By Alex Amansec

LOVE LABAN The PridePH Festival 2023 makes history by becoming the biggest pride event in Southeast Asia with over 110,000 attendees

A lot of commotion could be seen under the tents situated directly in front of the Quezon City Hall. Long lines of people in colorful outfits excitedly clamored at long tables that were each labeled with a specific district. I thought at first that this might be where everyone was getting their small rainbow flags to wave at the march, which is why I stopped here first before heading to the main venue of the event at the Quezon Memorial Circle. But I wanted to be certain.

“Ano pong nagaganap dito (What’s happening here)?” I politely ask the person freely distributing the flags.

While handing over the banner, simply and smiling, she answered: “LGBT po.”
Indeed, the LGBT is happening. It always has been.

The first time I stood up for the LGBTQIA+ community is a clear and vivid memory: I was 12 years old in a sixth-grade classroom. The discussion for English class that day was on the art of debate, and our teacher offered a prompt related to the issue of same-sex marriage in the Philippines.

Tense in my seat, I struggled to string together the right words in my head to acutely combat the religious and personal arguments that some of my classmates were proudly throwing around. I had something to say, I didn’t know how to say it, but I remember raising my hand anyway. However inarticulate her speech, the 12-year-old stepped up.

Ten years later, equipped with more words, platforms, and experiences, is a 22-year-old woman who is a member of our world’s complex systems and a witness to its ruthless cruelties. But beyond everything that has changed, the truth that pushed the 12-year-old to fearlessly raise her hand that one school day lives on, and it remains as simple as ever: Love is love, and love is for all.

And there’s nothing that can stop that today. Especially here in Quezon City, where tens of thousands of lovers and fighters came together on Saturday, June 24, in the biggest pride event in Southeast Asia by far. “Malayo pa, pero malayo na (We’re far from done, but we’ve gone very far),” said Senator Risa Hontiveros, who was a guest speaker at the event.

LOUD AND PROUD Thousands of LGBTQIA+ and their supporters join the Pride March in Quezon City on Saturday, June 24, to celebrate Pride Month (Noel B. Pabalate)

Pride has always been happening

Twenty-three years have passed since the SOGIESC Bill was first filed in the Philippine Congress. On May 23, the bill secured the approval of the House Committee on Women and Gender Equality, but it remains pending at the Senate committee level by virtue of it not being as “urgent” as the other bills. Some people have expressed how they even see this bill as a threat to the familiar and rigid man-woman dichotomy.

So is pride lust? A sin? A mental illness? An espousal of demonic, Western ideology?
Pride, as the self-affirmation and consciousness of one’s dignity and identity, sounds new, but it really isn’t. In fact, the Philippines has a history with pride and inherent gender variances that date all the way back to our pre-colonial records.

In his TED Talk, communications consultant and political science graduate France Villarta discusses how in the egalitarian structure of these early, animist societies, the pre-colonial Filipino woman had power in her role as a Babaylan, while the male priests or Asogs, according to a record kept by early explorers called the Boxer Codex (circa 1590), were described as effeminate or sexually ambiguous with the way they dressed and acted. If anything, they didn’t need pride to fight for their rights at all—why would they when it was already the norm?

PRE-COLONIAL PRIDE In his TED talk, political science graduate France Villarta discusses the norm of sexuality before Spanish colonizers set foot on the Philippines

Only when our Western, Spanish colonizers set foot on our islands were our ancestors’ practices and traditions almost completely eradicated, replaced with the ideas of patriarchy and Christianity. “All the free-loving, gender-variant-permitting, gender equality wokeness clashed viciously with the European sensibilities at the time, so much so that the Spanish missionaries spent the next 300 years trying to enforce their two-sex, two-gender model,” says Villarta.

But today, gender variance remains a tolerated feature of our culture in many forms. In language, the Tagalog gender-neutral siya, niya, and kaniya are far more accommodating than singular English pronouns. Asawa, kapatid, pulis, and bumbero are words that get tied to one side of the gender binary only when translated to English. The queer concepts of drag and cross-dressing have also been celebrated through the years in films and beauty pageants, persisting through our country’s espousal of Western homophobia.

Pride is here to stay

We paraded through the streets of East Avenue, V. Luna Road, and Kalayaan Avenue before finishing right where we began at the Quezon Memorial Circle. Loud, rhythmic percussion echoed through the streets as we ambled and danced through the afternoon, waving our flags in the sunlight. From the sidewalks and vehicle windows, others were watching, some recording with their phones, and to them, we’d smile and say, “Happy Pride!” However, they would respond, whether, with apathetic glances or a reciprocated joy, the true importance lies in the face-to-face certainty that you hear us and that you see us.

WE WILL WIN Drag artist Mrs. Tan gives a powerful lip-sync performance of ‘I Have Nothing’ by Whitney Houston

There will always be people who will see this march as a threat, a pure consequence of anger, or even accuse it as a symptom of brewing anarchy. But as a first-time attendee of this year’s Metro Manila Pride March, all I felt, besides the sweat on my brows and the aching of my feet, is an overwhelming, beautiful surge of love—everything we are fighting for is simply rooted in this.

Pride is an open-arms invitation for others to understand, accept, and perhaps even be part of its message to spread the love that has always been here and will continue to be as we march onward, together.