Gendered Sexualities in Migration: Play, Pageantry, and the Politics of Performing Filipino-Ness in Settler Colonial Canada
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GENDERED SEXUALITIES IN MIGRATION: PLAY, PAGEANTRY, AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMING FILIPINO-NESS IN SETTLER COLONIAL CANADA by May Leanne Farrales A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2017 © May Leanne Farrales, 2017 Abstract This dissertation examines the sexualities of Filipino/as in Canada who live and work on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh, and Tsleil- Waututh peoples (Vancouver). Specifically, it sketches out how gender and sexual paradigms in the Philippines are brought to Canada through labour migration and are re- scripted in relation to racial, gender and sexual regimes in Canada. I examine how these negotiations take shape at three particular sites and community-organized spaces. The first site in which I attend to the making of sexualities is at Filipino basketball leagues and games organized in the local community. The second site is at community-organized beauty and religious pageants. And finally, I consider how sexualities are being articulated and worked with by self-identifying Filipino/a queer, lesbian, gay and transgender organizers and activists. I work with interviews and observations I collected at each of these community-organized spaces. To analyze how sexualities are negotiated at these sites, I use a queer diaspora, queer of colour and transnational framework that attempts to be mindful of Indigenous critiques that urge for scholarship to take into account the ongoing processes of colonialism in settler colonial nations like Canada. The dissertation suggests that sexualities taking shape at basketball games, beauty pageants and in Filipino/a queer spaces are influenced by dominant racial, gender and sexual paradigms formed in the Philippines' colonial encounters at the same time as they are negotiated in relation to normative white heteropatriarchal settler colonial logics in Canada. More broadly I argue that the racialized, classed and gendered sexualities of Filipino/as are being made and remade in the overlapping colonial and capitalist geographies of Canada's and the Philippines' distinct nation-building projects. I suggest that engaging with these geographies poses critical questions of place and politics for Filipina/os in Canada by offering ways of understanding nation that might wear away at the normalizing logics. ii Lay Summary This dissertation examines how ideas about sexuality change when people migrate from the Philippines to Canada. Specifically, I analyze how Filipino/as perform their sexualties at three particular sites and community-organized spaces on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). The first site I study sexualities is at Filipino basketball leagues and games organized in the local community. The second site is at community-organized beauty and religious pageants. And finally, I look at how sexualities are being articulated by self-identifying Filipino/a queer, lesbian, gay and transgender organizers and activists. I work with interviews and observations I collected at each of these community-organized spaces. The dissertation contributes to transnational scholarship on the Filipino/a diaspora. It argues that the racialized, classed and gendered sexualities of Filipino/as are being made and remade in the overlapping colonial and capitalist geographies of Canada's and the Philippines' distinct nation-building projects. iii Preface A version of Chapter 3 is forthcoming in Diasporic Intimacies, Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries, Diaz, R., Largo, M. and F. Pino (eds.). The rest of this dissertation is unpublished. It is an independent work by the author, May Farrales. Research was approved by the UBC Behavioral Research Ethics Board: Certificate Number H13- 02609; Principal Investigator: Dr. Geraldine Pratt. iv Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Lay Summary..................................................................................................................... iii Preface ............................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents.................................................................................................................v List of Photos.................................................................................................................... vii List of Acronyms ............................................................................................................. viii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................ ix Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................1 1.1 Opening Scenes, Opening Thoughts..........................................................................1 1.1.1 Opening Scenes ..................................................................................................1 1.1.2 Opening Thoughts ..............................................................................................3 1.2. Mapping Out Filipino Sexualities in Canada: Assumptions and Accountability.....4 1.3. Theoretical Starting Points and Interventions.........................................................11 1.3.1 Theoretical Starting Points ...............................................................................11 1.3.2 Interventions: Theoretical and Empirical Contributions ..................................14 1.4. Dissertation Outline................................................................................................19 Chapter 2. Diasporic and Decolonial Dilemmas: Queering the Filipino in Canada .22 2.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................22 2.2. Dilemma 1: Queering the Filipino/a outside of the Philippines .............................24 2.2.1 Queering and Its Conundrums..........................................................................25 2.2.2 The Filipino as a Colonial Product ...................................................................27 2.2.3 The Filipino in Canada and Our Colonial Entanglements................................30 2.3. Dilemma 2: The Intimate Talk of Diaspora and Decolonization ...........................42 2.3.1. Fragmented Subjects and Filipinos in the Diaspora ........................................44 2.3.2 Crossing Cleavages: The Responsibility of Holding Stories and Knowledge Production..................................................................................................................48 2.4 Dilemma 3: Producing Knowledge About Home on Stolen Lands........................50 2.5 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................54 Chapter 3. Blood Lines: Basketball, Sexual, and Settler Narratives at Play .............56 3.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................56 3.2 Basketball as Life Saver: Making Healthy Masculinities........................................58 3.3 Blood Brothers: Basketball as Life Lessons in Healthy Heteronormativity............65 3.3.1 Learning Proper Sexualities..............................................................................65 3.3.2 Learning to be Proper Masculine Labouring Subjects in a Settler Colonial State ...................................................................................................................................70 3.4 Blood Lines: Reproducing the Filipino and Queering its Reproduction .................82 3.5 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................87 v Chapter 4: The Death of Maria Clara, Beauty, and the Pageantry of Filipino- Canadian Diversity ..........................................................................................................89 4.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................89 4.2 Beauty as Multifaceted Technology ........................................................................92 4.3 "Maria Clara is Dead": Colonial Reincarnations of Femininity and Beauty..........95 4.3.1 Settler Colonialism and the Death of Maria Clara............................................97 4.4 The Pageant (Re)Purpose: Beauty, Pageants, and Multicultural Liberal Performances and Politics............................................................................................101 4.4.1 Pageantry with a Purpose................................................................................106 4.4.2 Training Sexualities: Walking the Thin Line Between "Slutty" and "Classy" .................................................................................................................................113 4.5 Gender Play and Fringe Religious Ritual: Beauty and Pageants that Confound...120 4.5.1 The Beauty of Gender and Sexual Negotiations and Play..............................120 4.5.2 Religious Pageantry........................................................................................124