Vernacular self-representation in Filipino gender identities: the Bontoc minamagkit

ABSTRACT

This article is an exploration of lived experience of the minamagkit, a vernacular term coined in the 1980s for people of same sex attractions and identities in the Bontoc Mountain Province region of the Philippine Cordilleras. The ethnography traces the emergence of the identity and the label against the backdrop of the Chico River dam conflict and the militarization in the province from the 1970s until the 1990s. I investigate the factors and processes that created the context for the emergence of this self-designating label and the sexual relations between the minamagkit and soldiers stationed in the area. By doing so, I hope to contribute to a more localized, nuanced understanding of gender identities outside of the hegemonic European and even metropolitan-centric discourses on sexual identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Bontoc
• Cordillera
• gay/bakla
• gay sex in military
• Philippines

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I adopt June Prill-Brett’s use of Bontoc and Bontok. Bontoc refers to the place, the municipality and the barangay. Bontok refers to the people, the ethnolinguistic group, the language and the culture. Since my key informants came mainly from the two barangays of Bontoc Centro and Bontoc Ili, June Prill-Brett advised me to use Bontoc to refer to the two barangays and the people from these two barangays.

2 Individuals who belong to the various ethnolinguistic groups in the Gran Cordillera central in northern Philippines.

3 ‘The Popular Resistance to Chico and Cellophil as Self-Determination’, September 8, 2016. https://cpaphils.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/the-popular-resistance-to-chico-and-cellophil-as-selfdetermnation/

4 Quotations in English which are not italicized are my translations of the key informants’ narrations. Quotations in English which are italicized are direct quotations from the informants’ stories spoken in English.

5 Prill-Brett, personal communication, March 2018.

6 Interview with Katangay Pel-ey, Bontoc Ili, September 18, 2017.

7 Prill-Brett, personal communication, July 22, 2017.

8 https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/attachments/hsd/pressrelease/Cordillera%20Administrative%20Region.pdf

9 Seidenadel gives the example of the word tinaktaka to illustrate the implication of the infix ‘in’. The root word taka means a man or a person. Tinaktaka is a reduplicated word with the infix ‘in’. Tinaktaka pertains to an accomplished imitation of a man, such as a human figure carved in wood (1909, 22). Following the same logic, it is plausible that minamagkit was originally magmagkit infixed with ‘in’, which now denotes imitating or becoming a woman.

10 Interviews with Chica and Hilary took place in November 2016. Roda was interviewed in October and twice again in November 2016. Rose was interviewed in November 2016 and October 2017.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Mercedes B. Concepcion Research Grant of the Philippine Population Association and UNFPA Philippines; University of the Philippines System; University of the Philippines Baguio; Chemical Youth Research Project, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, and the Cordillera Studies Center Research Grant, University of the Philippines Baguio.