Intimacies of Older Filipino Gay Men in Canada

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A Different Shade of Grey: Intimacies of Older Filipino Gay Men in Canada

Fritz Luther Pino

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto

A Different Shade of Grey: Intimacies of Older Filipino Gay Men in Canada

Fritz Luther Pino Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute For Studies in Education University of Toronto

2019

Abstract

This dissertation is a qualitative study, which examined the experiences of intimacy of the older

Filipino gay men in Canada. These group of men identify as bakla, which is the Filipino term for queer or non-normative gender and sexual identity, practices, and performances. I specifically investigated how older bakla engage and express their intimacies with the three significant groups of people in their lives, namely, their sexual partner, their family or blood- related kin, and their friends. The purpose of such inquiry was to understand the relationship dynamics that older bakla have with these three groups. Such significant figures are the potential sources of social and emotional support of the older bakla. Intersectionality theory from a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological lens informed the study that takes into account the social location of the informants in terms of sexuality and gender, race, diaspora, age, and class. In this study, I used both participant observations and in-depth interviews as the main methods of data collection. These methods were informed by a culturally-grounded approach, called kuwento, a

Filipino version of storytelling. This type of storytelling allowed the informants of the study to articulate their experiences in a manner that was comfortable, accessible, and convenient for them. Using grounded theory for data analysis, older bakla revealed a different experience of

ii intimacy with their significant others. A story of difference exists, because they do not necessarily resonate to the dominant stories of aging. Their stories of intimacies offer critique of the norms and dominant discourses of identity. As well, older bakla’s intimacies illuminate their sense of agency in negotiating the norms of gender, sexuality, ageing, class, diaspora, and race that have marginalized and oppressed their beings and subjectivities. In the conclusion, I discuss how their intimacies with significant others, which are conditioned by uncertainty, impact their well-being and ageing bodies and how these informed critical social work education and practice. This study offers important contributions to the field of gerontological social work, sexuality and queer studies, migration and transnationalism, and anti-oppressive epistemologies.

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Acknowledgements

This work was not only been fueled by my own energy, but it was fueled by the many energies and love of the wonderful and kind people in my life. These people nurtured, guided, mentored, taught, showed, inspired, and supported me as I navigated North American academia. I want to first acknowledge my great mentor and supervisor Dr. Roland Sintos Coloma who guided, motivated, and walked me through the walls of Western academia. This guidance offered me the possibility of being in such a space as a racialized, first-generation Filipino queer. Maraming Salamat, Dr. Coloma for your genuine commitment of supporting historically marginalized students. Thank you for showing me the possibility of producing a scholarly work that I could truly embody, as well as showcase the histories and the experiences of the community that I care for. Next, to my amazing and brilliant committee members, starting with my thesis supervisor Dr. Ka Tat Tsang, who incredibly offered his infinite intellectual and academic support as well as guidance, not only in terms of completing my dissertation, but also to be able to thrive in the field of Canadian social work. Thank you so much Dr. Tsang for those moments of deep intellectual conversations, critical self-reflection, and for inspiring me to traverse to theoretical areas and boundaries, which would resonate the lives and experiences of my informants. To Dr. Izumi Sakamoto, I can’t thank you enough for your amazing commitment of providing me direction and thoughtful feedback that would bring out the strength of my scholarly and community work. To Dr. Abigail Bakan, thank you so much for helping me fine-tune my theoretical lenses and to think broadly of my work, particularly on its impact within the larger academic community, both locally and internationally. Next, to my informants who turned this project into a reality and to whom I dedicate this work; I am forever grateful. I am forever appreciative. I am forever humbled. I would forever be a student of your wisdom. Growing up queer in my little village in the Philippines, I see the crossing of our paths to create moments of conversation and reflection about being a Filipino queer in the diasporic context of Canda, as a gift from the universe. I am deeply honoured to have been given the opportunity to be able to listen to your stories, to be part of your experiences of the everyday, and to be bestowed with your trust to channel valuable life lessons to the next generations. I would not have able to arrive at this point of finishing this project without your generousity, kindness, loving support, thoughtfulness, belief, and patience. My life has been changed forever. Salamat Kaayu!

The brilliance of my colleagues in the doctoral program have greatly offered their generative feedback and ideas to my work, thereby, making me a better thinker and writer. I want to thank my amazing friends in the Social Justice Education Department (SJE) at OISE namely, Dr. Marissa Largo, Dr. David Pereira, Dr. Shamette Hepburn, Kenneth Huynh, Eunice Chow, and Dr. Sophia Papastavrou Faustmann. You were all there when this work was still in my head, in my mouth, and in my very rough draft. Thank you for the elevator and hallway conversations of my free floating ideas, for spending the time to closely read my seemingly endless research proposal, for answering and receiving my midnight emails, and for the friendship that I truly need. I have travelled so many spots, houses, and places to be able to write. I have met wonderful people along the way and became great supporters and lifelong friends. I want to thank Monica Anne Batac for being a great true friend, teacher, life couch, and comrade. You were one of the witnesses of my ups and downs in academia and personal life, but you never gave up to be my friend and guide in such an English speaking world where I am in. Thank you for listening to my ideas, for the difficult questions that you asked about the complexity of my work, and the friendly reminders to get up beautifully in the morning to be able to write. Next, to Dr. Ilyan Ferrer, I can’t believe we’ve been friends long way before I entered the Ph.D. program! Thank you for the guide, inspiration, push, and strong faith in me, especially when moments of doubts and uncertainties strike. You are a kuya who motivated me to keep on going and venturing the academic world and to always believe in the potential contributions of my work. To Dr. Jessica Ticar, thank you for the generousity and magic! I am forever grateful of the time, skills, and knowledge that you shared to me, and to be able to write this dissertation to spots and places that would remind us of the great powers of our ancestors who help us to come to this far. To my special colleague at SJE, Miss Jacklyn San Antonio. Thank you for your awesomeness, brilliance, fierceness, and humility. Your strong engagement and scrutiny of my ideas, thoughts, and methodological lenses not only made me a better writer, but also a better scholar and person. Thank you for being such a very good friend and life couch and for being one of my role model of beauty, eloquence, and wit. And to my dearest friend Dr. Raluca Bejan in the Faculty of Social Work, thank you for being there with me since MSW days. You never get tired of helping me work through my ideas, for believing in the beauty of my work, for showing and giving me the opportunities to be successful, and for being such a great true friend. Thank you for being a great writing partner and the countless days and nights of writing our thesis drafts in

v your cozy sofa, motivating and inspiring each other, lamenting of being far away from our homelands, and daydreaming with the philosophers that we admired from afar. To my friends and mentors in the community who continue to believe in my work, for being so patient of waiting for me to finish, and for being so understanding and kind to offer their hopes and positive energy so I could complete my project. I would like to first thank Miss Trisha Steinberg from Asian Community AIDS Services (ACAS) who, without hesitation, offered me direction and entry points in the community. We’ve known each other during my first few months in Toronto, and even up to now, you never get tired of helping and supporting me. Thank you, Che! Next, to Miss Jazmine Manalo of the Silayan Community Centre, thank you for believing and trusting me as you openly open your doors to show me the beauty of downtown Toronto, eversince in my first few years in Canada. Thank you for your brilliant ideas and direction on how to go about my research that would not dismiss the everyday struggles of the older folks in our community. Thank you Ate Jaz! And finally, to Martha Ocampo, Frank Villanueva, Flordeliz Andal, and Nora Taculad, thank you so much for the mentorship, inspiration, support, nurturance, and belief in the value of my work in our community. Also, this project would never ever materialize without my dearest non-blood (chosen) and blood related (biological) families who nurtured my body, heart, mind, and spirit with love, care, nurturance, laughter, smile, and food so I could keep up this work. My lifelong sisters Paula Gee and Kayla Valiente, you’ve made me grounded all the time. You’ve reminded me of the whole purpose of having a life. Thank you for being so patient on me, for brutally teaching me how to be strategic in life, to be mindful of the rules of the game, so as to survive, and not to be scared to fully embrace and embody my academic work with grace and confidence, faboulousity, and fierceness. Salamat Kaayu ninyo dae! To Philip, thank you so much for being there with me and to always remind me of the rewards of finishing the tasks and to be assertive. I truly value our moments together. Also, my friends Kitty, Kelly, Ken, Ate Nida and Kuya Laurence, thank you so much for being there with me during the toughest times in my life, and for giving me a home when I needed the most. Kitty, thank you dearest for being there with me when things get so rough and tough, and for being so understanding of my superstitions, and for always pushing me to look for the silver lining. To Atty. Jean De Vicena, thank you for sharing your place with me when I needed some alone time to write and to think.

And to my loving and understanding family who are always there with me. Thank you so much to my parents Mama Loreta Pino, Papa Fidencio Pino, to my siblings Faye, Francis, and Ferrari, to my supportive and ever caring sister-in-law Iris, and to my little niece and nephews Freya, Bondoi, Kiko, and Michael. Thank you for being so understanding of my decision to pursue a PhD program, for being so patient and supportive of my work, for not giving up on me, for always reminding me to be kind and gentle to myself, and to have a positive outlook in life. Thank you for nurturing me with so much love and food all the time, and for giving me the joys and warmth of being together. I offer this work to you, especially to the next generations, our Filipino-Canadian kids in the family. The completion of this work did not only take place in Toronto, but also in my new place of residence in Regina, Saskatchewan where I met wonderful and great people. First, I would like to say thank you to this wonderful and amazing person who happened to be my cousin Dr. Dominic Gregorio, a professior-musician at the University of Regina. Who would have thought I could have met you in this current lifetime and to witness your artistry and creativity! Salamat kaayu Dominic for the shelter, food, company, music, laugh, cry, stories, and encouragement to wrap up my dissertation writing while in Regina. To the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Regina, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share my work to you, especially to Dean Judy White, Dr. Nuelle Novik, and Dr. Daniel Kilkulwe. Thank you so much for the support, and for ensuring that I have the time and space to finish my work. I also would like to acknowledge that this project was supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship Award. Finally, I would like to thank the publisher of my piece (cited below) for permitting me to reproduce parts of it to my dissertation.

Pino, F.L. (2017). Older Filipino gay men in Canada: Bridging queer theory and gerontology in Filipino-Canadian studies. In R. Diaz, M. Largo, & F. Pino (Eds.), Diasporic intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian imaginaries (pp.163-181). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………. iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………...viii List of Figures ...... x List of Appendices ...... xi

Chapter 1- Introduction ...... 1 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Intimacy versus Relationships ...... 5 1.2 Existing Studies on Filipino Intimacies in Canada ...... 6 1.3 A Different Kind of Intimacy ...... 8 1.4 Theoretical Underpinnings: Queer Diasporic - Feminist Gerontological Approach of Intersectionality ...... 10 1.4.1 Intersectionality theory in feminist and queer studies ...... 11 1.4.2 Intersectionality theory in feminist gerontology ...... 13 1.5 Older Bakla Intimacy with Significant Others ...... 16 Figure 1. Framework of Older Bakla Intimacy……………………………………18 1.6 Dissertation Overview ...... 19

Chapter 2 - Research Methodology: An Intergenerational Queer Conversation ...... 23 2 Methodological Position ...... 23 2.2 Kuwento: A Queer Intergenerational Knowledge Construction ...... 24 2.3 Recruitment and Selections of Research Informants ...... 27 2.4 Methods of Data Collection ...... 28 2.5 Entry into the Community via Kuwento ...... 28 2.5.1 Participant observations ...... 29 2.5.2 In-depth interviews ...... 32 2.6 Data Analysis ...... 33 2.7 Constructivist Grounded Theory and Kuwento ...... 35 2.8 Procedures of Analysis ...... 37 Figure 2. Data Analysis Template Using CGT Approach to Kuwento…………39 2.9 Presentation of Findings ...... 40

Chapter 3 Sexual Intimacy with the Lalake ...... 42 3 Introduction ...... 42 Figure 3. Schematic Diagram of Older Bakla’s Sexual Intimacy………………….47 3.1 The Extra-Serbis ...... 47 3.2 Bodily Mechanisms and Performances ...... 49 3.2.1 Marie and Cara’s act of expectation ...... 50 3.2.2 Cara and Marie’s act of acceptance ...... 53 3.3 Transnational Migration and the Returnee (Balik-bayan) Identity ...... 55 3.3.1 Balikbayan identity and sexual desirability ...... 56 3.3.2 The limits of Balikbayan identity: Loving from afar ...... 59 3.4 Conclusion: Identity Validation ...... 61

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Chapter 4 Care for the Family ...... 65 4 Introduction ...... 65 Figure 4. Schematic Diagram on the Care for the Family…………………………69 4.1 His/Stories of Violence ...... 69 4.1.1 Physical and psychological abuse ...... 70 4.1.2 Suble violence and superficial acceptance ...... 72 4.1.3 Effects of Hetero-normative Violence on Older Bakla ...... 75 4.2 Negotiating Family Belonging via Breadwinning and Caregiving ...... 76 4.2.1 Breadwinning of Barb ...... 78 4.2.2 Breadwinning of Mama Riva ...... 80 4.2.3 Caregiving as Betcha’s Re-definition of Being Single ...... 81 4.2.4 Cara’s Caregiving Act: Re-working family relationships ...... 83 4.3 Conclusion: Partial Belonging ...... 84

Chapter 5 The Friendship Dynamics of the Older Bakla ...... 88 5 Introduction ...... 88 Figure 5. Schematic Diagram on Intimacy with Friends…………………………..91 5.1 Provide Social Support: Space for Identity (Sexual, Gender, Cultural) Expression . 91 5.2 Conflicts and Tensions ...... 94 5.2.1 Loss of trust ...... 94 5.2.2 Look down upone someone ...... 96 5.3 Conclusion: Loss of Friends ...... 99

Chapter 6 Conlusion: Summary of Findings and Implications to Social Work Education and Practice ...... 103 6 Summary of Findings ...... 103 6.1 Theoretical Implications ...... 108 6.2 Methodological Implications ...... 109 6.3 Implications to Social Work Practice ...... 112 6.4 Limitations of the Study ...... 114 6.5 Implications for Future Research ...... 117 References ...... 121 Appendices ...... 132 Appendix A: University of Toronto Ethics Protocol…………………………………………132 Appendix B: Information Letter to Potential Participants………….…………………………133 Appendix C: Informed Consent Form for Interview………………………………………….135 Appendix D: Informed Consent Form for Participant Observation…………………………..138 Appendix E: Demographic Profile of the Informants………………………………………...139 Appendix F: Summary of Informants’ Average Age and Living Situations………………....141 Appendix G: Interview Guide Questions……………………………………………………..142 Appendix H: Sources of Data…………………………………………………………………144 Appendix I: Completion and Compensation Form……………………………………………145

Copywrite Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………..146

List of Figures

Figure 1: Framework of Older Bakla’s Intimacy ...... 18

Figure 2: Data Analysis Template of Using CGT Approach to Kuwento ...... 39

Figure 3: Schematic Diagram of Older Bakla’s Sexual Intimacy with the Lalake ...... 47

Figure 4: Schematic Diagram on the Care for the Family ...... 69

Figure 5: Schematic Diagram on Intimacy with Friends ...... 91

List of Appendices

Appendix A: University of Toronto Ethics Protocol

Appendix B: Information Letter to Potential Participants

Appendix C: Informed Consent Form for Interview

Appendix D: Informed Consent Form for Participant Observation

Appendix E: Demographic Profile of the Informants

Appendix F: Summary of Informants’ Average Age and Living Situations

Appendix G: Interview Guide Questions

Appendix H: Sources of Data

Appendix I: Completion and Compensation Form

Chapter 1 Introduction

1 Introduction

On a Thursday afternoon in the late Fall of 2016, I walked to a downtown mall food court hoping to see Mama Riva, whom I have known for five years. At 88, he is called Mama, and considered by his peers as Toronto’s oldest bakla, the Filipino term for a queer man. His chosen name Riva comes from a Filipino actress named Maggie dela Riva. Since retiring from his hotel cleaning job, his travels to the Philippines have become more frequent. I heard that he was back in Toronto after a five-month visit to his hometown and wanted to invite him to a community event for Filipino seniors.

When I arrived at the food court where he and his friends regularly hang out, he immediately saw me:

Mama Riva: Hija, matagal na kitang hindi nakikita. Ano ‘yang dala mo? [My daughter, haven’t seen you in a while. What do you have there?]

Fritz: Ah eto, mga flyers. Punta tayo sa Masquerade Ball this coming November 22. [Oh, these flyers. Let’s go to this Masquerade Ball on November 22.]

Mama Riva: Ay sa 22, wala ako, Inday. Aalis ako ng Pilipinas. [Oh, on the 22nd? I won’t be here, girl. I’ll be leaving for the Philippines.]

Fritz: Oh really!

Mama Riva: Yes! I will be at my hometown’s festival. I would dress up and ramp in our dance festival as Armi Kuusela, and of course, to be with my lalake [boyfriend].

Fritz: Who’s Armi Kuusela?

Mama Riva: She was the 1952 Miss Universe, the first ever Miss Universe. Of course, you were not born on that time! I will be Miss Armi Kuusela! Hahaha!

This qualitative study documents the experiences of older Filipino gay men aged 60 and above in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). These men identify as bakla, the Filipino queer man. In his groundbreaking book Global Divas, Ethnography of Filipino Gay Men, Martin Manalansan (2003) described the bakla as an identity where both gender and sexuality are conflated. In other words, the bakla does not completely assume the identity of a man or a woman (Manalansan, 2003). However, the bakla strongly follows the hetero-female sexual desires and gender expressions. For example, in terms of gender expressions, the bakla may perform feminine roles such as cross-dressing as a woman (Garcia, 2000; Manalansan, 2003). He1 also expressed effeminate acts as reflected in his verbal and body language, demeanor, and self-presentation. In fact, in this study, older bakla2 took up female names including the ones they used as their pseudonyms (e.g., Mama Riva).3

In terms of his sexuality or sexual orientation, the bakla’s preferred sexual partner is a straight- identified, masculine man (i.e., cis-gender man) termed as lalake in the Filipino language. The lalake performs traditional male roles and tasks and is attracted to and engaged in a sexual relationship with straight women (Baytan, 2008; Garcia, 2009). To be clear, then, the bakla is not attracted to another bakla-identified individual (Manalansan, 2003). For, the bakla treats another bakla as a friend, as opposed to a lover or a sexual partner4. Relationships with a straight-identified man or lalake, however, requires financial provision (Baytan, 2008). That is

1 In this study, I follow Martin Manalansan’s (2003) ethnographic work on the bakla identities in the diaspora where the pronoun he is used throughout the book. Also, the term bakla is already in its singular and plural form; hence, bakla denotes both an individual and a group.

2 Older bakla, older Filipino gay men, or older Filipino queer men: I use the terms interchangeably to signal the fluidity of the terms in English and Tagalog language usage, and the difficulty of translating the term bakla in English (Manalansan, 2003). However, I mostly use the term older bakla to show the identity that older Filipino gay men or older Filipino queer men have in this study.

3 All names that the informants have taken up in this study have been modified to maintain anonymity, though consistent with the feminized names they use and embody.

4 See chapter 5 on the friendship dynamics of older bakla for elaboration. 2

to say, the bakla has to provide financially for the lalake to make their relationship work (Manalansan, 2003; Pino, 2017)5.

As I have noted elsewhere (Pino, 2017), the experiences of the bakla who are older have not been examined. Most of the scholarship on the bakla have focused on the younger, active, and abled-bodied bakla who are very much engaged in queer activism (Coloma, 2013), cultural production (Diaz, 2015), and the labour force (Manalansan, 2003). As well, in my previous work, I pointed out that the field of gerontology and queer theory have normally focused on the experiences of LGBT’s from the dominant, mainstream society (Pino, 2017). Due to that scholarly trend, I discussed previously how a focus on the older bakla who are in Canada could disrupt such a scholarly trend. For, older bakla in Canada do not only embody racial and sexual minority position and identity, which have not been fully engaged in both fields, but also, they continue to identify with their cultural queer scripts from the Philippines—the bakla scripts— which appears to be different from that of the mainstream, North American queer identity, practices, and scripts (Pino, 2017). Hence, in my previous work, I demonstrated how queer theory and gerontology could be bridged productively by considering the figure and the presence of older bakla who are living in the Canadian diasporic context.

Building from such a preliminary work on the older bakla, this dissertation specifically examined the older bakla’s intimacies with the three significant groups of their life, namely, their sexual and romantic partners, their families and relatives (i.e., blood-related kin), and their friends and peers. In other words, in this study, I turned my analytic gaze to the ways in which older bakla express their sense of intimacies with others whom they considered important to their lives (i.e., sexual partner, families, and friends).

I focus on these three significant groups in their life, because as gerontological social work literatures have indicated, the quality of life and well-being of older adults are affected by the

5 While in my other publication (see Pino, 2017), I have discussed this particular dynamic of the bakla- lalake relationship from a class or socio-economic perspective, in chapter 3 of this study, this particular dynamic is discussed further to flesh out and highlight the gendered dimensions of such relationship dynamics.

nature and kinds of relationship that they have with their significant others (Barker, Herdt, & de Vries, 2006; Grossman, D’Augelli, & Hershberger, 2000; Nguyen, Chatters, Taylor, & Mouzon, 2015). Most importantly, as studies have indicated, many older ethnic minorities (e.g., older Filipinos) remain connected and continue to rely on their significant others for care and support in their late life years (Ferrer, Brotman, & Grenier, 2017; Lai & Surood, 2010). Therefore, as this study unpacks the experiences of intimacies of the older bakla with their significant others, this study then provides the field of gerontological social work, where this study is situated, a nuanced understanding of how older sexual minorities from Canada’s racialized community express, negotiate, and perform their sense of intimacies with their significant others in the later years of their life.

My research questions are the following: (1) What are the experiences of the older bakla (i.e., older Filipino gay men) with their significant others and figures or support groups, namely, their sexual partners, their blood-related kin and relatives, and their friends or peers? (2) In what way does their queer or non-normative sexual and gender identity—the bakla identity—impact their expressions of intimacies with significant others? (3) What are the implications of the older bakla’s overall experience of intimacy with significant others toward their quality of life and wellbeing?

At the time of their participation in this study, the informants had an average age of 73 years old. All of the participants were single or unattached. Seventy-five percent of them lived alone in an apartment unit, while 25% lived with blood-related kin. They were at their working age— ranging from 21 to 47 years old—when they arrived in Canada. This means that they had not entered the age of retirement upon their migration to Canada (see Appendix E and F). The majority of the participants arrived in Canada between the 1970’s and the 1980’s, either through family sponsorship or as an independent immigrant. Like many older Filipinos that participated in my past research project (Coloma & Pino, 2016), this group relies mostly on government pensions as their main source of income at present.

In this study, I argue then that older bakla offer a different story of intimacies with significant others because of their queer, diasporic, racialized, and classed experiences that have impacted and shaped their queer (i.e., bakla) identity in Canada. Indeed, their bakla identity originated

from the global south context, which is the Philippines, where the informants in this study were born and raised (Pino, 2017). However, as they continue to embody the identity of the bakla in their very performance and expression of intimacies with significant others, they are confronted by the disciplinary tactics of the normative discourses of gender, sexuality, age, class, and race in the diaspora. Hence, this study highlights how older bakla navigate and negotiate the normative discourses and practices as they continue to embody their cultural queer identity, while engaging intimacies with significant others.

Moreover, as the informants demonstrated in this study, the bakla identity remains marginal, both in the mainstream Canadian society and within the Filipino community in the diaspora. That is to say, their queer practices cannot be easily read or are unintelligible within the dominant North American ways of knowing and within the dominant Filipino narratives of relationships (Pino, 2017). Hence, this study then exposes the limits of the normative conceptions of aging, gender and sexuality, ethnicity and race, migration and diaspora, and class via the othered subject position of the bakla. Like Mama Riva, older bakla in this study offer stories of intimacies for the field of gerontology that de-universalized the stories produced from the experiences of normative, mainstream citizen-subjects of the nation-state.

1.1 Intimacies versus Relationships

I chose the term intimacies, rather than the term relationships, since the former is more nuanced than the latter, specifically when referring to those affective attachments and engagements of older adults with their significant others. As queer theorist Lauren Berlant (2000)’s wrote:

To be intimate is to communicate with the sparest signs and gestures, and as its root intimacy has the quality of eloquence and brevity. But intimacy also involves an aspiration for a narrative about something shared, a story about oneself and others that will turn out in a particular way. Usually this story is set within zones of familiarity and comfort: friendship, the couple, and the family form, animated by the expressive and emancipating kinds of love. (p. 1)

What is useful in Berlant’s description of intimacy is her ability to bring up the term sparest to describe the signs and gestures, or the language of intimacy. Here, she considered the extra or

the additional verbal and non-verbal languages that we often mobilize and perform in those moments when we express our sense of connection with others. These additional gestures are often taken for granted due to our habitual and familiar use of them in the everyday.

However, these sparest signs and gestures that we perform to our intimate figures speaks volumes, for these indicate our desires and aspirations as well as our personal needs. In other words, Berlant’s idea of intimacy is both performative and relational: performative, as it depicts our own agency to enact or perform certain actions to meet our goals, needs, and desires with our intimate relationships; and relational, as it illustrates how our personal or individual experiences are connected to the social and even to the political spheres of life. As I examined the intimacies of older Filipino gay men in this study, I take into account both the performative and relational aspects of intimacy—that they may reveal upon their engagement with intimate figures of their lives.

1.2 Existing Studies on Filipino Intimacies in Canada

Studies that depict Filipino intimacies in Canada have dominantly revolved around the experiences of Filipino women, particularly their experiences in the live-in caregiver (LCP) program of Canada (Pratt, 2012; Bakan & Stasiulis, 1997). LCP is both a migration and labour program. The majority of the recruits in the program were Filipino women who worked as domestics, nannies, or caregivers to address the caregiving needs of Canadians from an economically privileged status (Coloma, McElhinny, Tungohan, Catungal, & Davidson, 2012; Stasiulis & Bakan, 2005). Consequently, Filipino women’s sense of intimacies with immediate families in the Philippines are constrained by years of family separation while working as live-in caregivers in Canada (Pratt, 2012). Studies have indicated how such years of family separation and then sudden re-unification upon the arrival of their families in Canada have a negative impact, as these women face conflicting situations with their marital partners and children, who, at the same time, experienced family estrangement and cultural alienation (Ticar, 2018; Tungohan et al., 2015).

Moreover, the focus on Filipino women make sense, because they are the majority in terms of the gender demographics in the Filipino community in Canada (Coloma et al., 2012). Historically, Filipinos started to settle in Canada in the early 1950’s and they entered the country 6

with permanent resident status while being able to practice their professions as doctors, nurses, teachers, and healthcare workers (Damasco, 2012). These group were then able to sponsor their relatives from the Philippines. But, when Canada shifted their immigration policy in the 1970’s to be able to recruit migrants to work in the service sectors, the labour trends of Filipino migrants changed, and in the early 1980’s, the LCP (formerly known as Foreign Domestic Movement [FDM]) program became the common pathways for Filipinos to enter Canada (Damasco, 2012; Ferrer, 2017). Scholars and activists continue to push for policy reforms of the Caregiver Program given its restrictions, which continue to hinder Filipino women’s mobility and quality of life (Largo, 2012; Tungohan, 2013/2015).

Meanwhile, in terms of the experiences of Filipino older adults in Canada, the very few studies that explored notions of intimacies also center on the family unit (Ferrer, 2015; Ferrer, Brotman, & Grenier, 2017) and how the normative gender roles in the family have changed (Pino & Coloma, 2018). Such studies have unpacked the impact of immigration and pension policies, effects of racialization, de-skilling, and deprofessionalization of Filipinos in Canada in ways that these have re-positioned the traditional gender roles, expectations, and relationships of older Filipino men and women and their children. Furthermore, the socio-political issues produced intergenerational challenges, tensions, and conflicts among Filipino older adults, thereby affecting their family intimacies and connections (Ferrer, Grenier, Brotman, & Koehn, 2017; Pino & Coloma, 2018).

While the focus on Filipino women, as well as on the Filipino family unit have offered important critiques of issues related to race, gender, immigration, labour, age, and class the experiences and critical contributions of older Filipino queer subjects are yet to be fully established in the Canadian scholarships in general. In the book Diasporic Intimacies, Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries, Diaz, Largo, and Pino (2017) encouraged scholars on Filipino-Canadian diaspora to re-think the concept of family and kinship, because it continues to rely on hetero-normative scripts and practices. By documenting Filipino LGBTQ experiences in Canada, the authors advocated for expanding definitions of gender, race, migration, labour, and class beyond (hetero)normative epistemologies and practices (Diaz, Largo, & Pino, 2017). For, the privileging of hetero-normative relationships and practices of the family eclipses the diverse experiences of Filipinos, including those who identify as LGBTQ’s as their notions of intimacy,

desires, kinship, and community do not necessarily follow heterosexual norms and practices. (Coloma, 2017). As education historian Roland Sintos Coloma (2017) eloquently wrote:

The field of Filipinx Canadian studies is embedded within hegemonic heteronormative framework, especially in its use of the family as a basic unit of analysis and analytical trope. Such normative frames control what can be said or done (as well as what cannot be said or done). Hence, to search beyond the normative challenges us to further disturb the invisibilities in our empirical, creative, and community work. (pp. 17-18)

This study, therefore, builds and continues the critical conversation of the ways in which normativities have dominantly shaped the knowledge production of minorities by foregrounding or paying attention to the non-normative practices of racialized and sexual minority older adults in the diasporic context of Canada.

1.3 A Different Kind of Intimacy

This study focuses on the embodied identity of the older bakla and how such an identity is maneuvered and re-configured during their later life years as they perform their intimacies with significant others. By focusing on such a group of older adults, I explored the understudied topic in gerontological social work: the experiences of queer older adults from Canada’s racialized and diasporic communities. Hence, I foreground a story of intimacy that has been eclipsed by the normalizing and universalizing moves of Euro-American narratives. Most importantly, I provide an alternative story of intimacy that illuminates a critique of the normative discourses of gender, sexuality, class, race, aging, and migration.

In this study, I showcase a type of intimacy in older age whereby the personal desires and agency (internal motivations) of older bakla interact or intersect with cultural, historical, and transnational factors (external factors). The insights of Lauren Berlant’s (2000) notions of intimacy as both performative and relational are instructive here. Primarily, I observed how older bakla in this study perform certain actions as expressions of their intimacies with significant others. I posit then that these performances of intimacies are reflections of internal motivations, needs, and desires, and therefore account for the sense of agency of older bakla. As well, because the expressions of intimacies of older bakla interact with the external factors (i.e.,

have material consequences), the relational aspect of intimacy is considered. This idea of intimacy as both performative and relational as depicted in giving emphasis on the role of both external and internal factors that impact older racialized and diasporic queers (i.e., older bakla) cohere with feminist gerontologists holistic understanding of aging, which is about the interaction and interrelationship of the physical, social, cultural, and political dimensions of life (Calasanti, 2003; Calasanti & Slevin, 2006).

This study then reveals that generally, the intimacies of the older bakla are uncertain despite the efforts and performances that they make for their significant other. This is because hegemonic forces and systems of gender, sexuality, class, aging, and race continue to constrain their sense of agency and queer desires. I reveal that the uncertainty of their intimacies with significant others is connected to their queer identities and performances, which are continuously being seen and considered as deviant or in conflict with the normative practices, discourses, gazes, and ways of life of their significant other. Older bakla showcased how they negotiate the uncertainties of their intimacies as they continue to insist on their embodied bakla identity and performances.

Therefore, this study goes beyond solely examining and documenting the areas of oppression (i.e., victimhood) and the areas of resilience of older LGBT’s (Brotman, Ryan, & Cormier, 2003; Kia, Grace, Strike, & Ross, 2018). Rather, this work emphasizes how these older queer men work through both their victim and resilient stances when enacting intimacy with significant others. In other words, this study focuses on showcasing their actions, performances, gestures, as well as, their feelings and emotions, which they deploy as they work through and engage with normative structures and relationships; thereby showcasing their ability to come to terms with the limits and benefits of normative social groups.

Finally, most studies on the social support groups of older adults continue to highlight the capacity or success of such social support groups to provide care and support to older adults (Grossman, D’Augelli, & Hershberger, 2000; Masini & Barrett, 2008). However, as I reveal in this study, in terms of how the intimacies of the older bakla with significant others are uncertain because of their embodied identity and queer subject position, I initiate an understanding of intimacy that considers the impact and effects of the normative social systems (e.g., hetero-

masculinity, hetero-normativity, global transnational issues) on the quality of life of older queer subjects.

1.4 Theoretical Underpinnings:

Queer Diasporic-Feminist Gerontological Approach

In this dissertation, as my theoretical famework, I applied a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological approach of intersectionality. This approach emphasizes the concept of queer diaspora from a queer of colour critique (Gopinath, 2005) and the idea of the aged body from feminist gerontology (Calasanti, 2003; Twigg, 2012). I argue that the combination of these two concepts offers a more expanded understanding of intersectionality that could be helpful in examining the experiences of intimacy of the older bakla (Pino, 2017). Hence, my work contributes to expanding intersectionality theory by making it attentive to the lives of transnational racialized queer bodies who are ageing in the diaspora.

Intersectionality is a lens that looks at the compounding effects of the simultaneous interaction of the various multiple dimensions of identity such as age, race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and immigration as well as of the various systems of oppression, domination, and power within a particular socio-political space (Dhamoon & Hankivsky, 2011; Koehn, Neysmith, Kobayashi, & Khamisa, 2012). Intersectionality theory, therefore, breaks the singular and fixed notion of identity to advance a comprehensive analysis of oppression, marginalization, and power relation.

While both queer theory and feminist gerontology have mobilized intersectionality theory to understand oppression and marginalization, each field’s use of intersectionality theory is inadequate when applied to the experiences of older Filipino gay men (Pino, 2017). This is because of the theoretical limits of each field. Hence, I combined the theoretical strengths of each field (e.g., queer diaspra and aged body) in order to produce a robust intersectionality approach that would be helpful in making sense of the experiences of intimacies of older bakla. To discuss my argument further, I present the genealogy of intersectionality theory, especially how it emerges in queer theory and in feminist gerontology, including how they have been utilized in each field, thereby, revealing its limitations and strengths. 10

1.4.1 Intersectionality theory in feminist and queer studies

In retrospect, ideas of intersectionality—especially based on gender, race, and class—emerges from the assertion of Black women and women of colour, feminists and activists, who critique the feminist and anti-racist movements of the early 1980’s for their failure to address the experiences of Black women, including queer black women and women of colour (Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982). As The Combahee River Collective (1982), a Black feminist lesbian organization, stated:

Many of us were active in those movements (civil rights, Black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideology, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti- racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of black and white men. (p. 272)

Indeed, while Black feminists appreciate the ways in which anti-racist and feminist movements have moulded their lives and collectives, it was the failure of these movements to mobilize a politics of identity that treat gender, race, class, and sexuality as mutually constitutive and interdependent, thereby, allowing them to insist on an intersectional understanding of their lived experiences and realities.

Following the critical works of Black women and women of colour feminists, Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), a critical race and feminist legal scholar, popularized the term intersectionality by applying the concept to the experiences of Black women in the US legal system (Bakan & Abu-Laban, 2017). Crenshaw used the metaphor of a road traffic intersection to elucidate the racial, gender, and class oppression that works simultaneously in the lives of Black women (Crenshaw, 1991). Such a metaphor, however, has been contested, because it tends to claim that oppression would happen only at the point of the encounter or intersection of the markers of difference (e.g. race, gender, class), as opposed to the ways in which oppressions have always already been embedded in the lives of marginalized subjects due to colonial history (Coloma, 2008; Gibson, 2015). Black feminist activist-scholar Patricia Hill Collins, instead 11

engaged with the term as interlocking oppression to capture the macro-level systems of oppression (Collins, 1990). Yet, despite the contestations of the meanings and metaphors of intersectionality, feminist scholars engage intersectionality as a generative lens to understand the complexities and specificities of women’s lives, while considering its political, philosophical, and methodological underpinnings (Bakan & Abu-Laban, 2017; Dhamoon & Hankivsky, 2011).

Informed by the works of Black women and women of colour scholars and activists— scholars and activists who identify as queer and racialized (of colour)—mobilize intersectionality as a response to the racism and whiteness in the field of sexuality and LGBT studies (Eng, 2001; Eng & Hom, 1998; Muñoz, 1999). Queer of colour scholars and activists observed that the disregard or disavowal of the lives and experiences of queers of colour in both academia and in LGBTQ community was similar to the ways in which Black women were being disregarded in gender and race-based scholarships (Ferguson, 2003; Walcott, 2003). Hence, they mobilize a queer of colour critique to illuminate their racialized experiences as subjects with non- normative gender and sexualities.

In line with this critique of whiteness in LGBTQ studies is the concept of queer diaspora. Queer scholars of colour foreground this concept to capture the experiences of sexual minorities of colour who are diasporic. In other words, those who voluntarily and involuntarily moved out from their countries of birth and have settled in new land or national space (e.g., host country) but remain affiliated and attached to one’s country of birth (Braziel, 2008; Parreñas & Siu, 2007). According to Gopinath (2005), queer diasporas are marginalized, othered, and displaced subjects of the nation-state, which has been constructed based on hetero-patriarchy and whiteness. Queer identity is a displaced identity under heteronormativity and hetero-patriarchy, while diaspora is considered as no longer fully part of national identity (Gopinath, 2005). Because of their subject position, queer diaspora, therefore, is a critique of national and community belonging as they expose those norms that govern spaces of belonging, affiliation, and intimacy (Gopinath, 2005). Queer diaspora is an intersectional approach, which highlights diasporic and transnsational identity of racialized queer subjects.

However, queer diaspora fails to take into account the concept or idea of aging or the aged body of racialized queers who are older, such as the older bakla in my previous study (Pino, 2017).

Theorizing queer diaspora have been dominantly based on the experiences and stories of active and younger queer bodies who are active in the workforce (e.g, Manalansan, 2003), social movements (e.g., Coloma, 2013), and cultural productions (e.g., Diaz, 2015). Older queer Filipinos have been left out of this conversation of queer diaspora. Hence, engaging with feminist gerontologist’s use of intersectionality expands the concept of queer diaspora even more.

1.4.2 Intersectionality theory in feminist gerontology

Feminist scholars in this field were primarily the main proponents of intersectionality in feminist gerontology. Influenced by the women’s movement in the 70’s and 80’s, scholars of aging noticed the lack of attention to older women in theory and research in gerontology (Calasanti, 2009; Calasanti & Slevin, 2001). Most of the research on aging centered on older men as they have been the dominant gender groups in workforce and have been affected by retirement. Older white men were the dominant subjects in gerontology because of their economic issues during retirement. Older women were left out of the conversation as they have been relegated only to the domestic sphere whereby their labour at home have been unaccounted. Mobilizing a gender lens in studying aging, gerontologists who adopted a feminist standpoint question such theories and research that focuses on men’s experiences and neglect that of women’s experiences. Feminist gerontology eventually emerged in the 1990’s and foregrounded the concept of gender relations in gerontology. From such a lens, studies focusing on older women that looked at their experiences, such as caregiving, widowhood, health, and income, proliferated (Russel, 2007). In the concept of gender relations, feminist gerontologists recognized power relations, which exist between older men and older women, and thereby made the experience of aging as gendered. Hence, feminist gerontology follows a dialectical approach of understanding gender inequality, such as that “men’s privileges are intimately tied to women’s disadvantages” (Calasanti, 2009, p. 473).

Feminist gerontologists’ use of gender analysis in gerontology has also benefited feminist theory. Feminists have neglected the role of age or age relations during the height of feminist scholarships (Zajicek, Calasanti, Ginther, & Summers, 2006). In fact, they reveal that in the early conceptions of a feminist intersectionality framework, intersections of race, class, and

gender were the dominant matrix of analysis in US feminist scholarships and that aging were not integrated in such a framework (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001). Such an omission has led feminist gerontologists to promote the concept of age relations in feminist scholarships. Age relation serves as one of the most important contribution of feminist gerontologists in both gerontology and feminist theory (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001).

Similar to gender relations, age relations focus on three components: First, age serves as a social organizing principle; second, different age groups gain identities and power in relation to one another (age relation as a political position); and third, age relations intersect with other power relations (intersecting identities) (Calasanti, 2003/2009; Calasanti & Slevin, 2001).

The first relation clearly pertains to the ways in which age organizes and arranges individuals and groups. This is reflected in the ways age is used as an instrument to manage and control groups and population. For example, age shapes the development of social policies and ways of distributing resources and social goods as reflected in age-based programs, services, and institutions, such as education and health, which rely on age as a marker of difference and that signals a particular set of human needs (Katz, 2000).

The second and third components pertain to power and social relations. In the second component, age is seen as a political position in its own right—age is a both a sight of privilege and oppression (Calasanti, 2003; Katz, 2000). The notion of age as a political position is what Calasanti (2003) used to critique cumulative advantage and disadvantage theory (CAD) (Dannefer, 2003). Here, old age is not just a reservoir of circumstances, challenges, and experiences over the life course that CAD theory promotes, but it is a distinct and unique state given the various forms of privileges and disadvantage that are accorded to the old (Calasanti, 2003).

Furthermore, this second component also gives emphasis of the role of the body. For feminist gerontologists, theorizing about age or old age must not be reduced to a mere discursive and symbolic interpretation but also must account for its materiality, as there are actual and material physiological processes that are occurring in the biological body (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001). In other words, theorizing age or old age must also engage in both the discursive and the material

conditions the shape the experiences of older adults (Connell, 1995, as cited in Calasanti & Slevin 2001).

Circumstances, challenges, and disadvantages, as well as privileges, are based on the how a particular society reads and interprets the aging body. In most cases, for example, the old are seen as weak and unproductive because of their aging or old body. Such a reading of their bodies then shapes the development of particular programs, services, policies, medical interventions, and even theories about the aged body, which would then determine older adults’ quality of life and chances. For example, Wilson (as cited in Calasanti, 2003) found that the old are taken less seriously by healthcare providers than younger individuals since their symptoms are attributed to the aging process. For feminist gerontologists, treating aging as a particular political position explains the process of ageism, which is the privileging the young at the expense of the old (Calasanti & King, 2005). Age relation, then, is always about in relation to other groups and individuals.

The third component is in line with a feminist intersectionality perspective. Here, age is seen as an identity marker that intersects and conflates with other markers of difference, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability. As well, such markers of difference shape aging. To be sure, feminist gerontologists did not use intersectionality as a term per se, but intersecting inequalities. Following intersectionality, intersecting inequalities explores how forms of inequalities are or (re)produced when age intersects with gender, race, class, and ability. For example, the dire economic condition of Filipino elderlies in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is brought about by their age, race, and immigration status (Coloma & Pino, 2016). Another example, in terms of the intersectionality of age, sexuality, and gender, is how an elderly lesbian in a long-term care facility changes her last name to her partner’s so that they are seen as sisters and that she can access the services and programs as a relative of her partner (Brotman, Ryan, & Cormier, 2003).

In sum, feminist gerontology has merged both feminist and gerontology theorizing by engaging in both gender and age relations. While feminist gerontology did not use the term intersectionality per se, but it follows its perspective of understanding inequality by recognizing the ways age and gender intersect with and are shaped by other markers of difference, such as

race, class, ability, and sexuality. To be clear, the ways feminist gerontology critique power relations and forms of inequality are by elucidating that such identities are always relational and dialectical. In other words, the critique is always in relation to other bodies and beings. Such inequality is not produced by a single fixed factor but rather by the ways such markers of difference interact with each other within a particular context.

However, intersectionality theory of feminist gerontology does not take into account diasporic and transnational subjectivity (Pino, 2017). Despite the productive combination of gender (feminism) and aging (gerontology) that provide emphasis on the body that ages, older subjects who are transnational and diasporic are not part of the analysis. Therefore, if feminist gerontology took into account the concept of queer diaspora, which focuses on the transnational dimension of racialized queers, then an intersectionality approach could be ehanced. This approach would take into consideration the experiences of older racialized queers who are transnational and diasporic, such as the older bakla in my study (Pino, 2017).

Hence, the combination of queer diaspora from a queer of colour critique and the idea of the aged body from feminist gerontologists, therefore, produce an intersectionality approach that is relevant to the experiences of intimacy of the older bakla. With queer diaspora, such an intersectionality approach would then consider the transnational and diasporic ties of the older bakla. For example, the various norms of their communities of belonging that either have displaced or took them in for particular purposes and that have impacted their intimacies with loved ones (Gopinath, 2005). Meanwhile, with the consideration of their aged body, an intersectionality approach would then elucidate how the normative discourses produce material or bodily impact when older bakla express and enact their intimacies with loved ones (Pino, 2017).

1.5 Older Bakla’s Intimacy with Significant Others

Informed by a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological approach of intersectionality, a critical view of intimacy from the vantage point of older Filipino gay men, who identify as bakla, is produced. Here, I consider older bakla as subjects who are conditioned by the ongoing interaction of the internal and external factors. Internal factors are those motivations, needs, and desires of the older bakla. Such factors are revealed and considered through a serious 16

consideration of their individual bodies that possess sense of agency, will, desires, and certain psychological or emotional states. External factors are the cultural, political, and historical situations, contexts, including the normative discourses and practices where the older bakla is being situated and located within. Both internal and external factors interact and intersect with each other to shape the expressions of intimacies of older bakla with significant others.

Drawing insights from Berlant’s notion of intimacy (see Figure 1), I looked at the ongoing expressions of intimacies of the older bakla as both performative and relational. As a performance, I focus on their actions and gestures as expressions of their intimacies with significant others. As relational, I consider their feelings and emotions that tell something about their relationship with significant others. Both aspects of intimacies are shaped and influenced by both internal and external factors.

Expressions Internal Factors External Factors (Desires, Needs, & (Social, Cultural, Significant Other of Motivations) Political Factors, and Intimacies Normative

Discourses)

SEXUAL Financial Provision The Need for Hetero-masculinity PARTNER Identity Validation & in the Bakla-Lalake (The Lalake) Relationship Service/Labour

{Performative}

BLOOD-RELATED Breadwinning The Need for Heteronormativity FAMILIES & Belonging in the Family Unit

Caregiving in the Family

{Performative}

FRIENDS/PEERS Practical Support The Need for Classism & Ageism Feelings of Community and And Anxiety, Fear, Loss Identity Expressions Death {Relational}

Figure 1. Framework of Older Bakla’s Intimacy.

The queer diasporic–feminist gerontological intersectionality approach allows me to situate and contextualize the performative and relational aspects of intimacy of the informants. With the queer diasporic–feminist gerontological approach, I would be able to consider how such expressions of intimacies offer a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological critique of normalcy embedded in normative relationships in later life. Normalcy are normative discourses, systems, processes, structures, and practices that regulate, discipline, and control queer (non-normative) subjectivities, desires, and practices (Coloma, 2017). As well, a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological approach allows me to recognize how such expressions of intimacies that offer trenchant critiques of normative intimacies have material and bodily ramifications. In other words, this framework considers and recognizes the socio-political, historical, and cultural locations of my informants and how these factors impact their desires and needs, as well, as the

actions they take to address their needs and desires that in turn would have material and bodily implications to their well-being.

1.6 Dissertation Overview

There are five chapters following this introduction. These are the following: Research Methodology (Chapter 2), Sexual Intimacy with the Lalake (Chapter 3), Care for the Family (Chapter 4), Friendship Dynamics of Older Bakla (Chapter 5), and the Conclusion and Implications to Critical Social Work Education and Practice (Chapter 6).

In the methodology section (Chapter 2), I highlight my utilization of Kuwento (kwen-to), a Filipino communicative tool, which has its genealogy from Philippine folk and oral traditions (Jocson, 2008; 2009). I consider kuwento an active meaning-making processes of Filipinos in the diaspora. Hence, kuwento informs my interview and participant observations, which are the main methods of data collection in the study. Kuwento also allows me to narrate my experience as a first-generation queer Filipino researcher who enters into the community of older bakla in Toronto, Canada. My data analysis follows Charmaz’ (2014) principles of grounded theory to analyze the kuwento (stories) of my informants, thereby, constructing a critical view of intimacies in gerontology.

Chapters three, four, and five highlight the main findings of the study: Older bakla’s intimacies with sexual and romantic partners, with blood-related kin and family, and with peers and friends, respectively. A vignette opens in each chapter. Older bakla then showcase their ways and means of expressing their intimacies, which are then impacted and shaped by the normative discourses and practices of gender, sexuality, aging, class, and migration. Ultimately, the chapters highlight the ways older bakla maneuver their queer identity as they interact with significant others to meet their needs.

Chapter three examines the sexual intimacies of older bakla through a closer exploration of their sexual relationships with the lalake or straight-identified man. Indeed, the customary practice in the bakla-lalake relationship is that the bakla has to provide the lalake with material or financial resources so he can be taken in as the lalake’s sexual partner (Pino, 2017). However, the informants critiqued this idea; they revealed that money alone could not necessarily make

possible the experience of sexual intimacy with the lalake. Instead, additional gestures, actions, and efforts must be done along with the money that they provide to the lalake. This chapter then argues that older Filipino gay men labour for sexual intimacy in older age because of such efforts and material resources that need to be produced for the lalake. Labour here pertains to movements that usually involve the use of their bodies to produce the requirements for sexual intimacy with the hetero-masculine subject. I outline three forms of labour or actions in this chapter: (1) the extra service; (2) the use of bodily mechanisms; and (3) participation in migration return and movement.

However, such forms of labour still do not guarantee sexual intimacy, because older bakla continue to be considered by the lalake as not a true or real women whom the lalake truly desires. While aware of such perception of the lalake, older bakla, however, continue to rely on such practices for the hope that intimacy would happen at some moment and point in time. This chapter then reveals the insidious work of hetero-masculine discourse, which has privileged the lalake and marginalized the older bakla in the relationship. Hetero-masculinity shapes and dictates the desires and needs of older bakla, as well as the older bakla’s aspiration for identity validation. Ultimately, this chapter not only offers a critique of hetero-masculinity, but also showcases how sexual desirability among older queer men could not be only about negotiating one’s aged persona. In addition, it is about enduring queer identity and practice within the context of sexual relationships in late life.

Chapter four focuses on older baklas’ family intimacies. Older bakla in this study do not have biological children, nor a family of their own. Hence, family in this context refers to their blood- related kin, especially their family of origin that includes older parents, siblings, and relatives. This chapter reveals that older Filipino gay men continue to have a strong engagement and connection with blood-related families. They express their continued connection with them through their breadwinning and caregiving roles and tasks. That is to say, older bakla in the study occupy and perform important roles in their families by either serving as the financial provider (i.e., breadwinner) or the caregiver to sick and older family members. This chapter, however, moves the meanings of breadwinning (i.e., financial provision) and caregiving beyond the political economy and cultural lenses. Here, the informants revealed that their breadwinning and caregiving are also psychologically motivated allowing them to negotiate and re-assert their

need to belong in the family, who punish them because of their kabaklaan or queerness. Their family cannot accept their queer identity at home, because it deviates from the norms of heterosexual reproduction, which is deemed an important component for the continuation of hetero-familial lineage (Butler, 1990). Older bakla experiences hetero-familial violence since childhood, allowing them to feel as though they do not belong. Through their embrace of the breadwinning and caregiving responsibilities, they could re-invent their selfhood and identities to become truly part of their families. However, as the informants revealed at the end, despite their breadwinning and caregiving performances, their family continue to police and reprimand their queer gender and sexuality even in their late life years. Breadwinning and caregiving, therefore, could only offer a partial sense of belonging, rather than a stable, fixed, and full sense of belonging in the family. This chapter is a critique of heteronormativity that formed the normative family unit, and how older Filipino gay men position themselves within such a family unit where they continue to connect with, care for, and even support during their late life years.

Chapter five highlights the friendship dynamics of the older bakla. This chapter offers a different tone and twist compared to the previous chapters, which focus on the performances, actions, and gestures of intimacies of older bakla. Instead, this chapter examines the feelings and emotions of the informants towards their friends in order to understand the meanings of their friendship. To be sure, friendship in the bakla culture is not necessarily sexualized or erotic (Manalansan, 2003). A sexual relationship with another bakla is not the norm, because the bakla are sexually attracted to cisgender men (Garcia, 2009). As well, unlike their relationships with romantic partners and blood-related families where they need to enact certain performances or gestures as their strategies to be able to remain connected with them, to be with their friends does not necessarily demand a particular performance. They are already accepted by them and are considered as a comrade and confidante who knows their bakla identity, especially their non-normative sexual practices they conceal from their families.

In this chapter I argue that older bakla elucidate multiple feelings and emotions with friends. This expands our common idea of queer friendship as one that would always be about positive feelings. While I highlight how older Filipino gay men feel a great sense of happiness while being with friends because of their ability to be able to express their queer identities with them, I also emphasize how friends become sources of anger, frustration, and resentments because of

conflict and tensions that arise from classism and ageism in the community. Ultimately, informants also revealed how their friends became figures of fear and anxiety. These feelings occur when close friends passed away. As the informants revealed, losing friends instigated anxiety and fear, because it allowed them to think on their own proximity to death. As I explored this deeply with the informants, I discovered that death here is not necessarily about physical death or mortality. Rather, the death of queer identity, because friends carry the possibility for queer expressions. Their death signals a possible death or erasure of a particular potential moment and space for queer feelings, desires, and performances to possibly exist. This chapter further offers an understanding of queer as relational and collective. Friends of older Filipino gay men connect to their identities: The fear after their loss is the fear of losing queerness that has made certain lives possible.

Finally, in the conclusion chapter (chapter six), I start with a section that summarizes the main findings of this study and its critical contributions to the field of gerontology, migration and transnationalism, and sexuality and gender. This is followed by a section on theoretical implications, which highlight how the findings of the study contribute to the theoretical framework. The next section includes the methodological implications and contributions to the field of qualitative research with racialized sexual minorities. Following these sections, I discuss the implications of this study to critical social work education and practice. Here, I reflect on this idea of uncertainties that older bakla have shown in their intimacies with their significant others. I explore the anti-normative potential of this idea of uncertainty when understanding the intimacies of older bakla with the social support groups in their later years. And finally, I outline some of the limitations of this study, and its implications to future research.

Chapter 2 Research Methodology: An Intergenerational Queer Conversation

2 Methodological Position

A qualitative approach was a relevant methodology, since I am interested in understanding the in-depth experiences of the older bakla in terms of their intimacies with significant others. Qualitative studies are not intended to produce generalizations, but rather a deeper understanding of social and cultural phenomena, practices, and systems (Newman & Robson, 2012). As well, qualitative approaches enable me to integrate myself into the study, allowing me to explicitly consider how my social location could help shape the analysis and outcomes of the study. This approach aligns with the social justice and anti-oppressive principles of knowledge production that highlight the ways the researcher impacts the study (Parada & Wehbi, 2017); thereby, resisting the positivist science’s claim for neutrality in research.

Indeed, my social location has explicitly informed my decision to pursue this study. I belong to the first-generation of Filipinos in Canada. Born and raised in Cebu, an island province located in the central-south of the Philippines, I relocated to Toronto, Canada, after completing my psychology degree in the Philippines in my early 20’s. Unlike many Filipinos in Canada who mainly speak Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, my first language is called Cebuano, a minority language spoken widely in my home province of Cebu. As well, I am a sexual minority community: I identify as gender queer or non-binary in the Filipino community.

Such a minority position informed my critical consciousness, aiding me to pinpoint the effects of the absence of older racialized sexual minorities in queer theories and gerontological studies (Pino, 2017). Indeed, in my review of queer-oriented scholarship, age or ageing have not been fully articulated, even within the discussion of racialization of queer bodies (Brown, 2009). Meanwhile, the field of gerontology has not fully considered the experiences of racialized LGBTQs (Van Sluytman & Torres, 2014; Woody, 2014). This absence perpetuates the universalization of aging experiences that suture with the neoliberal discourses of sameness to eclipse the differences and diversities within the elderly and queer community.

Furthermore, taking up the lessons offered by feminist post-colonial scholar Gayatri Spivak (1999) in terms of the imperialism Western thought in the global south, I would describe the absence of older bakla in the literatures as a situation of what Spivak termed, epistemic violence: an imperial move where critical and political discourses are still within the frames of Western epistemology. For Spivak, the subaltern subject—a person without lines of social mobility—cannot speak, because she is not heard (Ahmed, 2000). The framework for hearing is still always coming from and for the dominant. Such is a form of violence rooted in the practices of knowing, because it removes the agency, the power, and the history of the speaking subject. Under these conditions, the subaltern remains displaced, and the processes and practices of marginalization and oppression replicates.

Drawing from Spivak, in this study I foreground the knowledge of the below (Spivak, 1999). This means that by focusing on the older bakla, I re-situate the usual object and subject of the scholarly analysis in gerontology: from the normative citizen-subjects of the nation to the historically marginalized subjects. This also means paying attention to minority knowledges that these marginalized subjects have been utilizing to understand their intersectional and complex lives (Connell, 2007; Muñoz, 2006). Foregrounding these kinds of knowledges (i.e., as reflected in their non-normative expressions of intimacies with others) not only render the voices and experiences of the marginalized other visible, but also generates a productive critique of normalcy, which shape the homogenizing and imperialist practices and discourses of Western scholarships.

2.2 KUWENTO:

A Queer-Intergenerational Knowledge Construction

In line with the methodological position that I have articulated, I foreground and utilized Filipinos’ sociolinguistic and communicative tool called Kuwento [qwen-to] as my main research methodology (Jocson, 2008/2009). In its simple translation, kuwento means a form of conversation or storytelling among Filipinos in the diaspora. Etymologically, kuwento has its roots from Philippine folk and oral traditions. Filipinos in the diaspora continue to engage with each other through kuwento, or kwentohan, meaning the act of conversing with one another.

In her ethnographic study, Korina Jocson (2008) revealed how kuwento could be an effective pedagogical tool for diasporic Filipino high school students in the United States (Jocson, 2008/2009). Activist scholar Valerie Francisco also used kuwento for data verification in participatory action research studies with migrant Filipino workers (Francisco, 2014). Building from their works, this study, therefore, uses kuwento as a methodology: an ontological and epistemological tool to generate knowledge with the older bakla in Canada.

I argue that kuwento is more than just the act of story-telling. Older folks in my community, including the older bakla in my study, continue to use kuwento, particularly around the voicing, the narrating, and the telling of their lived transnational experiences, including how they navigate the Canadian diasporic terrain. In kuwento, not only certain information is conveyed and communicated, but as well, the cultural knowledges and personal views of the informants that have been shaped by historical and political circumstances are portrayed and revealed.

Kuwento contains multiple themes in one storyline or narrative. The narration of kuwento is not necessarily in linear form but can deviate from the original topic and then return to it. It is also delivered in a performative and quite an animated style and form. These linguistic patterns and mode of communication enable older Filipinos to collapse and then put together divergent temporal and spatial moments and scenes of their lives, so as to make them accessible and meaningful for themselves and to others.

In the subsequent chapters that follow, the narratives of the informants are reflective of kuwento, especially in terms of re-narrating their experiences with significant others in the diaspora. For example, as informants share their life stories, their sharing of these stories are not necessarily in chronological order, but as segments or episodes with certain themes and topics (e.g., sexuality, friendship, family, conflict), which are also expressed with a certain degree of animation and performance (i.e., in body language, voice, facial expressions, showing visual images such as personal pictures, and photos, etc.).

As a first-generation queer Filipino engaging in kuwento with the older, first generation, queer folks in my community, our kuwento becomes a form of intergenerational connection and conversation. This is because of the shared cultural location and identity that I have with the informants. Here, kuwento becomes the instrument through which older bakla can share their 25

queer life experiences to someone (such as myself) who embodies Filipino queer identity, but who is in a different generation, in terms of age. There is a sense of a mutual exchange of ideas, thoughts, and knowledge about Filipino queer practices and how these identities are expressed in the Filipino community across time and spaces.

Clearly, then, in this intergenerational conversation, the cultural ideas, events, and subjects around queerness, gender, sexuality, relationships, family, and community in the Filipino community are re-told, recited, and remembered. Kuwento, therefore, facilitates such a queer intergenerational conversation: where non-normative or queer stories are revealed and expressed by non-normative or queer subjects of similar cultural background but of differently situated generations. This showcases an example of addressing the intergenerational gap in the queer community as result of ageism (Wight, Leblanc, Meyer, & Harig, 2015).

Furthermore, by engaging in this intergenerational kuwentohan, a sense of trust is being established, allowing the older queer folks in my community to highlight their social location, sense of agency, and autonomy of being able to speak about their lived and intimate experiences. As well, my presence as someone who embodied Filipino queer identity facilitates their ability to speak their thoughts, feelings, and ideas freely, specifically for how they have pursued their bakla identity throughout the life course. Kuwento is a social relational and co- constructive process of meaning-making between me and the older queer folks in my community. It is a situated form of knowledge, and an important cultural tool and resource that foregrounds marginalized histories and experiences.

Kuwento fits with other critical forms of research praxis that emphasize reflexivity, narrative forms of communication, and co-construction. This is because kuwento carries cultural knowledge and practices of a particular historically marginalized community (i.e., Filipino community). Kuwento demands the researcher to learn and understand the political, social, and cultural factors and histories of the informants who are performing kuwento. This is done by immersing onself into the community to gain a deeper understanding of the informants, rather than conducting a one-time interview or observation. Kuwento could not be understood in one- time engagement as it does not make sense via superficial engagement. In this process, the researcher needs to be self-reflexive and genuinely attentive in order to understand him/herself

in relation to his/her informants who performed and narrate their lives through kuwento. In other words, kuwento requires the researcher to be attentive and conscious of his/her embodied identity as well as to understand the historical and political contexts of his/her informants, thereby, making kuwento a critical form of research praxis.

2.3 Recruitment and Selection of Research Informants

After receiving approval for my research ethics protocol from the University of Toronto (see Appendix A), the recruitment of research informants commenced. I decided to use word of mouth and personal referral as the main recruitment strategy because of the existing networks that I have in the community, especially with colleagues in the past who have worked with the older bakla in various capacities. Also, friends in the queer Filipino community have directed and guided me to connect with older, first-generation bakla.

I utilized purposive sampling as I am interested in the depth of the informants’ experiences, rather than on providing a generalization of their experiences based on quantitative measures that normally require large number of samples.

Informants in this study were selected based on the following criteria:

(1) Age 60 years old and above. I followed gerontological studies that use 60 years old as a selection criterion, since many older adults do not follow the age 65 as their retirement age (Clover, 2006; Grossman, 2010; Heaphy, 2009). In my engagement with Filipino older adults prior to this study, some have retired prior to the age 65 due to life circumstances related to health and social support issues.

(2) Filipino descent. This refers to their cultural, ethnic, and racial identity. I recruited those who were born and raised in the Philippines. This make sense, because those who are 60 years old and above belong to the first-generations of Filipinos in Canada.

(3) Self-identify as bakla. Informants identified as bakla. They confirmed this through personal referral and voluntary disclosure.

2.4 Methods of Data Collection

Participant observations and kuwento interviews were the main methods of data collection. Participant observations allowed me to observe and engage informally with the informants in their natural settings. Interviews helped me gain a better and deeper understanding of their cultural discourses and practices related to queer relationships and intimacies. Both methods build and informed each other, verifying and enriching the data collected from each of the methods (see Appendix H: Sources of data).

A total of 12 informants participated in both interviews and participant observations (see Aappendix E). Initially, they were provided with written notes about the purpose of the study (see Appendix B). I made sure these notes were written clearly for readability. I also translated and explained the content of the notes when they need clarification. After they read and understood the purpose of the study, they completed and signed the consent forms (see Appendix C and D).

Two consent forms were introduced: one for the in-depth interview and another for participant observations. I instructed that their participation in either of these research activities was optional; participants could choose to participate in either interview or participant observation, or both. I also indicated to them that they had the right to withdraw from the study at anytime without negative repercussions. A research incentive in the form of a gift card worth $20 was given to the informants for participating in each research activity (i.e., interview and participant observation; see Appendix L: Compensation list).

2.5 Entry into the Community via Kuwento

Kuwento has, indeed, helped shape the delivery and performance of participant observations and interviews I conducted. Most of my participant observations were at a foodcourt in a shopping center where informants usually congregate, as well, as in their own homes where they currently live. Through kuwento, I was able to observe both their verbal statements and actions. I recorded my observations with my voice recorder, as well as, in my personal journal immediately after engaging with them. These records contain my reflection and detailed observations. My observation was ongoing and lasted until data analysis. 28

Meanwhile, interviews were conducted at a place or space of their choosing—one that was private, convenient, accessible, and comfortable for participants. All interviews were audio- recorded and transcribed. The interview lasted for 2 hours per participant.

2.5.1 Participant observations

With the guidance and direction of a personal comrade in the community who has been connected to older Filipino gay men, I was able to be at the usual place of congregation of the informants: the foodcourt. Located at an underground mall in downtown Toronto, I considered this foodcourt as the hub where informants normally congregate. They spent most of their time here. It is the place where they could socialize, relax, and meet with their friends. It is even their point of departure—a place where they would initially meet and then go to personal appointments, cultural events, as well as to funerals and burials. They also celebrated birthday parties, anniversaries, and holidays, like Christmas and New Year, in the foodcourt. Furthermore, they interacted with the other people around the foodcourt, most of whom are Filipinos who worked as security guards, cleaners, bus boys, vendors, and food shop workers. Thus, this place connecte and holds them together, as they could openly engage in conversation with one another.

While they were aware of my role as a graduate student researcher, my openness of my queer identity and cultural location—one who is born and raised in the Philippines and is also embodying bakla cultural practices—fostered the establishment of trust and rapport. In other words, my insider position as a first-generation queer Filipino, and who is well-versed in kuwento, greatly facilitated my entry and easy access to the informants’ group in the foodcourt. Kuwentohan immediately started upon being introduced to each informant, as they asked to learn about my own migration history in Canada. Our kuwentohan then blossomed into a rich conversation of migration stories where in turn they also shared their own stories. Consequently, as their sense of trust heightened as the time went by, they began to invite me into their homes.

Kuwentohan at the foodcourt are usually unsolicited. This means they deliberately open up conversations that one does not necessarily inquire. The conversation is an open-ended one on different topics, themes, and subjects. The informal atmosphere of this setting enabled our kuwento to flow openly without fear of being regulated and judged. As well, my presence as a 29

first-generation queer Filipino allowed them to feel a sense of comfort, as they could speak up about things on their minds. Consistent themes in our kuwento were around sexuality, family, and friendships.

This kuwentohan in the foodcourt also allowed me to clearly see their actions, their gestures, and their expressions of intimacies with one another. I was invited to witness how they interacted with each other, how they told stories with each other, and how these stories were confirmed and affirmed by the other informants who were also present. They invited me to participate in their interactions that were less regulated, thereby, allowing me to observe them in the banal moments of their lives.

Meanwhile, I also observed my informants in other settings, such as in their homes and in other places of interactions, like hair and nail salons, shopping malls, and coffee shops. As well, I was able to observe them in some of the events that they attended, like the Filipino festivals that happened in the church halls, community centers, public parks, and streets. They also invited me to birthday parties and funerals. To be clear, I was only able to attend these places and events by either their invitation or by their approval.

Indeed, in general, researchers employing participant observations in their studies, especially those who are engaging in ethnographic work, may engage in different types or levels of observations or participation in the research site. The role could include either being a participant or an observer (De-walt & Dewalt, 2011). Being a participant may occur in different levels or in a continuum, such as from non-participation or pure observer, to passive, to moderate, to active, and to complete participation (Spradley, 1980 as cited in Dewalt & Dewalt, 2011). Other scholars also point to the membership role that the researcher takes or assumes in the community as a way to define their level of interactions with the research participants (Adler & Adler, 1987 as cited in Dewalt & Dewalt, 2011). The purpose of these categorizations or levels of participation are to enhance objectivity on the part of the researcher whose goal is to “know aspects of that world to greater and lesser degrees of accuracy based on his/her carefulness in observation, recording, and analysis” (Dewalt & Dewalt, 2011, p. 111).

While these ideas of explicitly specifying the researcher’s level or role of participant observation are generative, I would, however, be consistent with the methodological position 30

that I have taken on this study. This position is to foreground the marginalized or minoritized knowledges and cultural ways of knowing that I and my informants shared and embodied in the diaspora. To accomplish this, I intentionally performed and highlighted my insider role in the study. This means that I explicitly utilized my insider role in the conduct of my participant observations, especially the fact that I used the cultural practice of kuwento, which I am very much well-versed and fully familiar of. This move deviates from the dominant practice of field work observations often ruled by Eurorecentric and positivist-oriented researchers who are often from a culturally dominant group and culturally detached from the community they are observing or studying. With the advent of researchers from historically marginalized communities who are researching their own community, the insider position becomes more relevant (Villenas,1996).

The role of an insider is a much better to describe my level of participation as it highlights my non-detachment to the history, socio-political dynamics, and cultural practices of my informants. My interaction and engagement with them are always already impacted the historical and political factors that shape Filipino subjectivity. In this context, my mission as an (insider) researcher is not there to learn a strange culture separate from my own (Ahmed, 2000); or to understand a cultural pheonomenon that I have no knowledge about. My engagement with my informants, especially through kuwento, allowed me to closely dig up what has already been an existing and ongoing practice in my community (i.e., bakla-lalake dynamics; breadwinning and caregiving role of the older bakla; non-erotic queer friendship) but have been less deeply explored, especially from a critical perspective of gender and sexuality (i.e., impact of hetero- masculinity). Objectivity here is not necessarily the question or the goal that dominant field work methods have emphasized (Dewalt & Dewalt, 2011). Rather, my subjective and interpretative position plays a vital role in performing such participant observation. This notion of subjectivity and interpretative positonality is consistent with the data analysis of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) that I have taken up as my analysis and which I discussed in the subsequent sections.

Furthermore, kuwento, enabled my participant observation to be more creative, attentive, and fully present with my informants. In a participant observation informed by kuwento, I do not necessarily play as either an observer or a participant throughout the fieldwork. Rather, I

consider my participation as always present. This presence means that in a single moment of engagement with my participants, kuwento demands me to be fully connected and interactive with them (and by interaction, it is not necessarily verbal, but also non-verbal). Such a kind of performance or interaction is in line with the practice of kuwento, since kuwento requires one to be fully present in order to attend, understand, connect, and be attuned with others. My presence and attention made kuwento flourish. As the three data chapters, namely sexual intimacy, family, and friendship, will show, the moments or scenes where I am with my informants have always revealed an interaction that have fully unfolded to different kinds of interactions with others. That is to say, my presence facilitated and fostered new kinds of interactions, such as the ability of the informants to spontaneously and randomly converse with their peers on certain topic (i.e., sexuality), to talk about them, and to perfom ways for how they could share their personal stories of intimacies (e.g., showing objects, photos, album, pictures).

In sum, participant observation with kuwento did not necessarily occur based on an already decided level of participation or observation that I made prior to the study. Rather, my participant observation with kuwento was always expected to be an active interaction with the informants that relied on me being fully present and attentive with them, as well as to put my embodied identity as a queer Filipino researcher to work. This way, a strong connection and relationship with the informants was established. Afterall, in this context, the so-called authentic stories or observations (termed as objective by the dominant standard of field work) are produced not necessarily from the specific level or category of interaction and role that I had taken up in the study. Rather, in the deep sense of trust that have been built between myself and the informants.

2.5.2 In-depth interviews

I interviewed the informants for about two hours at their place of convenience and comfort. Using kuwento, I was able to attend to the complexities and contradictions of their lives, the disconnections and gaps of their narratives that have important meaning to them, and the constitutive relationship of gender, race, class, aging, and sexuality in their everyday life. In other words, through kuwento, I was able to explore in-depth, through a semi-structured, open- ended interview guide, their ideas, points of view, insights, and personal understanding of

intimacy, identity, needs, and desires. As well, the open-ended interview allowed for a flexible accommodation of the kuwento process.

In particular, I was able to recognize my informants’ use of swardspeak, their ability to re- arrange normal words, terms, and names commonly practiced by queer Filipinos (Manalansan, 2003). Swardspeak functions as a symbolic interpretation and representation of their identities, selves, and experiences in life. For example, in the introduction chapter, Mama Riva’s narratives show the shifting dynamics of his past, present, and future selves through his idolization of and identification with beauty queen Armi Kuusela. His swardspeak integrates Western and local icons, celebrities, and characters—in this case an international beauty queen, to describe his self and personhood. Through effeminate, dramatic, and animated body language, gesture, and tone, he enacts swardspeak to emphasize the significant ideas he wanted to convey. His performance was legible and effective to me, because he was talking to someone who openly identifies as a queer Filipino and is familiar with such speech acts. Swardspeak, which is a form of kuwento, enables intergenerational queer conversation, connection, relation, and dialogue.

2.6 Data analysis

I analyzed the data from participant observations and interviews by using Kathy Charmaz’ (2014) grounded theory approach. Grounded theory is a qualitative approach that aims to construct theories from the research data (Charmaz, 2014). This approach is highly useful and applicable when certain social situations and experiences have been undertheorized or underexplored (Creswell, 2013). The purpose was to generate a conceptual or theoretical analysis to understand the social processes and practices, and this is achieved through deep exploration of concepts and categories that a researcher could find in the qualitative data (Charmaz, 2014). The process of exploration is usually iterative and recursive whereby the newly obtained data from the field may enrich the existing category, thereby, building and expanding the category or concept being examined (Burck, 2005).

Indeed, a grounded theory approach addresses the purpose of this study, which is to theorize the intimacy of the older bakla. The social reality of older bakla has not been explored in-depth within the diasporic context of Canada. Thus, through grounded theory, I am able to show how older bakla perform their sense of intimacies with their significant others, revealing the 33

processes involved in their practices of intimacies, which includes how such practices are impacted by historical, psychological, and socio-political factors that would then produce effects on their subjectivities. The result offers a nuanced picture of how older adults, who are from a historically marginalized community, enact and experience intimacies with their significant others in the later life.

Specifically, I utilize Kathy Charmaz’ (2014) conceptualization and approach to grounded theory. Her approach is informed by the construtivist perspective, whereby the “subjectivity and the researcher’s involvement in the construction and interpretation of the data” (p. 14) influences the research design and grounded theory analysis. Here, Charmaz (2014) emphasized critical self-reflexivity, which means to reflect on the data and the ways ones social location impacts them. While my social location as a first-generation queer enables me to have some familiarity with the cultural nuances and tacit meanings of older bakla’s norms, social relations, and practices, such an insider role might also limit the kinds of information that I may see and witness with my informants (Coloma, 2008; Fajardo, 2011; Villenas, 1996). With critical self- reflexivity in grounded theory analysis, I am able to open myself up to allow particular phenomenon to show itself and other materials to come forward during my research. This sense of openness enabled me to be more flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes of the themes and codes that I generated until arriving at the point of saturation; meaning, the gaps and questions related to a particular generated theme are addressed and explored (Charmaz, 2014).

Charmaz’ (2014) constructivist approach to grounded theory deviates from the earlier version of grounded theory in order to consider the role of the researcher in generating the analysis. In restrospect, grounded theory emerged from the works of Glaser and Strauss in 1967 at a time when quantitive research approaches reigned supreme (Charmaz, 2014). They develop grounded theory to break away from the positivist paradigm of hypothesis testing towards an explicit understanding of how qualitative data could generate powerful analysis (Burck, 2005; Charmaz, 2014). In the early 90’s, Strauss moved away from Glaser’s approach of grounded theory and partnered with Juliet Corbin to emphasize priori assumptions and theorizing in the treatment of data during a grounded theory process (Charmaz, 2014). Producing a priori hypothesis or analysis of the data or categories during grounded theory work is something that Glaser, who was highly influenced by positivist thought, did not consider (Charmaz, 2014).

However, despite these developments of Corbin and Strauss, Charmaz’s approach to grounded theory came to emphasize the idea of subjectivity or the ways the researcher engaged in the construction of the analysis and results. Hence, she considered the practice of critical self- reflexivity on the part of the researcher and to integrate one’s reflections in the development of the analysis and theories of the qualitative data (Charmaz, 2014). As Charmaz’ (2014) stated, “subjectivity is inseparable from social existence” (p. 14).

2.7 Constructivist Grounded Theory and Kuwento: How Charmaz’ CGT Approach Enhances Analysis of Kuwento Data

As I have mentioned, I refer to kuwento as a methodology: the epistemological and the ontological tool through which older bakla’s cultural practices are revealed and reflected. Kuwento carries cultural knowledge in the qualitative data. Kuwento informs my two methods of data collection: participant observations and in-depth interviews. Hence, through kuwento, rich cultural knowledge is reflected in the participant observation and interview data. In other words, kuwento brings in cultural knowledge or data for grounded theory analysis.

With constructivist grounded theory of Charmaz (2014), my analysis of the cultural data is enhanced. First, given that construtivist grounded theory (CGT) considers my role and subject position as the researcher who interacts with the data, including my informants’ social world, my interpretation of the data is more nuanced, as I carefully consider how my social interaction as an insider of the community enabled the informants to tell and narrate their stories of intimacies in a particular way. Indeed, Charmaz suggested to record these interactions and observations as part of one’s critical self-reflection (e.g., personal memos) that would then be integrated in the coding and data analysis (Charmaz, 2014). The integration of my subjective reading of the data make sense and would enhance the analysis, since I am someone who shares similar cultural practices of my informants, well-versed in kuwento, and have prior knowledge and familiarity of the cultural practices and dynamics of queer diasporic Filipinos. In other words, the utilization and consideration of my insider role that CGT acknowledges enhances the analysis of cultural data. As Charmaz (2014) stated: “We are part of the world we study, the

data we collect, and the analyses we produce. We construct our grounded theories through our past and present involvements and interactions with the people, perspective, and research practices” (p. 17).

Second, CGT allows me, the researcher, to know and explore more of the ontological concepts embedded in kuwento. These ontological or cultural concepts inform the development of codes, themes, or categories that then build up to form a rich conceptual analysis of the social condition being studied. The ability of CGT to offer an opportunity for the researcher to keep specific ontological or cultural concepts and terms that could be explored in-depth aligns with the goal of CGT itself in producing a conceptual understanding or theory grounded in the data (Charmaz, 2014). In other words, CGT enhances the analysis of kuwento data through its very ability to honor the cultural terms and ontologies embedded in kuwento, while exploring their nuances in- depth, to be able to generate a relevant and productive interpretation or theoretical analysis of the social phenomenon (i.e., older bakla’s intimacies.)

Third, CGT enhances analysis of kuwento data as it allows the creation of an organized mapping of older bakla’ actions, practices, and expressions of intimacies in later life with consideration of the social, cultural, and even economic factors that shaped their experiences of intimacies with significant others. This ability of CGT to produce an organized conceptual map is helpful in understanding the nuances of kuwento. As I have described, kuwento is non-linear and non- chronological. It is open and flexible and allows informants to express themselves, including their ideas and their stories of intimacies in a manner that is convenient for them. Hence, utilizing Charmaz’s CGT approach enabled the creation of a coherent and logical picture that shows how seemingly disconnected ideas in kuwento are actually linked and built on each other.

Finally, unlike other qualitative approaches (i.e., narrative approach) where analysis is usually conducted at the end, CGT enabled me to make preliminary analyses, even during data collection, and including the time when preliminary data was being transcribed (e.g., first interview data; Charmaz, 2014). Kuwento allowed me to gather rich cultural data as opposed to a limited one, thereby allowing me to have diverse options and directions where I could begin and situate my preliminary analysis. Indeed, such a preliminary analysis are informed by my knowledge of the community, my engagement with the scholarly literature, and my

epistemological position and values (Burck, 2005). Constructing preliminary theoretical analysis and exploring the depth of the concept further through the feedback of the other sources of data is not necessarily a feature of the other forms of qualitative approaches (e.g., narrative analysis).

2.8 Procedure of Analysis

The research questions, which answered through my analysis, are the following: (1) What are the experiences of older the older bakla with their significant others or support groups namely, their sexual partners, their blood-related kin and relatives, and their friends or peers? (2) In what way their queer or non-normative sexual and gender identity—the bakla identity—impact the intimacies that they have with them? (3) What are the implications of these to their quality of life and wellbeing in late life?

Following grounded theory, answers to the first and second questions were directly obtained from the main data sources—the fieldnotes, which contain memos of my personal observations and reflections, as well as the in-depth, transcribed interviews. I will address the last question in the chapter six, which discusses the overall implications of the results of the study.

To understand their experiences of intimacy with significant others, I first looked at my field notes (from participant observations) where themes around sexual relationships, family, and friendships were consistently highlighted and mentioned by the informants. These data then guided the development of my semi-structured interview questions, whereby the themes of sexuality, family, and friendships were further engaged and explored. In the interview, not only I was able to clearly document the migration histories of the informants, but also, I was able to clarify and learn more their practices of intimacies with significant others. Once a single interview was completed, I transcribed it as immediately as I could so that I could generate preliminary analytic themes. This processes also informed my subsequent interview sessions with the other informants, including my ongoing participant observations. I then created preliminary connections and linkages between the themes in the interview and field notes. In other words, I went back and forth between field notes and interview transcripts. As well, my participant observations and informal conversations in the field (kuwentohan) were ongoing as these allowed me to go back to the informants and clarify some of the missing links in the data.

I assigned codes and labels to the data and linked them to the themes I generated in the preliminary analysis until I arrived at the point of saturation. The coding process also allowed me to fine-tune and modify the existing themes. When coding was completed, I mapped out the themes for each type of intimacy. The result revealed a conceptual framework that shows how this group experience intimacy with each of their significant other. I discuss and elaborate on these themes in the chapters that follow.

To be clear, the codes and labels emerged based on my reading of the data (informant stories). My reading of the data is, indeed, also informed by my insider position as one who is familiar with bakla cultural practices. My reading of the data was also informed and guided by the informants themselves via member-check, by engaging them back in the field, and by listening to their repeated articulations or re-narrations of the certain events, stories, and experiences of their lives. In their stories, I was then able to identify nuances that showcased certain issues related to power, agency, and marginality when they engaged with their significant and normative other. These concepts—power, agency, and marginality—that I assigned as preliminary codes and labels to certain situations, circumstances, relationship issues within their stories were informed by my engagement with queer diasporic–feminist gerontological analytics. As I discussed in chapter one, the intersectionality approach reveals issues related to power, agency, and marginality as seen in the expressions or performances of intimacies towards their significant other. In the conclusion, I further discuss how these concepts of power, agency, and marginality cohere with the experiences of the informants as well as how the informants themselves able to add, challenge, or enrich on these concepts. Figure 2 is the template of my research analysis using constructivist grounded theory and kuwento.

Constructivist Grounded Theory Impacted by Normative Discourses: Kuwento: Example: heteromasculinity Participant Observation & Interviews (cultural knowledges)

Participant Observation Interview Performances/ Example 1: Building on the Expressions/ Informant #1: Mama Riva concept of identity Of intimacies Significant CONCEPTS and relationality, I As well as

in his narratives: explored how bakla Feelings and identity is performed Emotions 1. strong identification in intimate with the bakla script to relationships. describe his self. (concept: Bakla as an identity) Interview data then reveal the nuances of Address 2. bakla script shapes the performance of personal needs: interaction with others. their identity to Example: (concept: Bakla identity experience intimacy Identity as relational) with loved figures Validation (example: the lalake).

I then probed futher: Why do such kinds of interaction/actions occur (e.g., service to Examined other the lalake). What’s in data – participant it for the older baka? observation notes What keeps this kind and subsequent of intimate interviews to expressions going? address the Is it different from questions what the literature has documented? Why?

Figure 2. Data Analysis Template of Using CGT Approach to Kuwento.

Here, kuwento brought cultural knowledge to participant observations and interview data. Using CGT, data from my participant observations of my first informant Mama Riva underwent preliminary analysis. My preliminary analysis of Mama Riva’s narrative was indeed informed

by my existing and prior knowledge of the community, particularly that of the identity of the bakla, as well as my engagement with the theories and texts on queer subjectivity, self-hood, and identity formation. Two concepts emerged from my reading of my field notes on Mama Riva: identity and relationality, where the latter pertains to the ways the bakla identity engages in relationships with others; that is to say, their interaction with objects and beings other than their own selves. These preliminary concepts informed the development of my interview questions where I focus on understanding the lived social interactions of older bakla in their everyday life. I gave particular attention to how their identity was played out as they built relationships with those whom they considered as important or intimate in their lives.

My analysis and reading of the interview data were also accompanied by questions and reflections to further explore the meanings of the particular intimate experience presented by the informant. What was revealed were those performances or actions that the informants made in order to enact and experience intimacies with their significant others. These performances and actions were also imbued with feelings and emotions that speak to its deeper connections with their queer identity. These performances and feelings are impacted by the dominant and normative discourses of gender and sexuality, thereby, allowing me to further understand the effects of the bakla identity, especially when such identity is performed to create intimate connections with significant other. Crucially revealed as well were the ways the dominant and normative discourses that impact older bakla’s performances and feelings also impacted their personal and psychological needs. Hence, the concept of identity and relationality were re- configured and further explored throughout the analysis, thereby, resulting to the creation of a picture or map that portrayed the practices or performances of intimacies of the older bakla. The next section further discusses these by introducing how each data chapters present the findings of the study.

2.9 Presentation of Findings

In the following chapters (Chapter three, four, and five), older bakla practices and experiences of intimacies with significant others are revealed. The introduction of each chapter begins with a vignette. After the vignette, I state my questions that signified my reflective stance and exploration on the given vignette, which serves as the initial data of a paritcular chapter. After

stating the questions, I highlight my main argument for the chapter followed by a supporting rationale and information from the literature. The introduction in each subsequent chapter ends with a conceptual map, which highlights the overall content of the chapter. The conceptual map demonstrates how each section of the chaper builds on and connects to each other.

To be clear, while most of the vignettes have narratives that are in Tagalog, the English translation follows immediately after the narratives. The vignette highlights and supports the main argument and key point or finding of a particular intimacy chapter. The sections that follow after the introduction are the sub-themes, which explain and support the main argument. In each section or sub-theme, I highlight one to two informants whose stories or experiences were adequate and substantial, thereby, showing analytic power of such a sub-theme. Thus, the stories presented by each informant—from the opening vignette to the conclusion section— build, connect, and enrich each other.

In the conclusion chapter of this dissertation, I engage with the final research question: What are the implications of these to their quality of life and wellbeing as older queers? I did this by primarily highlighting the contributions or findings of this study in relation to the experiences of the informants who embody the queer and racialized subject position. I then reflect on these findings within the context of social work education and practice.

Chapter 3 Sexual Intimacy with the Lalake

3 Introduction

Love…

They’ve come together in a special way,

Something clicked when they met, so

they went on meeting. The attraction grew…

until it was hard to be apart

always been lovers—and friends.

And while there are no guarantees of forever in their world,

There is the promise, which is enough.

Clarita, the 65-year old informant, showed this poem to me when I visited him at his apartment, a one-bedroom, subsidized unit. This poem was written in the opening page of his album. It was made of letter-cut outs that he assembled from a colored magazine. On the top of this poem was a picture of him and his jowa (boyfriend) named George6, whom he met at the salon where he worked. George was one of his regular clients. The picture of the two of them was an assembled one. Each image was coming from another picture. Clarita put them together to show that he and George were beside each other in one picture.

The poem, especially the line, “there are no guarantees of forever in their world,” points to the conditions of his relationship with George. As he clarified during our kwentohan (conversation),

6 Name of the lalake has been changed to maintain anonymity. 42

Clarita considered that his relationship with George was uncertain and would not last. As he reported, George, a Caucasian man who was 10 years younger than him, had a wife and two children whom he lived with. He then claimed that George’s primary attention was to his wife and children, rather than to him.

He also claimed that George refused to have sex with him despite the efforts of providing him the material resources as the normative practice in their relationship (Garcia, 2009; Pino, 2017). His friends reiterated this as they saw how George treated Clarita. They reported:

Oh, alam mo, kapag pumupunta yan si George sa parlor ni Clarita noon, agad-agad bibilhan niya ng pagkain, bigyan ng pera, at saka free hair cut pa ha! Kasi, para naman maka ‘do’ siya ni George. Pero, snubbed yong lalake eh. Sabi ng lalake na tinatawag na daw siya ng asawa niya pauwi. Pero, may free haircut pa siya, busog pa siya.

[ “Oh, you know, when George visited him [Clarita] in the salon, he [Clarita] immediately bought George some food, gave him money, and free haircut. He thought George would let him do [oral sex] him. But he was snubbed. George suddenly turned away and made an excuse by saying that he needed to leave because his wife called him already. George got his free haircut, and was also fed!”]

However, despite incidents of sexual rejections, Clarita continued adoring and loving George. He revealed in a later interview that he continued his financial and material provision for George. By doing so, Clarita hoped that George would eventually consider having sex with him.

In this chapter, I explore the experience of sexual intimacy of the older bakla, especially their intimacy with the lalake (i.e., the cis-gender man). I focus on examining and understanding those moments of sexual rejections they experienced from the lalake. To do this, I further examined the so-called financial and material provision that older bakla do for the lalake as the customary practice in their relationship.

As discussed in Chapter one, a relationship with the lalake requires financial provision on the part of the bakla. That means, the bakla needs to provide financially to the lalake so he could be taken in as his sexual partner. The rationale for this, as narrated by the informants (see the conclusion section of this chapter), is based on a hetero-masculine discourse that shapes the 43

lalake’s perspective towards the bakla. According to the informants, hetero-masculine men (i.e., the lalake) do not consider them—older bakla—as real women because of their embodied masculine body; therefore, the bakla must perform the financial provision to compensate for his gender lack.

Given that such is the customary cultural practice in the bakla–lalake relationship, along with the discourse that shapes it, the experience of Clarita, however, enables us to ask the following questions: Why do moments of sexual rejection still exist even though older bakla have fulfilled the customary financial and material provision to the lalake? What makes older bakla hold on to their relationship with the lalake even when they know that they (the lalake) do not seem to offer them the experience of sexual intimacy fully?

I argue that older bakla engage in other forms of endeavours, actions, performances, and even gestures beyond the act of financial provision to be able to experience sexual intimacy in older age. I then consider these forms of endeavours as labour7, because it involves the utilization of their physical bodies to perform certain bodily movements in order to address their needs, in this case, their sexual intimacy needs in later life.

Indeed, the cultural practice of financial and material provision for the lalake is already a form of economic labour enacted by the bakla. However, I highlight in this chapter the other performances that older bakla deploy beyond economic or financial labour. These include: (1) the extra services that they must perform along with the financial provision, (2) their engagement with their physical bodies to deal with difficult emotions (i.e., emotional labour), and (3) their participation in the transnational migration return or travel to homeland (i.e., the Philippines) to be able to be with the lalake. Thus, these forms of labour for sexual intimacy highlight their engagement with the economic, emotional, and transnational dimensions of their lives.

7 While I hinted on this idea of labour in my work elsewhere (Pino, 2017), such previous work solely relied on the existing studies that narrated the customary financial provision of the bakla to the lalake, allowing me to argue that such is a form of labour. However, in this study, I examined deeply the other aspects of labo, and it shows then that older bakla need to engage in non-economic medium of exchange should he want intimacy with the lalake. 44

With such forms of labour, sexual intimacy for older bakla then goes beyond the experience of sexual and physical satisfaction. As this chapter will show, sexual intimacy is the moment of sexual and gender identity validation of the older bakla. Sexual and gender identity validation pertains to that moment in which the feminine feelings, thoughts, and desires of the older bakla are fully felt, expressed, and experienced. As mentioned, the bakla identity is very much feminized. It follows the hetero-female’s scripts, especially around sexual orientation: having a cis-gender man as the sexual partner. Identity validation means being able to complete and enact the female script. Sexual intimacy with the lalake serves as the arena, the moment, and the scene where feminine identity validation can happen. Hence, sex with the lalake has these physical, emotional, and social benefits.

This chapter aims to unveil the insidious power of the hetero-masculine discourse embedded in the bakla-lalake relationship. The discourse reinforces and moves older bakla to engage in various forms of labour to experience sexual intimacy with the lalake. Therefore, while being motivated by the physical, emotional, and social benefits of having sex with the lalake, older bakla are also being impacted by the hetero-masculine discourse, pushing them to adore the lalake even more, despite his failure to reciprocate.

While the lalake take in such a hetero-masculine discourse, which shapes their perspective on the bakla, older bakla, too, internalized the hetero-masculine discourse and they articulated it as, “the lalake are a straight-identified man, so their actual sexual partner would be a cis-gender woman, and would never be a bakla.” Indeed, Clarita’s situation showed this and was even the basis of his experience of sexual rejection: “George suddenly turned away and made an excuse by saying that he needed to leave because his wife called him already.” Here, while Clarita knew that George’s primary desire is to be with the woman—his wife, George foregrounded and asserted his hetero-masculinity, which left Clarita out in the process.

In the hetero-masculine discourse, straightness aligns with the notion of truth and realness. That is, sexual desires deemed straight relies on what has been constructed as true or real (e.g., object, people, ideas) as opposed to objects or people deemed incoherent, such as the identity characteristics of the bakla. In short, hetero-masculinity privileges one whose female gender and sexuality are coherent (i.e. cis-gender women), while relegating the incoherent, the effeminized

masculinity, into the periphery or subjugated social position. Consequently, then, as this discourse dominates the bakla–lalake relationship, the lalake occupies the privileged position as the bakla needs to labour himself to be able to access the privileged subject; that is, he must produce for the man who is deemed to offer the feeling of identity validation. Hetero-masculine discourse, indeed, instigates and reinforces the desire of the older bakla to labour for the lalake.

But then, with all this labour as the situation of Clarita had shown, with all his embrace of the hetero-masculine discourse, and with all the labour that he did for George, he was still rejected by him. He was still seen as not a real woman. This evidenced the deceptive promise of hetero- masculinity. As hetero-masculinity shapes the sexual intimacy of older bakla, offering a promise of a pathway towards identity validation, it then produces a sense of false hope of identity validation. Identity validation of the older bakla will always be an ongoing process: it has yet to be achieved.

The subsequent sections of this chapter outline the three forms of labour that older bakla do to be with the lalake: Section 1: the extra-service; Section 2: the bodily mechanisms and performances; and Section 3: the participation in the transnational migration return. The final section then focuses on unpacking the notion of identity validation. Here, I consider how the need for identity validation of the bakla has been historically and politically shaped and produced, whereby it emerges from the effects of the life-long impact of hetero-masculine oppression and silencing of the bakla. I show how the subjectivity of the bakla has already been ruined by hetero-masculinity, so it will continue to rely on hetero-masculinity’s promise of identity validation, yet only to be sexually rejected by him.

Forms of Labour for Sexual Intimacy

The Extra-Serbis

Bodily Mechanisms and Identity Performances Sexual Validation Intimacy Older with the Uncertainty Participation in Lalake Bakla Migration Return

Heteromasculinity

Figure 3. Schematic Diagram of Older Bakla’s Sexual Intimacy with the Lalake.

3.3 The Extra-Serbis

While at his place, Mama Riva, the 88-year old informant, narrated a scene of his life that evidenced the existence of service provision that comes along with the customary financial provision in the bakla-lalake relationship. Here, he emphasized the cultural practices that are being played out in this transaction. Mama Riva explained:

kapag nakipag deal ka sa lalaki or jowa mo, katuald ng pagbibigay mo ng something sa kanya like pera, huwag mo gawin na parang nagbabayad ka sa kanya para makikipag- sex. Kailangan, pag sa kanya, you should start with good conversation, like mag offer ka ng something na hindi pera, like drinks, food, hindi kaagad pera. Dahil pag ibinibigay

mo yong pera kaagad, feeling nila sila ay bayaran. At ayaw nila yon dahil wala ka sa casa eh. Pero, pag nasa casa ka, syempre kailangan mo talaga mag bayad kaagad dahil business yon eh!

[When you deal with your jowa or boyfriend, like when you are giving him something like money, you don’t necessarily do it like you are paying someone for sex. When it comes to him [jowa], you should start with good conversation, offer him first with anything other than money, such as drinks or food, before giving him the money. Because if you give the money immediately, they would think that you are treating them as merely for pay. And they don’t like that; unless if you are in a Casa [brothel] where you really must pay right away because that’s their business.]

In his narrative, Mama Riva emphasized the so-called service, or in the words of the other informants, extra-serbis, which comes along with the financial provision. These extra-services appear as performances or extra gestures that must be performed, such as having a good conversation to make the lalake at ease and comfortable. As well, the narrative indicates that while money serves as the passport for sexual intimacy with the lalake, there must be other objects too, such as food and drinks. Indeed, these objects require bodily engagement (e.g., labour) in terms of its production (i.e., to purchase the object via a job or work) and delivery (i.e., to offer to the lalake).

What is also revealing in this account of Mama Riva is that the occurrence of extra-serbis was due to the configuration of the lalake as not merely for pay, but rather as a jowa, queer Filipinos’ term for a boyfriend. Since the bakla considers the lalake as his boyfriend, then he must not merely provide him with financial resources, but also, the extra services. Hence, the discursive script of the jowa demands more than just money: the bakla must perform certain gestures and services for him.

This dynamic, as narrated by Mama Riva, offers an important clarification in terms of how it is being read beyond a sexual economic gaze. As his narrative indicates, although it involves financial exchange, the bakla–lalake relationship may not necessarily resemble that of sex work, which is an institutionalized or privatized sex enterprise. The forms of services and performances the older bakla must engage in, particularly in terms of the delivery of the 48

financial provision, makes the relationship more nuanced and is not necessarily about a financial–sex exchange. That is, while they continue to financially provide for the lalake, they must also engage in other forms of services and gestures to be taken in sexually by the lalake. Mama Riva, indeed, cautioned in his narrative that the bakla must not treat his jowa as merely for pay, otherwise it would result in violence or the inability of the bakla to be with the lalake.

This cultural practice of financial provision is not new in that it has been the life-long practice of the bakla community, especially in the Philippine context. Several Filipino scholars have noted and documented this (Garcia, 2009; Manalansan, 2003). However, what they have not fully highlighted is that this cultural dynamic reveals the power of the hetero-masculine subject, the jowa, over the less masculine one—the effeminate bakla. In this relationship, older bakla need to exert more work and efforts should he want sexual intimacy with the hetero-masculine subject, who occupies the highest position in the gender hierarchy. This means that the hetero- masculine subject deserves the financial and service provisions from the less masculine one, who must labour to compensate his gender lack. Financial and service provision, then, are believed to be the tools or tickets of the older bakla to the straight-men’s world, and serve as one of the ways to negotiate sexual desirability (Pino, 2017).

3.2 Bodily Mechanisms and Performances

While the constant financial and (extra) service provision is one of the ways in which older bakla labour for the lalake to experience sexual intimacy with him, in this section, I show another expression or forms of labour that older bakla engage in or subject themselves into. These are the acts of expectation and acceptance. I consider these acts as labour, because these involve the use of their bodies to deal with the certain feelings and emotions in their relationship with the lalake. These acts are not about generating financial resources for the lalake. Rather, these acts are about their very subjection to the emotional stress in the relationship that impact their bodies. Older bakla face quite unpleasant emotions in their relationships with the lalake in the name of a possible sexual intimacy with them. In short, I consider expectations and acceptance as emotional labour.

In this section, I specifically focus on the experience of Joanna Marie and his friend Cara. Both showed us how they labour for sexual intimacy with their jowa beyond financial provision. 49

They also revealed how such emotional labour has occurred as the result of their embrace of the hetero-masculine discourse, which circulated in their engagement with the lalake.

3.2.1 Marie and Cara’s act of expectation

While sitting at the foodcourt with our cups of coffee on a Thursday afternoon, 70-year old Marie deliberately narrated his experience with his ex-lover:

Like si Johnny, ex ko five years ago; mga 22 years old at siya noon, puti, and from Barrie. Lumayas siya sa kanilang bahay dahil sa tatay niya sinasaktan siya at yong nanay niya ay sumama sa ibang lalaki. Na-met ko siya sa strip club dahil doon siya nagtratrabaho. Mula noon nagging regular na ako sa kanya at nagging jowa ko siya. Tapos nasabi niya nakikitira lang daw siya sa mga kaibigan niya. Kaya, tinanong ko siya kung gusto ba niyang sariling lugar. And then sabi naman niy kaagad “yes.” Pero dahil nakatira kasi ako sa kapatid ko na babae, syempre I cannot bring him in and I cannot leave my sister too. So, ang ginawa ko, sekreto akong kumuha ng bachelor’s apartment para sa kanya. At binibisita ko nalang siya doon pagkatapos ng trabaho. So para narin kaming nag live-in at pinoprovide ko sa kanya lahat ng kailangan pati pagkain, at binilhan ko pa siya ng sasakyan. May pera ako noon dahil sa salon business ko. Pero, our relationship has to end dahil nadatnan ko talaga siyang nakipag sex ng babae pagdating ko sa bahay. Actually, parang alam ko naman na maghahanap talaga yon ng babae in the long run dahi, alam mo na, derecho eh. Expected ko na yon. But its really a different story noong nakita ko siya with the girl. Oh my god, nagbabalde talagang yong luha ko!

[Like Johnny8, my ex-lover five years ago; he was young like around 22 years old. He is White and was from Barrie. He run away from home because of his abusive father and his mother went with another guy. I met him at a strip club because he worked there. From then on, he became my frequent guy and eventually my jowa. He mentioned that he was just living with his friends. So, I asked him if he wanted a place of his own. And

8 All names of the lalake has been changed to maintain anonymity. 50

he said, yes. But because I am living with my sister, I cannot bring him in and I cannot leave my sister too. So, what I did, in secret, I got a bachelor’s apartment for him. And I just visit him there right after work. So, it’s like, he is now living with me, and I provided him all the things that he needed like food, and I even bought him a car. I have some money on that time because I had my own salon business. But our relationship must end because I caught him having sex with a girl when I came home. I already thought that he will eventually look for a girl, because you know, he is a straight guy. I have expected that already. But it’s really a different story when you see him with a girl. Oh my god, my tears were falling like buckets of water!]

For Marie, the hetero-masculine discourse of Johnny produced a sense of expectation of loss: “since Johnny is a straight guy, he would eventually look for a girl.” The straightness of Johnny, created a mental schema on Marie. It provided him a roadmap that shows how his relationship with Johnny is destined to be gone or lost. In other words, Marie’s sense of expectation is an imagined one or that which occurs in the realm of the fantasy.

However, this expectation of loss becomes a devious mechanism of the hetero-masculine discourse, because it superficially mitigates or even minimizes the intense material or bodily impact of the actual loss situation. An imagined or expected loss makes Marie ready, providing him a protective mechanism from the unpleasant feelings and bodily reactions, such as the pain and the hurt associated with the actual loss situation. The imagined or expected loss also works to derail, conceal, and minimize the very intense emotional and bodily impact of actual situation of loss. As Marie pointed it out, “it’s really a different story when you see him with a girl.” The different story is his description of a bodily reaction that he experienced upon directly seeing Johnny having sex with a girl.

In that moment of witnessing, he felt as though he was no longer desirable, because Johnny replaced him with a true girl. The “bucket of tears” indicates how witnessing and seeing Johnny’s sexual engagement with a true girl shattered the seemingly ready persona that the sense of expectation put up. As well, the “bucket of tears” indicates how loss, which had been imagined and expected, flows into the visual and material reality, creating an intense emotional and bodily impact.

Meanwhile, even when expectation of loss is no longer imagined or outside of the fantasy, that is, something that shapes or influence an actual course of action, its promise to mitigate the pain and the hurt of loss continues to be broken. Cara, a 75-year old informant and friend of Marie, expressed this. As he reported, he was in his late 60’s when he met a guy from Newfoundland who was in his late 20’s. He worked as a stripper in Toronto. The guy became his jowa and the two lived together in a one-bedroom apartment.

While he claimed that he was not the same as the other guys whom his friends had (referring to Marie) because he would shell something out for grocery, Cara did not want to experience Maries’s situation of being able to witness a hurtful situation. For Cara, he did not want any drama, since he thought of himself as straight-forward. So, he made a deal with the lalake, his jowa, during his first day in the apartment. He openly told him that if he decided to leave him for a girl, he should mention it to him immediately and without hesitation. However, when the moment came for his jowa to discuss with Cara his desire to leave the apartment, Cara made a different response. He continued to narrate:

pero, dumating talaga yong araw na kinakakutakutan ko [But, the time that I have been afraid of has come.] He decided to leave me because he wanted to live with the girl whom he got pregnant. He said they would go to Manitoba to start a new life there. I was ok with it in the beginning because he was honest. But, deep deep down inside, my heart was crumbling. And mind you, my darling, when he left, oh my god, days and nights, for several months, I’ve been crying a bucket of tears. My friends were even worried of me, because “parati lang akong tahimik at nakatulala” [I was quiet all the time and stared blankly].

Cara’s expectation of loss shaped or influenced his course of action that seems to protect him from the hurt of being in a loss situation. Here, the discourse of expected loss due to the hetero- masculinity of his jowa allowed him to perform some actual precaution. He told his jowa upfront that if he eventually left him for a girl, he should tell him right away. Cara’s candid verbalization depicts a performance of a subject seemingly ready for an experience of loss. However, such a sense of readiness through the act of precaution, did not save Cara from the emotional toll of loss. When he heard that his jowa would leave him, Cara burst into tears, and

his ability to socialize with his friends was affected. Therefore, Cara’s hearing of his jowa that he would leave him, as opposed to seeing or witnessing the loss, such as in Marie’s case, revealed the shattering of the promise of expectation to protect him from the bodily and social impact of loss.

Altogether, Marie and Cara, show us how hetero-masculinity could shape our expectations towards the future. In this context, hetero-masculinity provides them a roadmap towards a seemingly bearable life: a life that seems to be devoid of significant material impact of experiences of loss. As a mechanism of hetero-masculinity, expectation projects a belief that the material impact of loss could be mitigated. It works to conceal or mask the actual intense emotional and bodily impact of loss, including the pain and the hurt that come along with it. Hence, expectation is labour, let alone an emotional one. It is the bodily response of older bakla to withstand or deal with the emotional ramifications in their relationships with the lalake.

3.2.2 Cara and Marie’s act of acceptance

The hetero-masculine discourse of their jowas did not only enable Marie and Cara to expect loss but also to accept the uncertainties of experiencing sexual intimacies with the lalake. Uncertainty occurs, because the actual experience of sexual pleasure is only experience by chance; that is, only when there is an opportunity for actual sex to happen.

However, they seem to accept such conditions of uncertainty as they imbibed the discourse, “the actual objects of desires of straight guys are women.” The acceptance of the condition of uncertainty conceals the older bakla’s material contribution and labour that made possible their jowas’ material living conditions. Cara narrated:

I mean, although we sleep in one bed, he does not always want to have sex with me. Alam mo na, lalake di ba hmmm? [You know, he’s a straight young guy, right?]. However, I know exactly when he wants to have sex. I would know because he would first take a shower. When he goes back to our bedroom, he would take off his towel and I can see his erect penis. And so, I grab the opportunity!!! Hahaha. At sa akin naman [And as for me], if I really want him to have sex, I would simply go to the bathroom and stayed there for several hours until he follows me. And, if he does not follow me, I

would never leave the washroom. I will wait, and wait, and stay there for several hours until he looks for me. That’s my technique to really let him feel that I want him sexually.

Marie also added a somewhat similar experience:

Pag pumupunta ako sa apartment, hindi naman kasi ako parati maka ano [sex] sa kanya. Dahil minsan, ayaw niya. Alam mo na, derecho na lalake! So, ako nalang ang gumagawa ng paraan para makuha siya. Mamasahiin ko yong likod niya, hanggang ma relax siya, and saka hahawakan ko yong ano ya (penis), at alam niyo na ang susunod ng mangyayari…hahaha! Pero, if nalilibogan talaga siya, of course, I immediately take the opportunity hahaha!

[When I visited him in the apartment, it is not all the time that we have sex. Because sometimes, he doesn’t want to. You know, he is a straight guy! So, I always initiate and find ways on how to get him. I massage his back, until he feels relaxed, and then I touch his penis, and so you know what comes next…hahaha! But if he is horny, of course, I immediately take the opportunity hahaha!]

Here, both Cara and Marie showed that their experience of sexual pleasure is not necessarily always available and accessible despite the presence of straight men in their lives. Hence, it is uncertain, because the possibility for sex relies on the desires and the moods of their jowa. When they sensed their jowa would really want to have sex with them, they would grab the opportunity; otherwise, they would not be able to have sex with them unless they devised certain ways and means to get their attention: Cara goes to the bathroom and waits for his jowa to come; Marie massaged his jowa’s back, thereby, taking the lead to make the actual sex happen.

However, Cara and Marie seem to allow or accept the situation of uncertainty because of the notion that they are a straight guy whose object of desire is after all women as opposed to baklas. In other words, the hetero-masculine discourse of their jowa—being a straight guy— allowed Cara and Marie to consider the uncertainty of their experience of sex with their jowa was normal and quite natural. The discourse of hetero-masculinity of their jowas shaped their acts of acceptance with regard to the situation of uncertainty.

The acceptance of uncertainty, however, obscures the ways Cara and Marie honoured or fulfilled their promises or transaction to their men, in terms of their material provisioning to them. Both Cara and Marie engaged in material provisioning—providing their jowas with roof, food, and transportation—for the belief, or with an understanding, that they would get sexual intimacy in return. Of course, they did, but the sexual intimacy was not readily available or given. They continue to labour and work for the event of sex to happen.

In sum, while the acceptance of uncertainty showed their creative selves in terms of how to negotiate the possibility of sex with the lalake, the acceptance of the uncertainty of sex also made them work or labour even more to make sexual intimacy certain or possible. Consequently, indeed, the very act of acceptance rendered invisible the material contributions that they already had made to make possible the comfortable living conditions of the lalake. Nevertheless, the acceptance of uncertainty shows that their experience of sex or sexual intimacy in later life demands continuous efforts and labour, indicating the ways in which sexual intimacy is afterall a property of the hetero-masculine subject.

3.3 Transnational Migration and the Returnee (Balik-bayan)

Identity

The third course of action that older bakla do or perform to experience sexual intimacy with the lalake is by returning to the Philippines. This migration return is laborious in that it does not only make use of their physical bodies for travel, but also their economic and financial resources to be able to sustain the costs of returning home (Pino, 2017). As well, as the informants would show, migration return has emotional implications, both by being in the Philippines, as well as by being far way from the homeland.

Elsewhere, I discussed that one reason for migration return is the difficulty of the older bakla to find a lalake in Canada (Pino, 2017). This difficulty is based on the ways in which the Canadian queer norms of sexual intimacy contradicts that of the bakla, who desire a straight man as a sexual partner rather than another gay man. The return to the Philippines was pushed by feelings of loneliness of not being able to find a lalake in Canada, while they perceive a sense of happiness in the Philippines because of their ability to engage easily the lalake (Pino, 2017). 55

However, in this section, I explore deeply the nuance of their return to the Philippines. I aim to understand further how the return to the Philippines becomes an option, or a form of labour, for older bakla to experience sexual intimacy with the lalake. Based on their narratives, I found that the return to the Philippines produces a different kind of consciousness on the older bakla. This consciousness pertains to their thoughts and feelings of being very much sexually desired by the lalake in the Philippines. As a result, they participated in migration return since this placed them into a certain realm of consciousness where they would feel that their sexual desirability has increased.

The reason why this consciousness occurs is their balik-bayan (returnee) identity. This identity surfaces upon their very return to the Philippines. Balik-bayans or returnees are highly regarded in the Philippines because of the racial and class position that Filipinos have ascribed to them. Consequently, this identity impacts sexual intimacy by making the older bakla returnee feel highly desired by the lalake as well.

Since the balik-bayan identity increases their feelings of being desired by the lalake, then the identity reinforces hetero-masculine discourses. As a result, they continue to disregard and tolerate the lalake’s abusive or problematic potential. Instead, they utilize and hold on to their balik-bayan identity to be validated sexually by the lalake. While the identity provides them a seemingly empowered persona, which shapes their sense of happiness while being in the Philippines, the identity also disempowers them by shaping their sense of disregard to the hetero-masculine subjects’ dominating, let alone, abusive stance. In this section, I first show how the balik-bayan identity contributes to the older bakla’s sexual desirability. Then, I show the limitations of the balik-bayan identity that older bakla use to negotiate for sexual intimacy with the lalake.

3.3.1 Balikbayan identity and sexual desirability

After his three-month visit to the Philippines, Shalah, a 75-year old informant, came back to Toronto. He called me up, because he had some pasalubong (gift) for me. When I came to his apartment in the Summer of 2016, while bringing two cups of coffee and pastries to share, he gave me the abanico, a fan made from the rattan tree. When I received it, he shared his experiences in the Philippines, particularly about his lalake whom he asked to get and secure the 56

abanico for his trip back to Canada. One of the repeated scenes in his story was about the power of his balik-bayan (returnee) identity when accessing a lalake in the Philippines. He then narrated:

On my god, hija, sa Pilipinas, pag alam nila na galing ka ng Canada, ang mga lalake parang gustong gusto kana talaga nila kahit hindi ka pa nila nakikita. Katulad ko, yong lalake parang alam nila kung saan ako nakatira at saan ako ma kontak. Kakaloka! Syempre, sinabihan na yon [lalake] ng mga bakla tungkol sa akin!

[Oh my god, in the Philippines, my darling, when they knew that you are from Canada, they [lalake] would already have some liking on you even before you would actually meet in person. Like myself, they [alake] seem to know where I live and how to reach me! It’s crazy! Of course, my bakla friends may have told them about me already.]

According to Shalah, his transnational identity created a different scene with the lalake. In the Philippines, the lalake seemed to show interest in him even before they were to meet in person. He attributed the lalake’s deliberate interest to his transnational or balik-bayan identity—a Filipino, born and raised in the Philippines and lives in Canada, and then able to go back to his country of birth. The balik-bayan or returnee is considered as the Philippines’ new heroes, because they boost the country’s economy through their remittance. According to Shalah, the identity carries the notion of financial abundance. For Shalah, this is the reason why men have pre-existing interests in him, since he was seen as a wealthy man, because he was from Canada, a first world country.

The notion that he is financially equipped and capable of providing the lalake is connected to how the dominant discourse of Filipino migration around the globe is understood as a sign of financial success. Migration of people from the global south to the global north is often understood as a successful developmental trajectory of moving from a third world country to a first world one. For many Filipinos, the West is the global north where a better economic life situation is possible. Canada is considered as a first world country and is often seen as the site of financial prosperity. Therefore, Shalah’s return to the Philippines is being read or assumed, a sign of financial and migration success, since she has been able to partake the wealth of the West. 57

While the balik-bayan identity established the thought of being desired by the lalake, even prior to the actual meeting, the identity also produces a sense of power and command during sex. This power and command pertain to their ability to have more say on how the lalake should sexually engage with them. This is the experience of Mama Riva, the 88-year-old informant. He reported:

Sa Pilipinas, masaya makipag sex sa lalake doon dahil gagawin talaga nila lahat. Hindi ka nila tatanggihan. Gagawin ka talaga nilang reyna. Syempre, gusto nila yon dahil galing ka sa Canada. Feeling nila na ma satisfy ko talaga sila financially so sinasatisfy then nila ako, hahaha.

[Having sex with a lalake in the Philippines is fun because they [lalake] seem to do everything to you. They would never refuse your request. They would make you feel as the queen [a woman]. Of course, they would love to do it because you are from Canada. They have that feeling that I could financially satisfy them so they satisfy me also, hahaha!]

Rosana, the 70-year old informant also shared his experience:

Ay, yong mga lalake, gagawin ka talagang parang tunay na babae. Lalo’t alam nila na galing ka sa Canada na may maibigay ka talagang mas maraming pera! Ayyy, aasawahin ka nila.

[Ay, they [Filipino men] will really make you feel like a real woman. Especially if they would know that you are from Canada who could provide more [financially]! Ayyyy, they would wife you]

Cary, 67-year-old informant also shared his experience when he went to the Philippines:

Minsan, pagsa una, ako talaga ang mag initiate dahil parang nahihiya sila ba. Pero, ikaw talaga yong gusto nila, na parang you are the apple of their eyes syempre dahil galing ka ng abroad. Yong mga lalake ginagawa talaga nila kung ano ang gusto mong ipapagawa sa kanila.

[Sometimes, in the beginning, I am the one who initiates, because they [lalake] seem shy. But they would also engage with you, like you are the apple of their eyes [since you are from abroad]. They [lalake] would do whatever you want them to do.]

In this context, the balik-bayan identity provides older bakla a heightened sense of being desired by the lalake in the Philippines. For Mama Riva, his being a balik-bayan made his sex with the lalake fun because of his ability to be able to command the masculine subject (the lalake) during sex. He felt being treated as the queen. For Rosana, he felt that because he was a Canadian citizen, the lalake treated him as woman and wife. For Cary, he also felt being in power during sex as he was being treated as the apple of the lalake’s eyes. Indeed, they attributed to their balikbayan identity their feeling of being desired highly by the lalake. Such an identity made the lalake assume that older bakla returnees could financially provide them more than the local bakla.

3.3.2 The limits of the Balik-bayan identity: Loving from afar

At the foodcourt, Rosana, the 70-year-old informant, who just arrived from the Philippines, showed me the picture of Roman, his jowa in the Philippines. He narrated how Roman cared for him while he was in the Philippines. According to Rosana, as soon as he arrived at the airport, Roman was already at the airport to pick him up with his motorbike, together with his bestfriend. They would then go to the beach while his bestfriend would go back to Rosana’s hometown to drop off his luggage. Rosana was very fond of Roman, claiming that he was lucky to have found him in his life. He further claimed that he also provided Roman a good home because, “before, he [Roman] was just living in a wooden house, but I [Rosana] got it renovated to a concrete one. I also bought him the motorbike.”

Several months passed, Rosana phoned me. He asked if I knew a social service agency that provided information on immigration sponsorship. He disclosed to me that Roman had been asking him to sponsor him to Canada, because he was tired and stressed living in the Philippines. Roman was also jobless and was financially dependent on Rosana’s remittance. Also, Roman has been asking for financial assistance from him to help to pay his utang (debts). Rosana also added that he was concerned of Roman’s safety in the Philippines. Roman told him that “there were big, armed men in motorbikes looking for him and asking him to pay his 59

utang.” After these conversations, I referred Rosana to a social worker in the immigration and settlement field for information on the sponsorship process.

On the day of our appointment, Rosana and I agreed to first meet at a nearby train station. But he came more than half an hour late. When he arrived, he looked tired and sleepy, and a bit worried. He made an apology and then explained that he had not slept until 6 o’clock in the morning, because he had been chatting with Roman in the Philippines. According to him, Roman was only available to chat with around 5 o’clock p.m. in the Philippines, which was 5 o’clock a.m. in Toronto. He also reported that every other day he woke up at around 3 o’clock in the morning to check if Roman was online.

At the social worker’s office, we found out that sponsoring Roman would be difficult. According to the worker, one of the areas that may pose a problem on Rosana’s application was his age and income. Given that Rosana was already retired and fully dependent on government pensions and welfare for his income, it would be difficult for him to justify his financial capacity to support his sponsored loved one. As a policy, the sponsor should financially support the sponsored relative for a certain period. Furthermore, the worker stated that the age gap would be questioned. Roman was in his 30’s and Rosana on his 70’s. Because of the age gap, as the worker emphasized, the idea of a genuine relationship as part of the qualification for sponsorship in his case would be difficult to justify and establish. He was then advised to avail the services of a lawyer who could represent him.

Months passed. I bumped into Rosana at a senior’s event in the community. At the reception, he immediately said:

I broke up with Roman. Niloko lang niya pala ako [He fooled me]. I found out that he has been seeing some other women, financing them using my own money. And then, he was involved in drugs. Kaya may marami siyang utang [That’s why he had so much debts]. Ayy naku! [Oh my!]. Dito nalang ako sa isa [I will just be with this new one], [as he immediately showed his phone a picture of a guy]. Kahit may anak na ito, may trabaho naman [Even if already has a child, he is not jobless].

I end this section with Rosana, because he demonstrated how the balik-bayan identity conditioned his experience of disappointment and betrayal from the hetero-masculine subject. That is, the increased sense of being desired by the lalake due to the balik-bayan identity and that having made a seemingly successful sexual intimacy with him, allowed the older bakla to develop a strong sense of trust in the lalake, insofar as the older bakla missed the lalake’s patterns of betrayal and abuse.

Like the experiences of the other informants who travelled to the Philippines, Rosana’s balik- bayan identity has been helpful in his ability to access men in the country. It made him more sexually desirable, as he was perceived as someone who could provide more than the local bakla in the country. In his experience, he became Roman’s financial provider, and through his possible sponsorship, he could potentially save Roman from those who were after him. But Roman was just taking advantage of him. He found out that he was being used by Roman to finance his engagement with other women and drugs. He broke up with Roman, indeed, and while he found another potential boyfriend in the Philippines, he seemed to hope the relationship would be different from that with Roman.

While older Filipino queer men are conscious and aware of the lalake’s motivation into their lives, they do not focus on such a motive of the lalake. With the increase of their sense of being desired by the lalake due to their the balik-bayan identity, they seem to disregard the lalake’s motives even more. The feeling of heightened desirability even pushed them to labour more for the lalake or even to exert more effort for him: Rosana had to adjust his wake-up time to be able to catch Roman’s time in the Philippines. Therefore, while the balik-bayan identity serves as the condition of attraction and sexual desirability, it also conditions the experience of disappointment and betrayal of older Filipino gay men. In this context, the balik-bayan identity reinforces the power and privilege of the hetero-masculine subject in the bakla–lalake relationship.

3.4 Conclusion: Identity Validation

As I was having coffee with Feriah, a 67-year-old informant, he shared with me his thoughts of the bakla–lalake relationship. Here, I asked clarifying questions based on his ideas and personal experiences with peers who have jowas. 61

Fritz: Bakit kaya ganyan ang kanilang mga jowa? Bakit hindi nila maibigay ang gusto ng mga bakla kahit ginawa naman ng bakla ang dapat nilang gawin?

[Why do you think their boyfriends are like that? Why can’t they give in to the sexual needs of the older bakla even when they had fulfilled the customary practices of financial, material, and service provision which are indeed necessary in their relationship?]

Feriah: Eh, kasi hindi sila babae eh. [Oh, it’s because they are not considered as ‘real’ women.]

Fritz: Anong ibig mong sabihin? [What do you mean?]

Feriah: Ang ibig kung sabihin, ang mga bakla ay hindi babae. Kaya, hindi talaga sila ang gusto ng mga tunay na lalake. Pero, ang mga bakla ay feeling babae. Ang gusto nila ay mga lalake. Kaya, kahit anong gawin ng lalaki sa kanila, ok lang, basta may lalake sila. Para na silang babae. Yan kasi nakasanayan sa atin eh!

[What I mean to say is that the bakla are not considered real women [cis-gender women] by the lalake. That’s why, the lalake do not truly desire them. But, the bakla feel as though they are women. They want a lalake as their sexual partner. Hence, they seem to accept whatever the lalake would like to do to them (e.g., including their act of sexual rejection). The presence of the lalake would make them feel as though they are a woman. That is what we have been exposed to in the Philippines, right!]

As I argue in this chapter, older bakla labour for the lalake to be able to experience sexual intimacy with him. That is to say, they need to engage in economic, emotional, and transnational forms of labour to be with the lalake (i.e., the hetero-masculine subject). Their engagement with such forms of labour is propelled and reinforced by the discourse of hetero-masculinity that they have also embraced and internalized. Hence, in this context, we see how hetero-masculinity works: being able to demand the effeminized subject (i.e., older bakla) to labour should he want the experience of sexual intimacy with him in late life.

However, Feriah highlighted that older bakla’s engagement in various forms of labour for sexual intimacy is not just for physical or sexual satisfaction, but also, for identity validation. Therefore, as older bakla labour for sexual intimacy, they also labour towards achieving a sense of identity validation at the same time. As Feriah noted, identity validation is the condition where the feminized scripts of the bakla seem to be expressed and enacted. He described it as the feeling of being a woman, which could only happen with the lalake.

However, despite the labour they engage in for the lalake, identity validation is not a guarantee, as evidenced by those moments of constant sexual rejections of the lalake. The older bakla is still, and would always be considered by the hetero-masculine subject as those who exist outside of the normative construct of gender and sexuality. That is, despite hetero-masculinity demands them to labour, their labour is still considered not enough or could not compensate for their gender lack.

Identity validation, therefore, remains unachievable. This, I claim, reveals the devious work of hetero-masculinity: it must construct the state of a seemingly achievable kind of identity validation for the older bakla to continue to aspire, work, and labour for the sexually privileged subject. In other words, hetero-masculinity renders identity validation as a thought, a fantasy, or a promise than an actuality. It creates those moments of sexual rejections, while pushing older bakla to continuously embrace or hang on to the hetero-masculine subject’s desires.

I posit that the vulnerability of the older bakla to believe in the promise of hetero-masculinity to achieve a sense of identity validation emerges from their experiences of historical and political oppression. Further, oppression is from the silencing of their queer gender and sexuality during a time when bakla existence in the Philippines was highly repressed (Garcia, 2009). Since the average age of my informants is 73 years old, they have lived in a moment when homosexuality was highly silenced in the Philippine society. The silencing of even a trace of effeminized acts performed by male-bodied subject was being straightened up, medicalized, incarcerated, or even punished. Some of my informants, like Feriah, claimed that he experienced being subjected to medical and mental health authorities during his younger years to correct his effeminized behaviours. He further shared this when we he talked about his family relationships. Hence,

during their time, the dominant representations of sexuality and gender have always been heteronormative, as circulated in religious institutions, education, and media in the country.

Consequently, these historical and political conditions shaped their sexual identities, especially their adherence to normative scripts of gender and sexuality. The only way they could represent and express their sexualities as closely as possible was through the idealization of and identification with the women’s sexual practices and desires. In other words, feminized script embraced by the bakla has a life-long history. It has always been impacted by normative ideas and practices of gender and sexuality. The bakla identity is, therefore, an already ruined identity by the hetero-norms of gender and sexuality. The norms push older bakla to subscribe to them, producing the fantasy of identity completion or validation (Berlant, 2011).

While most literatures have indicated that ageism and ageist discourses have made sexual intimacy of older adults difficult in later years, in this study, however, I reveal and highlight that their queer identity make their experience of sexual intimacy challenging. Hence, instead of foregrounding age or ageism, older bakla foreground the significant role of their queer gender and sexuality that constitute to their difficulty of experiencing sexual intimacy in later life. Moreover, as this chapter highlighted how racialized and transnational older queer bodies perform their identities in the context of sexual intimacy with the hetero-normative subjects in later life, this study expands and departs from the usual scholarship in the field of LGBTQ aging, which usually focus on the analysis of structural or institutional oppression of LGBTQ elders rather than in the context of the intimate or the private realm of sex and sexual desires. That is, this chapter foregrounds the queer cultural practices and performances of older queer Filipinos in terms of sexual intimacies that showcased their both their marginalizing and seemingly empowering acts.

Chapter 4 Care for the Family

4 Introduction

Ray, an 87-year-old informant, invited me to his home so we could continue our chikahan (chat) about his life. Although I have been hanging out with him at the foodcourt for several months, he wanted our conversation to be in his home so he could be away from the outside heat. It was the peak of Summer in 2016.

Since the age of 62, Ray lived alone in a subsidized seniors’ building in downtown Toronto. According to Ray, when he first came to Canada at the age of 42 in 1972, he lived with his married sister who sponsored him. However, he eventually moved out and lived with his friends, because he wanted to be independent, and to avoid his brother-in-law who kept on questioning why he didn’t ever get married.

With a laugh, Ray claimed, “Welcome to my little brothel!” as he opened the main door in his apartment. I smiled and followed him inside. He asked me to sit and to feel at home while he walked towards the kitchen. There in his kitchen, I heard the squeaking sound of a plastic bag and the movement of the microwave. He was, indeed, preparing something to eat.

As he walked back to the living room, he offered me a bunch of pandesal (Filipino sweet bun) stuffed with omelet. I was curious where he bought them, because I did not see any Filipino stores in his area. He reported that he went to down to the east side of the city, where several Filipino stores are located. He claimed that it was not his intention to buy those pandesal. Rather, he went there to have his money sent to the Philippines. In there, a Filipino store offered remittance services. Ray narrated:

Galing ako kaninang umaga doon sa Filipino store dahil nagpapadala ako sa atin. [I was at the Filipino store early this morning because I have to send money to the Philippines!]

He continued: Oh hija, hindi mo alam, [Oh darling, you don’t even know], I have been sending money to my nephews and their children for more than 20 years now, especially that my sister-in-law, the mother of my nephews in the Philippines, passed away two years ago!

I responded: So you’ve been providing them money?

He slowly responded again: Oh yeah! I have been their financial provider! My friends had even asked me to stop sending money to them because I am already old. But I cannot resist [the breadwinning role]. I feel guilty if I don’t [send money]. It’s like abandoning them if I stop [sending money]. Oh, I tell you more about it.

In this scenario, Ray showed that not only hetero-sexual Filipino men and women were to taking up the breadwinning responsibility—the task of financial support—in the family, but also older queer-identified Filipinos. As well, he showed that older Filipino gay men continue to have strong connections with blood-related families and relatives through their act of financial support. This deviates from the dominant assumptions about older LGBT’s, indicating their movement away from blood-related families because of their experiences of homophobia and heterosexism at home (Herdt & de Vries, 2004).

In this chapter, I ask the following questions: What might be the reasons and conditions why older bakla participate in the financial provision to their families in the Philippines? Were homophobia and hetero-sexism present in the homes of immediate families, since these could have prevented older bakla to engage in such financial provision? If financial provision in the previous chapter is about being able to access the lalake to address the need for sexual intimacy and identity validation, what do the acts of breadwinning, and to some extent, caregiving mean to address? In what ways do these acts reflect certain needs as well as particular relationships with immediate, hetero-families?

I argue that the breadwinning and caregiving practices of older Filipino queer men to their immediate families goes beyond economic and cultural reasons and conditions. Indeed, economic and cultural factors dominate the study of breadwinning and caregiving practices in ethno-racial communities, including Filipinos in Canada. For example, the cultural practice of

padala, which is the term for the act of sending remittance by Filipinos in diaspora to their loved ones in the Philippines, has been mostly understood from a political-economic lens (Stasiulis & Bakan, 2005; Tungohan et al., 2015). Through such a lens, the economic disparity between the global south (i.e., Philippines) and the global north (i.e., Canada) is revealed. Money from the global north has greater value when remitted to the global south. This enables Filipinos in the global north to rely on such remittance to help boost the financial resources of their families in the Philippines. Meanwhile, from a cultural perspective, padala also gestures to a sense of utang-na-loob or debt of gratitude (Fajardo, 2011). Utang-na-loob is a Filipino cultural practice of reciprocity or giving back to close kin, family, and friends who made important contributions to one’s life. This is synonymous to filial piety, which is the caring act of children to their older parents (Lai & Surood, 2009). From a social gerontological lens, padala is evidenced in the transnational and intergenerational caring practices of older Filipinos to their loved ones in the Philippines (Ferrer, Brotman, & Grenier, 2017).

For the older bakla in this study, however, breadwinning (i.e., in the form of financial provision or padala), and caregiving roles (i.e., to older family members) was also driven by intrapsychic and deeply emotional circumstances. These circumstances were moulded by their experiences of hetero-violence while growing up as bakla inside the home. Under hetero-norms, which structure the Filipino family unit, both male and female family members, as expected to reproduce to continue the hetero-patriarchal lineage9 (Ahmed, 2006; Butler, 1990; Gopinath, 2005). Because of his queer performances, desires, and practices of gender and sexuality, however, the bakla is perceived by his family as one who can not help support and maintain the norms of reproduction. He is then considered by them as a useless family member, let alone, a threat to the structure of the family unit. As the informants reveal in this chapter, physical and emotional violence were the apparatus of heteronormativity to straighten and discipline the bakla in the home. Consequently, violence has produced feelings of unworthiness on the part of the bakla in terms of his sense of belonging in the family.

9 The formation of the family unit based on heteronormativity and hetero-patriarchy are well-discussed by queer theorists Ahmed, 2006, Butler, 1990, and Gopinath, 2005. 67

Breadwinning and caregiving are their strategies to deal with the feelings of unworthiness. These allow older bakla to re-invent and re-make their identities: from being tagged as a useless family member due to their non-reproductive potential, to being seen as useful blood-related kin that would make possible the re-generation and sustenance of hetero-normative families. Breadwinning and caregiving, therefore, have served them best. They can re-configure their queer persona so as to advance family belonging. This is evidenced in the ways in which breadwinning and caregiving for older Filipino gay men was also based on stories of intrapsychic struggles.

Indeed, in the previous chapter, a critique of hetero-masculinity was mobilized by rendering visible the limits of the economic, emotional, and transnational labour of the older bakla when it comes to achieving a sense of identity validation with the lalake. This chapter, however, illuminates a critique of heteronormativity by rendering visible the limits of the acts of breadwinning and caregiving to achieve a sense of belonging in the family. The informants suggest that at the end, their breadwinning and caregiving can only offer a sense of partial belonging. This means being somewhat accepted by their relatives. On the one hand, their relatives value and recognize their financial and caring support. On the other hand, their queer identity is continuously being policed and reprimanded by them. Heteronormativity, therefore, works to create this condition of relative belonging.

Furthermore, the breadwinning and caregiving practices of older Filipino gay men render visible the heteronormativity embedded in the cultural act of utang-na-loob or debt of gratitude. Indeed, breadwinning and caregiving are also expressions of utang-na-loob or debt of gratitude of the older Filipino gay men to their blood-related families. However, the sense of reciprocity, which is the core of utang-na-loob, stops with queer-identified subjects. This is because of the inability of hetero-families to welcome the queer identities of their older bakla relatives. This indicates that utang-na-loob circulates and could only be truly operative among hetero-normative subjects, rather than with queer-identified ones.

Breadwinning

Physical and Psychological Abuse Expression of Family Family Partial Belonging Intimacy Intimacy Older Histories of

Bakla Family Violence

Subtle Caregiving Violence & Superficial Acceptance

Heteronormativity

Figure 4. Schematic Diagram on the Care for the Family.

To expound these points further, I offer three sections in this chapter. The first section shows the experiences of violence of the informants in their homes, highlighting their pre-adult years while living with immediate families. The second section is an expansion of the first section, because it reveals how breadwinning and caregiving acts are combinations of narratives and expressions that go beyond cultural and economic contexts. The final section discusses the concept of relative belonging as well as the limits of utang-na-loob in the experience of older Filipino gay men with immediate families.

4.1 His/Stories of Violence

Violence is hetero-families’ management of queerness at home in order to maintain the order and structure of the family. Violence indicates hetero-normativity’s power over queer subjectivities by disciplining and regulating them. As they recall their past experiences with 69

immediate families, the informants revealed two ways in which their immediate families inflict violence on their queer gender and sexuality at home: (1) through the actual demonstration of violence—physical and emotional or psychological abuse; and (2) through subtle demonstration of violence, in the form of seeming or superficial acceptance of their queer gender and sexuality.

Since their narratives substantially illustrate the mechanisms of hetero-normativity, I specifically highlight the experiences of four informants namely, Ray and Feriah for stories of domestic violence and abuse; and Kiki Mora and Marie, for stories of subtle violence. These informants narrated their experiences while growing up as a bakla at home. They then revealed that hetero-normative violence has been part of the developmental history of older bakla. Heteronormative violence has also led them to think of themselves as unworthy of family belonging as their queer identity seems to destroy and threaten the survival of the hetero-familial unit.

4.1.1 Physical and psychological abuse

Continuing my conversation with Ray, the 88-year old informant who opened this chapter, he revealed his experience of physical abuse from his father:

Ray: I was really abused ng tatay ko, yong parang lagi akong sinasakatan [I was really abused by my father, something like I am often being hurt physically by him]. It [the physical abuse] became worst when my mother passed away when I was 15. I was close to her. She defended me when tatay [father] hit me.

Fritz: Why do you think he did that?

Ray: I don’t know why [he hit me]. Magalit lang siya ng kaunti ay sinasaktan na niya ako. Parang almost everyday binabatukan ako at pinapalo ako. Siguro na boking na nya ako. Siguro napansin na niya. Naiinis siya sa akin dahil may pagkabakla ako [Even a simple mistake he would immediately hit me. It’s like almost everyday he hit and beat me up. Maybe I got busted already. My [effeminate acts] must have been obvious to him already. He must have been so annoyed by it [my effeminism].

Here, Ray experienced physical abuse by his own father because of his effeminate acts. The acts disturbed the gaze of the hetero-patriarchal father, because they were inconsistent to the gender expectation of a boy child. By virtue of his male-bodied persona, Ray was expected to act straight and masculine as opposed to being effeminate. His effeminism, which is part of being a bakla, ruins the normative (re)presentation of being a male-bodied person in the family. The deviancy of Ray might have caused much anxiety for the father. Ray seems to no longer uphold the norms of hetero-sexuality, which supported and maintained the hetero-patriarchal position of his father. By inflicting violence on Ray’s body, the father’s anxiety is not only released, but also the threat of effeminism in the family is contained.

The containment of the effeminisms of the bakla, however, is not only accomplished by physical violence, but also by utilizing the state institution. The experience of the 67-year old informant Feriah narrated how his parents sought the medical authorities to contain his effeminate acts. Feriah shared his experience:

Noong napansin ng parents ko na may pagkabakla ako noong mga early high school, dinala nila ako sa psychiatrist para iinom daw ako ng hormonal pills kasi sabi ng tatay ko na “yon [pills] would convert me to be straight.” Pero, I stopped taking them because nag collapse ako sa school. At saka, nakita ng mga classmates ko yong mga gamut sa bag ko. So, nagkalat sila ng balita na addict daw ako. Noong nalaman ng lolo ko eto, galit siya and sinabihan niya ako na “nakakahiya daw ako sa pamilya.” Dapat sundin ko daw yong kung ano ang mga lalaki namin sa pamilya—either pulis or babaero.

[When my parents knew that I acted effeminate and gay early in high school, they brought me to the psychiatrist so I would take hormonal pills because my father said, “the [pills] would convert me to be straight.” However, I stopped taking them because I collapsed in school. My classmates then discovered the medications in my bag. They even spread a rumour that I was a drug addict. When my grandfather knew these, he got very angry on me and told me that “I am such a disgrace in the family. I should follow the traditional expectation of a man in our family—a policeman and a womanizer.”]

In Feriah’s family, the hetero-masculine and sexist discourses of being a policeman and a womanizer constitute to the notion of being a man. These discourses cohere with the hetero- 71

patriarchal practices of denigrating the woman by projecting the man as a more entitled, privileged, and powerful subject than the women in the family. However, Feriah’s effeminism and gay identity run in contrast to such normative expectations. His deviation from these expectations rendered him a disgrace in the family: one who brought shame. In other words, Feriah is his family’s disappointment, since he failed to adhere to the scripts of what it means to be a man in his family.

Consequently, the parents of Feriah attempted to contain his being gay by invoking the power and expertise of medical authorities and institutions. The state institutions became the tools to discipline and correct his deviance. The situation was violent. Feriah’s body was harmed. Consequently, he was subjected to another form abuse, which is more of an emotional and psychological one: he was bullied and was tagged as a drug addict. In other words, the failure of the physical violence gave rise to another form of violence—an emotional and psycho-social one.

4.1.2 Subtle violence and superficial acceptance

These are the words of Kiki Mora, a 75-year-old informant, as he narrated his experiences while growing up as bakla in the family in the Philippines:

Growing up, my parents were strict. And I have a brother who does not accept me. But when I was in my early 20’s, my mother had noticed that me and Eric10, the son of her friend who is around 18 years old, were very close. Of course, he was my lover! Hehehe.

Kiki Mora continued:

Yong nanay ko na akala ko na alam niya talaga na bakla ako simulat simulat paman, ay tinanong ako bakit kami close ni Eric. At sinabi ko sa kanya, “syempre we grow up together. We should take care of each other!” Pero, sabi naman niya,“ok, may tiwala ako sa iyo. Pero, mag-ingat ka nalang pag lumalabas kayo sa gabi.” So, isang gabi,

10 Name of the lalake has been changed to maintain anonymity. 72

natulog si Eric sa amin. Kina umagahan nakita siya ng Nanay ko at sinabihan na umalis na. Ay nagulat ako bakit niya sinabi yon kay Eric. At nang tinanong ko siya [Nanay], sabi niya, tumawag daw sa kanya yong Nanay ni Eric at pinapauwi na. Pero, alam ko talaga na sinabi lang niya yon dahil alam ko sa tono niya eh. Ay hindi talaga ako naniwala sa sinabi niya at nagalit ako sa kanya. Akala ko talaga alam at nainitindihan niya pero parang hindi pa talaga.

[My mother, whom I think already knew that I am a bakla since the beginning of time, had asked me why I was close to Eric. And I responded to her, “yes, of course, because we grow up together. We should take care of each other!” And she replied to me with a sigh, “ok, I trust you. I have faith in you. But just be careful when you both go out at night.” And so, one night, Eric had a sleepover in our house. However, when my mother saw him in the morning, she immediately told Eric to leave. I was surprised and was taken aback and wondered why she did that. When I asked her, she then told me that Eric’s mother called her to ask him to come home. But I knew she was just making it up as I can hear it from her tone. I did not believe her and I was upset of her. I thought she would be very understanding but it seems she was not.]

In this situation, Kiki Mora thought in general that his family seemed to be accepting of his being a bakla. With such a thought of acceptance in mind, he continued to hang out with Eric. Since his family knew Eric, he felt confident to bring him at home for a sleepover. However, Kiki’s thought and confidence were destroyed when he felt that his mother seemed to be uncomfortable seeing him and Eric together in their house. He knew that his mother was just making up a reason for Eric to leave the house.

Hence, her mother might not be able to fully embrace his deviancy at home. While she seemed to accept the fact that Kiki is a bakla, her actual witnessing of Kiki’s gay act inside their house may have disturbed her normative gaze. Consequently, Kiki was upset and felt disappointed upon this realization about how his family did not seem to fully acknowledge and accept his queerness.

Superficial acceptance is a form of violence, yet a subtle one, because it destroys the sense of trust and confidence of the queer subject, both on himself and to those whom he believed could 73

be relied upon. To be clear, the acceptance is superficial simply because it was immediately shattered by the actual moment of seeing the queer act at home. In this context, Kiki then existed as a tense figure in the family: the family saw his queerness a threat to hetero-familial order, but because he is blood-related, they were forced to embrace him with the discourse of acceptance.

In other words, superficial acceptance is the outcome of hetero-families’ anxiety and discomfort to an extremely proximate and loved figure who could potentially destroy the heteronormative order and structure of the family. Consequently, being superficially accepted, Kiki felt as though he was an object who could easily be manipulated and emotionally played, and whose presence in the family could only become legitimate based on the decision of a hetero-normative kin.

Meanwhile, 70 year-old Marie expounds the violence of superficial acceptance by clearly revealing the existence of the heterosexist discourse embedded in it. Joanna narrated his experience:

One time, when I was around 17 and 18 years old, my mom scolded me dahil parati lang daw ako sa telepono [because I am always on the phone]. She wanted to use the phone but I think I did not notice her and I keep on talking and dialing different numbers. I was trying to talk to some boys. Hahaha. She knew that I am gay already but we never talked about it. She immediately said to me, “can you stop talking to boys. Why don’t you just court a woman or even get a [(female] prostitute.” I paused, put down the phone, as my tears started to fall. I said to my mother, “how can I go with a woman! I cannot give her physical needs and everything, I don’t wanna ruin a woman’s life just for marrying, because I know and you knew that I’m totally bakla.” My mother responded with a cry, “I’m so sorry anak [my child] if I offended you that way. I did not mean to hurt you. You know that I accepted you for who you are. I was just angry because you keep on using the phone.”

The superficial acceptance of Marie’s situation was shattered by the actual heterosexist discourse embedded in his mother’s reprimand. His mother indirectly blamed his queerness as the reason of the inappropriate behaviour at home (i.e., talking and dialing different numbers of men). The heterosexist reprimand was painful to Marie, and it made him cry. The heterosexist 74

reprimand was an indicative of his family’s rejection of his queer identity in the family. The situation, therefore, is a subtle form of violence that produces feelings of apprehension on Marie, specifically when it came to his freedom to expressing his queer gender and sexuality at home.

However, Marie indeed refuted his mother to assert his identity. The pain of the reprimand encouraged him to talk back to her, thereby, being able to remind her about the acceptance that he thought was already existing. Thus, Marie’s situation not only indicates the existence of heterosexist discourse embedded in the superficial acceptance of his family, but also the labour of justifying a queer self that the notion of superficial acceptance strongly demands.

4.1.3 Effects of heteronormative violence on older Bakla:

Experiences of Ray, Feriah, Kiki, and Marie

The violence of hetero-normativity rendered older bakla as other, one who does not fully belong or part of the hetero-normative household. In my subsequent conversation with Ray, the physical abused that he experienced in childhood led him to consider himself as not part of the family. He made sense of his experience by continuing to believe that his father was angry because of the fact that he, as the eldest son in the family, could not provide him with grandchildren because of his being a bakla. Ray reported that after he had graduated high school, he found a job that helped financially support his college education. From that time on, he lived close to where he worked and studied, while financially supporting his family as well. He rarely went home to his family, and if he visited them he made sure he had fulfilled his monthly financial obligation to them.

For Feriah, the negative experience he had while growing up made him emotionally distant from his family. After his parents separated in the Philippines, his aunt in Canada sponsored him. He arrived in the country at the age of 19. While his family—his aunt in Canada—seemed to be accepting of his queerness, he continued to feel as though he did not belong with them. Part of it was the fact that he had not lived with them, and another part was the fact that he is a bakla. According to Feriah, at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Toronto in the early 80’s, he went to back to the closet, because he did not want his family to tag him as bakla. He continued

to hear his family’s stigma on the bakla as sinners and carriers of the disease. Given that many queer Filipinos have been infected with HIV and died of AIDS at the time, his family reacted to news reports by saying that “karma yan sa kanila dahil sa kanilang kabaklaan” [Such is a karma (punishment) of the bakla because of their deviant gender and sexualities].

For Kiki Mora and Marie, the acceptance they thought had existed, but suddenly was superficial, made them feel disappointed. Kiki’s disappointment made him describe his position at home as, “I am accepted, but not fully.” Despite this incomplete acceptance, Kiki maintained continuous contact with his immediate family, as he had been financially supporting his nieces and nephews’ education. The same situation occurred with Marie. While he felt disappointed by his family’s superficial acceptance, he continued to live with them, but with apprehension and vigilance. According to him, he made sure not to show his kabaklaan (queerness) at home so, “things would not escalate and they don’t have bad things to say against me.”

Taken together, the violence of heteronormativity, as I argue, has led older bakla to feel and to think of themselves as unworthy of family belonging. The sense of unworthiness is based on how their gender and sexual identity and position are seen as not contributing to the wellbeing and maintenance of hetero-normativity, such as the reproduction of hetero-patriarchal lineage. Social stigma adds another layer to the discourse of non-reproduction. In other words, their being a bakla renders them as useless family members and that would only ruin the hetero- patriarchal unit when being taken in fully by their family.

4.2 Negotiating Family Belonging via Breadwinning and Caregiving

The experiences of the informants with their families during their younger years revealed how hetero-families deal with their bakla identity. However, the informants also revealed a different kind of response to their experiences of non-belonging and othering processes by family. They instead occupied certain positions and performed important family roles and responsibilities. These are the breadwinning and the caregiving tasks and responsibilities. In the breadwinning task, the older bakla, like Ray, do the financial provision or support to the family. In the caregiving task, older bakla provide care to aging parents and family members. Breadwinning

and caregiving, therefore, allowed older Filipino gay men to remain connected to their immediate families despite their experiences of violence, which results in feelings of unworthiness and uselessness. They use these roles to re-assert and to re-claim a sense of belonging in the family.

However, as the informants would reveal in their narratives in this section, their stories of family violence that shape their existing acts of breadwinning and caregiving also collide with their cultural practice of utang-na-loob, a Filipino term for debt of gratitude. Debt of gratitude is an act of reciprocity to those people and individuals who have made material contributions to one’s life; those who have given someone some favours and services to augment one’s life condition (Fajardo, 2011). This is prevalent in collectivist cultures like the Philippines. Utang- na-loob is based on the idea of pasalamat or gratitude in Filipino language. In the context of family relations, utang-na-loob can be likened to the practice of filial piety to older parents, siblings, and relatives (Fajardo, 2011).

Hence, older bakla expand the meanings of breadwinning and caregiving by considering how the cultural (i.e., utang-na-loob) and the economic conditions (i.e., socio-economic challenges of Filipino families), intersect with the intrapsyhic conditions (i.e., the desire to belong) of older queer-identified subjects. That is to say then, the story behind the breadwinning and caregiving performances of older Filipino gay men does not just revolve around the themes of cultural and economic conditions, but also, on psychological conditions that have emerged based on their histories of particular family relationships and positions.

To further elaborate on these intersections, Barb and Mama Riva talked about their breadwinning experiences; while Betcha and Cara narrated their caregiving experiences. The themes in this section include: (1) how breadwinning enables the informants to assert their value in the family and how it also counters negative stereotypes; and (2) how caregiving erases the notion of being single and allows informants to re-work familial relationships.

4.2.1 Breadwinning as Barb’s Efforts to Be Seen as Useful And To Express Gratitude

Dahil hindi ako magkakaroon ng mga anak na gusto ng mga magulang ko dahil hindi ako magkakaroon ng sarili kung pamilya, kaya ako nalang ang tumutulong na mag susuporta sa kanila. Yon na ang tulong ko sa kanila. Kahit bakla ako, hindi ako naligaw ng landas. Nakakatulong ako sa pagsuporta sa pamilya.

[Since I won’t be able to provide grandchildren to my parents ‘coz I wouldn’t have a family of my own, then I’ll be the one to help support them [his family, including his married siblings]. That is my contribution to them. Despite I am bakla, I did not go astray. I have contributed to the family as the breadwinner.]

These are the words of the 72-year-old Barb when I asked him the reason why he continued his breadwinning role to his immediate family. Barb further explained that:

Noon paman ako na yong nag bibigay ng pera sa pamilya ko. Kahit yong kapatid ko na babae ang nag sponsor sa akin para maka punta ako sa Canada, ako yong nag gasto noon sa pag-aaral niya sa Pilipinas. Mahirap lang kami na pamilya. Kahit noong bata pa ako, sinabihan na talaga ako na dapat ako yong mag-aalaga sa pamilya, lalot na’t pag tumanda na yong mga magulang naming. Baka, sigure, nakita talaga nila na may pagka bakla na ako at hindi ako maka buo ng sarili kung pamilya. Pero, tinanggap ko na talaga yon [responsibility] dahil alam ko na iba ako sa kanila. Pasalamat ko na iyon sa pamilya ko na binuhay nila ako maski bakla ako!

[I have always been the family’s breadwinner. Even though the eldest sister was the one who sponsored me to Canada, I was the one supporting her education while we were in the Philippines. We were a working-class family. Since I was a little kid, I have been told that I should be the one to take care of my family, especially my parents when they get old. Perhaps, because, they really noticed that I am gay and would never have a family of my own. But I gladly accepted the responsibility of caring for them because I knew already that I am different [gay; bakla] from them. That [breadwinning] is my gratitude to my family since they took care of me even though I am a bakla.]

For Barb, his parent’s decision to bestow upon him the breadwinning responsibilities since childhood was based on his being a bakla. As the informants have articulated, their hetero- families perceive the bakla as a useless family member, not only because of their effeminisms that seem to disturb the hetero-patriarchal gaze, but also because of their non-reproductive potential that would fail to contribute to the continuation of family lineage. Specifically, in Barb’s words, the bakla is stereotypically being pre-determined to go astray: someone who would not be successful in life. Since these stereotypes of his bakla identity function to make him feel unworthy of family belonging or be part of his immediate family, Barb embraced the breadwinning responsibility.

The tasks of breadwinning, as he believed, would make up for his non-reproductivity by being seen as a useful family member: someone who is also able to contribute materially for the family. Through his breadwinning responsibilities, Barb could assert and re-claim family belonging. That is to say, by taking up the breadwinner role, the stereotypes of his being a bakla would then be mitigated and counteracted, and he could claim that he deserved to be part of the family.

Indeed, the breadwinning responsibility of Barb is life-long in that he embraced it when he was still a child. While such a situation was also impacted by economic needs and conditions since they were a working-class family, Barb’s ability to fully embrace the breadwinning responsibility was also based on utang-na-loob or debt of gratitude in relation to his bakla identity and position at home: “binuhay nila ako kahit bakla ako” [they took care of me despite I am a bakla]. This means breadwinning is also his gesture of reciprocity as though he owed or was in-debted to his family because of his existence. Breadwinning was his way of paying back his family’s ability to take care of him during childhood, despite being gay.

In sum, Barb’s breadwinning role, which is an expression of intimacy with his immediate, blood-related family, instesects with the cultural, economic, and psychological factors. His breadwinning acts are his ways of negotiating family belonging, which has been less felt and experienced by Barb since childhood, due to the ways in which his being a bakla is perceived by his family. The breadwinning role that he embraced allowed him to be seen as one who is worthy of family belonging or acceptance.

4.2.2 Breadwinning as Mama Riva’s shield from the negative stereotypes of the Bakla

While the breadwinning narrative of Barb was lifelong, Mama Riva, 88-year-old informant, had his breadwinning responsibility commenced during his working years. He then claimed that such breadwinning responsibility—the financial support to his family—continued even after his retirement. Mama Riva reported:

So sinugurado ko talaga na yong responsibilidad ko sa pamilya yong pagbibigay ko ng pera para sa kanila dito sa Canada at sa Pilipinas ay nagawa ko. Kahit nagbibigay ako sa lalake, sinu-sure ko talaga na ang budget ko sa kanila ay hindi magalaw so wala silang masasabi sa akin. Wala silang masasabing masama tungkol sa akin katulad ng nalolong ka sa lalaki kaya hindi muna magampanan yong responsibilidad mo sa kanila. Nakakahiya yon, at saka, siguradong hindi ka nila [family] respetuhin.

[So I made sure to fulfill my breadwinning responsibilities like my monthly financial support to my family in the Philippines and sometimes to some of my siblings here (Canada). Even if I spend my money on men, I made sure that my budget [ money] for my family is intact and remain untouched so they would not say anything against me. They cannot say anything against me like I became hook on men that I abandoned them [my family] including my responsibilities to them. That’s such a big shame, you know, and totally, they [family] would no longer respect you!]

To contextualize this narrative, it is implied that Mama Riva embraced the breadwinning responsibility primarily because breadwinning it was his way of expressing gratitude or utang- na-loob (i.e., debt of gratitude) to his family. Like Barb, Mama Riva had been thankful or felt in-debted to his family for raising him, despite being a bakla. Hence, the cultural practice of utang-na-loob is deepened due to his bakla position in the family.

However, as Mama Riva felt accepted by his family, since they knew that he is a bakla and they were able to raise him when he was a child, he was also aware of the various stereotypes that circulated or associated with his being a bakla. As he mentioned, he had all the stereotypes of the bakla—from being seen as emotionally unstable to being sexually excessive: one who could

be engrossed and be addicted on men and would consequently forget his breadwinning responsibility. He felt then that these stereotypes would easily reign or take over the minds of his family members.

To protect himself from the infiltrating moves of these stereotypes to his identity, he made sure that his breadwinning responsibility was not overlooked. Hence, for him, breadwinning mitigates and counteracts the stereotypes of his identity, because breadwinning gestures an image of respectability and usefulness in the family. In other words, breadwinning serves as shield from such stereotypes, which also work to motivate him to maintain his breadwinning responsibility even more. Ultimately, he would then be able to be considered worthy of being part of the family because of his ability to keep the hetero-family’s image of respectability intact.

4.2.3 Caregiving as Betcha’s re-definition of being single

Efforts to re-connect with biological family is not only about taking up the role of a breadwinner. It is also that of a caregiver to one’s older family members as one of the ways to re-connect and assert family belonging. Betcha, the 68-year old informant at the time of the interview, reported that he had no plans to come to Canada. However, when he was a kid, he promised himself that he would be the one to take care of his parents when they got older. His reasoning was that ever since he was a child, he already knew that he would not get married. He claimed:

I knew since young that I would never get married, and I knew in my heart I was going to be single. Unlike my siblings, they would have their own families so their caregiving task are split. And I don’t want that their responsibility to taking care of my parents would also be split. I want my parents to be fully attended to. So, as the single person in the family, I am the best position to take care of them.

Betcha’s promise to take care of his parents came into reality. When his sister, who sponsored his parents to Canada, told him that their parents had deteriorating health concerns that needed care and assistance, he immediately applied for a tourist visa to Canada. When he was in Canada, his sister processed his sponsorship, so he could stay for good. As Betcha claimed:

my work was dictated by my role in the family. I made sure that I worked not more than 2 km. away from where we live since I have to look after my parents 24/7. I need to be with them closely. And, of course, this caregiving task had served me best as I use it to reason out to people about my being single. A lot of people, especially my families’ friends ask why I am still single. So, I told them that I have been taking care of my parents that’s why I didn’t get married.

While the caregiving act of Betcha is also based on filial piety and utang-na-loob, which is an expression of gratitude to his family for rearing and raising him up, the caregiving act was also prompted by his being single. For Betcha, being in a single or unmarried position has utility. He considered it the best position to carry on the caregiving responsibilities for his aging parents. He compared this to his married siblings, whom he thought could not carry the caregiving tasks properly and successfully because of their family and childcare obligations. This notion about the utility of being single had thrived in his mind since childhood. So, when the time came that he needed to take up the caregiving role for his parents, he whole-heartedly embraced the role. Consequently, it benefited his hetero-siblings, since they would not have to carry the burden of the caregiving responsibility.

However, being single was also a subtle signifier of his identity as a bakla. This means that being single, especially if one is a man or male-bodied one, is a contested position that people in his community would be interested to query. Being single in the Filipino community is not the normative life trajectory for a Filipino male. A Filipino male is rather expected to be a padre de pamilya or head of the family with a wife and family of his own (Pino & Coloma, 2018).

To address the queries and the doubts of the people around him, Betcha invoked and capitalized on his caregiving tasks and duties as the reasons of his being single. Hence, the caregiving responsibility provided a new image: a devoted and loving son who is committed to caring for his older parents, rather than a bakla (one who could not reproduce) in the family. The caregiving role diverts the negative notions of being a single man, projecting an image of being a good and useful family member worthy of family belonging.

4.2.4 Cara’s caregiving narrative: Re-working family relationship

If caregiving allowed Betcha to divert the stereotypes of being single, Cara, the 70-year old informant, performs the caregiving tasks for his sister, not only as a way to express his gratitude to her for helping him in his childhood, but also, as a way to re-work their relationship given that her sister does not seem to welcome his being a bakla in the family.

At the time of the interview, Cara continued to recount the incident, which shows his sister’s sacrifice to him when they were still in the Philippines:

Mahirap lang kami at yong mga magulang ko ay hindi nakatapos ng pag-aaral. So, ‘yong kapatid ko na babae ay nag working student at nang natapos siya, hindi talaga siya nag-asawa dahil pinapaaral pa niya ako. Hindi ko talaga makalimutan ang sakripisyo na ginawa niya sa akin. May boyfriend pa siya na pumupunta sa bahay namin at gusto siyang pakasalan. Natakot at nabahala talaga ako dahil if she says “yes,” that means hindi na ako makapagtapos ng college. Narinig ko talaga noong tinanggihan niya ‘yong boyfriend niya na magpakasal dahil gumapang ako sa may kwarto niya at nakinig. Sinabi niya na kailangan pa niyang tulungan yong mga kapatid niya. Hindi ko talaga makalimutan ‘yon! Utang ko talaga sa kapatid ko kung saan ako ngayon. I don’t know where I would be in my life right now if she wasn’t there for me. That’s why, I’m taking care of her now.

[We were a poor family, and my parents did not even complete their education. So, my sister worked while she was in school and when she finished, she did not even get married because he is still sending me to school. I could never forget the sacrifice she did. She had a long-time boyfriend who went to our house to marry her. I was really anxious and worried because if she says “yes,” that means I would no longer be able to finish college. I crept down to the hallway of our house and really heard her saying “no” to his boyfriend’s marriage proposal as she said to him that she still has a sibling to help.” I would never ever forget that moment! I really owe a lot to my sister. I don’t know where I would be in my life right now if she wasn’t there for me. That’s why, I’m taking care of her now.]

According to Cara, his 80-year old sister, now lives in Toronto, was sick and had mobility issues. They lived together before. But when she got married, Cara moved out and got his own apartment. But when his sister’s husband passed away, she live by herself, since she did not have children. So, Cara visited her frequently in her apartment. He brought her food and cleaned the apartment for her. For Cara, the caregiving made her sister to temporarily become silent. That meant that rarely would she reprimand him on his bakla lifestyle (i.e., being effeminate, hooking up with men). As well, as Cara reported, her sister became so focused on her own personal well-being that she would only speak against his queerness in certain moments.

Indeed, the caregiving act of Cara was his way of honouring and giving back to the enduring sacrifice of his sister to him. However, it had served him best as well. Caregiving allowed him to re-connect and re-engage with his sister without being reprimanded. Her sister had never been accepting of his being a bakla, but the caregiving duties allowed Cara to experience a moment without being questioned and scrutinized about his non-normative sexual practice and identity. Caregiving became a moment when they could be at ease with each other, setting aside the issues around his being a bakla in the family temporarily.

4.3 Conclusion: Partial Belonging

As I continued to hang out at Ray’s place, sitting down in the soft, cotton-based couch of his living room, the furniture in front of me caught my attention. It housed Ray’s pictures in standing frames. I saw two full face pictures of him: one, a casual look that emphasized his perfectly trimmed eyebrows and soft make-up; and the other, a more formal and serious look. According to Ray, the casual look was done by Barb, “who got bored, so he beautified [make- up] me;” The formal look, as he said, was just his old passport photo, which he enlarged.

As I continued to look at the other photos, I saw two separate photos of him with a guy. Ray said the two photos were based on significant migration histories of his life: his pre and post migration to Canada. He claimed that the picture on the left was him and his boyfriend in 1972 when he first moved to Canada from the Philippines. Meanwhile, the picture on the right was him and another boyfriend in 1991, which was the year when he first went back to the Philippines from Canada.

The pictures were significant to Ray. However, whenever his sister and her husband visited him, he would immediately hide the other pictures, while keeping the formal, passport- sized one visible in the living room. He felt anxious and annoyed by his sister who would be so upset and get disgusted upon seeing those pictures. She told him that those would bring bad luck to his life.

While hearing these words, his brother-in-law would also say to him: “Why you even did not get married?” This constant policing by his family, according to Ray, were one of the reasons why he moved out and lived independently away from them. He reported that he felt uncomfortable with them and that despite his ability take up the breadwinning responsibility, they continued to scrutinize him.

Cara had the same experience. Despite being the primary caregiver to her sister, her sister continued to police her. Sometimes, when her sister had the chance to visit his apartment, she would search his room to see if he had been sexually engaging with men. Cara then became so hyper vigilant that he constantly felt anxious whenever his sister came to his apartment.

While living independently away from hetero-families one could still be subjected to frequent policing, even more so than some informants who continue to live with hetero-families. Barb, for example, who currently lived with his immediate family, took me to his veranda during our interview. This was because his sister was in the living room and he wanted to make sure that she would not be able to hear when he shared his sexual experiences with men to me. He claimed that he was scared that his family might lose their sense of respect on him. He stated:

Mahal na mahal ko talaga yong family ko so willing talaga ako mag sakrispisyo sa mga ganitong bagay [sexual needs and desires on men] para sa kanila. Hindi ko makayanan na mawala ang respitu nila sa akin so pinag santabi ko talaga ko yong mga kagustuhan kong may lalaki sa buhay ko. Pero, pag gusto ko talaga, sinisigurado ko na hindi nila makikita yon [sexual affairs with men].

[I love my family so much so I am willing to sacrifice these things [referring to his sexual needs and desires on men] for their sake. I cannot afford to lose their respect so I

set aside my desire to have a man in my life. If I want it, I make sure they must not see me having a guy or engaging sex with another man.]

As we know, Barb was a breadwinner as well as the main caregiver to his mother until she passed away. Indeed, for him, these roles were so important, because these allowed him to be seen as a useful and respectable family member. Explicitly showing kabaklaan, particularly around his sexual engagement with men, would surely displace him. With a vigilant and low voice, he continued to say, “I cannot take the risks. So, let’s make sure she [my sister] cannot hear our [gay] conversations.” His situation was very similar to the other informants who lived with hetero-families. One informant claimed: “I cannot even bring men in the house.”

Indeed, in this chapter, I initially started examining the act of transnational financial provision of older Filipino gay men to their families in the Philippines, and in the diaspora. This allowed me to understand how such an act is part of their breadwinning responsibility. As well, they also engage in the caregiving responsibility of their older family members. They use both their breadwinning and caregiving performances to re-claim a sense of belonging in their immediate, blood-related families who see them as useless family members because of their non- reproductive potential. Therefore, I argue that breadwinning and caregiving practices of older bakla, for their immediate families, were founded based on stories and experiences that go beyond economic and cultural reasons and conditions.

However, the breadwinning and caregiving roles that they embraced wholeheartedly as ways to negotiate belonging with immediate families offered a partial experience of belonging. As the informants revealed at the end, despite the breadwinning and caregiving tasks they do for them, their being a bakla continues to be stigmatized as that which could negatively destroy the integrity and respectability of the hetero-family unit. They continue to experience the policing and reprimand of their queer gender and sexualities by their families. In fact, even if they live with or physically away from their immediate families, they can not escape from such constant policing of their sexual identity as bakla.

Hence, breadwinning and caregiving, which reflect a sense of enduring sacrifice and reciprocity to immediate families, could not guarantee full belonging. Instead, what is received in return is partial belonging: being somewhat accepted given their utility and care to immediate families, 86

but their queer identities could still not be accepted by them. The cycle of reciprocity also ends with queer identified subjects, as evidenced by their limited sense of identity expressions at home. They could not have full expression of their identities with normative families, who have benefited and received the care and the support of older queer subjects at home.

In this chapter, therefore, older bakla revealed what it meant to negotiate and work with the structures and lines of hetero-normativity, especially in the context of the family. Older bakla’s sense of intimacies with hetero-families—through their acts of breadwinning and caregiving for them—are gestures of a constant striving for belonging at home, and, at the same time, a sense of endurance to the emotional difficulties from the hetero-normative violence that they experienced at home. For the older bakla then, their own home situation, whether they live with anyone or alone, is not necessarily always a space of comfort and protection; but also, of hypervigilance, anxiety, and constant policing. As Ray had described in the opening scene, his home is like a brothel: a place of both pleasure and displeasure.

Chapter 5 The Friendship Dynamics of Older Bakla

5 Introduction

In one of my interviews with Ray, the informant who opened the family intimacy chapter, he shared with me that he had a nightmare. He dreamed that he had drowned. He thought that he died. When he woke up, he was sweating and feeling very nervous. While sharing this experience to me, he then remembered Anton, his 82-year-old best friend, who recently died of a stroke.

Anton was his bakla friend based in New York. They were good friends since they were in the Philippines. As Ray reported, he and Anton usually checked in with each other via phone every night just to see if they were “still alive and kicking,” as Ray would describe it. Ray claimed that his nightmare might be caused by his feelings of anxiety of thinking about Anton’s sudden death. According to Ray, he was really sad and shocked when he heard the news. He and Anton just came from a trip before he died. Unfortunately, he was not able to go to his funeral because at that time he was sick and his doctor did not allow him to travel to the US. I further asked Ray: “Why do you feel anxious about his death?” Before Ray answered me, he looked at Anton’s picture hanging on the wall. He then responded, “ngayon na wala na yong bestfriend ko, na wala na den akong travel companion. Hindi na talaga ako maka pag trip. Parati nalang siguro ako sa bahay. Wala ng travel-travel for me. At wala na ring mag check sa akin.” [Now that my best friend is gone, I lost a travel companion. I would no longer be able to go for a trip. I will just be at home all the time. No more travels for me. And no one is going to check on me.] With a sigh, Ray continued: “We would never know when would be our final time [death]. It seems that I would be next because he is gone.”

As I examine the friendship dynamics of older bakla in this chapter, I focus on their feelings and emotions that they have with friends during the older years. Indeed, the arena of older or later stages in life is bound with loss situations, especially due to the death and dying of loved ones, including friends. Ray’s experience, therefore, allowed me to ask the following questions: (1) How might feelings of anxiety around the loss of a friend (e.g., of Anton) help us understand the 88

dynamics of queer friendship during the later stages of life? How might feelings of loss reveal the significance of friends in the later years of life?

According to Sarah Ahmed (2004), feelings and emotions are pedagogical in that they teach us something about human life and relationships. Also, it has been noted that the friendship dynamics of the bakla is non-erotic, because they are not sexually attracted to one another (Manalansan, 2003). They consider their friends as comrades who knew them for so many years while being in Canada. They do not necessarily have to perform for their friends in order to be either validated or accepted like what they do for their lovers and families, as shown in the previous chapters. What abounds, then, are their certain feelings and emotions that they have with them, especially in terms of their presence or absence in their lives. Hence, a focus on exploring their feelings and emotions in this chapter, rather than on the actions or performances, make sense as such are prominent in their interactions with friends.

I argue that older bakla expand the meanings of queer friendship because of the other possible feelings that move and circulate while being with friends. The existence of multiple feelings and emotions critique dominant literature that suggests queer friends as figures who would always carry positive feelings, including happiness (de Vries & Megathlin, 2009). Happiness, for example, rests on the idea that friends become fictive families or families of choice whom queer subjects could turn to, because blood-related families failed to accept them. Older queer Filipino men, however, reveal other kinds of feelings besides happiness with friends. In this chapter, they show the feelings of anger, resentment, and frustrations that occur when friends become figures of conflicts and tensions. As well, friends become figures of anxiety and fear when they pass away, as Ray narrated.

The multiple feelings with friends allow older queer Filipino men to claim that, “they do not have a choice.” According to them, in their late life years in the diaspora, they seem to have no choice in terms of who they would end up hanging out with: whether or not with those friends who might bring happiness, sadness, anger, or anxiety into their lives. To them, if they discontinued socializing and being with friends (who are bringing different kinds of feelings into their lives), they would end up being isolated and unsupported. This indicates how older queer Filipino men consider friends as not necessarily a family of choice that most of the

literature has considered. Friends could instigate various kinds of relationship dynamics, situations, and circumstances as indicated by the emotions and feelings that could possibly emerge and circulate.

I pay more attention to the feelings of anxiety and loss in this chapter. I use this as the point of analysis to understand the overall significance of friends and the associated emotions and feelings that friends bring during the late life years. What does it mean when both feelings of happiness and conflict that friends have brought would be all gone or lost upon their very passing? What does it mean when feelings of happiness and anger are transformed into feelings of anxiety and loss? Happiness and conflicts, however, seem to be the common feeling that one can expect from friends. But, friends as signifiers of anxiety and loss, is, indeed, undertheorized.

According to the informants, death or passing of a friend does not only signal a close proximity to death, but also, signals a potential loss of a moment and space to express queerness or kabaklaan. Hence, feelings of anxiety and loss allow us to understand how friends are connected to their queer identities. Friends make possible the expressions of ones’ queer identity and performance. Their death is also the death of the possible moment to expressing queerness. This implies that queer friendships of older bakla is relational and communal rather than individual. As well, this shows how feelings and emotions with others (i.e., friends) delineate particular situations and relationship dynamics.

In the subsequent sections, I illustrate first the ability of friends to provide social and practical support, especially around identity and cultural expressions. These sections illustrate the occurrence of happiness that friends could bring. The second section shows the conflicts and tensions with friends that run across class and age dynamics. Here, it shows how certain feelings of anger, resentment, distrust, and frustration occur with friends. Finally, the conclusion section shows instances of loss and death of friends where feelings of anxiety and loss emerge. It ultimately discusses the significance of friends and peers in the lives of older Filipino gay men (see Figure 5).

Friends Provide Social Figures Support & of Happiness, Intimacy Joy, Figures Space for Camaraderie Death of Queer Identity Is Expressions Anxiety of and Loss Uncertain Friends

Older Bakla

Figures of Anger, Friends as Resentment, sites of Hatred Conflicts and Tensions due to Classism and Ageism

Figure 5. Schematic Diagram on Intimacy with Friends.

5.1 Provide Social Support: Space for Identity (Sexual, Gender, Cultural) Expressions

When I was walking towards the foodcourt, where most of my informants usually congregate, I immediately saw Feriah. He looked very busy. As I went closer, I discovered that he was applying make up on Mama Riva. Mama was sitting still and looked very obedient. He was also wearing a printed headscarf. His eyes were closed, and Feriah carefully applied eyeshadows on them.

I asked, “What is the make up for?” Feriah claimed, “it’s a trial!” as he continued working on Mama’s eyes. However, from the way I saw it, Mama’s make-up session was almost done, as the contour and the blush were already on. I felt excited to see his final look.

All of a sudden, Cary came in. He handed Feriah the big brush and said, “There you go, she’s gonna be very pretty now!” He then continued to say:

Kasi [Because], she is going to the Philippines to join a religious parade as Armi Kuusela. You know, Armi, the first Miss Universe beauty pageant winner. So, we decided to ask help from Feriah so he could have a make-up trial. We will then take a picture and we will show it to the bakla there in the Philippines who will assist him. At least, they have a guide already. And, I also bought him this crown! At least, he doesn’t need to buy a crown there!

In this scenario, friends make possible the expression of bakla identity, specifically around feminine gender expression. They provide social support in this form: the production of a certain space and moment where they can fully be in-touch with their bakla persona. Here, a community or space of mutual support did exist. While both Feriah and Cary were able to help Mama put on her make-up, they too benefited from that moment of supporting Mama: both were able to perform their queerness by showcasing their cosmetic expertise. These kinds of moments are indeed significant. Since they could not show or perform these in front of their families, their friends make these queer performances and gender personas possible.

Moreover, in terms of queer sexuality expressions, older Filipino gay men also reported how they could freely express and tell their stories of heartbreaks and sexual encounters with men to their friends. They could describe in detail their experiences with men in front of their friends. One time, I witnessed how they showed pictures of their men to their peers, and how they were able to articulate their feelings of them—their friends served as space where they could safely express their stories of sexual relationships without fear of biased judgements and persecution.

Meanwhile, some informants also considered their friends as those who could provide cultural support. This meant that with their friends, they could be connected with their own language and culture. One informant noted:

Dito sa Canada, ay English lahat di ba? Pero, pag nasa mga kaibigan ako, nakakasalita talaga ako ng maayos at naintindihan talaga ako. Lalo’t nat ngayon ang mga bagong generation, mayroon na silang parang sariling salita.

[in Canada, it’s all English right. So, if I am with my friends, I can really speak my language and I am always understood. Especially now, we’re already old and the new generation has a language of their own.]

This scenario brought to light older Filipino gay men’s love of soap operas in Filipino languages. By being with their friends, they could easily express their thoughts, opinions, and critique of the soap opera shows they were able to watch on the Filipino channel in their own language. For example, one time I found them watching their favourite soap in one of their friend’s iPad at the food court, I though they were fighting because of their raised voices. But they were actually just talking about the incidents of the show and how their favourite character might endure her life’s predicaments.

Finally, friends also offer practical support. They address their feelings of nostalgia that emerge, not only from their diasporic situation, but also from the changes and transitions in older ages. One informant claimed:

Oh, noon, sumasali talaga kami sa mga events na iyan. Nag be-beauty contest pa kami, may stage play, at saka may musical. May tatlong grupo na pageant: galaxy girls, queen of hearts, and international queern. Lahat kaming sumali ay mga bakla. Ang gaganda pa naming and pasikitan kami sa stage.

[Oh, before, we really participated in cultural events. We did beauty contest, stage play, and musical. There were three groups: galaxy girls, queen of hearts, and international queen. We were all bakla. We were so pretty and we’re competing with each other.]

This re-narration of past events became possible with the presence of their friends. They could re-kindle their wonderful memories and re-narrate their friendship histories. They could also memorialize those friends who passed away by talking about them.

Another form of practical support, which friends provide, is by serving as companions to important appointments, trips, and travel. Like Shalah and Kiki, they accompanied each other to go to the doctor, while sharing information on relevant services. Some of them also initiated and helped out the planning of someone’s birthday, normally held at the foodcourt.

In sum, friends serve as a community where they can be engaged in and be in touch with their queer diasporic subjectivities, which includes their queer gender and sexuality, language and culture, as well as serving as sources of practical support. I argue then that the existence and presence of their friends, with their ability to offer psychosocial support, produce feelings of happiness and joy merged within the spirit of mutuality, camaraderie, and trust. Happiness and joy were produced based on the fact that they were able to express their identities with the people with whom they considered as those who could truly understand their queer subjectivities.

5.2 Conflicts and Tensions

While the presence of friends in their lives become figures of happiness, friends can also become figures of anger, hatred, and resentment due to conflicts and tensions. With these conditions, the monolithic idea of queer friendship as merely sources of support is being expanded. This section outlines two moments or causes of conflicts with peers and friends: the loss of trust and the looking down on someone. These also show how classism and ageism work in their own communities of belonging.

5.2.1 Loss of trust

It has been four years since Cary and Tina, Cary’s friend for more than 10 years, have not spoken. They were both drag performers. According to Cary, their conflict started when Tina blamed him for not clearly informing him about an organizations’ expected talent fee. Cary shared the story:

Yong isang organization kung saan ako nag-perform noon ay ininvite din si Tina na mag perform din. Sabi ni Tina, hindi nalang daw siyang nagtanong at humingi ng talent fee dahil baka hindi sila maka afford. Pero, mga ilang araw, tinawagan ako ni Tina. Galit siya. Sabi niya, may isang bakla daw ang nagsabi sa kanya na naka receive daw akong ng talent fee sa organization na yan. Kaya, sagot ko sa kanya, “Yes I did receive a talent fee. And I assumed that you also did.” Pero, galit parin siya sa akin at ako ang bini- blame niya dahil hindi ko daw siya nasabihan na kaya palang magbigay ng pera ang

organization na ito. Nagalit din ako sa kanya! So, sinabihan ko siya na huwag mo akong ebiblame sa katangahan mo! Kaya mula noon hindi na kami nag-usap.

[An organization that I had the chance of performing in the past invited Tina to perform at another occasion as well. According to Tina, he did not bother to ask a talent fee from this organization because he thought that they cannot afford. However, weeks after his performance, Tina called me angrily as she was upset of me because a certain bakla, [another friend of them] told him that I did receive a talent fee from the same organization. I said to Tina, “Yes I did receive a talent fee. And I assumed that you also did.” But Tina was still upset, and blamed me for not telling him about the organizations’ capacity to pay. I was annoyed. So, I responded angrily and said to him that he must stop blaming me for his katangahan [stupidity]. Until that time, we never talk.]

In this scenario, the conflict that arose from miscommunication is tainted by a financial and economic condition and its impact on their friendship, which has been forged by trust. In their friendship, it seems there is an implied understanding that they would have each other’s back, which includes supporting each other in the context of their work as performers. For Cary, he may have felt frustrated by Tina for blaming him about his failure to receive a talent fee. For Tina, he may have felt betrayed by Cary for not giving him a heads up about the fees. The trust that they had for each other was broken.

The lost of trust that led to the end of friendship also happened to Mama Riva. He had a best friend Rita11, in whom he confided his stories of sexual intimacies. However, because of this particular moment, Mama Riva cut him off from his life. Mama Riva shared the story:

Kasi mayroon din akong isang kaibigan na nagsabi sa akin kung anong sinabi ni Rita. Sabi ng kaibigan ko, noong nagkita si Rita at mga relatives ko habang ako ay nasa Pilipinas, tinatanong daw ng mga relatives ko yong mga pagpupunta ko sa Pilipinas at yong mga kinikita ko na mga lalaki. Hindi niya ako denipensahan. He even exaggerated

11 Although Rita is not part of the study, his name has been changed to maintain anonymity. 95

and fueled the story. Kaya yong family ko ay grabe makausisa sa akin. Pero, hindi ko kiniconfront si Rita. Iniiwasan ko nalng siya at siya umiiwas din sa akin. Ayaw ko nang mangita ang pagmumukha niya. So pag-nandiyan siya, ayaw ko talaga siyang kausapin dahil nagagalit lang ako.

[Because there was one friend who reported what he [best friend] did to me. According to this friend, when he met my relatives while I was in the Philippines, they were asking him about my travels and sexual affairs in the Philippines. He did not defend me. He even exaggerated and fueled the story. That’s why, my family never stop scrutinizing and questioning about my travel to the Philippines! But I did not confront him. I just evaded him and he evaded me too. I don’t like to see his face again. So, if he is around, I just don’t talk to him as he makes me angry.]

Like Cary and Tina, Mama Riva and Rita relied on the idea that they would have each other’s back. However, for Mama Riva, Rita failed him for not defending him from his family’s scrutiny of his sexual affairs and travels to the Philippines. From someone whom Mama Riva could talk to with regards to his sexual affairs, Rita turned into someone who could no longer be trusted. Anger is what Mama Riva felt with Rita’s presence. But unlike Cary and Tina, Mama and Rita did not have a moment of confrontation. Instead, they evaded each other. The loss of trust made their friendship gone awry. They have not reconciled since then.

5.2.2 Look down upon someone

At the food court, Ray randomly shared to me that he had a friend whom he avoided. He was referring to someone sitting across us. Ray claimed that he stopped engaging with him because of his arrogance. He shared:

That guy [pointing to someone who is sitting at distance in the food court] is very hambog [arrogant]. Who do you think he is? He even doesn’t have the looks. And he keeps on bragging about his men. Please! He is so annoying.

Ray continued: Everytime he bumped to me, he immediately showed me pictures of his men even if I did not ask for it. He wants me to feel that he is more desirable than me. Para bang sinasabi niya na mas angat siya sa akin. Hindi naman ako nang-ano sa 96

kanya! [It’s like he is really wanting to show to my face that he is better than me. I wonder why he is that to me? I did not do anything to him!]

Here, Ray felt a sense of arrogance from his friend who showcased pictures of his men. He read his arrogance as a gesture of looking down on him, rendering him less sexually desirable than him. That is to say, his friend seemed to express an intention to compete sexually with him. I would describe this act as ageism: the consideration of Ray as lacking of youth because of his age, making him not capable of engaging sexually with others (Calasanti & King, 2005). His friend seemed to show to Ray that he is more capable than him, because he got more men in his life than Ray. The situation broke their years of friendship.

While the act of looking down on someone could be based on age, it could also explicitly be based on class. This situation was experienced by Marie. According to him, it was on that moment when he was invited at a house party of one of his friends who was celebrating his birthday. The celebrant knew that Marie had a boyfriend who would come later in the house. Marie then shared the story:

Nang dumanting ako sa party, lahat ay nakaupo na doon sa sala dahil parang tapos na sila kumain lahat. So pumunta ako nalang sa kitchen table para kumuha ng pagkain at bumalik ako sa sala with my food para makaupo, at kumain kasama nilang lahat. Pagkatapos kung kumain, bumalik ako sa table para kumuha ng pagkain para naman sa boyfriend ko. Alam na ng nag-birthday na darating yong jowa ko at siya paman naman nagsabi na magtabi ako ng pagkain para sa kanya.

Pero, bigla nalang ako nakarinig ng boses tinatawag ako bakit daw ako nagtabi ng pagkain kahit hindi pa tapos ang party. Yong bias niya ay mataas na parang pinapagalitan ako, and sinigawan ako na hayaan muna yong mga pagkain sa mesa. Hindi ko talaga na expect na magagawa niya yon sa akin. Kaibigan ko siyang matagal. At tapos ginawa niya yon sa akin sa harap ng marami. Napahiya talaga ako. Para bang nandoon ako sa party para mag nakaw ng pagakin.

Ay pagkatapos, nag-away na kami at nag-sigawan sa party. Sinabihan niya ako, “who do you think you are!” na para bang mababa talaga ako. Agggh, nagalit talaga ako sa

kanya. Para bang ang pagkasabi niya ay pumunta lang ako sa party para sa pagkain. Para bang ibing niya ipakita na mahirap ako at wala akong makain sa bahay. Para siya ata ‘yon. Siya yong pumupunta lang sa party for the food. Kaya mula noon, hindi na kami nag-usap.

[When I arrived there [at the party], everyone was already sitting down in the living room as they had just finished eating. I then went to the the table to get food and then went back to living room, sat with them and eat. When I finish eating, I went back to the table to take some food and saved them for my boyfriend. The host knew already about it, and she was even the one telling me to save food for my boyfriend.]

[However, I just suddenly heard a voice calling me out why I am keeping some food since the party was not over yet. His voice was raising, like he was reprimanding me, and told me to just let them be in the table. I didn’t expect that he would do that to me. He was my friend for several years. And then he did that to me in front of the people! I felt embarrassed! I felt like I was there to steal the food!]

[Then after, we were fighting and raising each others’ voices at the party. He then told me “who do you think you are,” as though I am just nothing! Aghh, I was really upset on him! He thought that I am just in the party for the food! So, he meant that I am poor and have nothing to eat at home! He is just projecting it to me. It’s him who only attended house parties for the food! From that time on, we never talked to each other anymore.]

To provide some context, in the Filipino community, especially at a party, it is not uncommon that guests would bring the food and the left overs from the party to their homes. This cultural practice is termed as bring house, which is usually done later at the party as every guest would have the chance to get a share and bring some food home.

However, Marie’s friend called him out with a classist gesture. He was deemed a food stealer as his friend thought that he was already doing the bring house even when the party was not over yet. Marie was angry about it, not only because he was immediately judged by him, but also because the tone of calling him out was disrespectful. His friend looked down on him or disrespected on him. He was considered lacking in cultural etiquette, and did not have the

finesse, tact, and knowledge while being at the party. That is to say, he was relegated as someone from a low-class background. Consequently, the two had a fight at the party that ended their friendship.

In sum, the presence of friends in older Filipino gay men’s life could be the cause of negative emotions such as anger, frustration, and resentment. Loss of trust occurs because of the ways in which friends deviate from the cultural idea of them as those who could be relied and trusted upon in terms of economic and sexual situations. Meanwhile, the gesture of being looked down upon by friends occurs, often instigated by classism and ageism.

5.3 Conclusion: The Loss of Friends

What if friends pass away? What happens when those figures of both happiness and conflicts are gone? Or, how do we imagine a condition of life that neither happiness nor conflict are present? In this final section, I reflect on the ways in which feelings of happiness and conflict are transformed into feelings of anxiety and loss due to friends and peers’ passing. How do we understand friendship dynamics in older age when loss almost becomes an everyday occurrence due to the death of friends?

On a Friday night that was caught by a harsh snowstorm, I went to a funeral home. While the snow has been piling up outside due to the thrust of storm, the body of Clarita laid gently in an open casket at the funeral home. At 67, he passed away. Red roses and lavenders surrounded his casket. These covered almost half of his body, letting the golden laces of his dress to pop. Located at the left corner of the room, just a few spaces away from the casket, a slideshow, which featured Clarita’s pictures, was projected.

I was sitting with Feriah and Shalah, who were indeed, close friends of Clarita. As we watched the slideshow, tears ran thinly down our checks. We remembered the wonderful moments that we had shared with Clarita. While in our seats, Feriah and Shalah spoke of Clarita, as they recalled how he had contributed so much in their lives as well as in the community.

According to them, Clarita was really their leader. They recalled that almost every season they found themselves participating as either performers or organizers of cultural events that Clarita initiated for them. Feriah stated:

Si Clarita talaga ang nag le-lead sa amin. He always brings people together. Siya ‘yong parati maka-isip ng mga events na makasali ang lahat. At ngayong wala na siya, hindi naming alam if mayroon pa bang mga ganoon. Wala na siguro dahil wala na siya.

[Clarita was really the one who initiated things for us. He always brings people together. He could always think of events that draw us together. And now that he is gone, we don’t know if we would have the same experience. We wouldn’t have those activities anymore because he is gone.]

The loss of Clarita, therefore, made their friends wonder about the possibility of having someone to bring them together in the community. For them, his passing was not just about an individualized kind of loss experience, but also a community loss. Clarita made possible the expressions of their bakla identity in the community—it was Clarita’s presence that enabled their queerness to be known in the community. His absence—his passing—meant a loss of the certain part of their (queer) identities. Loss therefore, offers an understanding that the friends of older Filipino gay men are connected to their identities.

Loss of friends in the homeland also impacted one’s motivation to return to the Philippines. Cary shared how he lost interest in travelling back to the Philippines, because his childhood bestfriend already passed away. As he shared his experience to me, he suddenly paused and became teary eyed as he remembered his bestfriend. He narrated:

Tuwing umuuwi ako sa Pilipinas, nandyan talaga siya parati dahil siya yong contak ko. Sabay kaming lumaki, minsan isang plato lang ang kinakainan namin, at kahit sa kalsada na kami natutulog after sa mga ini-organize namin para sa fiesta. Tinuturi ko siyang tunay na kapatid. At noong nasa Canada na ako, parati kaming nag-uusap sa phone, at sa kanya ko sinabi lahat yong mga paghihirap at kabigoan ko sap ag-ibig dito sa Canada. At pag umuuwi ako sa Pilipinas, siya yong tagakontak sa mga gwapong lalaki at sinasamahan niya ako papunta sa kanila. Hindi ako lumalabas ng bahay pag

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hindi ko siya kasama. At ngayon na wala na siya, parang wala na akong ganang umuwi ng Pilipinas. Kasi, pag nandoon ako sa Pilipinas at wala na siya, sa bahay nalang ako parati. No more men. No more fun.

[Everytime I travel back home [Philippines], he was always there ‘coz he was my contact. We grew up together, eat the same plate and food, and even sleep in the street when we organized festivals. I treated him as my sibling. When I migrated to Canada, we were always chatting, and I shared to him all my hardships and heartbreaks here [Canada]. And everytime I go back home [Philippines], he is the one who connected me to good-looking men, and he even accompany me to meet them. I don’t go out in the house if he is not with me. And now that he is gone, I’m not that excited to go back home anymore. If I would be there [Philippines], I imagine that I would have nothing to do since he is no longer around. I would always be inside the house. No more men. No more fun.]

Cary furthered described his situation, “para akong napilayan noong nawala siya” [I felt like being crippled when he was gone]. This meant that he felt as though he is no longer whole, or having a full sense of being and identity when his bestfriend was gone. As well, for Cary, the loss of his friend meant he would no longer be able to enact his queerness while being home in the Philippines.

Feeling a great sense of loss not only happen with friends who have been supportive in their lives, but also with those whom they have had conflict with. When Joanna Marie heard about the death of one of his friends whom he had a conflict with, he reported that he still attended his funeral. Meanwhile, for Ray, when he also heard the news on the passing of a friend whom he had a grudge with, he reported that although he did not attend his funeral, he had let go of his negative feelings of him.

Friends, therefore, are repositories of multiple emotions and feelings. But, indeed, upon their loss or passing, they become reminders of older bakla’s proximity and vulnerability to death. Death here is not necessarily about physical mortality; but mostly about the death of a potential moment and space where queer identities could be enacted, performed, and even shared.

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Anxiety and loss, therefore, are powerful analytic concepts as we continue to understand the friendship dynamics of racialized queer older adults living in the diaspora. For these queer subjects, friends are connected to their queer identities. Their death re-narrates the notion of how intimacy during the late life years—in the context of friendship—continues to remain uncertain.

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Chapter 6 Conclusion:

Summary of Findings and Implications to Critical Social Work Education and Practice

6 Summary of Findings

This study has addressed the knowledge gap in the field of gerontological social work by foregrounding the experience of intimacies of the older bakla, who embody a racialized and diasporic queer identity. While the very few studies on older adults who are racialized and queer offer an analysis of the intersection of race and sexuality in the context of ageing, (Battle, Daniels, Pastrana, Turner, & Espinoza, 2013; Hull & Fine, 2005; Woody, 2014), the literatures have mainly focused on their experiences within their current country of settlement or nation- state. That is to say, such literatures do not necessarily take into consideration the ways in which racialized and queer older adults may have certain connections or ties to other countries (e.g., Philippines) that may shape how they consider and understand their identities, relationships, family, and community in the diaspora (Pino, 2017). As well, the existing studies on race and sexuality in gerontology do not necessarily focus on the nuanced issues of intimacies, specifically on how certain intimacies in late life are impacted by culture, transnationalism, and normative discourses of identity.

Hence, this study, which focuses on the older bakla, has contributed to the diversification of the research subjects in gerontology, thereby, aiding in the efforts to de-center the dominant gerontological knowledges that have reinforced normativities. Most importantly, as this study focuses on how older bakla negotiate their sense of intimacies with their loved ones in their own community of belonging in the diaspora, this study offers an important analysis around the sense of agency of marginalized older adults, as reflected in the actions and responses that they take, as well as on the kinds of feelings and affects that they feel and experience, when dealing with normative discourses, systems, practices, and institutions.

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Clearly, then, the focus on the older bakla in this study illuminated a different shade of grey. This means showcasing the existence and the significance of difference in the field of LGBTQ aging studies, which has been traditionally dominated by older adults from the White, mainstream group, the usual subjects in LGBTQ aging studies and research. The focus on these populations reinforces a universal concept of aging and queer realities that work to eclipse the lived experiences and realities of certain queers who do no necessarily adhere to Western ways of knowing and meaning-making (e.g., older bakla).

By considering the performance and enactments of the older bakla, whose queer realities are not merely sexual, but also emotional, economic, and cultural, as well as racialized and classed, this study debunks, breaks, and resists such idea of sameness and universality. As older bakla emphasize difference when it comes to intimacies with sexual partners, families, and friends, they exposed how the other markers of difference, such as race, class, culture, history, and transnational locations that they embody produce a different way of performing queer identity and intimacy, as well as, a different way of experiencing ageing in Canada.

Older bakla have revealed stories of intimacies that integrate their queer cultural expressions of them, as well as their own understandings of the norms and conditions that govern and regulate such queer cultural expressions of intimacy with loved ones. As a result, their stories of intimacies generated a powerful critique of minority ageing experiences by problematizing existing relationships around sexual partners, families, and peers. Such a problematique, a Foucualdian concept of destabilizing the given norms (Rabinow & Rose, 2003), opens up room for other discourses, practices, and thoughts around intimacies that would further allow us to reflect on power relations, forms of marginalization, identity oppression, and of empowerment and disempowerment.

Revisiting the three contexts of intimacies that older bakla were situated in—sexual intimacy, family intimacy, and friendship—illustrate such a problematique of intimacy. In the context of intimacy with sexual partners, older bakla revealed the additional efforts, let alone, the labour that they make for their desired sexual partner: the straight-identified man or the lalake. These forms of labour include doing extra services to and for the lalake, performing certain bodily mechanisms to endure the lalake’s uncertain gestures of intimacy, and participating or

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embarking on a journey or travel to the homeland. Older bakla perform or do such forms of labour, hoping that the lalake would provide a sense of identity validation. For, the hetero- masculine discourse [i.e., the lalake is for the woman only], which shapes the gender and sexuality of the lalake and maintains his privileged position, renders older bakla as not worthy or good enough for the lalake, since they (the lalake) see them as not real women whom they, the lalake, truly desires. Hence, this context of intimacy offers a critique of the hetero-masculine discourse by revealing how it subtly moves and impacts queer sexual relationships in the later stage of life, how it reinforces the heteromasculine gaze, thereby, illustrating the ways in which hetero-masculinity demands the effeminate and subjugated subject to labour for him should he want his intimacy. As well, this context of intimacy elucidates a nuanced perspective of the intersection of aging, gender and sexuality, labour, migration, and transnationalism, which was revealed particularly upon the return of the older bakla to the homeland; a return that reinforced the power and the impact of the hetero-masculine discourse on his identity, desires, and fantasies.

Meanwhile, in terms of intimacies with families or blood-related kin, this study expanded the common stories around breadwinning and caregiving normally performed by hetero-sexual family members. The stories of breadwinning and caregiving of family members with normative gender and sexuality have successfully revealed the socio-political and intergenerational factors that shape breadwinning and caregiving of Filipinos in the diaspora (Ferrer, et al., 2017; Stasiulis & Bakan, 2005; Tungohan, 2015). These factors include economic (e.g., the value of padala or remittance), cultural (e.g., expression of the cultural value of utang-na-loob or reciprocity), and intergenerational (e.g., keeping the family together) conditions. However, older bakla expanded or problematized these stories by revealing the intra-psychic and deeply emotional reasons or factors that also serve as motivation for their enactment of the breadwinning and caregiving roles for their family. For the older bakla, breadwinning and caregiving are possibilities for family belonging, which they have been deprived of because of being queer in the family. Their queerness renders them as a useless family member because of the hetero-family’s perception of them as bakla, the un-reproductive subject—one who could not carry the hetero-patriarchal lineage of the hetero-family. Growing up in a hetero-familial household, they are violently punished as they are seen as those who could ruin the hetero- family unit’s hetero-patriarchal image and lineage. Breadwinning and caregiving serve as tools 105

to re-make their identities, so as to be seen as good citizen-subject, thereby, re-asserting their belonging in the family.

However, these tools were not sustainable or did not fully serve its purpose. For, they are continually policed and regulated by family members because of their queer sexuality and gender. As a result, older bakla receive partial belonging: they are accepted and honoured due to their breadwinning and caregiving contributions, but they are still not allowed to fully express their identities in the family. This context of intimacy then is a critique of heteronormativity that shapes the formation of the hetero-normative family unit. It renders visible the hetero-norms embedded in the very act of breadwinning and caregiving. These normative family roles seemingly rectify the feelings of unworthiness of the older bakla; however, such feelings of unworthiness rupture as family members police their queer practices. Their participation of breadwinning and caregiving have instead exposed the limits of family intimacies.

And finally, in the context of friendship, while older bakla’s intimacies with friends are deemed non-erotic, they instead revealed multiple feelings or emotions with their friends. That is to say, as they continue to maintain friendship with peers or with the other older bakla in their community, they reveal certain feelings and emotions beyond happiness, which is the common feeling when we think of having a community who share similar identities in terms of race, ethnicity, age, language, and sexuality. Instead, they also reveal feelings of anger and resentment due to conflict and tensions with them that emerges from classism and ageism in the community, as well as the feelings of anxiety and fear when friends pass away.

The considerations of the existence of these multiple feelings with friends had ultimately revealed the ways in which friends of the older bakla are connected to their identities. Friends enabled older bakla to express their queerness. Loss of friends (e.g., due to their death; and sometimes due conflict) produce feelings of anxiety around the potential loss of their own queer identities, since friends made possible the expressions of their queer identities. This finding reveals the collective, communal, and inter-subjective aspect of the bakla identity, as opposed to an identity that is solely individual, personal, or internal. As well, the focus on feelings and emotions here contribute to the pedagogic capacities of emotions or feelings (Ahmed, 2004; Boler, 1999), allowing us to identify the cultural meanings of queer relationships, expressions,

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and practices of older queer adults. This context of intimacy offers a critique of queer friendship and community by considering its multiple sides and phases and how the presence and absence of friends impact the very expression of queerness in late life.

These three major findings of the study generally reveal a picture of the ways in which historically marginalized older adults, based on race, transnational location, class, sexuality and gender, worked through and come to terms with their experiences of marginalization and oppression in the context of their intimate relationships in later life. This study considers older bakla’s sense of agency in situations where normative discourses and bodies marginalize them. It also showcases their responses and ways of engaging the intimate affairs of their life that are bounded by normative social relations. Hence, rather than focusing only on examining and documenting their experiences of marginalization and oppression within hegemonic institutions and systems, I instead produced a study that closely examined how marginalized subjects negotiate with the normative discourses of gender, sexuality, and age to address certain psychosocial and relational needs in the later life stage.

Moreover, the three major findings of this study produce the idea of uncertainty as the outcome of the various means of negotiation and dealings of the older bakla with intimate figures. Despite their efforts of securing intimacy with such loved figures, there are no guarantees that their efforts are being reciprocated as well as their sexual, emotional, and social needs are met. As they maneuver their queer identities and practices to have some sort of intimacy within the terrain of the normative, the actual experience of intimacy is uncertain. Indeed, in sexual relationships with the lalake, intimacy becomes uncertain, because the lalake may eventually leave them to pursue (hetero) normative relationships. Meanwhile, family intimacy is uncertain, because breadwinning and caregiving do not necessarily secure a sense of belonging in the family. Further, friends become unreliable because of mistrust, conflict, ageism, and classism, and when they passed away, the sense of community support and queer identity expressions become volatile and uncertain.

Uncertainty then becomes one of the living realities of historically marginalized older adults— the older bakla—in their very experience of intimacy in the later stage of life. The uncertainties exist because of the ways in which the norms have been so vigorous, let alone, violent on the

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older bakla, especially when they assert their desires and needs. These norms demand older bakla to produce actions and performances that are seemingly empowering and disempowering to them. This means the norms demand older bakla to do certain actions that may seemingly address their emotional or psychosocial needs. However, at the same time, the actions that they do or take reinforce the power of the norms and normative bodies and institutions, hence constituting to their sense of disempowerment. Consequently, in this process, intimacy is not a guarantee because of how queer identity stands or being perceived by the dominant norms of gender and sexuality.

6.1 Theoretical Implications

The findings that highlight the concept of uncertainty in intimate relationships enrich the given intersectionality approach, which is from a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological perspective. Indeed, intersectionality, informed by such a perspective, allowed me to pay attention to the socio-political and cultural contexts of the informants, as well as the possible implications of these to their ageing bodies (Pino, 2017). Specifically, in this study, a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological approach of intersectionality allowed me to culturally situate the performative and relational aspects of the sense of intimacies of the older bakla.

In retrospect, I initially engaged with Berlant’s theoretical concepts of intimacy, which emphasize the notion of performativity and relationality. These two concepts cohere and resonate with the expressions of intimacy of the older bakla with their loved ones as evidenced in their stories and experiences. However, missing is the cultural context that impact the very expression of intimacies of the older bakla. By integrating the queer diasporic–feminist gerontological lens of intersectionality, the queer diasporic identity and location of the informants were taken into account, allowing the cultural script of the bakla from the Philippines to emerge.

The consideration of the cultural expressions of queer identity of the older bakla is important. As their stories have shown, the cultural script of the bakla shapes their later life experiences. In their stories, the bakla cultural script of queerness is the target of the disciplinary tactics of the

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dominant norms of gender and sexuality that most of their loved ones embody and use against them. As well, with the queer diasporic–feminist gerontological approach, Berlant’s performative and relational aspects of intimacy are given nuance and context, especially by how the two aspects of intimacies are played out in racialized queer communities. Thus, an intersectionality framework informed by a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological lens has contributed to the contextual expressions of intimacies of the older bakla, while paying attention to their socio-political and cultural contexts, as well as the possible implications of these macro amd mezzo factors to their ageing bodies.

While the intersectionality informed by such a perspective is helpful in understanding the intimacy of the older bakla living in the Canadian context, the main finding of the study, that is, the concept of uncertainty, has in return deepened the theoretical approach itself. The concept of uncertainty opens up those stories of struggle that marginalized subjects experienced when it comes to asserting their identity and sense of belonging in the realms and spaces of those whom they considered important and intimate in their lives. These stories of uncertainties are indeed carrying affective and emotional bearings.

Therefore, through the concept of uncertainty, intersectionality informed by queer diasporic– feminist gerontological lens would also be enriched by considering and highlighting the affective or emotional responses of marginalized subjects when they interact (intersect) with both normative and non-normative subjects, bodies, and groups, both within their own community and in the mainstream society. In other words, the notion of uncertainty enables intersectionality from a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological lens that also pays attention to the affective and emotional aspects as effects of the interaction between the marginalized body and dominant discourses, as part of articulating the material effects of the dominant discourses and systems of oppressions.

6.2 Methodological Implications

Indeed, the findings of this study were obtained through kuwento, which older queer Filipinos in this study have engaged in, in order to express their ideas, thoughts, and experiences related to

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their intimacy with significant others. As I have discussed in chapter two, kuwento is demonstrated by the informants through a performative, and quite an animated style and form, allowing them to put together the divergent temporal and spatial moments and scenes of their lives. Kuwento, therefore, is a communicative procedure that enables older bakla to express their stories of intimacies in a manner that is comfortable, convenient, and familiar to them.

More importantly, kuwento paved the way to building what I have called a queer– intergenerational connection and conversation with my informants. This is because kuwento prompts the embodied cultural knowledge that both my informants and I shared and carried. Older bakla were able to share their life experiences that showcased the way they maneuvered their bakla identity in the Canadian diaspora to me as someone who is also part of the community. This intergenerational connection and conversation made possible by kuwento becomes a moment or a scene where my informants and I were able to showcase and illustrate how we bridged and linked disparate queer temporalities due to generation and age gaps.

Consequently, this methodology addresses the intergenerational gap, which is a result of ageism that scholars and advocates have identified in terms of the interconnection and engagement between elderly LGBTQ’s and the younger generations in the LGBTQ community (Wight, LeBlanc, Meyer, & Harig, 2015; Woody, 2014). Hence, methodologically, this study offers the possibility of employing kuwento as a queer–intergenerational methodological approach to generate a knowledge of intimacy that is culturally-grounded and relevant.

Moreover, this study also offers the possibility of how Charmaz’s (2014) grounded theory, which I employed in the data analysis, sutures with kuwento. The suturing of kuwento with grounded theory analysis is based on their shared principles and practices, such as the ways in which both approaches foreground critical self-reflexivity of the embodied identity of the researcher, as well as the sense of openness and flexibility existent in both approaches; thereby, allowing the informants to express and show their own voice, styles, and ways of maneuvering and articulating their own stories and experiences of intimacies.

Consequently, the shared strengths of kuwento and grounded theory have been vital in the establishment of trust with the research informants. Trust is an important component in this very process of research engagement of intimacy. Stories concerning their romantic dynamics, family 110

sentiments, and anxieties in friendship could not easily be spoken due to the regulation by heteronormative assumptions embedded in certain contexts and settings. In other words, their ability to share and express in their own terms their experiences of intimacies could always be regulated and immediately policed by normalcy. Trust here allows both the researcher and the research informants, who both identify as queer, to genuinely be comfortable on their identities while engaging in the research process. Kuwento and grounded theory principles has, therefore, instigated such a sense of trust by ensuring and validating the sense of agency and autonomy of the informants.

In sum, this study has addressed the first research question that sought to understand the experiences of intimacy of the older bakla with their significant others and figures or support groups namely, their sexual partners, their blood-related kin and relatives, and their friends or peers. The study has, therefore, indicated that the expeience of intimacy of the older bakla with significant others are conditioned by uncertainties due to the dominant norms and discourses that impact such relationship with loved ones.

The second question that inquired on the ways in which queer or non-normative sexual and gender identity of the older bakla impacted their expressions of intimacies with significant others is also addressed. Here, the study indicated that the queer identity, desires, and performances of the older bakla shape their experiences of intimacies, which have been uncertain. Their queer identity, the bakla identity, which they continue to embody in the later years of their life, is a contested identity; meaning, the bakla identity becomes a site of marginalization, as well as one of empowerment (e.g., as reflected in older bakla’s very ability to endure and to hope for identity validation [with the lalake], assertion for belonging [in the family], as well as, ability to commune with friends in the community). Hence, as shown by the older bakla, this study evidenced the ways in which a particular form of queerness, the bakla identity, including its associated cultural, performative, and affective dimensions that are built or shaped by histories of gender and sexual oppression, marginalization, violence, and racialization becomes a lifelong marker of difference as well as of contestation.

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6.3 Implications to Social Work Practice

In this final section, I address the final research question: What are the implications of these issues of intimacy to the quality of life and wellbeing of the older bakla? To answer this question, I begin with the idea of uncertainty of intimacy that older bakla revealed in this study.

I argue that uncertainty is a motivating force. Because of the uncertainties of their intimacies with loved ones, older bakla are pushed to labour and make use of their bodies to achieve such a sense of intimacy, which they aspire. Considering their aged body, their labour to achieve intimacy, both physical and emotional forms of labour, may have certain material implication on their ageing bodies. Elsewhere, I discussed how older bakla’s travel and return to their homeland to experience sexual intimacy made them think about their own bodily health conditions (Pino, 2017). They made certain thoughts and preparations related to their physical health needs. Bodies, then, are sites of knowledge, especially when it comes to the lives of older adults (Calsanti & Slevin, 2006). Bodies have material and political meanings as they become foundations through which certain policies and disciplinary practices are conceptualized and implemented (Katz, 2000). The aged body, as feminist gerontologists have reminded us, must not only be about understanding its discursive meanings, but also, its actual material and physiological processes (Calsanti & Slevin, 2006). Therefore, as older bakla continue to engage with their bodies through their physical and emotional labour, which come with being intimate and proximate with loved figures, the effects of their actions or labour towards their bodies, which impacts their quality of life and wellbeing, must not be overlooked. Uncertainty then, is a temporal signifier, which brings us back to the significance of our bodies.

But, in such an uncertainty of intimacy, which allowed older bakla to labour, also shows their strength, courage, and endurance. Here, older bakla showed their courage and endurance of carrying on their marginalized queer identity, the bakla cultural practices, throughout the lifecourse. They continue to identify with the cultural script of the bakla even when their intimacies are at stake. They embody their cultural expression of queerness despite being aware of its material repercussions. They face the uncertainties of their intimacies. Hence, if uncertainty have made them to labour, uncertainty has also made them to showcase their creative selves. 112

Consequently, by facing the uncertainties of their intimate relationships, they created new stories of ageing that contest, and eventually resist, dominant stories of intimacies made possible by normative discourses of gender, sexuality, and age. These dominant stories of intimacies are usually marked by stories of success, happy endings, and good life that the nation-state continues to promote (Pino, 2017). Indeed, queer thinkers and scholars have reflectively reminded us that these kinds of normative intimacies promoted by the nation-state are fantasies of good life that conceal the harmful and the violent structures of unequal power relations in terms of gender, sexuality, race, and age in ones’ intimate lives (Ahmed, 2010; Berlant, 2011). To name systems of domination, such as hetero-patriarchy, hetero-normativity, neoliberal capitalism, whiteness, and settler colonialism made possible the production of good life fantasies to enable the nation-state to claim a united front (Ahmed, 2010). The uncertainties of older bakla’s intimacy in older age break these notions of good life narratives, thereby, showcasing a generative critique of the norms. Uncertainty, as mobilized by older Filipino queer folks, is a queer move: an anti-normative gesture that exposes the limits of normative intimacies.

Considering these findings analysis, social workers may transcend and translate the insights of this study not only in the discursive, theoretical realm, but also in thinking about policy and practice. First, as this study revealed, the relationships with significant others or social support groups among older sexual minorities of colour, social workers may continue to remain critical about the ways in which social support groups (i.e., romantic partner, family, friends) may or may not facilitate or aid in the wellbeing of older adults. Social workers may continue to engage in an open conversation with older adults, whom they work with, in terms of the ways in which significant support people in their lives may or may not have a good understanding of their needs, lifestyles, and queer cultural practices.

Second, as this study indicates the uncertainties of intimacies and relationships of older adults who are racialized and queer, the policy around Aging in Place must also be revisited. Aging in Place started as a movement that advocated for the de-institutionalization of the elderly so they could live in their own homes and communities with social and health supports and services, accessible housing and transportations, civic and social engagements, information, and opportunities for social participation (Golant, 2014). As Golant (2014) indicated, such a movement aligns with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Age-Friendly Cities

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Project that follows an active aging framework: “Active Ageing is the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation, and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. In an age-friendly city, policies, services, settings, and structures support and enable people to age actively” (p. 3).

Given the circumstance of older adults who are queer, racialized, as well as classed and diasporic, such as the older bakla in my study, social workers may participate in engaging in discussions and public forums that may re-assess and modify some of the principles of this policy to account for the experiences of older minorities with non-normative relationships, and who have uncertain support and intimacies from loved ones. For example, as older bakla continue to rely on their community for formal and informal support, principles of this policy may need to be clearly established in culturally-grounded interventions, programs, and practices to support their ways of life, choices, and practices. This means that when this policy translate into practice, questions around respecting queer cultural practices and relationships, especially by those who are racialized and diasporic, must be openly discussed.

And finally, this study offers evidence on the ways in which a culturally-grounded epistemology can be useful in working with older adults with diasporic and transnational experiences. Kuwento is an example of a cultural tool that could be effective in understanding the issues and circumstances of the daily lives of older bakla. Following this move, social workers may continue the act of being open to understanding and learning the cultural nuances, practices, and tools that their clients may have shown to them, while also maintaining genuine and critical support as clients continue to perform certain strategies of navigating and living their lives in the diaspora.

6.4 Limitations of the Study

In this section, I outline some limitations of the study. These limitations would serve as entry points for future research endeavours.

First, this study has used a qualitative approach in research. The focus of this approach is to have a deeper or in-depth understanding of the issue of intimacy that particular marginalized older adults may have. Hence, a small sample is needed for this purpose. Therefore, this study

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does not aim to produce a generalization, which is consistent in other research approaches that follow quantitative principles. Indeed, this study focused on a select group of older adults to understand how the identities and social locations that are embodied, based on gender, sexuality, queerness, race and ethnicity, diaspora, and transnationalism, which shape experiences of intimacy in the later stage of their life.

Second, this study focused on older queer Filipinos in the diasporic context of Canada who continue to identify, embrace, and perform the bakla cultural script from their country of birth— the Philippines. I acknowledge, however, that diversity exists in the older queer Filipino community in Canada. There are those who do not necessarily embrace or identify strongly with the bakla scripts of queer sexuality and gender. Thus, this study only reflects the stories and experiences of those who identify with the bakla identity. This study finds relevance and applicability to a particular group of older adults who are both sexual and racial minorities.

Third, methodologically, in combining grounded theory and kuwento, while they share similarities and convergences, I also recognized incompatibilities. First pertains to the cultural location of each approaches. Both approaches are historically situated differently, where grounded theory could be more of a Western perspective and a highly institutionalized one; whereas, kuwento is very much community-based, and based on particular marginalized communities who have been subjected to Western colonization. As well, kuwento is still very nascent compared to grounded theory approach. These varying locations of each approaches— kuwento and grounded theory—must also be thought of in terms of considering each of their own political, cultural, and ideological goals and directions. Perhaps, this could be addressed and reiterated as a future research project. Nevertheless, I chose, what I considered to be the strengths of each approach, thereby elucidating the generative potential of their combination and integration.

As well, the varying cultural location of the two approaches posed a challenge at the decision- making process of the researcher; that is, how the researcher would decide on moving forward his/her analysis of kuwento data including the decision of which cultural concept would he/she explored more or forego. Indeed, as mentioned, kuwento is so rich with cultural data and one must be attentive to them. Kuwento consists of cultural terms and concepts that reflect the

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informants’ articulation of their lived experiences. Indeed, for a researcher following constructivist grounded theory, one of his/her tasks is to identify which concepts or ideas to explored and build and how he/she would complement them with other kuwento data. Thus, the preponderance of cultural concepts that warrant analysis, create difficult decision-making choices for a constructivist grounded theory researcher who needs to develop a clear conceptual analysis of the data.

In this situation, another challenge would then occur and that is, timing. The researcher may need more time to dwell and understand the data given kuwento’s non-linerarity and non- chronological presentation of its narratives and statements. Themes and topics in kuwento may not necessarily immediately linked together, thereby, posing certain time issues spent in understanding their connections. This may be incompatible with grounded theory which demands immediate coherence, flow, and clear structure of the qualitative data for the development of a conceptual map. Perhaps, other qualitative analytic approaches (i.e., narrative, discourse analysis, critical ethnography) could be explored in future research as that which could also be compatible with kuwento given their own unique approach to data analysis. For example, narrative analysis that enable one to re-story a lived experience (e.g., Riessman, 2008) rather than producing or creating a theory of a cultural phenonomenon could also be explored. Engaging kuwento with other approaches may have to indeed address timing and structure issues, which are also existent in using kuwento with construtivist grounded theory approach.

Finally, in constructivist grounded theory, analysis is made during preliminary stages – even during data collection, transcription, and coding. Because of this, the researcher may need to be attuned to the kuwento narratives. He/she may need to gain understanding of the cultural, political, and social context that shape the emergence of kuwento narratives so as to illuminate a preliminary analysis that gives justice to kuwento data. In other words, kuwento demands the researcher to pay more attention to the context of the informants who did the kuwento, to be informed on the political structures that impact their lives and identities, thereby, allowing the researcher to spend more time with informants rather than to rely solely on what has been obtained in a one-time data collection.

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6.5 Implications for Future Research

The findings and limitations of this study potentially serve as entry points to future research areas. Here, I outline the possible areas that, when explored, could also provide new analysis and insights for future research.

First, in terms of the sexual intimacy of the older bakla with the lalake, future research could be geared towards exploring the thoughts, ideas, and positions of the lalake in terms of his engagement with the older bakla. What might the lalake think of the normative discourse of hetero-masculinity, which has propelled the older bakla to labour for intimacy with him, and which have benefited him in the process? What might be his other motivations besides economic ones, for example, that have allowed him to also be open to the older bakla’s desire for sex and sexual intimacy, especially the fact that he indeed does not identify or claim as homosexual, but rather, a straight (cis-gender) man? This future investigation that focuses on the lalake will give nuance to the notion of sexual economy, let alone of social exchange theories in the context of Filipino masculinity, which is also a racialized and classed masculinity in the diaspora (Fajardo, 2011; Pino & Coloma, 2018). As well, this investigation will continue to trace the workings of the norms and discourses of hetero-masculinity that impact queer relationships in the later stage of life.

In terms of family intimacy of the older bakla, future research could also be undertaken to the family members of older bakla, especially those whom older bakla continue to have emotional contact, such as their older female siblings in the family. This further study might reveal how older women are also impacted by the hetero-norms that shape and form the household. Indeed, studies have indicated the experiences of older Filipino women who also become the conditions of possibility for the heteronormative Filipino family to exist through their breadwinning and caregiving roles (Ferrer et al., 2017). By exploring the intimate connection and relation between older bakla and the older women in the Filipino diasporic community will shed light to the intersecting relationship of ageing, gender, and sexuality and how the norms of heteronormativity continue to impact transnational and intergenerational family situations of older adults (Ferrer, Brotman, & Grenier, 2017).

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In terms of intimacy with friends, the concept of multiple emotions is a helpful analytic concept, especially when we think of the ways in which historically marginalized older adults engage with institutions of power and with normative bodies, groups, and communities. Indeed, in this study, I foreground how older bakla engage and produce varying feelings and emotions with their friends. The consideration of multiple emotions has led me to reveal and understand that the concept of queerness of the older bakla is collective, relational, and inter-subjective, rather than solely an individualized experience; that is, queerness for older bakla is communal, and social relational experience because of the ways in which they think of their friends as conditions of possibilities for their queer expressions and identities to continue to exist in their later life years.

Building on this concept of multiple emotions as effects on one’s engagement with institutions and normative bodies, I currently engage in a critical analysis that explored the engagement of queer Filipinos with their own religion, a normative and colonial institution (Pino, under review). This is then an example of applying the concept of multiple emotions to understand how certain marginalized subjects, such as queer Filipinos, engage with an institution that has historically been violent on them. In such work, I critically reflect on the multiple emotions as effects of queer Filipinos’ engagement with organized religion to obtain a sense of spirituality. For future research, this concept and insights could also be applied to other groups of historically marginalized older adults who engage with institutions of power to address certain needs.

Another area of future research investigation is the political nuance of kuwento, especially on the ways in which it elucidates a decolonial and anti-colonial move. Given that kuwento is a sociolinguistic practice of Filipinos, it also illustrates a critique of the normative, Western ways of story telling practice, which follows a structured chronology; therefore, how might kuwento reveal a critique of colonial ways of knowing? Since this dimension of kuwento has not been thoroughly investigated in this study due to the study’s purpose and parameters, I currently aim to engage in a critical analysis of exploring this aspect of kuwento, particularly the slang language used by queer Filipinos termed as chika-chika, a derivative of kuwento that shows similar patterns of kuwento but is more nuanced in terms of its contextual meaning. In such current work, I aim to unravel and think through the ways in which chika-chika (manuscript in

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preparation) could possibly be the site of the practice of de-colonization by queer communities of colour. This unravelling of the anti-colonial aspect of kuwento through chika-chika may perhaps flesh out the genealogical differences between kuwento and grounded theory that I discussed as one of the challenges in combining kuwento and grounded theory approaches.

Moreover, it is also worthy to consider for future research the ways in which kuwento could be useful in direct social work practice. While kuwento has been useful in the context of research, for it has been mobilized as a methodology, how might kuwento become valuable in terms of client engagement and interview, and even perhaps in the context of group dynamics or process? While this seems to be applicable when engaging with first-generation Filipinos, how might the analytic insights of kuwento be translated and applied to other contexts, populations, and communities? Future research would need to be conducted to build evidence on how kuwento could be integrated in direct practice with certain marginalized communities, including older adults.

Finally, as revealed in this study, uncertainty is the outcome of the efforts of the older bakla to secure intimacy with loved ones. While uncertainty becomes the lived reality of their experiences of intimacies, uncertainty has also enabled them to endure and to hope, thereby, showcasing their creative selves in negotiating with the normative discourses that regulated their queer identities. Reflecting on this idea of uncertainty that describes the experiences of intimacies of older bakla with significant others (i.e., sexual partner, family, and friends), future research could be geared towards understanding how the concept of uncertainty may reveal insights in the context of providing care to older bakla, or older adults who identify as both a sexual and a racial minority.

The future work could be in conversation or dialogue with the issues and critiques raised by Brotman and Ferrer (2015) in Diversity Within Family Caregiving: Extending Definitions of “Who Counts” to include marginalized communities. In this important work, they reveal the limits of the common assumptions around the care practices of marginalized communities that most social and health service providers would tend to live up: (1) the ability of marginalized communities to take care of their own; and (2), the consideration of family caregivers as only those who are blood-related and from a normative family unit. Using evidence from their

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studies, they critique the two limiting assumptions, since these do not only conceal the diversities within caregiving communities of older adults, but also, the assumptions reinforce invisibility, exclusion, lack of cultural sensitivity embedded in mainstream services, as well as the norms the have privileged certain ideal bodies of the nation while displacing those who are not (Brotman & Ferrer, 2015).

My study revealed that uncertainties of intimacies of racialized and queer older adults will enliven the critiques raised and will also serve as point of reflection to consider the agency, desires, and sense of autonomy of marginalized older adults, and how these are impacted by the normative systems and discourses that exist in their communities of belonging.

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Appendix A:

University of Toronto Ethics Approval

Note: University Ethics Protocol currently uses an online system. Attached are screenshots of the renewed protocol: #00033157.

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Appendix B:

Information Letter to Potential Participants

To Whom It May Concern: My name is Fritz Luther Pino and I am Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Toronto. I am conducting a research study on Filipino gay seniors in Toronto as part of my Ph.D. program. The purpose of my study is to understand Filipino gay seniors’ experiences, including their migration history, their perception of age/ageing, their needs and struggles, their strategies to deal with everyday problems, and their social support system. The outcome of this study aims to inform the development of programs, services, and policies that would benefit Filipino gay seniors. I am currently seeking participants for this study. To qualify, you must be: (1) of Filipino ancestry; (2) at least 60 years old; (3) identify as gay. The qualified research participant will then participate in 1 to 2-hour interview with me once he consented by signing the interview consent form. The interview will take place at a day, time, location that is convenient for the participant. If requested, I can send the questions ahead of time, which will serve as a guide and starting point for the interview. After the interview, I will ask for another consent if I can follow him (or not) in his daily activities so I can get more information of his daily experiences. Participation in this research is voluntary and the participant have the right to withdraw at any time, even when interview and/or observation has been completed. To withdraw, the participant will contact me by email, phone (contact information is at the end of this letter), or in person. He will simply state that he discontinues his involvement in this research. I will then destroy all information that he shared with me. There will be no negative consequences attached to either declining to participate or withdrawing from participation in the study. As well, I will be the only one with access to the research data (interview recordings, transcripts, and participant observation notes). I will ensure to keep the data in safe password- protected area of my restricted-access computer and a locked filing cabinet. All electronic files

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will be encrypted in accordance with UofT’s standards, which can be found at: http://www.research.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/documents/2013/05/datasecurity1.pdf The data that will be collected in this study will be kept for several years and will be used in expanding the study to additional geographical regions (e.g.; Vancouver and Winnipeg that have sizable Filipino populations), transnational contexts (e.g., the Philippines, United States, or Australia) and other ethnic minorities (e.g., Chinese, South Asians, Koreans, Vietnamese). What are the benefits of participating in this research study? ü You will receive a $20 gift card for completing the interview. ü Another $20 gift card will be provided to those who will be selected for participant observation. ü The research will provide the opportunity for you to share your thoughts, opinions, and perspectives in a safe and non-judgmental manner because all information will remain anonymous. ü You will be part of the first study on Filipino gay seniors in Canada which will be shared in scholarly, community, and governmental settings through publications and presentations. ü The results of the study will assist in the capacity building of seniors’ organizations, including developing and improving programs that are sensitive to the lives of minority seniors. For questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the University of Toronto Office of Research Ethics by phone (416) 946-3273, fax (416) 946-5763, or regular mail: McMurrich Building, 12 Queen’s Park Crescent West, 2nd Floor, Toronto, ON M5S 1S8. For additional questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at any time. You can also correspond with my supervisor, Dr. Ka Tat Tsang, by email at [email protected] Thank you for considering this research opportunity! Maraming salamat po! Warmest regards, Fritz Luther Pino, Ph.D. (Candidate) Social Justice Education Department, OISE, University of Toronto (647) 406-8905 / [email protected]

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Appendix C:

Informed Consent Form for Interview My name is Fritz Luther Pino and I am Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Toronto. I am conducting a research study on Filipino gay seniors in Toronto as part of my PhD program. In this study, participants must: (1) be of Filipino ancestry; (2) be at least 60 years old; and (3) identify as gay. The purpose of my study is to understand Filipino gay seniors’ experiences, including their migration history, their perception of age/ageing, their needs and struggles, their strategies to deal with everyday problems, and their social support system. The outcome of this study aims to inform the development of programs, services, and policies that would benefit Filipino gay seniors. This letter asks for your consent to participate in a 1-2 hour, face-to-face INTERVIEW with me that will be conducted at a day, time, and place that is convenient for you. If you would like, I can send the interview questions ahead of time. Interview Consent Form

On page 3 (of this form), a form is provided for you to sign with your name to indicate that you have read and understood the content of the information letter (attached this form) and of this interview consent letter. As well, by signing your name, you have given your informed consent to participate in this Research Interview. The form also asks if you are interested in participating the participant observation portion of this study.

Confidentiality During the interview, I will audio tape our conversation. This is to allow me to accurately document our conversation. A check box in the consent form (page 3) is provided to indicate that you consent to audio-taping. I also want to let you know that you have the option to disclose your name or to remain anonymous. If you choose to be anonymous, please indicate your preferred pseudonym.

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Conditions of Participating Your participation in this research is voluntary and you have the right to withdraw anytime. To withdraw, you can contact me by email, phone, or in person, and simply state that you would like to discontinue your involvement in this research. I will then destroy all information that you shared with me. There will be no negative consequences attached to either declining to participate or withdrawing from participation in the study.

What are the benefits of participating in this research study? ü You will receive a $20 gift card for completing the interview. ü Another $20 gift card will be provided to those who will be selected for participant observation. ü The research will provide the opportunity for you to share your thoughts, opinions, and perspectives in a safe and non-judgmental manner because all information will remain anonymous. ü You will be part of the first study on Filipino gay seniors in Canada which will be shared in scholarly, community, and governmental settings through publications and presentations. ü The results of the study will assist in the capacity building of seniors’ organizations, including developing and improving programs that are sensitive to the lives of minority seniors. ü Access to Information I will be the only one with access to the research data (interview recordings, transcripts, and field notes). I will ensure to keep the data in safe password-protected area of my restricted- access computer and a locked filing cabinet. All electronic files will be encrypted in accordance with UofT’s standards, which can be found at: http://www.research.utoronto.ca/wp- content/uploads/documents/2013/05/datasecurity1.pdf . De-identified data, however, will be shared to my PhD thesis committee (Drs. Tat Tsang, Izumi Sakamoto, Abigail Bakan). Should these individuals need to access de-identified transcripts, I will be the one to facilitate in accessing these data.

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Rights as a Participant and Contact Information For questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the University of Toronto Office of Research Ethics by phone (416) 946-3273, fax (416) 946-5763, or regular mail: McMurrich Building, 12 Queen’s Park Crescent West, 2nd Floor, Toronto, ON M5S 1S8. For additional questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at any time or correspond with my supervisor, Dr. Ka Tat Tsang, by email at [email protected]

INFORMED CONSENT FORM FOR INTERVIEW PARTICIPANT (Print Full Name): ______I have received a copy of the Information Letter: YES NO I give consent for my interview to be Audio Recorded: YES NO I choose to: Disclose My Name Remain Anonymous If I choose to remain anonymous, my PSEUDONYM will be: ______I have received the $20 gift card. YES NO Optional: Check the box if you’d like to participate in the participant observation portion of the research. If so, include your contact information: Home Phone (______) ______Cell Phone (______)______

Participant’s Signature: ______DATE:______Interviewer’s Signature:______DATE:______

Maraming Salamat Po! Thank you very much! Fritz Luther Pino, Ph.D. (Candidate), Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6 (647) 406-8905 / [email protected]

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Appendix D: Informed Consent Form for Participant Observation

I, ______(participant’s name in the interview), give consent to the student investigator FRITZ LUTHER PINO to do the following activities as part of the participant observation portion of his research study: 1. visit me everyday, from morning to evening so as to observe my everyday routines and activities. I will set and approve the visiting hours (e.g., 8:00 am – 6:00 pm; or 10:00 am – to 8:00 p.m.) 2. interact and converse with me while doing my daily activities. 3. attend and participate in the cultural and social events that I am a part of. 4. if necessary and subject to my approval, can accompany me when attending to my personal appointments (e.g. doctor’s visit, hair and beauty salon appointments, dental appointments). Fritz will engage in these activities with me until the completion of his research study. Moreover, I will give consent to Fritz to record his observations by: ___Writing only __Audio-recording only ___either writing or audio-recording

By signing my name here, I have acknowledged that I have read and understood the content of the Information Letter for Potential Participants, the details in the Informed Consent Form for Interview, and that I have given informed consent to participate in this Participant Observation. As well, I received the $20 gift card for participating in this research activity.

Participant’s Signature:______Date______Interviewer’s Signature:______Date______

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Appendix E: Demographic Profile of the Informants

Pseudonyms Age Year Living Research Participation Arrived Situation (at the Mark X – means in time of the participated in both Canada study) Interview Participant Observation

1. Mama 88 1972 Single, lives x x alone Riva

2. Clarita 65 1980 Single, lives x x alone

3. Marie 70 1984 Single, lives x x with a sibling in a house

4. Cara 75 1969 Single, lives x x alone

5. Shalah 75 1973 Single, lives x x alone

6. Rosana 70 1993 Single, lives x x alone

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7. Cary 67 1973 Single, lives x x with a sibling in a house

8. Feriah 67 1970 Single, alone x x

9. Ray 87 1971 Single, alone x X

10. Kiki 75 1981 Single, alone

Mora x x

11. Barb 72 1975 Single, lives x x with sibling in

an apartment

12. Betcha 68 1977 Single, lives x x alone

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Appendix F: Summary of Informants’ Average Age and Living Conditions

Average age 73

(at the time of the interview)

Average age of arrival in Canada

youngest – 21 years old

oldest – 47 years old

9/12

Lives alone (75% of the informants)

3/12

Lives with a family (25% of the informants) (relative, other people):

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Appendix G: Interview Guide Questions

1. Describe your migration experience. What made you decide to move to Canada?

2. What did you do when you came to Canada and where did you first live?

3. Are you retired right now? When? What was your job before you retired?

4. What is your usual routine (now that you’re retired)?

5. Whom do you live with now? What do you like and do not like about your current living situation?

6. Do you have a partner right now? If yes, how long you have been together?

7. How is your relationship with your family? How is your relationship with your friends? Have these relationships remained the same or changed over time? How so?

8. What have your experiences been like with medical/healthcare services? With social services? With Filipino organization? With religious organizations?

9. What do you consider as one of your current difficulty or problem right now? What do you consider as one of the things that make you feel happy?

10. If there is something that you have to change in your current situation, what would it be and why?

11. What do you think is the difference between living in the Philippines and living in Canada as a gay senior? How would your life be different if you lived in the Philippines?

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12. Where do you want to spend the remaining days of your life?

13. What is your own understanding of being old? Of being gay? Of being Filipino?

14. What can you say about the current life situation of Filipino gay seniors in Canada? How is your current situation similar to or different from them?

15. If you are given the chance to speak to younger Filipino queers, what message can you give to them?

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Appendix H: Sources of Data

Sources of Data

Research Questions Participant Individual

Observations Interviews

(1) What are the experiences 1) observation notes 1) interview transcripts of the older bakla (i.e., older from immersion in of 12 participants Filipino gay men) with their the foodcourt, significant others/figures or events, homes; voice 2) personal memo of my support groups namely, their record of my observation during the sexual partners, their blood- feelings and interview related kin/relatives, and observation (as I use their friends or peers? audio recorder to 3) objects shown by document my informants during (2) In what way their queer personal interview such as or non-normative sexual and observation). photographs, picture gender identity – the bakla frames, and album. identity – impact their 2) Statements and expressions of intimacies narratives of the with significant others? group during their interaction with one (3) What are the implications another; or informal of the older bakla’s overall conversations. experience of intimacy with significant others toward 3) memos: personal their quality of life and reflection or wellbeing? journaling

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Appendix I: Completion and Compensation List Form

Interview Signature Gift Card No. Date of Completion No. (Participant or Researcher)

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011

012

Interview Signature Gift Card No. Date of Completion No. (Participant or Researcher)

001

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005 145

Copyright Acknowledgements I would like to thank the publisher of my piece (cited below) for permitting me to reproduce parts of it to my dissertation.

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