the global aspect of gender and sexuality, they both analyze their countries of interest through a variety of lenses. In Martin Manalansan IV’s "The Borders Between Bakla and Gay,” he discusses the growing differences between the terms gay and bakla used in the Philippines to describe people’s sexuality and refers to modernity, culture, and class as forces of influence for this distinction. In Peter Jackson’s “Capitalism and Global Queering: National Markets, Parallels Among Sexual Cultures, and Multiple Queer Modernities,” Jackson focuses on capitalism’s impact, on and alongside globalization, on cultural differences and parallels to the “West” for queer cultures in Asia (in this reading, Thailand.) As I read both texts for this week, I couldn’t help but focus my thoughts on the way language is discussed and used by the authors for their specific culture/country. While specificity and the creation of labels were heavily discussed by both Manalansan and Jackson, I found the creation of certain labels and their application to be incredibly engrossing.

Peter Jackson’s “Capitalism and Global Queering: National Markets, Parallels Among Sexual Cultures, and Multiple Queer Modernities,” caught my attention with the explanation behind the Thai word seua bai, or “bi-tigers.” The word describes men that are attracted to both women and men and gained popularity in the twentieth century. The creation and establishment of the word depict a mixture of global queering as talked about by Jackson and the Thai culture’s own language evolving over time. Seua bai originally referred to a famous Thai gangster from the 1950s, but then evolved into including the homonym of the Thai abbreviation of the English word bisexual, or in this case bai (Jackson 372.) With these connections, alongside other Thai cultural references to men’s sexuality and double-meanings behind the words, seua bai came to be a new label used by some to describe people in Thailand. As the author described, “In the Thai imagination, the expressions seua and seua bai combine notions of male penetrative ambisexuality with the memory of a powerful and violent masculine figure from recent history,” (Jackson 372). The creation of the word is an excellent example of the ways globalization has created an impact on queer culture or identities for some countries. While the label of seua bai grew from a Thai foundation, the influence of the word bisexual from World War II ignites the conversation surrounding Western impact over cultures in places around the world.

For the reading, "The Borders Between Bakla and Gay,” Manalansan compares and contrasts the words gay and bakla, with both vaguely referring to the same thing yet with different distinctions. Bakla in the Philippines is the Tagalog word meaning a man with a woman’s heart while gay is seen as a man who wants to have sex with other men. While both of the words gay and bakla were used by people in the Philippines, bakla has ties to the culture and community that the word gay does not. In the reading, Manalansan says, “In some situations, bakla symbolized Filipino queerness while gay symbolized white queerness,” (Manalansan 24). Manalansan’s direct explanation of the variation between the two words points us to a way that globalization and the concept of how the global gay identity works in the world. While the words refer to very similar things, the specific differences create a huge impact on how the words are perceived and approached by Filipinos. Bakla will always have the Filipino connection that gay will never be able to have, even though its use is prominent in the Philippines. I also wanted to point out the importance of the author saying, in some situations, as this is a nod to how some Filipino people may prefer to identify as gay, rather than bakla due to its history. The words working alongside and against each other in the Philippines showcase the influence that globalization has from the “West”. 

The evolution of language and its application in these countries reminded me heavily of the use of the word queer. While originally meaning strange during the 1800s, the word was quickly adopted to refer to people who were homosexuals. This word was then, and still can be, used in a derogatory manner. However, during the 1990s, many people in the LGBTQ+ community have adopted the word as an identity and umbrella term for those who are a part of the community, reclaiming the word. While globalization doesn’t have as much of an impact on the history of the word in the United States, the evolution of the word queer is very similar to how seua bai and bakla have changed over time, creating new meanings and positions in society for those who identify with the words and/or holding onto the roots of the word’s cultural origin.