Handbook for Being Bakla at the End of the World
Ian Rafael Ramirez on Carlo Paulo Pacolor
Edited by Erika Carreon
AUTHORS NOTE
All the translations from the original text in Filipino are mine. However, I withdrew from translating the final text lifted from Handbook. I perceive this as her final message to us, her beki sisters.
Hoy, bakla!
Oo, ikaw nga gurl.
Shinoshowag kitey.
Basahin mo ‘tiz. ‘Lika.
Nahanap ka ng Handbook!
When does this speculative fiction end and our reality as a bakla begin? I find myself stuck in this question, held captive by the almost Babaylanic text I have just read: Carlo Paulo Pacolor’s Handbook ng Mga Bakla sa Napipintong Pagtatapos ng Daigdig / Handbook of the Bakla at the Impending End of the World. ① Handbook, in various fragments and ruptures of texts and frequencies, illuminates the workings and violence of polite centralised society, how it eradicates the bakla and how she negotiates her power amidst this brutality. The bakla is one of the many local genders in the Philippines that are often conflated with an effeminate gay individual, trans femininity, and gender fluidity. Carlo’s text is Babaylanic for, like the pre-colonial shaman of the Visayas known as babaylan, ② who warned her people about the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, Handbook also warns the bakla at the present juncture about the extent of the violence which the anti-bakla regime of the Philippine nation-state enacts.
Handbook opens with a note on the text’s dystopian milieu: during the ‘‘Age of Effective Communication’’, the League of Macho Macho Men (L3M) had banished the archives of pirated broadcasts from a queer radical, Alias Clotho, addressing the bakla community. The swarm of bakla who had kept these pirated broadcasts were detained, and like the archives, they were nowhere to be found.
While we perhaps have not reached that moment, many instances resonate with the present. The transcripts of the recordings of Clotho appear to us as a premonition from the no-longer-here (or the not-yet-here, who knows? char), but situating myself in the text would tell me otherwise. Handbook reads to me like a premonition from the not-yet but resembles what is already in the here and now; we are (still) living in the regime of eradication. The first section of Handbook presents the clippings, pirated broadcasts, and recording transcripts of Alias Clotho.
Tears started pouring down
for it occurred to me that Handbook had made
the boundaries between
fiction
and
reality
porous.
I felt the embrace of the babaylan comforting me
through Carlo’s words.
She had not left
nor was she annihilated
as the colonial archives
would proclaim.
She was reading Handbook
beside me;
as if telling me,
‘hoy bacs, magpaca-baclá ca lang, bruja ca’. ③
‘‘Luxuriate in anger,’’ Carlo writes elsewhere after drag artist Pura Luka Vega was unjustly detained in Manila on 4 October, 2023 for ‘failure’ to attend a court trial. Luka’s anime-pop-rock Jesus drag performance of two gospel songs, ‘Ama Namin’ (‘Our Father’) and ‘Papuri sa Diyos’ (‘Glory to God’), went viral a few weeks after their actual performance during Elephant’s after-Pride party at Dirty Kitchen, Quezon City. ④ Soon after, lawmakers from both the Philippine Senate and Congress were quick to call Luka out for offending their religious feelings. Even staunch LGBTQ+ rights supporter and principal author of the SOGIESC Equality Bill (Anti-Discrimination Bill on the basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity or Expression), Risa Hontiveros, tagged the performance as ‘regrettable’. Trans Filipina Congresswoman Geraldine Roman warned Luka not to wave ‘the queer card’, noting that the performance ‘is simply a case of disrespect for religious feelings’.
Albeit infuriating, these events did not come as a shock. Seventeen cities and municipalities across the archipelago declared Luka as ‘persona non grata’ for their allegedly ‘blasphemous’ act.The first city that did so was General Santos City, the hometown of Former Senator Manny Pacquiao, who called people in same-sex relationships ‘worse than animals’ (‘mas masahol pa sa hayop’). Other Christian groups who have taken offence against Luka brought their fragile cries to the courts, citing that Luka breached Section 133 of the Revised Penal Code of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, which incriminates acts ‘offensive to the feelings of the faithful’. Luka had been released, detained and released again, at the time of writing, yet they continue to face court trials.
We continue to luxuriate in anger.
Luka’s story is just one instance of what Carlo might describe in the Handbook as indicative of the ‘regime of effective communication’, signalled by the eradication of improper and unwanted queer subjects and integration of obedient queer subjects into the polite and centralised society. The warnings mentioned in the pamphlets attached in Handbook further explain how the text’s milieu mirrors the incident I describe here. ‘Isangguni sa mga kinauukulan ang mga nagdedelikadong katawan’ (‘Confer queer bodies to public officials’), says an archived pamphlet attached in the beginning of Handbook. It proceeds to provide a list of ‘abnormalities’ which include gayness, transness, female masculinity, male femininity, and engaging in pre-marital sex among many others. The pamphlet ends in a warning: ‘Ang sumalungat sa anuman dito ay dapat lang ituring na criminal at terorista. Sumangguni sa mga kinauukulan’ (‘Those who oppose the normative deserve to be labelled as criminal and terrorist. Seek advice from public officials’).
Carlo’s words
seep
deep
into my skin.
The Philippine nation-state’s anti-bakla regime has always been threatened by our existence, even before the Philippine independence. During the Spanish colonial era, Spanish friars Christianised the archipelago and displaced many gender-crossing shamans. This eradication of queerness continued until the American empire’s racial-sexual governance, marked by anti-vagrancy laws. ⑤ We find ourselves here at the present—when a fellow bakla who performs in Jesus drag to accommodate our kabaklaan in a church is being unjustly detained and dehumanised while her cisgendered Catholic counterpart has weaponised their self-proclaimed morality to police and discipline our bodies.
Reading Handbook reminds me: eradication has always been their strategy. But how can we survive? Is there even dignity in survival tactics? What radical potentialities might our being offer in the creation of bakla futurity?
I turn to Clotho’s recording transcripts in Handbook.
✷
REKORDING TRANS | BULK #20 | PERIOD REF ‘INTEGRASYON’
Ang bakla ay mas madaling lulunin kung piksyunal na karakter, o palamuti, o pinagandang picture. Mga baklang dapat may silbi at katuturan. Hindi pwedeng sa bakla mismo manggaling ang kanyang pakahulugan.
The bakla is more digestible as a fictional character, an ornament, or a beautified image. They are required to have value through productivity and be imbued with sense. Their meaning-making should not come from them.
The normative script of the bakla is to find productivity through her supposed creative prowess. Her social script appears in Martin Manalansan IV’s text as an expectation to ‘fare better economically than the rest of the population’, and to satisfy this role, she must ‘slave away at work in order to survive.’ ⑥ This work has also already been scripted to be in creative labour as a parlorista or beauty salon worker, as a couturier, as a filmmaker, as a theatre-maker, as the creative brain of town fiestas, as choreographer for dance competitions, as a beauty pageant trainer and contestant herself, and as the many other creative roles in the arts she can accumulate. She is, above all, an entertainer found in comedy and sing-along bars, film and television, and events requiring a comedic host. She is not to be recognised beyond these social constructions of her being. Otherwise, she must present herself as macho, which would mean she has been integrated into the polite centralised society. Clotho writes this as the core of integration—to conceal self-respect as self-loathing.
One may find this contestation in the online wars between ‘alter gays’ (hypermasculine bakla who engage in the economy of trading nudes and home-recorded sex videos) and trans folx with their allies. Sometime in April 2023, an online debate unfolded whereby trans folx and their allies pushed back against the misogyny, transphobic rhetoric, and femme phobia of certain alter gays. One of which is @makaryobaranda who remarked that tomboys or lesbians are ‘maaasim’⑦ because they are denied the experience of having penises. Another is @DustinRam1, who misgenders trans folx by saying that ‘biologically males like you (referring to trans folx) with penis want to use women’s comfort room are the ones who are manyak (maniac)’. A troll account by the handle @hello53521 even asserted trans women are killed because ‘they harass and deceive people.’ Trans folx and their allies pushed back against these remarks by emphasising the patterns of these hypermasculine cisgays: they overvalue their phalluses to shame and devalue femmes and lesbians.
Alter gays pretend to be polite and centralised, refusing to acknowledge that their eros—devouring assholes, inserting their penises in the mouths of their fellows, wanking behind open toilet doors to invite fellows for a quick fun—are also subjects of moral policing by their Christian surrounds. The period of integration within the eradication regime separates the deviant from the assimilated. Regardless of her social scripts, however, she remains the object of surveillance, policing, and brutality.
✷
REKORDING TRANS | BULK #17 | PERIOD REF ‘MEME’
… natagpuan ang mga libu-libong labí ng mga baklang malilibog na mahilig ibidyo ang mga sariling nagkakantutan. … May mga nagsabing naging behikulo ito nang pagkalat ng epidemya. Ito ang napagkasunduang kongklusiyon ng mga paham.
… Corpses of libidinous bakla who are fond of taking pornographic videos were found. … Some were saying that this resulted in the spread of the epidemic. The educated concluded this.
Around July 2022, popular television host, weather anchor, and trivia connoisseur Kuya Kim Atienza faced queer critics for spreading misinformation about Monkeypox. He notes that monkeypox can be transmitted via male-to-male sexual encounters. He eventually took down his post.
✷
The clippings, pirated broadcasts, and the recording transcripts of Clotho inscribed pain
beneath my skin.
Or perhaps, it resurfaced
well-hidden wounds
through memories.
One memory was when I was a teenager; when my parents confronted me that a high school classmate’s mom told them I am a bakla.
Play recording from memory: ‘A’s mom said bakla ka’.
Sweat
knees tremble
stop your fingers from flicking
fist tighten
masc voice release— ‘hindi po’ (I am not.)
more sweat
On a circulated state-produced pamphlet from Clotho’s archives: ‘GUSTO BA NG MAGULANG MO NA MAGING GANITO … KA?
SWEAT
KNEES TREMBLE
FLICK YOUR NEWLY-MANICURED NAILS
FEMME VOICE RELEASE— ‘OO, BAKLA AKO’ (I AM BAKLA)
BELT ARAW GABI BY REGINE VELASQUEZ
ISPAGETING PABABA LABAN BAWI DROP SPLIT COMBO
Upon reading Clotho’s recording transcripts, my body constantly found this trembling reappearing from the tip of my fingers to my lips, but now in anger and not fear. It resembled the anger I felt when former Philippine president Rodrigo Roa Duterte III pardoned US Marine Joseph Pemberton for the crime of murdering trans-Filipina Jennifer Laude.
SWEAT
KNEES TREMBLE
FLICK YOUR NEWLY-MANICURED NAILS
FEMME VOICE RELEASE— ‘TANGINA MO, PDUTZ’
(FUCK YOU PDUTZ)
The same anger I luxuriated in when I read colonial archives describing my sisters as brujas, salvajes, deceived by the devil.
SWEAT
KNEES TREMBLE
FLICK YOUR NEWLY-MANICURED NAILS
FEMME VOICE RELEASE— ‘BRUJA KUNG BRUJA’
(FINE, WE ARE BRUJAS)
Carlo may have written ‘luxuriate in anger’ elsewhere, and yes Carlo,
I am luxuriating in
anger,
for I had felt
the painful s
c
r
e
a
m
of the babaylan
and her sisters
annihilated
during Spanish colonisation
✷
An excerpt spliced from multiple pages of the third section of Handbook titled ‘The Bakla at the End of the World’. ⑧
Nagpapakilala ako sa iyo muli, kapwa bakla, dahil hindi natin sa katunayan kailangang magpakilala sa iba. … Ano ang engganyo ng malulupit na mga daidig na ito sa ating mga bakla? Eksakto, wala. … Ang banyuhay sa tingin ko ng mga bakla ay sa mga DIY nating libog at galak. … Dapat lang nating ayawan ang mga sentralisadong daigdig na iyan, at sa halip, maggiit nang hinaharaya nating bonggang baklang daigdig! … kaya nga nakagawa tayo ng ‘sarili nating wika ng mga bakla’. … Nakaaaliw siyang word game, oo, at pwede pa ring gamitin para mandaot ng mga kupal na cisheterosekswal na mga macho, pero nakakasawa na ring magtago sa wika ng daot, gaya ng kung paano tinotolerate ang bakla sa entablado ng dautan sa mga comedy bar. … Ang ating baklang katawan ay hugutan ng baklang enerhiya na laging handang sumabog at pumukol. … Sa pagbabawal lalo itong napapanday. Matigas ang ulo at pasaway ang mga bakla, hahanap at hahanap ng paraan, maisakatapuran lang ang kabaklaan. … Tayo ay hitik. Ang mga bakla ay laging nasa punto nang kahitikan. At lagi tayong sumisibol. At lagi tayong nahihinog at namumulaklak.
I am introducing myself to you again, fellow bakla, because we do not actually need to introduce ourselves to others. … What is the allure of this brutal world to us bakla? Exactly, nothing. … The metamorphosis of the bakla transpires via their DIY lusts and joys. … We should refuse a centralised world, and instead, insist on our imagined explosive, fantabulous, and grand bakla world! ⑨… That is why we can construct ‘our bakla language’. … It is like a word game, which we use to throw insults at cisheterosexual macho men. But, it can be exhausting to hide behind the language of insult, in a similar way that our sisters at comedy bar stages are tolerated. … Our bakla bodies are imbued with energy that is always awaiting eruption. … It is forged because of repression. The bakla are stubborn; they will always find a way to materialize their kabaklaan. … We are abounding. The bakla is always at the point of abundance. And we are always sprouting. And we are always maturing and blossoming.
I can only speak alongside Clotho, for Carlo
had surfaced
the meanderings
in my subconscious.
This final section of the Handbook gagged me, much more than the Youtuber who taught millions of gays around the world how to douche and shave burnek or ass hair, or when Steve Harvey came out of stage again to announce that Pia Wurtzbach had won Miss Universe.
It embraced me
like a love letter from the future.
The pain remains
but it has
subsided,
for now,
into tiny follicles
emerging from
my brown surface.
Shelemet, Clotho. Thank you, Clotho.
✷
Carlo, via Clotho, illuminates to us that the brutality of anti-bakla regimes can be struggled against through our bakla being. Our empathy, mundane joys, eruptive eros, and constructed language may dismantle oppressive modern/colonial systems. These are not survival tactics. Carlo asks where the dignity in pure survival tactics is; I respond, there is none.
Our being (pagiging) bakla makes us whole.
They will catapult us, even in glimpses, into a not-yet that is worth living. Our ways of being in the world make visible the cracks in how the postcolonial Philippines treats us gender non-conforming folx—not just the bakla, but more so the lesbyana, our trans sisters, the agí, the bayot, the minamagkit, and our many other sisters across the archipelago.
Reading this speculative fiction via Walter Mignolo and Rolando Vasquez’s decolonial aestheSis, Clotho’s recording transcripts and clippings do not only set the tone of the brutalities against gender non-conforming folx in the ‘Age of Effective Communication’; they also resurface the violence of modern/colonial anti-bakla regimes in contemporary Philippines that has been a continuation of the annihilation of our gender-crossing shaman sisters. It unravels the colonial wound in the here and now and moves us towards healing, much like my emotional journey of experiencing Handbook.
Through Clotho, we may find a critical re-emergence of our precolonial gender-crossing shaman sister who had warned the islands of the arrival of colonial powers. In the colonial archives, we only hear her say, ‘ang ating unang pagcacaibigan ay tapus na sapagca’t darating dito ang ilang lalaquing mapuputi’ (‘our ancient friendship has finished because white men will arrive upon these shores’). ⑩ Perhaps, those were not her last words. The colonial archives want us to believe she had abandoned us, but through Carlo’s fabulation via Clotho, ⑪ I can hear her utter some advice: ‘insist on our imagined explosive, fantabulous, and grand bakla world!’ And her last words:
‘Nasa kabila tayo, nasa malayo at ibayong pampang ang mga bakla, kumakaway. O pwedeng sumasayaw. Sinasayawan natin ang ating mga tugtog na ang frequency ay tayo lamang ang nakauunawa at humuhulma. Mga bakla lamang ang nakaririnig’.
✷ ✷ ✷
Works Cited
✷ 1. I opt not to translate the bakla to assert that the bakla evades translation. It may be loosely translated as queer but not in the deployment of queer as an umbrella term. The bakla is not an umbrella term for all non-conforming genders in the Philippines; it is, after all, a Tagalog construction. I propose that the bakla is parallel to queer if understood as a verb and a performative. If ‘to queer’ is ‘to destabilize’, ‘to bakla’ (or baklain) implies ‘to disrupt’. Jaya Jacobo does a better job of explaining the linguistic and cultural nuances of the bakla. See Jaya Jacobo et al., ‘The bakla, the agi: Our genders which are not one’, in Periferias.
✷ 2. See Leny Mendoza Strobel and Susanah Lily Mendoza, ‘Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory’, Center for Babaylan Studies, 2013.
✷ 3. This translates to English as: ‘Hey baks, just be bakla, you witch’. Baks, short for bakla, is a usual term of endearment among the bakla community and their allies. In some parts of this essay, I will place the English translations in the endnotes instead. The reason is to assert the difficulty of translating words, but more so cultural nuances.
✷ 4. The viral video of Luka’s performance has now been deleted from their official X (formerly Twitter) account. A snippet of the video can be found here.
✷ 5. See Victor Román Mendoza, Metroimperial Intimacies: Fantasy, Racial-Sexual Governance, and the Philippines in U.S. Imperialism, 1899-1913 (Duke University Press, 2015).
✷ 6. Martin Manalansan IV, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2003), 26.
✷ 7. ‘Maaasim’ is a pejorative expression colloquially used to refer to people, often queers, who look unhygienic or have negatively-perceived personalities.
✷ 8. These excerpts came from different pages: 60, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 73. (‘O. Itaya mo sa lotto baks!).
✷ 9. It is difficult to find a translation to ‘bongga’. It is an expression that stands for ‘fabulous’, ‘grand’, and ‘explosive’. It can also refer to something that has been over-exaggerated.
✷ 10. This text was lifted from Fr. Gaspar de San Agustin’s Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas 1565-1615 by Isabelo de los Reyes. I quote it from delos Reyes’s El Diabo En Filipinas translated into English and Filipino by Benedict Anderson, Carlos Sardi ña Galache, and Ramon Guillermo.
✷ 11. Saidiya Hartman, ‘Venus in Two Acts’, Small Axe 12.2 (June 2008).
Ian Rafael Ramirez (They/Them/Siya) is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne where they are exploring the everyday performances and worldmaking practices of the bakla (a local gender identity in the Philippines). Their essays have appeared in the Australasian Drama Studies Journal, Art+Australia, and Malthouse Theatre's Engine Room Blog.
Ian also works across dramaturgy, curation, and performance-making. Their most recent creative projects include “Butiki, Baboy: A Pride Conversation Series”, “Regine: The Fairy Gay Mother” (Virgin Lab Fest, Cultural Centre of the Philippines), and “Baklang Kanal!” (Performance Space and PACT Centre for Emerging Artists).