Professional Documents
Culture Documents
https://www.cnn.ph/life/culture/2020/6/29/filipinx-gender-neutral.html
CULTURE
When Spain “[ceded] to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine
Islands” through the 1898 Treaty of Paris, a treaty signed six months after the Philippine
declaration of independence in Cavite, it annexed Mindanao territories that Spain never
conquered. Suddenly, we were all Filipinos, our identity sealed by an exchange
between imperialist nations.
In the 1935, 1973, and 1987 Constitutions, we proclaim ourselves as a Filipino people
whose national language is Filipino.
But what does it mean for the word Filipino to be gender-neutral when it is placed in the
context of conservative Catholicism that the Spanish friars brought to our shores, as they
accused the babaylan and katalonan of talking to evil spirits and instructed women —
only women — on virginity, chastity, and modesty?
What does it really mean when our collective identity is rooted in a history of imperialism
and colonization that reinforce a patriarchal society?
Filipino is a word that identifies us in official documents like passports, a word written to
indicate our nationality which is passed on by blood — jus sanguinis. It does not matter
where we were born or if we are identified as male or female at birth; it only matters that
we are born to Filipino parents.
If the word is gender neutral, why then does the word "Filipina" exist?
There is a need to name what is known, if only to acknowledge it, and as early as the
1900s it was very much clear that society made a distinction between Filipino men and
women.
In her 1993 paper entitled "Filipino Women and Political Engagement," Belinda Aquino
notes the early efforts of “prominent ladies” such as Concepcion Felix de Calderon to
“secure reforms in schools, prisons, factories, and other institutions employing women”
by establishing the Asociacion Feminista Filipina in 1905. A year later, Pura Villanueva
Kalaw formed the Asociacion Feminista Ilonga which carried women‟s suffrage as one
of its causes.
To identify one’s self as a Filipino and to speak the
language requires a constant interrogation of our
shared histories, while confronting the links between
our personal privilege and another’s oppression.
At a time when Spanish was used within their social circles, they chose not to identify
themselves as mujeres but as feministas. Meanwhile, the use of Filipina and Ilonga
highlighted the intersection of their womanhood and identity which was central to the
struggles they waged.
These early Filipina feminists weren‟t without fault, however. Among them was a woman
civic leader who “complained bitterly that her driver could vote and she could not.”
Class struggle is inextricably woven into the Filipina‟s struggle for rights and freedoms.
Citing Maria Luisa Camagay‟s work in 1986, Amaryllis Torres notes how women were
already working outside the home in the late 19th century as criadas (domestic helpers),
maestras, matronas (midwives), cigarreras, buyeras, bordaderas, and sinamayeras
(women selling sinamay and other fabrics). However, discrimination was apparent as
maestros earned more than maestras, and women were subject to sexual harassment
from their male amo and the frailes.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Filipinos have started to take on a new name for
themselves. In "Little Manila is in the Heart," Dawn Bohulano Mabalon shares how,
according to first-generation immigrants, the words “Pinoy” and “Pinay” were developed
in the 1920s specifically by Filipino immigrants as a nickname for Filipinos living or born
in the United States.
Melinda de Jesus quotes an email from Mabalon in her introduction to "Pinay Power:
Theorizing the Filipina/American experience," where the latter notes how these labels were
used to “differentiate (Filipino-American) identities and experiences” from Filipinos
based in the Philippines, and how “interesting” it was that the terms found their way
back to the Philippines and how “the controversies surrounding its usage in the „60s and
„70s point to ongoing issues surrounding class” in Filipino-American communities.”
Unlike the now commonly used Pinoy and Pinay, the word "Filipinx" is a relatively new
label that Filipino-Americans have been using to differentiate their own “identities and
experiences.” Debates regarding the use of Filipinx as an identifier pops up every now
and then in an increasingly online world, as every side asserts seemingly strong points
of contention such as inclusivity, gender neutrality, and solidarity.
Filipinx is hardly the first word Filipino-Americans used to distinguish themselves from
Filipinos based in the Philippines. Aside from Pinoy and Pinay, there was the
word "Pin@y" — as if the letters a and o merged together to form the @ symbol.
However, there is a point that is often easily missed. What it means to be Filipino is
always subject to an interrogation, and it takes more than switching letters around to
deconstruct and dismantle systems of oppression. “Filipino” may be a gender-neutral
word but, as far as languages go, it is hard to find a language that is gender-neutral in a
world where imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy persist.
We may have gender-neutral words like "magulang," but we curse in Filipino by calling
one‟s mother a whore instead of calling one‟s parent a whore. We may have the gender
neutral "asawa," but our books still describe a mother as the light of the house while the
father is the pillar. We refer to our country as "Inang Bayan," often describing the
violence of colonization and imperialism under a patriarchy in ways that approximate
rape.
This is not to say that we should use words such as Filipinx to identify ourselves without
engaging in a critical analysis of our own sociopolitical contexts. Surely there are both
distinct and shared experiences between a Filipino who has lived all her life in the
Philippines and a Filipino-American who is based in the United States. Acknowledging
these different experiences and locating them in our shared struggle against structural
violence and systemic oppression is necessary for a genuine and meaningful practice of
solidarity.
In a speech by Black feminist Audre Lorde, she points out that “the failure of academic
feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the
first patriarchal lesson. In our world, „divide‟ and „conquer‟ must become „define‟ and
„empower.‟”
We must learn to interrogate the hegemony and essentialism that the word Filipino
carries within our shores and beyond our borders, as we collectively pursue liberation
for all. We must focus on the historical and material conditions that surround our
language and identity if we are to dismantle the imperialist, white supremacist, and
capitalist patriarchy that defines the landscape of domination and oppression here in the
Philippines and abroad.