Philippines:TS in society

[Jim Beaux]

Source http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue14/winter.htm
Thanks to Ecstatic for posting the link.

A survey/report was carried out in 2001 to 2003. It asked 195 Thai mtf TS and 147 Philippines mtf TS why they were TS i.e. what did THEY think was the cause?

In brief, there was a split between the Thai transwomen and the PI transwomen in several key areas. The author of the survey report, Sam Winter, suggested that this was due to the fact that (Buddhist) Thailand was more accepting of (or less against) transsexuals than (Catholic) Philippines i.e. that culture and acceptability influenced the result.

If you are interested in the reality of life whilst TS in the Philippines, please read the report. It is stuffed with amazing eye-opening examples that I can’t cover here.

NB. As at mid 2008, the Philippines had a population of a little over 90 million, making it 12th largest (by population) in the world (whilst the biggest European country is Germany, ranked 14th with 82 million).

The Philippines became a Spanish colony in the 16th century, a US Territory in 1898, and independent in 1946.

Report highlights are in the next post.

[Jim Beaux]

The report recorded that, prior to the arrival of Catholicism, society accepted that some men would dress as women and carry out roles normally assigned to women, and there is evidence of same sex relations.

The Spanish rigidly ended this, the Philippines is largely Catholic today, and its laws reflect a Christian binary view of male and female.

The language does not have a single word that equates to transsexual, as the split between sexual orientation and gender identity is not reflected. A person seen as mtf TS in the West would be labelled bakla (or bayot), but this would better translate as ‘not real man’, as it also includes homosexuals, cowards, effeminate men, males unmarried for too long, and cross-dressers.

The rest of the survey/report covers ONLY transsexuals i.e. those who genuinely self identify as women.

Transsexuals face a considerable amount of discrimination throughout society – education, employment, and of course with Catholic religion.

Using a scoring method, transsexuals reported that parents and society were less accepting in the Philippines (than Thailand). Because of this nearly 20% of TS expected to revert to male by age 50.

The transsexuals were asked why they thought they were transsexual. Was it – biological – culture (support from parents, siblings, other relatives, friends) – or God/kharma? NB A single respondent could pick as many reasons as she wished.

A high percentage of Thai TS included at least one of the cultural elements e.g. 50% included friends. But for Filipino TS biology and God were nearly the only reasons.

Sam Winter suggested that in a society with strong moral and religious objections to transsexualism, the Filipino TSs picked the reasons that could not possibly be attacked for containing some element of choice.

[bigdaddy]

there are lots of philipino ts's in hawaii, and alot of them are very passable

[unannyemegest]

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