Transportation: Translating filipino and filipino American tomboy masculinities through global migration and seafaring

GLQ

Volumn 14, Issue 2-3, 2008, Pages 403-424

  Fajardo, Kale Bantigue ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 43949118460     PISSN: 10642684     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10642684-2007-039     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. See, for example, Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997);
2. and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
3. Neferti X. Tadiar, Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004).
4. I use the word seamen because it is the term commonly used by seamen, their families, and local people in the Philippines. Seafarer and Overseas Filipino Worker are terms more widely used by the Philippine government and nongovernmental organizations. On state discourse, see Kale Bantigue Fajardo, "Of Galleons and Globalization," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 38, nos. 1-2 (2002): 61-65;
5. for a literary perspective, see Carlos Cortes, Longitude (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1998).
6. Many Filipino seafarers (men and women) work on cruise ships; my research primarily focuses on Filipino seamen on industrial container ships. For information on multinational cruise corporations, see Ross A. Klein, Cruise Ship Squeeze: The New Pirates of the Seven Seas (Cabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2005).
7. Maricel Burgonio, "2006 OFW Remittances Hit Record $12.8 B," Manila Times, February 16, 2007, www.manilatimes.net/national/ 2007/feb/16/yehey/top_stories/20070216top4.html.
8. The relatively brief duration of conversations is partially due to the fact that while ships are docked in port, seamen are quite busy. Because of mechanization and increased time pressures, working in port is often more fast paced than working at sea (although this depends on the seaman's position).
9. Scott Morgensen uses the phrase "intimate relationalities" to describe the historically close political and cultural relationships between U.S. sexual minority formations and two-spirit (American Indian) formations. See Morgensen's forthcoming book, Settler Sexuality and the Politics of Indigeneity. Tomboy is an English word that has been "Tagalog- ized" (i.e., the first o is pronounced with an even shorter o sound than the English version). Following the historian Noenoe K. Suva's lead, I do not italicize Tagalog words in this essay. Silva states that she does not italicize Hawai'ian words in order "to resist making the native tongue appear foreign" (Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004], 13).
10. Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley theorizes oceanic spaces (e.g., black Atlantic) as queer racialized spaces. Tinsley's black queer feminist reading of oceans, ships, and shipmates is in dialogue with the analysis here. See Tinsley, this issue.
11. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 11, emphasis mine.
12. Megan J. Sinnott, Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004);
13. Evelyn Blackwood, "Tombois in West Sumatra: Constructing Masculinity and Erotic Desire," in Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures, ed. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
14. Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
15. I immigrated to the United States in 1973 and have been traveling regularly to the Philippines since then, with trips lasting from ten days to ten months, in the following years: 1977, 1978, 1987, 1988-89, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997-98, 2000, 2005, and 2006.
16. Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), x.
17. Clifford, Routes, 12;
18. Tsing, Friction, 3.
19. The other gender formation often discussed in Filipino/a contexts is bakla (a Filipino/a male femininity or gay men's formation). See, for example, Martin F. Manalansan IV, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), and Bobby Benedicto's essay, this issue.
20. Amelia M. de Guzman and Irene R. Chia, "Working Class Lesbians in the Philippines," 2005, www.icwow.org/WCL/WCLenglish.pdf.
21. Nice Rodriguez, Throw It to the River (Toronto: Women's Press, 1993), 26.
22. Chie Abad, pers. comm., February 2002.
23. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, "Performing Citizenship and 'Temporal Hybridity' in a Queer Diaspora," Antithesis 11 (2000), www.devilbunny.org/temporal_hybridity.htm.
24. My position is that in Global Divas Manalansan does not significantly focus on Filipina tomboys, lesbians, and dykes primarily because it was not within the scope of his study to address these racialized gender/sexuality formations.
25. Melinda L. de Jésus, ed., Pinay Power: Feminist Critical Theory: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience (New York: Routledge, 2005).
26. Guzman and Chia, "Working Class Lesbians in the Philippines," 14, 18.
27. Balikbayan historically refers to Filipinos/as from North America who return to the Philippines. The (Ferdinand) Marcos dictatorship coined this term and promoted tourism with Filipino/a immigrants in Canada and the United States in the 1970s.
28. Various readings emerged quickly upon first meeting with Filipinos/as during fieldwork. As Teresita V. Ramos writes, "Filipinos are usually not inhibited about initiating conversations because talking to a stranger is generally not considered intrusive. If thrown together for almost any reason, someone will break the ice. A common conversation opener is Tagasaan ka? 'Where are you from?' " (Intermediate Tagalog: Developing Cultural Awareness through Language [Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1981], 38).
29. Tagalog does not have feminine or masculine pronouns. My translations of the seamen's commentaries reflect the gender-neutral aspects of Tagalog.
30. All names introduced in quotation marks are pseudonyms.
31. Anak is a gender-neutral Tagalog word for child/offspring, and there are no equivalent Tagalog words for "son" or "daughter." A speaker may say, however, "anak na lalaki" (child that is a male) or "anak na babae" (child that is female) to mark a person's gender. Jonas used the word anak and did not include "na babae" (that is female). So as to not infantilize the tomboy Jonas was referring to, I do not translate anak here as "child." Anak can also refer to adult children.
32. Situated traveling fieldwork emphasizes short-term ethnographic encounters in contact zones and reflexive/situated cultural analysis in contrast to long-term fieldwork in a bounded field site (e.g., village) with hopes of producing "objective ethnography" (the preferred mode in traditional/colonial anthropology).
33. My discussion is most applicable to the largest Philippine lowlander groups (largely Christian based): Tagalogs, Ilokanos, and Visayans.
34. Jane Margold, "Narratives of Masculinity and Transnational Migration: Filipino Workers in the Middle East," in Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in South East Asia, ed. Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 279, 283, 274. Margold's pakikiisa is a variant of pakiisa.
35. Teresita V. Ramos, Conversational Tagalog: A Functional-Situational Approach (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), 134, emphasis mine. Pilipino - largely Tagalog based - is the national language of the Philippines.
36. I anecdotally heard about these critiques from U.S.-based queer studies scholars who attended the Sexualities, Genders, and Rights in Asia - 1st International Conference of Asia Queer Studies, in Bangkok, Thailand, July 7-9, 2005.
37. Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in The Cockfight: A Casebook, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 99.
38. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
39. See Scott Guggenheim, "Cock or Bull: Cockfighting, Social Structure, and Political Commentary in the Philippines," in The Cockfight: A Casebook, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 149, for a brief discussion of Filipinas who work at cockfighting arenas.