Abstract
The internet has opened up a space for discussions of queer sexuality and the interconnectivity made possible by internet technologies enables the active exchange of queer ideologies across distant spaces that facilitate the formation of ‘queer counterpublics’. But how do cyberqueer movements form a collectivity amid the instability of individual and collective identities and the vulnerabilities and controls posed by new technology mediation? Through the case study of Ladlad, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) political party in the Philippines, this paper examines the role of online media in the construction of a queer movement. The article argues that the process of connectivity facilitated by online spaces creates nodes of identification, belonging, and support that symbolically form a collective site of resistance to sources of oppressive power for LGBTs.
In May 2010, a political party of self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Filipinos (LGBT), Ladlad (Out of the Closet), 1 was on the ballot for the first time in the Philippines. The Supreme Court’s decision to allow the first LGBT 2 political party in the country (and purportedly in Asia) to run for the 2010 nationwide party-list elections, overruling the Commission on Elections’ decision, marked a significant opening for the LGBT community in the political arena and a considerable achievement in this predominantly Catholic society. The party-list system of elections provided in the Constitution was intended to allocate space for the inclusion of society’s marginalized sectors in law-making. Ladlad deems that a Congressional seat will give the LGBT community, estimated at 670,000 persons, a voice in the crafting and passing of the pending Anti-Discrimination Bill that will work against the physical and symbolic violence experienced by LGBTs. Ladlad did not receive sufficient votes to acquire a seat in Congress during the 2010 elections. The party ran for another chance at securing a Congressional seat during the May 2013 election, but was again unsuccessful. Despite this second failure, the inclusion of LGBTs as political actors is a significant departure from typical characterizations of LGBT people in society and an interesting case for the analysis of the role of online media in LGBT political formations.
Over recent years, Ladlad has developed a wide set of internet-based campaign strategies, including online narratives and discursive spaces in its website, e-group, and social networking sites. An interesting aspect of its campaign is how Ladlad mobilized members with diverse self-concepts, ways of life, and sexualities. The availability of internet access by virtue of affordable marketing schemes and cybercafes implies that the online LGBT community is represented not only across sexualities, or religious beliefs, but across class. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender are categories that represent differing needs and social positions, yet they also have in common the generalized forms of discrimination that occur along ethnic and class lines (Thoreson, 2012: 539–40). Amid these sources of diversity and commonality within this grouping, how and for what purpose do queer groups form and what constitutes a structural basis for an alliance? As Melucci (1995: 291) asks, how do heterogeneous individuals find themselves as part of a collective and what processes and strategies underlie the continual tensions and negotiations of collective action? How do online media facilitate, shape, or constrain such LGBT political formation?
Dialectics of online LGBT activism
The environment for discussions of queer identity and sexuality has opened up because of the internet (Friedman, 2007; Gross, 2003, 2007; O’Riordan, 2007; Pullen 2010a, 2010b). The interconnectivity made possible by internet technologies enables the swift exchange of queer ideologies and networks across ways of life in distant spaces, where queer individuals ‘get to experience something of a queer community’, and obtain advice and information about a variety of queer issues (Castells, 2010; Fraser, 2010: 31). As more local and regional materials on queer identity and struggle are available, experiences are exchanged and networks are formed amid a diversity of cultures. The striking activity of LGBT youth online also provides them with an opportunity for engaging intensely in identity formation and exploration (Gross, 2007, 2003; Rak, 2005: 166–82) and social action (Castells, 2010; Pullen, 2010b: 17–36). As the number of Filipino LGBTs with online access grows, these form communities of solidarity for sharing similar experiences and causes that increase motivation for more members to go online (Austria, 2004, 2007).
Through the internet’s ‘multi-logicality’ (Dahlgren, 2001: 46), which transcends the ‘one-to-many’ correspondence of traditional media to ‘many-to-many’, minority groups may also surpass local and national boundaries that contribute to the reconfiguration of political practices. Computer-mediated communication can work for political mobilization by: (a) lowering the cost of mobilization; (b) facilitating a network of people sharing a common interest and needs despite geographical distance; and (c) creating new venues to come together secretly (Castells, 2010; Dahlgren, 2001; Gross, 2003, 2007). These potentials suit the queer community specifically, by pooling together people, resources, and capacities that are needed in local struggles and allow limitations of dispersion to be transcended (Friedman, 2007). The character of online spaces also serves as a space for expression and belonging even for those still ‘in the closet’ (Austria, 2007; Gross, 2003; Nip, 2004; Pullen 2010b) or those who have ‘come out’ but uncomfortable with public expression of their sexuality.
Aside from bringing people together for horizontal networking, online spaces are also viewed as spheres that facilitate resistance through ‘speaking back’ to certain power structures (Mitra, 2010). ‘Cyberqueer spaces’ are constituted as points of resistance against the dominant assumption of heteronormativity (Wakeford, 2000: 408). As a group that has suffered from others’ image-making and issue-framing practices, LGBTs find a platform for communicating their issues and bringing them to the attention of the state as political issues. By becoming new actors in the political arena, LGBTs can intervene in the reconfigurations of citizenship (Wakeford, 2000: 409). Further, as the internet becomes the symbolic mode of organization of both cultural and economic power, ‘cyberqueer’ can be used strategically by challenging the superiority of patriarchy and heterosexuality (Castells, 2010: 261–87). Possibilities for networking also create opportunities for LGBTs to mirror and counteract the networking logic of domination in the informational society (Castells, 2010: 424). Sexual minorities can use online media to strategically contextualize their struggle as part of a transnational LGBT rights campaign that reverberates across national borders. Here, the discursive potential of an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 2006) of LGBTs may become real as LGBTs take on agency as ‘counterpublics’ (Pullen, 2010b; Vivienne and Burgess 2012; Gross, 2003, 2007; Mitra, 2010).
However, despite the internet’s enabling opportunities for the political mobilization of LGBTs, it also poses several constraints. These include concerns such as further segregation and ‘ghettoization’ as opposed to fostering communication (Friedman, 2007: 797); potential loss of ‘real physical community’ (Pullen, 2010a:11); dangers of queer essentialism (Fraser, 2010; Rak, 2005: 177–8), and commercialization of queer sites (Campbell, 2005). For example, concern has been expressed that even the radical discourses of cyberqueer movements can be targeted by capital (Wakeford, 2000: 410). The courting of the LGBT community by mainstream marketers represents a repositioning in commercial panoptic formations based on the perceived desirability of these populations as niche markets (Campbell, 2005). Moreover, tied to the very globality of online spaces and the possible formation of transnational networks of queer activists is the entrapment in certain hegemonic discourses that define the ideals of ‘queerness’ and ‘queer activism’ (Jelača, 2011; Puar, 2007). There is a fear that geographically located experiences and local emancipatory acts may become lost in the cacophony of voices arising from a ‘global LGBT activist community’ (Alexander, 2002; Friedman, 2007: 797). Further, while online spaces allow the amplification of the queer voice, it can also expand the reach of discrimination in these spaces, exposing the queer community to new vulnerabilities and controls. Another important question underlying the internet’s potential for queer political mobilization is how a critical mass of online users leads to a critical and reflective discussion of issues resulting in the construction of a collective identity (Austria, 2007; Nip, 2004).
Queer formulations and political formations
In rethinking queer theory’s limits in addressing and explaining LGBT movements for social change, Kirsch (2000) argues for finding explanations for strategies where queer individuals come together to form a collective force for social change. Queer theory’s questioning of what counts as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ identity, or whose definition of gay counts, led to questions about the overall viability and political usefulness of using sexual identity as the basis of political formations (Kirsch, 2000). Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity looks at gender and sexuality as a performance, or as a repetitive series of performances, whose effect is the production of a united subject, an identity. The theory rests on the premise that identity is neither a substantive entity nor a metaphysical inevitability, but the effect of repetitive performances of discourses and acts that paradoxically produce the subject who enacts these performances (Butler, 1990: 24–5). Queer in this sense is not an identity category but a form of ‘meta-identity’ that is not limited by labels or social constructions and disassembles common beliefs about gender and sexuality (Kirsch, 2000: 33; Sedgwick, 1990). Conducting a critique of social order, queerness was used to challenge the stability of any identity and theorized cultural forms as iterative performances (Butler, 1990, 1993).
By focusing on the individual performance as site for change, queer theory has developed along a path that questions the basic tenets of past resistance movements. Other scholars expressed concern that queer theory moved sexual and gender politics towards questions of discursive constructions but neglecting economic and political regimes (Gray, 2009: 215). Others argue that queer theory, by focusing on diversity, has done little to understand the ability of this inclusiveness to form communities of resistance (Kirsch, 2000: 121). As the individual becomes the center of analysis, there is also no basis for explaining how certain groups that organize on the basis of sexual orientation come together to advance social change.
Philippine LGBTs and the problem of difference
The Philippines presents an interesting case for LGBT activism. Despite the situatedness of LGBTs in a society where Catholic values largely dictate moral norms, the Philippines allowed the formation and candidature of an LGBT political party. The first Gay Pride Parade in Asia was also organized in the Philippines in 1994, which inspired similar Pride Parades in other parts of the region such as Colombo, Hongkong, Taiwan, Delhi, and Singapore (L Garcia, 2008). There is a myth that LGBTs are accepted in Philippine society despite still being the objects of ridicule and despite the prejudice that they confront daily (Austria, 2004; B. Benedito, personal communication, October 2011). The Commission on Elections’ (COMELEC) official resolution in 2009 to reject Ladlad’s appeal for candidature due to ‘immorality’ and for being a ‘threat to the youth’ reflects the prejudice that many sectors hold towards the LGBT community (Ang Ladlad, 2011). Further, in a report published by the Philippine LGBT Crime Watch (2012), 156 suspected anti-LGBT hate crime deaths since 1996 have been tallied. In some instances, these victims’ dignities were maligned as ‘their sex organs were mutilated or plugged into their body openings’ (Umbac, 2011). Thus, while a degree of passive tolerance towards the LGBT community exists in the Philippines, this tolerance and leniency do not equate to equal protection by the law (Ladlad chairperson, personal communication, October 2011).
Marginalization happens not only through explicit ridicule or physical violence but in ways by which heteronormativity constitutes the process of self-loathing by LGBTs. As queers grow up in societies where homosexuality is loathed and mocked, a homosexual growing up in this society begins to loathe himself or herself and adopts a negative view of being queer (Hodges and Hutter, 1974). Heteronormativity also results in discourses and policies that marginalize and erase the concerns of those who do not fit into the heterosexual norms (Olson, 2009: 4). Tolerance is high for those who conform to stereotypes and ‘regulate their own sexualities’, and this could mean never coming out of the closet and shying away from public movements against discrimination.
Rethinking queer theory’s relevance for understanding Philippine gay culture, J.N.C. Garcia (2000: 267–8) argued that while employing central insights of Butlerian performativity is productive, it is important to be reminded of how localized and context-bound gender and sexuality always are. Sexual and gender subjectivity in the Philippines falls between religious and secular registers, ‘a Filipino “psycho-spirituality”: a hybrid site of sorts, that if anything indicates to us just how important religiosity, despite the trappings of modernity, continues to be for most Filipinos’ (JNC Garcia, 2000: 270). Understanding of the self is still very much embedded in the ‘teachings of folk Catholic symbology’. It is for this reason that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is conflicted on the exercise of sexuality, particularly because the church, which he or she sees as moral authority, only accepts union between a man and a real woman under the norms of procreation (Dumdum, 2010). This can also explain why the bakla (male homosexual), for example, seeks to become a woman, in contrast to the concept of a drag for British radical fems, which implies ‘giving up the power of a male role’ while ‘passing off as a women is never the object of their forays into cross-dressing’ (Dumdum, 2010; JNC Garcia, 2008: 265). Moreover, the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines offers a notion of homosexuality which can be detached from homosexual acts, and contends that although homosexuality is not condemned, engaging in ‘homosexual acts’ is immoral and sinful (Sampan, 2013). Such an interpretation of homosexuality, although criticized by LGBT activists, is imbibed by some members of the community. The enormous formal and informal influence of the Catholic Church in Philippine politics and society, as well as the significant percentage of practising Catholics among the LGBT community, implies that queer political formations and online articulations need to traverse this sensitive terrain (Thoreson, 2012: 541–2).
Ladlad online: out of the closet and into politics
The COMELEC denied Ladlad’s registration as a sectoral political party in 2006 for lack of ‘substantial membership base’, and again in 2009, for ‘lack of moral grounds’ (Ang Ladlad, 2011). The Commission’s decision was overturned by the Supreme Court, paving way for Ladlad to run for party-list elections in the May 2010 elections, but with less than a month left to campaign. Ladlad, organized in 2003, claims to have 16,100 affiliates and members around the country. The organization’s funds come primarily from collected annual fees of P100 (US$2.4) per working member (P50 or US$1.2 for students), donations, and fund-raising events (Ladlad leaders, personal interview, May 2010 and October 2011).
Ladlad set up its website, www.angLadlad.org, in 2007, after the COMELEC turned down its first bid for elections. The website was created to serve as a channel for broadcasting its motion for reconsideration and for attracting new members and supporters. A Ladlad leader explained that prior to the internet, the LGBT community saw itself only through the lens of mainstream media and the dominant culture, as there had been limited opportunities for LGBTs to represent themselves and articulate their causes publicly. According to a Ladlad member, ‘as many members of our community are known as comedians or parloristas (salon assistants), media’s representation of our community is also limited within these caricaturizations’. Online spaces facilitate self-representation of their causes without the usual control or mediation of others.
Ladlad was selected purposively as case study (Yin, 2008: 91) because it is suitable for the analysis of how minorities use online spaces to mobilize as a collective political force. A case study design was used as it allows the investigation of a phenomenon from multiple dimensions. In-depth interviews with current and former leaders and members as well as activists and historians closely related to the movement were conducted to explore the group’s purposes and meaning-making of online political mobilization, situated within the historical roots of the struggle. Ethnographic analyses of the website, Facebook site, and Twitter 3 were conducted from March 2010 to June 2011 to explore actual uses of online spaces for political mobilization, engagement of symbolic forms, and dynamics of interactions. The blog, 4 which replaced the website in early 2012, is not covered in this review. Archived documents relating to Ladlad’s political candidature and the LGBT struggle were utilized. This use of multiple resources and sites of media engagement and meaning-making (Baym and Markham, 2009) was critical in understanding the online strategies engaged by Ladlad. Following guidance from Ryan and Bernard (2003), themes were generated from recurring topics that appeared in the interviews and in the online spaces.
Ladlad’s website was seen as the organization’s image in the virtual front, a lens through which the group expected itself to be understood and recognized. It is for this reason that posts in the website were more carefully screened and crafted. The Yahoo! e-group page, on the other hand (with 4307 members as of August 2011), functions as a private discussion board and requires registration, but allows non-LGBTs to join. Prior to Facebook and Twitter, the e-Group served multiple purposes and was the central space for communication across the community – from public announcements and sharing of LGBT issues or petitions, to private matters such as internal conflicts or rules of membership. As more of its members have subscribed to social networking sites, matters relevant to the group that do not need to be kept internally, such as announcements, news, and opinion pieces are posted on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook drives more members to participate, especially the younger ones, because there is a feeling of belonging, and ‘spontaneous solidarity’ in terms of LGBT issues and concerns (Ladlad member, personal communication, May 2010). Ease of maintenance and participation also enabled the involvement of more members in content development and continued activity. The automatic alert and tagging features facilitate the drawing of members’ attention and in disseminating information to a large audience that includes the non-LGBTs. Ladlad’s Facebook newsfeed shows an amalgam of posts shared by its members, ranging from political and intellectual talk to personal greetings, making Facebook more current and active in terms of content than its website. Ladlad’s Facebook and Twitter accounts are updated daily, with activity of an average of about 10 messages posted in a day, while the website is updated at least every two weeks.
Dynamics of construction and negotiation of an LGBT movement online
Carving out a space for belonging
Giddens (1990) argued that modernity involves a profound reorganization of time and space in social and cultural life, which is spelt out in his discussion on ‘time–space distanciation’ and ‘embedding–disembedding’ that take place in modernity. Social relations of pre-modern societies are largely confined to face-to-face interaction (Giddens, 1990: 18). However, the internet as a form of this modernity undermines this social interaction by fostering relations between ‘absent others’, locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction. Internet technology further disembeds social relations from local contexts of face-to-face interaction and rearranges them across time and space (Castells, 2010). Reflexivity, Giddens argues, is bound by the issue of trust and belonging with respect to disembedded institutions, as well as considerations of security and risk of involvement. In the context of Ladlad, LGBTs from distant locations form a group of solidarity with others living out similar circumstances.
Social networking sites have actually paved an era of gayness…. Subconsciously, it progresses into the real world. By association and mingling with older LGBTs, we get this drive, sort of a confidence; it’s a real world outside the web. Then we start to use gay lingo. (Member, gay, personal communication, April 2010)
The above quote reflects the symbolic confidence gained by belonging to a community that also drives the performance of one’s sexuality, characterized by the use of ‘gay lingo’ or ‘gayspeak’. Social networking sites’ capability to articulate a list of other users with whom one maintains a connection (boyd and Ellison 2007) facilitates an open association with a community that boosts courage to express one’s sexuality. Ladlad’s Facebook page has members from small LGBT groupings across the Philippine islands. Some members express a feeling of protection by being part of the collective, ‘Don’t hurt us, we will report you to Ladlad!’ (Ladlad party-list Facebook, online posting, 22 January 2011). As a bigger group comprising of four major groupings of sexual minorities, the members feel stronger than if they faced discrimination as individuals. Seeking advice online is one of the common themes arising from the e-group page of Ladlad. Members often ask for advice in terms of coming out or would share personal conflicts in coming to terms with their identity. As argued by Gross (2007: ix), ‘the potential for friendship and group formation provided by the Internet is particularly valuable for members of self-identified minorities who are scattered and often besieged in their home surroundings.’
Ladlad organizers post messages offering protection and security to its members as part of the organization. For example, Ladlad encourages its members to share experiences of discrimination and connects them to free legal assistance, ‘U need lawyers? Ladlad party-list will offer free legal assistance to Pinoy LGBTs who are victims of injustice and discrimination’ (posted on Twitter and Facebook, 7 January 2011). This form of service bridges LGBT communities across class and occupation, by mobilizing professional LGBTs to help out the disadvantaged members of the community. The process of engagement in such online formations, therefore, can be argued to be useful in the creation of a community of LGBT activists. According to a Ladlad member: ‘some of us just wanted to have an organization, you know, to belong. But in the process, we also learn about other members’ struggles. Because we can relate, it is only natural that we help if we can.’ Other members explained that membership in the organization’s online spaces allowed them to realize the commonality of discrimination that different members of the community experience and in turn intensified their support for the organization’s cause.
Amid this internal mobilization is the question of representation across diverse groupings that Ladlad represents. In Ladlad’s Facebook page, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders participate, but there are occasional quips, ‘Gays again? How about us lesbians?’ Ladlad noted that there is relatively more active online participation among gays and transgenders, and considers it a challenge to present a balanced representation in its membership.
LGBT cocoons
In emphasizing why LGBT research is vital, Slagle (2009), argued that in most cultures, heterosexuality is a privileged site of social and political organization, while other types of relationships are considered less than heterosexual relationships or are rendered invisible. The internet reverses this norm by giving visibility to alternative forms of organization, allowing groups to come together and form a community. Ladlad members explained that the internet’s facility to control the community that queers surround themselves with makes it easier to segregate and shield them from discrimination while finding a community of belonging: The LGBT culture is very online ’cause that’s where discrimination is very low. That’s where you can really be yourself. The only one controlling your actions would be you. You are not exposed to other people, what people have to say about you. Unlike if you want to be gay in public you are exposed to scrutiny and ostracism of people, criticism of other people. We can easily shut off people who write against us. Chances are the community is very screened because people who are familiar with our social network, or who would actively search us are also the LGBT…. So I believe there’s very little port of entry for threats to the community online. (Member, gay, personal communication, April 2010).
It has been argued that individuals are more likely to align themselves with networks and views that suit their predispositions and prejudices in the online space (Sunstein, 2006). Such selective exposure to information that reinforces the group ideology leads to the formation of ‘information cocoons’ that allow people’s beliefs to be reinforced and within this environment, ‘feel validated’ (2006: 29) within a closed, self-referential environment. While information cocoons have been seen as leading to narrow thinking and extreme speech in online discussion forums and blogs (Sunstein, 2006), the possibility of forming cocoons in the online space presents advantages for the LGBT members who come together to provide support and, in turn, shield themselves from discriminatory voices. The organization also makes an effort to delete derogatory comments in their Facebook pages because ‘these taint the credibility of the organization as a political party’. According to a leader, ‘We don’t want to allow ourselves to be maligned in our own site. Because this is a pro-LGBT site. That is the beauty of Facebook, you can remove what you don’t like easily so it can be the page for promoting yourself and your cause.’
Members also call the group’s attention to homophobic sites or groups on the internet, and these members respond by ‘attacking’ such spaces. A significant number of Facebook members and supporters online, now in the thousands, make this possible. Examples are Facebook groups inspired by the theme, Mabuti pa ang magnakaw kesa mamakla (It is better to be a thief than ‘to be in a relationship with a homosexual’). Ladlad members managed to report and take down some of the first few groups formed under the banner, although two groups still remain as of September 2011. A gaming group page, Pinoy Patay Bading (Filipinos Kill Gays), was also reported to Ladlad’s Facebook site, after which the page was filled with posts from Ladlad members against discrimination and which outnumbered the homophobic posts.
Online political mobilization and campaigning
When Ladlad’s candidature was denied by the COMELEC in 2009 on the basis of ‘immorality’, the LGBT community actively campaigned against the decision both offline and online. In their blogs and social networking sites, LGBTs and their non-LGBT supporters created online petitions (i.e. ‘I am Not Immoral’ campaign), 5 condemning the COMELEC’s decision. As the queer community has limited control over mainstream media and meager funds to mount elaborate campaigns, the internet also helps to level the playing field with other well-funded political parties as they construct a space for organizing their campaigns and communicating what they advocate online. Given social networking sites’ capacity to be shared and tagged, Ladlad’s campaigns also reach non-LGBTs, who constitute a majority of the voting population. This reaching out to non-LGBT friends and supporters, Ladlad argues, is helpful because it allows them to provide alternate representations of the LGBT community and struggle beyond mainstream media depictions and contributes to their broader goals of soliciting greater understanding of their claims.
However, as many parts of the archipelago still have no reliable internet connection, face-to-face campaign rallies are critical to LGBTs in other parts of the country. The online spaces serve to complement their provincial campaigns, which require huge funds to mount. Since Ladlad intensified its online and offline campaigns, some 52,000 members have already signed up as members and volunteers, a significant increase from its 2010 figure (Ladlad chairperson, personal communication, October 2011). During the provincial campaigns in 2010, the Facebook page served as a central portal for announcements, complaints, and organizing of the group’s provincial campaign that involved LGBT members posting updates and concerns from various parts of the archipelago.
From as early as 2011, Ladlad has been actively using its Facebook and Twitter pages to organize regional and provincial campaign assemblies for the 2013 elections. The 2013 election was crucial for Ladlad because a second loss may cast further doubt on its claim of a broad membership base and result in disqualification as a political party for subsequent elections. Photos of provincial campaigns were posted in their SNS to affirm Ladlad’s reach as a national organization, and which counter previous doubts that Ladlad does not have ‘national’ membership. Fund-raising events are also shared in these sites. According to a member, the online space also serves as a venue for those who still refuse to participate in campaigns where public association is required. Online mobilization allowed members to join and offer support while being shielded from the discriminatory eyes of peers and families.
Constructing identity in diversity
My review of Ladlad’s online spaces reflects competing opinion among the members on how queers must act in society and what constitutes a queer identity. In the Facebook page, some participants argue concerning a public forum on ‘Homosexuality is not a sin’:
i object….im gay….but sometimes, isn’t it that its….nicer if let’s leave spiritual matters to the rightful ones…homosexuality is not a sin..but havin sex with same gender is the sin…
homosexuality is not a sin but having sex with the same gender is? that’s so patently ridiculous it’s funny. i thought i only hear that statement from clueless & ignorant catholic priests. a lot of protestant denominations like the MCC, Episcopalian, and other Anglican churches treat homosexuality as harmless and equal as heterosexuality. :)
dont judge my opinion my friend ..as much as i want to oppose that views…i think i would prefer to believe that truly its a sin….and im really sad about it…i read it on the bible..and those protestants, Mcc etc…i hate to say..but i guess they are opposing GOD’s word…now i admit im a sinner…not as a gay..with by having sex with same gender… let me clarify…God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, not because of homosexuals…but because they chose to have sex with same gender…that is clear…Being GAY is not a sin… some gays start from childhood…and they are not sinners..coz they don’t have the sexual urge with the same sex… but once sex comes in…there the sin starts…that is why I am sad… because as much as I want to obey God…I can’t give up my baby…huhuhu :)
LOL. you can believe whatever you want to believe but please remember not to impose your belief unto others. i hope your views only represent a very tiny minority in the LGBT community. for homosexuality was NEVER a sin, period. :)
im not imposing…im just sharing my view…minority or not…im still part of a gay movement in our area…that is why we chose to keep distance from the church..we don’t want to drag God in our desire to be happy…
(Series of exchanges in Ladlad’s Facebook page, some words and phrases translated from Filipino, 5 June 2010)
It will be noticed that A’s opinion is heavily influenced by the Catholic Church’s teachings about homosexuality. As pointed out by Hodges and Hutter (1974: n.p.), the ultimate success of all forms of oppression is a person’s own self-oppression. For example: ‘self-oppression is achieved when the gay person has adopted an internalized straight people’s definition of what is good and bad’. Such repressions create a split in a queer’s identity, alienating him or her from his or her passions, and encouraging an abandonment of personal feelings or desires and ‘internal feelings of sin, sickness and criminality’ (Austria, 2004: 49). This implies that self-oppression complicates the overlapping layers of struggle faced by Filipino queers (Austria, 2004, 2007), particularly in terms of internal conflict between willingness to express one’s sexual preferences and urges and the Catholic Church’s teachings as moral authority.
Although the two members in the above quote expressed conflicting views, the disagreements were expressed politely, with ‘smileys’ added at the end of their posts, an attempt to attach respect in the midst of disagreement. This could be explained by the fact that most members posting in the Ladlad Facebook page and e-group do not use pseudonymous accounts and it is possible that these members might see each other during national assemblies. Some members can be identified as known LGBT activists, professionals, or educators. In a few cases when they use pseudonyms, the members explained that they still know their real identities. As Ladlad’s leader argued, ‘We need names and real members, not trolls. We rely on membership, warm bodies. So yes the offline is very much connected to the online world of the org’ (former leader of Ladlad, personal communication, May 2010).
There are other points of contention within the community. For example, the Gay Pride march, where members parade on the streets in colorful costumes to communicate their fight against discrimination, is viewed by some members to be reinforcing traditional media prejudices that caricature the LGBT image. The group is also divided over the contentious issue of same-sex marriage and views have been exchanged in its e-group site. The membership also expressed competing views on Ladlad’s support for particular candidates during the 2010 elections. Such expressions in the online spaces show that a unified conception of LGBT identity is reductive. The online spaces represent the divergent views of what constitutes queer identity and discrimination, and this implies the challenge for the organization to accommodate these differences while finding a common ground.
Common ground for mobilization
Ladlad calls on its members to report personal experiences of discrimination, ‘Have you experienced discrimination because you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender? Report to Ladlad!’ (Facebook and Twitter posting, 5 January 2011). In response, varied experiences of discrimination are shared. Together with members who seem to be financially constrained, LGBT members from the middle and upper income classes also express experiences of discrimination in their respective contexts. Some members sought help in finding jobs, or report prison abuse. Other members, some of them celebrities, writers or professionals, also shared experiences of having been refused entry to bars, restaurants, or spas, while others report discriminatory practices in company promotions exercises. Discourse on marginalization in terms of sexuality and gender work as both a leveling and a mobilizing factor that brings together members from various levels of prestige, profession, or income.
Harassment or physical violence conducted by the police and military were also exposed. Local ordinances that discriminate against queers (e.g. imposition of separate toilets for LGBTs) are brought to the attention of group members. At times, intellectual discussions on queer theory are participated in by a cluster of students or academically inclined members, as they historicize the roots of LGBT discrimination in Philippine society. A common theme running across the online spaces is not only the sharing of the experience but the goal of advancing the community with regard to multiple facets of discrimination. Calls to report and share personal experiences of discrimination allow the organization to act as an entity working to protect and defend the community. Aside from political institutions, the Catholic Church is a common subject, as members respond to the Church’s statements of incrimination of the non-heteronormative way of life. Contrasting with criticisms of the Catholic Church for its disapproval of the LGBT lifestyle are clusters of posts around the theme ‘God does not discriminate’ or ‘God loves bakla [gay]’ (various Facebook postings, May 2010– 2011).
The online space facilitates reporting of discrimination cases and creates room for some of its privileged members to be of help to members in need of assistance. Ladlad’s chairperson shared that their online spaces receive about four to five complaints on discrimination cases sent by its members every day, which they compile in order to strengthen their clamor for the passing of the Anti-Discrimination Bill. The issue of discrimination is important because it justifies Ladlad’s claim for recognition as a political party aspiring to a seat in Congress.
But the use of online spaces for political mobilization, according to its leaders, also poses challenges. For example, the website used to carry a membership form, which had been the group’s strategy to increase membership. However, they received reports that the form had been improperly used in the provinces to solicit membership fees. Their old blog was also targeted by advertisements for liquor and other ‘unwholesome’ products, which they had to distance themselves from because of their goal of being taken seriously as a political party.
Moreover, I observed that particular kinds of speech and performativity are placed in the public space while certain articulations are regulated for fear of the consequences. For example, members used to post ‘personals’ (i.e. looking for partners) on the blog, but when they became accredited as a political party, there was an effort to negotiate self-presentation in their online spaces and moderate the posts and comments of their members. Ladlad also maintains explicit rules against the posting of pornography or selling of products in its online spaces (Ladlad former leader, personal interview, May 2010). Conversations in Facebook rarely touched on members’ private lives or their love relationships. The restraint in showing internal disagreement online is also managed by the moderators and, to a certain extent, self-regulated by the members.
A prevailing assumption of a liberal, heteronormative public sphere necessitates the delineation between the private and the public whereby ‘sex acts should remain private’. McCann argues that ‘any LGBT rhetoric that privileges the rational over the sensual, the decorous over the transgressive, the family-friendly over the backroom cocksuckers’ places limits on how queer citizens express their sexual liberation (2011: 260) and essentially supports heteronormativity. Setting up Ladlad’s strategy amid such theorization of what counts as a queer counterpublic would point to a view that Ladlad silences queer subjectivity through its willingness to be subsumed under heterosexual norms. However, a closer analysis of Ladlad’s online strategies would manifest a more complex arena of negotiating online engagement that operates within particular cultural orientations and political objectives. Ladlad stands as a national organization existing within a divergence of ideologies carried by its members, including those whose self-concepts are heavily influenced by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the LGBT community exists within the confines of a Catholic society, which still widely influences social mores and norms. The reality of religious influence over Philippine culture shows that setting up rules that delineate public, political talk from private talk is necessary in order to advance an agenda in Philippine society, because extremely radical approaches can be immediately nullified or censored. As an LGBT leader put it in the interviews: We need to strategize our battle, otherwise we will be completely shut off. This is also why same-sex marriage is not formally in our plan of action. We have our individual opinions about it, but if we push for it as a national organization, we will have a lot of enemies both inside and out and people will stop listening to our call against discrimination. (Ladlad leader, personal communication, May 2010)
Here we see how the organization’s assessment of the cultural and political climate shapes its online political mobilization strategy. Members also mentioned Ladlad’s interest in constructing and debating opinion on a wide range of national political issues such as transport hikes, corruption, or poor governance, and particularly those that involve marginalization of all sorts. As a political party which works under the veil of ‘equal rights, not special rights’, the organization is careful that while it addresses LGBT issues primarily, it also has a firm stand and awareness of other national and political issues. A leader explained that framing LGBT issues within a broader concern for social justice is important because, while the community experiences marginalization as sexual minorities, they are also directly affected by the vulnerabilities caused by social injustices such as unemployment or inflation. By bringing such political and governance issues onto the group page, LGBT members who might otherwise shy away from political discussions elsewhere are encouraged to participate.
Discussion and conclusion
It has been argued that ‘while much is being said about how movements should be interpreted, they are treated as a black box: how movements organize their collective political will, and how they manage continuity and unity, are factors that make them into collective actors’ (Mayer and Roth, 1995: 315). By looking at Ladlad’s meaning-making and use of online spaces for political mobilization, we get a privileged view of this black box. The case study brings to the surface internal political mobilization in practice as the group constructs its collective identity and strengthens its visibility through the internet. This is critical in a society where conservative religious norms can clash with themes such as self-expression and exercising one’s sexual and gender choices. The case of Ladlad’s online political mobilization shows that ‘connectivity’ is an important component of the complex process of building a ‘collectivity’. Ladlad does not represent a collective of members with homogeneous values and interests and a consensus of opinion. However, the connective process facilitated by their online initiatives mobilizes LGBT members of diverse backgrounds and ideologies to be in solidarity with others of similar experiences.
Ladlad failed to secure the necessary number of votes during the 2010 and 2013 elections, which it had expected to come from its dispersed members and supporters across the country. This implies not only the insufficiency of an online campaign to fully mobilize itself as a political force, but also the overall challenge of inserting an LGBT agenda in Philippine politics. Despite this failure, the process of connectivity facilitated the activism of its members, as they learned about the struggles of their community, exchanges support and assistance, and found greater affirmation for the organization’s cause.
A backstage view of Ladlad’s online spaces shows how narratives of discrimination are used to mobilize the sentiments of its membership and move them into solidarity and action. In terms of framing strategies, these focus on the detection of problems (diagnostic framing), presenting solutions (prognostic framing), and giving members and potential recruits a reason for joining collective action (motivational framing) (Snow and Benford, 1988). These frames work to break the accepted frames that operate within the status quo that some members of the community have unknowingly accepted (i.e. that LGBTs are already ‘accepted’ in Philippine society; that it is a sin to have same-sex relations; or that sexuality cannot be a basis for social or political formations). Through the sharing of personal experiences of discrimination – but also offers of support – LGBTs from diverse classes and social strata, holding a variety of values and self-concepts, find common ground. This sharing of common experience serves as an affirmation of belonging and works as the foundation for a social movement among members ‘disembedded’ physically, but ‘embedded’ socially and politically. The capacity of online spaces to bring together a diverse and geographically dispersed LGBT community with shared experiences of discrimination, while at the same time allowing it to form ‘cocoons’ that can shield members from discriminatory voices, help to create arenas for solidarity and belonging. In these platforms, LGBTs who used to feel excluded by earlier modes of political participation now felt that they can participate in politics in their own terms.
Community, as we saw in the case study, is a ‘space of belonging and safety’, and yet the community is not free from unequal representation, divergent views, varying levels of commitment, or misunderstanding from within. The recognition and accommodation of the differences within the community and collective identification with the projected goals work for the group in the process of social movement formation. This is parallel to the logic of many resistance movements in the past, especially of subordinated communities, where members of differing class, status, race or sexual orientation hold a common understanding of the goals of liberation, even as they exercise activism separately (Kirsch, 2000: 101). As we glean from the case of Ladlad, LGBTs of diverse backgrounds and levels of power in society share a common experience that works symbolically to solidify their fight against discrimination. The case of Ladlad’s online political mobilization shows that the private and sexual are heavily embedded in the political articulations and shared experiences of discrimination that form the basis for their individual and collective political resistance. These experiences help formulate an explanation for collective identity-building and emphasize the relevance of sexual identity as the basis of political formations.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.