1
Jaya quotes me saying in her article: "If experience has already taught you that romance, and the monogamy aspired within it, are both transphobic, then why continue to seek love along these cishet paradigms? Trans women are in the best position to redefine what queer relations should look like, don't you think?" Of course, she makes it sound like I'm this much together. I post this on my IG story and this particular quip catches Pepe's attention—Pepe, proud parent of Anaïs the cat. She asks in her trademark earnestness what I meant by "monogamy being transphobic". I try my best and cobble up an answer:
I've been using the terms world/worlding quite often recently. I've begun using these terms as a substitute for the term reality—in broad strokes covering our perception of ourselves through consciousness; how we experience the material and virtual demands of our current everyday; and how we locate, navigate, and exert our conscious selves within these everyday demands. We live in reality, we live realities, and so we also have realities.
These realities, these worlds/worldings inform us of who we are, how we treat/conduct ourselves, and conversely how to act in a larger becoming within the worldings presented to us. Pepe, I think you would appreciate this because you're into science fiction: You, Pepe, are a world on your own; that's the Pepe-world. Anaïs also have a world, the Anaïs-world. But you two combined, you create a Pepe+Anaïs-world which is vastly different from the two seperate Pepe and Anaïs-world. We look to other worlds so that we can understand the larger world and worldings we inhabit and create. And these larger worlds—apart from Pepe-world or Carlo-world or Anaïs-world—tend to have distinct, non-discrete categories within them. Sometimes, but not always, these categories go by such names as politics, economics, science, religion, and so on.
These categories have within them a ready-made set of meanings. For example, science will always turn to overdetermined biology; it will look to genes to explain a trait or evolutionary outcome. Science over-determines by explaining "the natural" which it construes for nature, while nature as phenomenon prefers to explain itself in another code, ie another form of worlding. From birth science via XX/XY pre-determines an infant's sex as most definitely female/male, and correspondingly through their categorically implied gender manifestations, vagina::female/penis::male, as definitive cross-references. This is cis determinism. Cis determinism through the supposed exactitude of science sets the tone for what will eventually become a set meaning-making inscribed within set political and economic categories. Male is rudimentarily prescribed to mate with female as ordained both by science, and another set category, social religion. What comes out of this is the basic economic unit, the cisheterosexual nuclear family.
OK, you're probably asking by now, yes, Carlo these are all interesting but what does it have to do with my question about "monogamy being transphobic"?
Here we go: I think while there are set, ready-made meanings handed down to us, the very nature of our nature is always towards self-determination, as conscious beings with selfs locating, navigating, and exerting within and through our current and complex everydays. We learn along the way, literally doing-it-ourselves, that's why sometimes the outcome of our actions are either fucked up, or sometimes mint gold. We locate, navigate, exert within, through, and upon languages that commence the discovery of another set of categories that allow us to determine our beings. Race and gender are some of those languages that decommission worlds that over-determine us, and so allow us to re-orient ready-made categories. Race and gender have long been conscripted by politics and economics to suppress and repress other languages that don't serve the dominant political economy of any given time. For example, why do we still suspend our disbelief on the insistent primacy of the cisheterosexual nuclear family in upholding capitalist values of aspiration and accumulation in the face of climate catastrophes that capitalist production earmarked in the first place? This very primacy that devalues the already existing teeming sprawl of Eros and desires that surrounds and overruns it; countless Eros and desires that are experiential avenues of self-determination—intuition rather than assumption.
The mere fact that you have to ask me to explain to you what I meant by "monogamy is transphobic" is because within your worlding (language, category) as a cisheterosexual woman, monogamy is an unquestionable norm. But we QTGNCs—queer, trans, gender non-conforming non-binary folx—have different worldings of what constitute the intimate or the erotic, or what is generally described, and very oftentimes prescribed, as love. This is also something that has been conscripted by cisheterosexual worlding, the cisgays in turn calling for marriage equality: cisheterosexuals trying to make sense of a cishomo worlding. Because cisheterosexuality has limited language to describe its world beyond its overdetermination, it has to use the language of law to inscribe within its ethos homosexuality. Law demonstrates politics through ethical treatment, and bodies become shorthand for politics in the great circle of overdetermined life.
My question to Jaya also points to an oversimplified, overdetermined, ready-made meaning of relationship: romance is still cisheterosexually understood as given, and distinctly only between "biological man and woman", and that its aim is towards monogamy/marriage (economics). Here my self-determination comes in over the categorical: I am an aromantic. I do not relate to other beings in a romantic sense, rather I gather my intimacies from friendship and countless erotic encounters. This I learned from experience, from explorations, going through the bushy (or sometimes trimmed) thickets of desires. There, monogamous romantic overdeterminism lays suddenly bare, awkward, and becomes the out of place eerie.
And this is why cisheterosexual worlding is exactly transphobic. What cannot be codified within its language or categories are mere composite, becomes the unspoken or the unseen. Why else is woman required to be enunciated as "biological" in cisheterosexual dialect other than to fulfill overdetermined biology? What has no category has no function here, what is functionless is therefore un-able: something with a monstrous deformity. And what else is fear, what else is phobia, but the conjuring of some monster that could very well destroy the very "fabric of reality"—so I could also be describing a DDS kind of worlding. But more precisely, the currently crumbling cisheterosexual fabric of reality.
Queerness, transness, and GNCness as nature, or by our very language, invites you to see beyond this veil. So says the child in Matrix, which is a very trans film, there is no spoon. What spoon, what gender, what body?
2
Keywords: macho, machismo, masculinity, cismasculine
The thing that I get from these cis macho dudebro trippers on dating and hook-up sites is this: they need to double-act, assert-then reassert the performance of macho to downplay what they feel and perceive as perverse homo/queer desire. This desire makes them feel less of a cisman, disassembling the macho man they aspire to resemble, an ideal constructed for and by them. In current imaging and reception, and for our convenience, let us say this macho man is Duterte.
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There is a hint of camp to this brand of dudebro machismo. And this can further be split into two typical toxic masculinities—masculinity reaches toxicity when it devolves into the impositional performance of the macho, ie machismo. We already have the stiff, foul-mouthed swagger of the Duterte cismale cartoon; this type of machismo signals that all meaning-making is supposed to emanate only from the masculine, and all attributes outside of this masculinity is nothing but fodder to its conceived authority, inclined specially towards subjecting those it deems weaker through indignities. Requisite conformity and failure to conform are examples of these indignities.
The other type is the more insecure machismo in that it lashes out on the obverse of macho, on the femme/feminine. Not so much as assumed weakness as it is a form of defeat. Homo/queer desire makes the cisman fall apart it seems, becomes shortcoming, or a failure to achieve ideal masculinity, and the insecure machismo of the dudebros—trippers, straight curious, MSM or men who have sex with men—can only turn to femmes to relieve themselves of their insecurity. If the machismo of the dudebro is a double-act, it follows their insecurity is also double: their machismo only coming second to their ideal, and their perceived perverse desire, which maybe un-ironically they keep close to their groins like good ol' fashion Catholic guilt. That kink is hot until it's not, or until you get to call it by its names: internal homophobia and outright transphobia.
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It's not far to assume that a dudebro is much like a police or military man; he is the individual that has relinquished his capacity to self determine to the macho state. What's more instructive, because they evaluate every homo/queer encounter as absence of policing within themselves for acting on such perverse desires, they turn to shaming trans and femmes as a retaliatory form of policing. This happens at the disjoint of valuations hinged strictly on the cisheterosexual virtue of timpi, descriptive of the sacrament of matrimony (and not surprisingly more of a requirement to women wannabe brides). The opposite of this is to give in, or the euphemistic pejorative term referring usually to a young boy believed to be turning into a faggot: bumigay. Control is perceived power, a masculine suggestion. But what a dudebro macho understands as power is actually borrowed power: stripped of dudebro machismo, what is he?
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I've never actually asked my cismasculine friends what they think of their masculinity. Maybe because cismen don't really talk about masculinity at all; what it is, and how it's structurally related to another structure which is the penis. I'm not one to shy away from saying an erect penis is one of the most beautiful things to behold—once I saw a time-lapse video of flowers budding, achieving turgidity, blooming, then wilting away to a flop. I think masculinity is something like that, an insignificant burst of exertion. Cismen are conditioned to be silent about masculinity, but they are however, in my observation instructed by older cismale models to represent and to demonstrate as validation. The goodboy is also the hot-blooded warfreak, the cariñoso is also the matinik.
To my cismasculine friends: what do you think of your masculinity?
If no cisman has thought of this, it's because it's a facet of a patriarchal worlding to assume that a cisman is simply this. This position, this hierarchy, this order.
To my cismasculine friends: what function has the position of masculinity afforded you?
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But all this still has something to do with desiring, this macho acting dudebro posturing. Let's just say: there's a generic unremarkable dull sheen to the macho allure. I think what these bros truly want, with their no fats no femmes reassurances, is to actually be liked; whether this gesture of liking sputters between glossy admiration or genuine attraction, only they can mumble.
But because their notion of desiring is limited to this ideal macho demonstration, what they continually search for is the self-same thing. Dudebros want carbon-copy dudebros, that's why masc4masc makes perfect sense! The self-same thing trying to eradicate what it perceives as a perverse threat but only to find itself with a copy of itself which is the source of the threat. Yes, it sounds borderline psychosis because fact is the dudebro types are the ones who enact verbal and physical violence machismo is very much known for. Dudebro machismo is also the height of individualist narcissism (our fave IG thirst traps, anyone?) because it forces itself to replicate. The dudebro yells to his Xerox dudebro, I'd fuck me, only me, and nothing but me.
So also says Agent Smith when he's made a copy of himself, me too.
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Queer intimacy is the anti-thesis of cis machismo for the very reason that it is fluid and disruptive.
Queer intimacy tosses you in a perpetual disengagement, disassociation, urges you to explore, take risks, go on adventures. Queerness is always ready to be questioned. That's why the cis macho patriarchy wants and relies on the erasure and eradication of queer trans femmes, and the non-binaries because they believe in total unquestioned power, however borrowed.
See why fascism/authoritarianism is so close to the spleen of the cismasculine?
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I actually refuse to give a rat's ass about cis macho dudebros who have tiring antiseptic plot driven sex with themselves—but alas strawberry boi, a tripper, recently broke my heart. I know, big shocker. And I do understand that as much as these dudebros are part of our narratives, coming and going unlubricated within the vast clearing of our QTGNC desiring, they are also mostly the cause of our pains.
We can't possibly help who or what we desire, how we mend and un-mend our feelings, and for most of our queer, trans, and non-binary lives, these very feelings are the very thing, the very body that gave wild taxonomies to our equally wild beings. So, sometimes, as the gaggle of fags put it in Gay Sluts Who Read, we have to forgive ourselves for [some of] our desires. Forgiveness isn't for the downlow who keeps sliding in our DMs, it's for us, for you, my pretty fag. We have to stop giving free passes to these dudebros who we allow to break-in our hearts. This is pride. And when I say hearts, not just the romantic hearts, but the hearts that we share with our fellow trans sisters, non-binaryxxx, this, our very underground mycelium. We must refuse this constant invalidation, ridicule, and reinforced policing from these cis macho dudebros. Remember: all cops are bastards, and fuck the police!
And then we must commit. Commit to our DIY intimacies. The intimacies we invented and divined, installed only to be dismantled, found and buried, to our intimacies that makes the very soil we toil on quiver. And most importantly commit to this: cismasculinity can take no more part in our narratives.
Hey, starve a dudebro today.
3
I got tagged in a video post called "Ladyboy Love". The white cismale rapper is Trashzilla, and he's with another white dude; he keeps flashing his melon-sized biceps, not to mention his grillz. It's annoying. Blings, booties, booze. Trashzilla reminds me of Candy Ken, a white musclehead cismale who has a fetish for everything Hello Kitty; he has a music video on Pornhub in praise of pornstars and pornography. In "Ladyboy Love" Trashzilla & co. is surrounded by gyrating southeast Asian trans women—could be in Manila, could be in Bangkok. They look like they're having fun. Some trans folks I ask don't mind being called "ladyboy" but the term seems outdated in my opinion. Like "cold war" or "pin-up".
I'm a bakla. That's GNC, gender non-conforming non-binary. There's the trans, the cis, and then there's us, we're the third gender. The trans and the cis can be man or woman, but we GNCs don't identify as man or woman. We can be both and we can be neither.
I'm saying this because I cannot speak from the POV of a trans person; I can only say something of the world, and therefore my worlding, through my lens, my many lens, but at this particular moment of enunciation, through the lens of being a non-binary GNC.
I've recently become friends with this cisguy whom I presumed was queer. He stumbled upon one of my shows at Catch 272 one night, and then we moved on to following each other on IG. I have a foot fetish and he has desirable feet he likes to show off in his stories, when he goes running or training. I would mention this to him outright when we'd chat, and I'd flirt. Until one day he came to me for kink advice and referred to his partners as she/her. I was pretty shocked, said, omg you're not queer, yeah, he said, I'm straight, but continued to say something along the lines of equal opportunity flirtation. I'm cool, he's cool, and he still shows off his feet as per request.
But I suppose it was also at that moment when I realized I still have this residual cishet imposed baggage on desiring. To feel embarrassed for having flirted with a cishet male who's apparently otherwise OK with me flirting with him. Not to mention my thing with feet. But perhaps there's something more pleasurable in this scenario: there is no terrible feeling that he is merely allowing or tolerating me to be queer in our virtual interactions. Instead I sense he feels a certain enjoyment whenever he's being queered.
Desiring: this tricky nit-picky thing, always unraveling.
Most cishets would disagree but let's not bore ourselves.
The world we inhabit is largely built for cisheterosexual consumption; along with it a worlding that seeks the even uniformity of desires. It is rigged with countless cishet boobytrap valuations.
Trashzilla's "Ladyboy Love" is that kind of boobytrap: it may be sexy to some extent, but it is nonetheless a video for the consumption of a particular white cisheterosexual form of desiring.
Insert unavoidable insertion here.
There's always a lot of fantasy insertion involved when it is the cismale uttering desire for an object. Here, a trans object of desire.
"Ladyboy Love"'s lyrics is composed of the following: a repeating verse that plays on the catchphrase "chick with a dick"; some obvious insinuation of catching STD ala Dagtang Lason's "Nagmahal Ako ng Bakla"; and the all important toilet humour, that prerequisite space to size up that ladyboy's part. We mustn't forget Young Vito's "Awit" which is a transphobic rap because it is nothing but the cismales' act of sizing up. Palakihan ng titi, pataasan ng ihi. While this can also be play, as any cisgay could probably attest, what turns this usually prepubescent exploration with mates into machismo is when boys are instructed by older cismale models that the penis for all its fleeting intents and purposes gets to define everything. This isn't mad exaggeration. Don't we dignify biology when we refer to the penis as ultimately biological, and when inverted then it is not? The erasure of penis is the disappearance of being, and the excess of penis is the cancellation of being. Hell, what's a trans, queer femme, non-binary got to do?
Anything that becomes unquestioned is prescription. When I find myself inquiring about my desire, it can only mean that it's not a singular form of desiring but a sprawling kind.
In a comment section banter, Jaya says it's only the Caucasian guys who find us desirable because we're seen as doubly exotic.
I agree, then I also redouble. I really have no problem about being exoticized. For me, at least, self-determination comes in conscious reflexivity, this awareness that these are the systems that operate to frame me. And so sometimes I can play the ditzy slut because this gives me pleasure. The exotic gaze doesn't have anywhere to go except through me. This triangulation then gives me the ability to gauge the moment when pleasure becomes exploitation.
Stop, I'm not enjoying this anymore.
I cannot speak for the trans women in "Ladyboy Love". Snatches of performance, no matter if so dated. Exoticism, caress, trade. These men get off on this. This reminds me of T, a young trans woman who does sex work so she can earn extra while studying. She understands that it's work, precarious both economically and physically; but she's also not the first and last trans woman who will say sex work is also where she feels desired.
So I write:
desiring and gendering occupies a whole varied spectrum
there are those that should always come to light not because they are prescribed as liberative, but because they also give birth to new forms of other beautiful desires
these are usually suppressed by economy, history, politics then armed with social values
and from these categories emerge the darker forms of desiring, chem sex, extreme forms of sadomasochism, etc.
Earlier this year there was a Makati ordinance aimed at criminalizing trans women, profiling them automatically as sex workers. It's transphobic not just because of the vile legalization of profiling, but because it sees the very trans presence as a threat. A disturbance, possibly terrorism.
Queer desiring particularly has always been seen as a threat because it makes the cisheterosexual worlding short circuit. Cisheterosexual worlding refuses to recognize that desire is phenomena, and so uncategorizable as either right or wrong. We desire because we desire, and we don't desire because sometimes we're not wired to desire. And so when we find ourselves conflicted with our desires—then let us be conflicted! If we all thought desire was convenient then all of us should've been in some arranged marriage by now, and even that is pretty complex. Desire and criticality aren't wholly incompatible.
Weren't we taught from a very young age to distrust our desires?
Maghinala.
So we decide to live in our heads, create scenarios, choreograph graceful martial art sequences, splatter drawings, write erotic fanfics between Sergio Osmeña and Manuel L. Quezon. I'm not even making that up.
Because to desire as queers, trans, and gender non-conforming folx is nothing but to risk. Will they kiss back or will they punch me?
But I learned early on to masturbate in front of poons.
Desire is sensation. It is skin, breath, touch. These are the things I trust now more than when I feel that flutter in my stomach. And we also crave to be desired singularly so badly because we were taught that marriage and monolithic rom-coms were the only biological destiny of each and every single being. Completeness that required something like a body double that you only get to watch on video. So I return to my body at every point of intimacy: friends, ex-lovers, pups, flings, casual flirtations, the sexyboi who smiled at me through his mask. Rambling body worlds. I experience you.
Bad Bunny also has a video, "Yo Perreo Sola". He's a cismale Latinx trap artist, but in the video he's a big-busted bad bitch Latinx. He actually got a lot of flak in his IG for this to which he replied showing off his booty, and flipping a finger, "Calm down, I only have love for you." Bad Bunny performed in American television wearing a shirt that said: "Mataron a Alexa, no a un hombre con falda". They killed Alexa, not a man in a dress. Alexa Negrón Luciano was shot in Puerto Rico because according to reports, she "went in the wrong comfort room".
"Ladyboy Love" has nothing to do with love for trans women. For love is full recognition of being, embodied, and we forget giving in to longing. We stop saying: I long to be desired. Bad Bunny's video dances to a kind of delicious, emancipatory trans desiring. Because here he inhabits another body and for a moment I feel him truly feeling his pussy up—that feminine energy that belongs to everybody. I give to you. Isn't desiring trans all along in its invocation? To want you is to want to inhabit you, and so therefore I must transform, I must become.
Images: 1 stock photo; 2 Peter de Potter; 3 Ren Hang
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