Re-Imahinasyon sa Identidad at Kasarian ng mga Bakla sa Dula at Pelikulang Pilipino

For years, most voices from the gay liberation movement were made basically to counter oppression and homophobia. This "fallen state" of the gay community has been used as springboard of actions for change and "gay studies." This approach has failed to provide definitive philosophical answers to basic questions on gender identity-- the identity of the individual and his/her work, particularly in the Philippine context. Rodriguez sees a trap in the obsession with this kind of liberation and looking at gays as "special persons." Oppression, although an essential element in the gay experience, is merely symptom, he contends. This paper seeks to make a radical departure from the traditional oppression-based discourse on homosexuality en route to a deeper, indigenous aesthetics, gender studies and a new way of looking at the bakla.Initially the paper used the idea of gender as a social construct woven by collective consciousness. Accordingly, it is also acted upon by power relations which is the province of politics. This is where issues on oppression can be drawn. Aesthetics is rooted in politics. Society accepts and prohibits actions of its membersbased on their gender, which is what aesthetics, or that by which society imposes what is acceptable or not, is all about. A gender can be considered unacceptable and something to be suppressed. Plays and films support or contest this constructionon that gender. The author noted the strong metaphor of the castrated male in gay plays and films. This means the stereotypical depiction of the bakla as hysterical, a disease,laughable and abnormal. The author says this is necessary to give shape to the bakla being an outcast and to the heterosexual as normal. However to make this oppression as basis for the movement for change would leave out questions that would still need to be answered even after the oppression is over, questions such as what is the bakla as gender? Rodriguez then puts forward the concept of "sign" to define the bakla gender using plays and films. He says that plays and films are a sign or symbols, although arbitrary, for society. From these works can be gleaned overt and hidden discourseson the social castration of the bakla, whether these works contest or unconsciously support such castration. However, Rodriguez contends that these works must be seen beyond their representational or ethic aspect-ethic meaning a moreliberating way of looking at the bakla as gender. He makes a radical departure from these aspects by saying that gender is not the issue but sexual difference is. Citing Moria Gatens, he