MEDIUM RARE
By JULLIE Y. DAZA
Jullie Y. Daza
Life used to be so simple. Now we have to know how to read LGBTQIAplus without forgetting F and M.
Senator Koko Pimentel was aghast at his own ignorance in translating those connected letters. A cellphone message to a TV show asked how come the majority has always had to adjust to the minority. My own stand is, if I go to the ladies’ room and I find myself alone in there with a trannie looking and sounding masculine and less feminine than myself, my instinct would be to quickly but quietly slip out. If there were lots of other women, I would take strength in our numbers and stand my ground.
It's not that I’m prejudiced against the LGBetc., it’s only that this thing is new to me. As a matter of fact, if you ask me where I stand in the row between Gretchen the trannie and the bathroom attendant who tried to bar her, I would say the latter was doing her job and protecting the ladies already inside their stalls doing their business, as well as the ones waiting for their turn or fixing their hair, touching up their makeup. Her mistake was arguing with Gretchen and letting the security guards get physical – all that while nature called and Gretchen had to hold back the urge, poor girl.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros is pushing a SOGIE (sexual orientation/gender identity and expression) bill. Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte is dismayed that the Gretchen brouhaha happened in Cubao when her city was the first to pass an ordinance against disrespecting women. Sen. Panfilo Lacson warns us against voyeurs (and maniacs?) who would go to the extent of putting on women’s clothes just to satisfy their sicko tendencies in a private space inside a public building.
Ateneo’s Loyola campus was among the first to build toilets for LGBTQs. The school’s college department was smart enough to identify the comfort rooms for the late-blooming genders by painting on the door the icon of a human figure wearing a skirt covering one leg and a pant covering the other leg. How’s that for gender equality? Like the M and F toilets, the multigender (for lack of a better word) toilets are one-door affairs, i.e., one user at a time. Now, that’s privacy.