It was twenty years ago today, when Filipino lesbians first marched on International Women’s Day (okay, I deliberately made that sound like the opening line of a Beatles song). If you’re old enough to know this song, or the Beatles, you’re probably old enough to have been alive on March 8, 1992, the last time that Filipino feminists/women activists marched together as a ‘movement’ under one collective banner. Yes, that IWD rally was peppered with women spanning across generations, crossing class boundaries and transcending conflicted political persuasions. Tragically, that same year and the many years thereafter, we saw the savage splintering of this fragile entity that we called women’s sisterhood. Triggered by ideological conflicts and personal wars (and the separation between the two had always been porous and permeable), the women’s movement, broke into smithereens (okay, I am being overly dramatic here). But what I also want to say is, despite becoming fragmented and conflict-ridden, women's organizations continued to advance women's rights -- in various spheres and platforms. As a twenty-something self-identified feminist, I witnessed the virulence, the hostility and the brutality that had engulfed the women I had learned to regard as my ‘sisters’ and looked up to as my heroes and role models. Yes, Virginia, I was really young, then. And impressionable. (I can hear my “elder” feminist friends chuckling).
But I’m going ahead of myself, as always --indeed, if there’s one thing that the women’s movement has taught me, it’s CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT).
So, just a few disclaimers:
1. Prior to 1992, discussions around lesbian issues have taken place, but they were confined to a few women’s organizations. One of the pioneers was my feminist organization, KALAYAAN. As early as 1985, KALAYAAN had dared to posit that ‘women’s rights are human rights’, then considered heretical in the hallowed halls of the political movement. KALAYAAN then went on to ‘explore’ issues of sexuality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and proudly claim the ‘F’ word. In 1990, the International Women and Health Meeting (IWHM), an international gathering of women working on issues of health, sexuality and gender, held a five-day conference in the University of the Philippines (UP). It became the platform for the first ‘closed door’ discussion of lesbian issues in a conference setting and subsequently fueled further ‘backdoor’ exchanges.
2. Since the event I am recalling happened exactly 20 years ago, I am only able to vividly recall fragments of that fateful period when we dared and bared (not physically) our so-called political existence. And I must acknowledge Giney Villar and Tesa de Vela, two of my co-conspirators in that first lesbian formation, who ably recalled and provided critical details to plug the holes in my now-forgetful mind. I’m sure there are many other details that have been inadvertently left out – and I’ll save that for another writing project.
Months before the March 8 rally, a motley crew of overzealous, passionate, worked up and eager beaver young (put emphasis here) women got together to conduct informal discussions about lesbian issues. We belonged to different organizations (though some were not affiliated with any) and we vowed to be as inclusive and as open to anyone who wanted to join – by invitation, of course. We would get together on weekends and evenings, ‘problematizing’ our location vis-à-vis the women’s movement. We held arduous discussions on which was more essential: our feminist identity or our lesbian identity. Back in those days, lesbianism, in the women’s movement where I was situated, was being proffered more as a ‘political choice’ than being ‘biologically determined’. That was the heyday of the ‘constructionist versus essentialist’ debates and we lapped it all up like flies to honey (okay, bad analogy). You get the drift. Giney swears that some of us were obsessed with ‘theorizing lesbian existence’ whilst others have actually just been living it -- like her.
One afternoon, we all got together to collectively create a banner. Channeling our emotions, ideas and contexts into a 5x3 canvass resulted to a crazy hodgepodge of symbols, slogans and statements, eerily resembling our state of mind. The central image was two overlapping women’s symbols (also regarded as the lesbian symbol) with the words, ‘lesbian’ and ‘feminist’ scribbled in circular motion, signifying the revolving door of our lesbian/feminist existence. Tesa had the bright idea to put tassles at the bottom of the banner -- yes, she was in her gypsy/pirate stage then. Oh wait, sometimes, she still is. Then we surrounded it with slogans like, ‘gay and proud’, ‘babae sa babae’, ‘we’re coming out’, ‘we will be visible; we are invincible’; ‘freedom of choice’, ‘labanan ang homophobia’.
Since it was just weeks before the International Women’s Day March, a lightbulb moment hit us: why not join the march as a lesbian contingent? (Tesa thinks I broached the idea). After all, we belonged to women’s organizations, we grew our feminist minds in the movement and it seemed like a safe space for some of us to publicly come out. Not everyone was open to participating in the march, but we all agreed that lesbians needed to be visible and represented.
And so, that led to the hatching of the first-ever public outing of a germinal (as opposed to seminal) lesbian formation. I am using the word ‘formation’ because the group did not live long enough to evolve into a more formal organization. What started as a banner-making project ended up as full-on production work, facilitating the confluence of theory and experience, of idealism and pragmatism, of the political and the personal.
As is the mode in most political mobilizations, we had to come up with a statement, decent rally placards and catchy chants. As far as the statement is concerned, Tesa recalled that it was focused on breaking stereotypes about lesbians. When it came to the chants, Giney remembered, ‘Lesbian rights are human rights. Lesbian rights are women's rights.’ Yes, we were starting to become grim and determined then.
I remember exactly what I wore that day. Twenty pounds ago, I tucked in a brown sleeveless shirt in blue denims, covered my head with a bandana and slipped into heavy-duty hiking boots.
The place of assembly was Welcome Rotunda along Quezon Avenue. The march would traverse through Espana and Recto, culminating at Mendiola, where the obligatory post-march rally would be held. As a last-minute addition to the march, our contingent had to negotiate our participation and location. Yes, we caused quite a stir, as the organizers did not know where to place us, both during the march and in the programme that followed after.
During the march, the excitement was palpable – and our collective heartbeats were thumping like crazy. Every now and then, we exchanged tentative looks, engaged in nervous banter and flashed awkward smiles. Those of us who were not “out” carried cameras and became instant photographers.
We shouted our chants, faced the glare of cameras and endured the furtive stares (neither hostile nor affirming) of fellow women marchers from other organizations. Overheard during the march: “Ang gaganda naman pala nila.”
The end point of the march was Mendiola – and it was Cory Aquino’s last year as president. Meaning, Mendiola was still not totally ‘off-limits’. We then ‘negotiated’ with the organizers to allow us to read our statement, foolishly written in English, for all the grassroots women from urban poor communities, labor unions, and peasant groups to fully comprehend and appreciate. But it was not easy. As Tesa pondered, it had to take a ‘straight older feminist’ to negotiate on our behalf, before we were allowed to read the statement. Giney, whom we ‘forcibly assigned’ to read the statement, was asked by the flustered emcee to just introduce herself. Our contingent moved closer to the stage as a show of force and support. As soon as Giney finished, we heard cheers and loud, thunderous clapping.
I don’t know how the other organizations and rallyists regarded our presence, but I remember being euphoric on the way home. And yes, we had a post-march party to celebrate that grand coming out.
We met a few times more before deciding that we needed to have a name for our group. We huffed and we puffed, we hemmed and heehawed, we agreed and argued, and finally came up with the very exciting…. “The Lesbian Collective” or TLC, for short. We swore to not become as grim and determined like our ‘elders’. We swore that we would not let the historical baggage and conflicts of our respective organizations affect us.
Alas, that March 8 event would not be repeated because after 1992, a united, inclusive women’s march was no longer possible. And by then, TLC had also imploded (or maybe disintegrate is a better word). What do you expect when you put fierce idealism, passionate commitment and strong personalities in a space and time that is mired by external conflicts and animosity? So, we were not immune to it after all.
That’s 20 years ago today. Since then, we’ve fought and made up, forgot about each other’s existence, reconnected, went our separate ways, and got back together. In between, we got involved in development NGOs, became full-time academics, dabbled in artistic and creative work, got in and out of relationships and rode the roller-coaster ride of our lesbian-feminist-lesbian lives. Best of all, we still know how to party and put our feet up, after a long day.
Thanks, Giney and Tesa, for indulging me and my nostalgia trip.
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