Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T17:32:44.595Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Call for Healing: Transphobia, Homophobia, and Historical Trauma in Filipina/o/x American Activist Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Karen B. Hanna
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue that for those who migrate to other countries for economic survival and political asylum, historical trauma wounds across geographical space. Using the work of David Eng and Nadine Naber on queer and feminist diasporas, I contend that homogeneous discourses of Filipino nationalism simplify and erase transphobia, homophobia, and heterosexism, giving rise to intergenerational conflict and the passing‐on of trauma among activists in the United States. Focusing on Filipina/o/x American activist organizations, I center intergenerational conflict among leaders, highlighting transphobic and homophobic struggles that commonly arise in cisgender women majority spaces. I contextualize these struggles, linking them to traumas inherited through legacies of colonialism, feudalism, imperialism, hetero‐patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy. I inquire: how does historical and personal trauma merge and shape activist relationships and conflict, and what are activists doing to disrupt and work through historical trauma? I advocate for a decolonizing approach for “acting out” and “working through” trauma and healing collectively. By exploring conflict in organizations shaped by dominant Filipino nationalist ideologies, I resist romantic notions of the diaspora. Revealing the ways that dominant Filipino nationalism perpetuates a simultaneous erasure of nonnormative histories and bodies and epistemological and interpersonal violence among activists, I reject homogeneous conceptions of nationalism and open up possibilities for decolonial organizing praxis.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 32 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Contested Terrains: Women of Color and Third World Women, Feminisms, and Geopolitics , Summer 2017 , pp. 696 - 714
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abinales, Patricio N. 2004. Love, sex, and the Filipino communist. Manila: Anvil.Google Scholar
Allen, Jafari S. 2012. Black/Queer/Diaspora at the current conjuncture. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18 (2–3): 211–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anonymous 1. 2015. Personal Interview. Bay Area.Google Scholar
Anonymous 4. 2015. Personal Interview. Bay Area.Google Scholar
Anonymous 5. 2012. Personal Interview. New York City.Google Scholar
Anonymous 6. 2015. Personal Interview. Seattle.Google Scholar
Anonymous 7. 2012. Personal Interview. New York City.Google Scholar
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN). 2013. What is Bayan? http://www.bayan.ph/what-is-bayan/ (accessed October 2, 2016).Google Scholar
Blackwell, Maylei. 2011. ¡Chicana power! Contested histories of feminism in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Brave, Heart, Horse, Maria Yellow. 1998. The return to the sacred path: Healing the historical trauma and historical unresolved grief response among the Lakota through a psychoeducational group intervention. Smith College Studies of Social Work 68 (3): 287–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, Carolyn. 1999. Baylan, asog, transvestitism, and sodomy: Gender, sexuality and the sacred in early colonial Philippines. Intersections: Gender, history and culture in the Asian context 2. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue2/carolyn2.html (accessed October 1, 2016).Google Scholar
Brewer, Carolyn. 2004. Shamanism, Catholicism and gender relations in colonial Philippines, 1521–1685. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Brown, Elaine. 1992. A taste of power: A Black woman's story. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Cheng, Anne. 2000. The melancholy of race: Psychoanalysis, assimilation, and hidden grief. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Combahee River Collective. 1983. A black feminist statement by the Combahee River Collective. In This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color, ed. Moraga, Cherrie and Anzaldúa, Gloria. New York: Kitchen Table Press.Google Scholar
Cordova, Dorothy. 2015. Personal Interview. Seattle.Google Scholar
Crimp, Douglas. 1989. Mourning and militancy. October 51 (Winter): 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann. 2003. An archive of feelings: Trauma, sexuality, and lesbian public cultures. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Guia, Katrin. 2005. Kapwa, the self in the other: Worldviews and lifestyles of Filipino culture‐bearers. Pasig: Anvil.Google Scholar
Doestch‐Kidder, Sharon. 2012. Social change and intersectional activism: The spirit of social movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eng, David L. 2010. The feeling of kinship: Queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eviota, Elizabeth Uy. 1992. The political economy of gender: Women and the sexual division of labour in the Philippines. London: Zed Books Ltd.Google Scholar
Fujita‐Rony, Dorothy. 2003. American workers, colonial power: Philippine Seattle and the transpacific west, 1919–1941. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, J. Neil. 1996. Philippine gay culture: The last thirty years. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, J. Neil. 2008. Villa, Montano, Perez: Postcoloniality and gay liberation in the Philippines. In AsiapacifiQUEER: Rethinking genders and sexualities, ed. Martin, Fran, Jackson, Peter A., McLeilland, Mark, and Yue, Audrey. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. 2016. Keynote speech. Womxn of Color Conference. University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Habal, Estella. 2007. San Francisco's international hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American community in the anti‐eviction movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Jessica Marie. 2015. Thinking about the “x.” African American Intellectual History Society Blog. http://www.aaihs.org/thinking-about-an-x/ (accessed March 18, 2017).Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D. G. 1997. Yo’ mama's dysfunctional. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Klatch, Rebecca E. 2001. The formation of feminist consciousness among left‐ and right‐wing activists. Gender and Society 15 (6): 791–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindio‐McGovern, Ligaya. 1999. Political consciousness, identity, and social movements: Peasant women in the Philippines and Filipino immigrant activists in Chicago. In Research in social movements, conflicts and change, ed. Dobskowski, Michael and Wallimann, Isidor. Stamford, Conn.: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Mabalo, Dawn. 2013. Little Manila is in the heart: The making of the Filipina/o American community in Stockton, California. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machado, Yasmin S. Portales. 2014. Personal Interview. Havana.Google Scholar
Mangahas, Fe. 2006. Centennial crossings: Readings on babaylan feminism in the Philippines, ed. Mangahas, Fe and Llaguno, Jenny. Manila: C&E Publishing, Inc.Google Scholar
McCoy, Alfred W. 1999. Dark legacy: Human rights under the Marcos regime. Presentation, Legacies of the Marcos Dictatorship Conference, Ateneo de Manila University. September 20.Google Scholar
McEwen, Bruce S. 2000. Allostasis and allostatic load: Implications for neuropsychopharmacology. Neuropsychopharmacology 22 (2): 108–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mendoza, Victor Román. 2015. Metroimperial intimacies: Fantasy, racial‐sexual governance, and the Philippines in US imperialism, 1899–1913. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondiguing, Remedios. 2000. Analysis, reflections and recommendations on gender and tourism in Banaue, Ifugao. Review of Women's Studies 10 (1 and 2): 16–40.Google Scholar
Naber, Nadine. 2012. Arab America: Gender, cultural politics, and activism. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
National Coalition of Anti‐Violence Programs. 2015. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV‐affected hate violence in 2014. http://avp.org/resources/avp-resources/520-2015-report-on-lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-and-hiv-affected-hate-violence (accessed February 25, 2017).Google Scholar
Nono, Grace. 2013. Song of the babaylan: Living voices, medicine, spiritualities of Philippine ritualist‐oralist‐healers. Manila: Institute of Spirituality in Asia.Google Scholar
Ordona, Trinity. 2000. Coming out together: An ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander queer women and transgendered people's movement of San Francisco. PhD diss. University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Pimentel, Boying. 2015. “Never again” is not just about Marcos. Inquirer.net, October 31. http://globalnation.inquirer.net/130228/never-again-is-not-just-about-marcos (accessed February 25, 2017).Google Scholar
Roces, Mina. 2012. Women's movements and the Filipina: 1986–2008. Honolulu: University of Hawa'ii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosca, Ninotchka. 2000. Living in two‐time zones. In Legacy to liberation: Politics and culture of revolutionary Asian/Pacific America, ed. Ho, Fred, with Antonio, Caroline, Fujino, Diane, and Yip, Steve. San Francisco: AK Press.Google Scholar
Santiago, Evelyn. 2000. Examining gender economic inequality in the Philippines. Review of Women's Studies 10 (1 and 2): 1–15.Google Scholar
Scott, William Henry. 1994. Barangay: Sixteenth‐century Philippine culture and society. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press.Google Scholar
Snorton, C. Riley. 2009. A new hope: The psychic life of passing. Hypatia 24 (3): 77–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. 1988. Subaltern studies: Deconstructing historiography. In Other worlds: Essays in cultural politics, ed. Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stryker, Susan. 2007. Transgender feminism: Queering the woman question. In Third wave feminism: A critical exploration, ed. Gillis, Stacy, Howie, Gillian, and Munford, Rebecca. New York: Palgrave Macmillian.Google Scholar
Tompar‐Tiu, Auroria, and Sustento‐Seneriches, Juliana. 1995. Depression and other mental health issues: The Filipino American experience. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass.Google Scholar
Toribio, Helen. 1998. We are revolution: A reflective history of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP). Amerasia Journal 24 (2): 155–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuba, Quantum. 2011. The prison industrial complex vs. the queer and trans community. Dissenting Leftist, December 27. http://dissentingleftist.blogspot.com/2011/12/prison-industrial-complex-vs-queer-and.html (accessed December 2, 2015).Google Scholar
Wolf, Diane L. 1997. Family secrets: Transnational struggles among children of Filipino immigrants. Sociological Perspectives 40 (3): 457–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, Judy Tzu‐Chun. 2013. Radicals on the road: Internationalism, orientalism, and feminism during the Vietnam era. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar

A correction has been issued for this article:

Corrigendum