Papers (Part 1)

• From White to White: Media Advertising, Online Content, East Asian Pop and Changes in Aesthetic Preferences Among Gay Filipino Youth Aaron Raphael Ponce Université Libre de Bruxelles

  Studies on Philippine queer masculinity focusing on sexual preferences of gay Filipino males often note that the concept of traditional manliness and machismo has been regarded as the most sexually desirable, as sexual intercourse between homosexual men with overtly feminized features and behaviors is seen as akin to relations with women (Ricordeau. 2013: p. 427). In terms of globalization and the transnational flow of images facilitated by increased migrant mobility and developments in social media, the white Anglo-European male is often described as the epitome of this desired masculinity, as he not only has physiological qualities deemed more “macho,” but access to intimacy with Western males also represents the aspirational value of upward economic mobility associated with the ability to travel and the cosmopolitanism of being able to access the Western cultural sphere (Benedicto, 2008; Manalansan, 2003; Teunis, 2007).

  However, recent studies suggest that the hegemony of white masculinity as a sexual ideal is beginning to wane among Southeast Asian gay males, with the advent of two media trends. First, heavy advertising from cosmetic companies active in Southeast Asia such as Pond’s have increasingly pushed East Asian (Chinese and Japanese) facial features and fair skin as the new standards for beauty. Second, the massive popularity of boy bands from China, Japan and Korea among Southeast Asian audiences have been observed to change perceptions of male sexual desirability away from Western machismo, to a more feminized aesthetic involving men patronizing cosmetics (among them skin bleaching products) and achieving quasi-androgynous features (Song, 2016; Ainslie, 2017; Kang, 2018).

  Looking through the lenses of visual anthropology as well as gender and mass communication studies this paper thus aims to demonstrate two evolutions in Filipino gay aesthetic preferences: first, that contemporary media and social networks have shifted focus from Western models of masculinity to East Asian male aesthetics, albeit retaining the heavy cultural connotations of fair skin. Second, this shift to the glorification of the East Asian male is not a mere change of sexual preference, but represents a deference to East Asian cultural hegemony, as seen not only in media patronage but consumption patterns among the youth as well. We aim to do this through a comparative discourse and image analysis of three media avenues: first, through images and narratives shared in popular gay groups found on Facebook and channels in Youtube; second, a comparison of the gay male body in queer Filipino cinema from popular films in the past thirty years; and finally, a comparison of images of masculinity in cosmetic product advertising targeting youth vis-à-vis changes in consumer response and patronage.

• MSM Peer Counseling and the Dispositions of Care in HIV Prevention in the Philippines Richard Karl Deang University of Virginia

  New practices of care are emerging from the critical biopolitical moment of the Philippines, which has the fastest HIV infection growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region in addition to a state-sanctioned war on drugs. In this paper I focus on LoveYourself, a volunteer-based HIV organization in Manila catering primarily to “men who have sex with men” (MSM). LoveYourself distinguishes itself from other providers of HIV prevention services through its “promise of service” to its clients: “iniingatan at inaasikaso.” The two verbs in this slogan, “ingat” and “asikaso,” are both translations of the verb “to care,” but “ingat” can also mean “to value” and “to protect,” and “asikaso” (from the Spanish “hacer caso,” or “to heed”) can also mean “to attend to” and “to pay attention to.” They are also often contrasted with “alaga,” a translation of “care” that also means “to provide the needs of” (a child, for example). How do “ingat” and “asikaso” compare with forms of healthcare provided by traditional providers like the social hygiene clinic, which traces its roots in the American colonial public health system? How do HIV prevention counselors’ practices of empathy, friendship, and belonging come together with the aims of global health intervention within the fifteen-minute duration of an HIV prevention counseling session? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Manila, I aim to explore not only the effects of these embodied linguistic constitutions of care on the HIV/AIDS epidemic but also the ways in which these practices can be transposed outside HIV prevention work to replace practices of apathy, enmity, and alienation in the ongoing war on drugs and other similar public health interventions.

• Politics in the Cracks: Indonesian Muslim Queer Communal Care and Belonging Ferdiansyah Thajib Freie Universität Berlin

  In this panel presentation, I explore how Muslim queer communal belonging in Indonesia are partly sustained and complicated by practical, emotional, and ethical manifestations of care. I understand that although as affective dynamics, senses of belonging and care are often entangled in the remaking of everyday life among those whom I encountered during fieldwork, they are irreducible to each other. To capture the political implications of these everyday happenings as a necessarily incomplete process, I convey ‘interstitial' as an intersecting characteristic that makes up Muslim queer communal, political engagement. By interstitial, I mean an affective quality of a sociality which tends to dwell in the status of in-betweenness rather than moving towards a categorical understanding. They are forms of affiliation that neither offer finality nor clear teleological aims. By inhabiting neither a public nor a private site; and being neither a fully banished nor liberated social space, Muslim queer subjectivities are collectively engaging in what they loosely describe as a community space (ruang komunitas). The ‘space’ within this community space does not only pertain to a physical location but also points to the roles of self-organized groups to collectively cope with rampant marginalization. This way, Muslim queer communities are not only occupying the cracks of formal political structure which neglects and abuses them, and but also inserting themselves in the fissures created by wider queer movements within in the country, the region and beyond.

• Transparency and MSM in Indonesia Benjamin Hegarty University of Melbourne

  This paper charts a genealogy of the category MSM (men who have sex with men) in Indonesia. A bulk of the work conducted by NGO workers at the intersection of discourses of transnational global health/LGBT rights involves counting, categorization and verification. Their efforts offer the insight not only that categories and enumeration make up people or constitute populations, but that these practices are inseparable from transparency as a moral concern in postauthoritarian Indonesia. As exemplary objects of scrutiny, attending to the efforts to undertake documentation by activists working at the intersection of LGBT rights/global health offers a perspective on emergent modes of exclusion and belonging in postauthoritarian contexts more generally.

Papers (Part 2)

• Bodily Negotiations of Belonging and Religious Sensitivity Among Waria in Java and West Papua, Indonesia Terje Toomistu University of Tartu

  Indonesian male-bodied and feminine identified subjects who are locally and internationally increasingly known as waria – a portmanteau word derived from Indonesian words wanita (woman) and pria (man) – claim to have the heart and soul of a woman. While waria form a visible social category, they suffer from various prevailing stigmas, of which a remarkable share derives from the cultural assumptions embedded in Islamic morality.

  In line with the rest of the society, of which around 87% are Muslim, majority of waria also identify as Muslim. While most waria do not feel comfortable practicing their religion in public mosques, many describe their subjectivity along with the distinction between their male bodies and the inner sense of gender as something “given” from God. Subsequently, permanent bodily modifications are associated with the notion of sin, making this one of the main reasons why most waria shy away from the idea of gender reassignment surgery.

  Following anthropological fieldwork among waria in the cities of Yogyakarta in Java and Sorong in West Papua between 2010 and 2018, I address waria bodily negotiations against their religious sensitivity and aspirations for belonging, on both the communal and national levels. I focus on the narrations by waria addressing their spiritually driven sentiments in relation to their bodies and the sense of gender. I also outline the case of Pondok Pesantren Al-Fatah Waria (Koranic school for waria) in Yogyakarta that was attacked by Islamic extremist organization Front Jihad Islam in 2016. While Pesantren is a place of community building and learning, it is also the means to strive for belonging to Indonesian (Muslim) society.

• “They’re Just Too Lower Class”: Queer Inclusion and Exclusion in HIV-Related Care in Indonesia Sylvia Tidey University of Virginia

  In this paper I consider various means by which queer Indonesians are made to feel (un)welcome in HIV–related care settings in a wider context of conflicting care regimes. In particular, I explore how among queer Indonesians the snub of being seen as “too lower class” works to exclude certain queer Indonesians from vital health-related services. Amidst an increasing HIV epidemic that disproportionally affects waria (Indonesian transgender women), teaching adherence to the stringent regimen of antiretroviral medication forms an important part of trainings waria undergo. Couched in rhetoric of individualized self-valuation, these trainings aim to impose an inflexible conception of clock time over the more pliant conceptions of “rubber time” that generally characterize the flows of many waria everyday lives. Ultimately, so goes the promise of biomedical care, such retemporalization ensures the particular “good” of having a long life. However, as I will show, the conceptions of self and temporal outlooks of biomedical care fit uneasily with the complexities of care and contradictions between different regimes of care that waria navigate. For example, the self–acceptance and openness encouraged in HIV trainings contradict the silencing and opacity necessary for the maintenance of family ties. Furthermore, subtle forms of class–related stigmatization among HIV–positive queer Indonesians, suggest not everyone is thought to be equally deserving of care. The unquestioned biomedical good of having a long life, then, loses appeal when the life it promises is one without family – by blood or by choice.

• “Ugliness” as Pathways to Intimacy: On Deception and Disclosure Among Gay Filipino Men on Dating Apps in Manila and Los Angeles Paul Michael Atienza University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  Thinking through what affect does on mobile digital media platforms, this paper seeks to catalogue what sociologist Adi Kuntsman (2012) calls “affective fabrics.” These are intense yet ephemeral lived and deeply felt everyday sociality of connections often sensed through words or structures circulating through the use of the mobile media device. Working with Mia Mingus’ claim that ugliness is vital in the age of social media, I offer stories from my larger multi-sited ethnography focused on the digital lives of gay Filipino men. I focus on their discussions of and interviews from posers, poz men, and those in open relationships within the situatedness of geolocative dating apps in Manila and Los Angeles. I suggest that these three “deviant” figures offer distinct strategies in resisting established norms of attractiveness and desirability on these digital platforms. Through the poser’s intent to deceive, the poz man’s open declaration of his HIV seropositive status, and those who admit to an open relationship while seeking other sexual partners, I claim that these figures short-circuit a system that rewards certain digitized bodies as more valued than others. I assert the queer possibilities of deception and disclosure through the lens of affects, feelings, and emotions.

Abstract

Keywords

• Health
• LGBTQ
• Politics
• Social Structure