Queer Crossroads: Contours of Internalized Homophobia in the Physical and Imagined Space of Orosa-Nakpil (Malate, Manila City)

Abstract

The paper positions the Orosa-Nakpil intersection in Malate, Manila as a critical space which maps out the contours of queer metropolitan, pronounced in the tension between the bakla (the cross-dressing, feminine, parlorista) and the cosmopolitan, globalized gay man. Recent critical scholarship on Philippine gay culture utilizes this dichotomy to illustrate the effects of globalization on the production of sexual identities in this post-colonial city, with the globalized “straight acting man” functioning as the privileged summation of such influx. Propelling this dichotomy is a curious form of internalized homophobia which pertains to personal acceptance and endorsement of sexual stigma as part of the individual’s value system and self-concept. This paper thus seeks to enter this discussion by using a specific site as an illustrative text to highlight the complexities of such a dichotomy. With the influx of globalized forms of queer identity and new forms of technology which digitized forms of cruising (geosocial applications), Orosa-Nakpil has since dwindled. The paper argues, however, that the existing denizens of Orosa-Nakpil offer a counterculture to the hegemony of the globalized gay on two levels: on a physical level, the enduring presence of the bakla in Orosa-Nakpil who insist on empowering themselves through varied performativities emphasize a stake and claim of place. On an imaginative level, the presence is a return to the old forms of gay identity; nostalgia functions as a critical counterpoint to the systematic demonization of the bakla as inferior. Through an examination of practices and textual representations of queer activity in Orosa- Nakpil, the paper locates the ways in which the current queer performatives, function as critical dialectics in the appropriation of queer subjectivities.