GENDER STUDIES AND

QUEER THEORY
ARE YOU GAY?
WAS RIZAL GAY?
J. NEIL GARCIA
ACADEMIC MALICE…
For Isagani Cruz

 Fear of commitment (to the revolutionary

cause)
 Failings in relationship with women
 Did not go to brothels
For Isagani Cruz

 Fear of commitment (to the revolutionary

cause)
 Failings in relationship with women
 Did not go to brothels
“…categories we use are always culture-
bound and historically specific…”
“…categories we use are always culture-
bound and historically specific…”
In Rizal’s time…

“ “
the socially-
binabae/yi,
effeminate “bakla” bayoguin, effeminate
homosexual asog and bido men
” ”
In Rizal’s time…

 that people were different on account of

the gender or the object of their
sexual desire (heterosexual or homosexual)

was alien to our turn-of-the-

nineteenth-century ancestors
HOMOSEXUALITY

only coined in 1869 by Karl Maria

Kertbeny
In El Filibusterismo

 “That respectable gentleman who is

so elegantly attired is not a physician
but a homeopathist on his own, sui
generis: he believes totally in
the similia similibus, the attraction
of likes. That young Cavalry captain
with him is his favorite disciple.”
In El Filibusterismo

 “That respectable gentleman who is

so elegantly attired is not a physician
but a homeopathist on his own, sui
generis: he believes totally in
the similia similibus, the attraction
of likes. That young Cavalry captain
with him is his favorite disciple.”
So,

 Rizal could not have been a bakla

 the concept didn’t yet exist in his times
 such categorizations were not yet available
 engagingin homosexual sex is one thing,
being a homosexual is another.
 there were men who loved other men, and
women who loved other women, but they
were not much different from everybody
else (also in the Philippines…)
The Colonial Perversion

 Social “unselfconsciousness” vs. Sodomy

Sins against the sixth commandment

With other men or women or animals

Not “sense of self”

In Confesionarios…

 Cunnagpuit, o cun nagpapuit, o cun

nagcasala sa hayop.
- friar Gaspar de San Agustin, 1713
Going back to Rizal…

 “…sinceRizal couldn’t have been a

homosexual, it only follows that he
couldn’t have been a heterosexual
either…”
 As individuals whose lives were not
governed by the homo/hetero distinction,
they were relatively free to commit
homosexual and heterosexual acts without
thinking how these acts affected their
selfhoods.
 “homosocial”:individuals were expected to
develop bonds within each of the two
genders, bonds that could be expressed in
several ways.
LEARNING FROM THIS EXAMPLE…
QUEER CRITICISM…

 HETERONORMATIVITY
 theinstitutions, structures of
understanding, and practical orientations
that make heterosexuality seem not
only coherent—that is, organized as a
sexuality—but also privileged”
 Gender studies and queer theory explore
issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized
populations (woman as other) in literature
and culture.
 Femini
sm

Decon
Seman
tics queer structi
on

Psycho
analysi
s
 culturaldefinitions of sexuality and what it
means to be male and female are in flux:
"...the distinction between "masculine" and
"feminine" activities and behavior is
constantly changing (Richter 1437).
Questions to ask:

 Whatelements of the text can be

perceived as being masculine (active,
powerful) and feminine (passive,
marginalized) and how do the characters
support these traditional roles?
 What elements in the text exist in the
middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In other words,
what elements exhibit traits of both
(bisexual)?
 Howis queer, gay, or lesbian experience
coded in texts that are by writers who are
apparently homosexual?